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Web Searches Go Low-Tech: You Ask, a Person Answers
Communal appeal keeps answerers coming back, said Vallera, the food aficionado in San Francisco, who typically answers two or three questions a day.
"You get a human element you can't get with just a search engine," she said. The impulse to scan strangers' questions and type out answers is largely about trying to help people and be a good citizen, she added. But having met a few other answerers in person at an event sponsored by Yahoo in June, she decided they share a common trait: "We're the worst kind of chronic overachievers who love getting those e-mails that say your answer was the best."
  Richard Marchal fields relationship questions on Yahoo Answers. (Richard Marchal) |
"We see Co-op as the next evolutionary step in search" by augmenting the conventional search formula with user input on what people think are the most expert sites, said Shashi Seth, product manager for Google Co-op.
Still, Google's main focus in search technology remains the mathematical algorithms that made its search engine famous.
"It remains to be seen how significant [social search] will be," said Matt Cutts, one of Google's lead search engineers. There are several areas of concern, he said: "One is malicious people -- you always have to be wary of that." Second, people often seek expert advice, not just answers from the masses. "There is the danger of the quality of information, which can be lower."
The only real quality control online is reputation.
"Organic information is a key part of the Internet. The difficulty is the control or lack of control" over people looking to mislead others or spread disinformation, said Rob Enderle, an independent analyst with the Enderle Group in San Jose. "What people like about it is that it's free-form, but it's predicated on good behavior."
Most social search engines, like other sites that compile user-generated content, rank users to help highlight people who tend to have good answers or who routinely post better information. They often also rely heavily on users to report bad behavior, such as using objectionable language or linking to spam or adult content.
In Yahoo's case, in addition to a five-star rating system for the best answer, contributors receive points based on the quality of their answers -- and Yahoo keeps a leader board of its users.
Marchal, a 58-year-old part-time consultant, is currently ranked fourth on the Yahoo Answers leader board with nearly 85,000 points, a status he said is "totally irrelevant" when it comes to his motivation to help people.
"Family and relationships are the ones that I tend to do well on," Marchal said, particularly when it comes to helping lovelorn people around the world discern the fine lines between "crushes, infatuation, love and romance." To date, no professional psychologist has challenged his answers, he said.
Marchal doesn't ask too many questions, though after searching unsuccessfully for a movie featuring a penguin he thought was named Melvin Fox, he posed the question to his Internet community and promptly got a response.
The penguin was Milton Fox, and the 1964 movie was called "Quick Before It Melts."
