I-Search #153: Personal Interest Graph

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January 29, 2013                                    I-Search #153
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                   .....IN THIS DIGEST.....

// -- FEATURED TOPIC -- //

             "Personal Interest Graph"
                         ~ I-Search


// -- CONTINUING DISCUSSION -- //

             "Social Search Optimization"
                         ~ I-Search Community

// -- NEW DISCUSSION -- //

             "Facebook Graph Search"
                         ~ Chantal Tardif


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// -- NEW DISCUSSION -- //

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==> Personal Interest Graph

From: I-Search <>

Last Friday at World Economic forum in Davos Switzerland, CEO 
Marissa Mayer of Yahoo! (formerly of Google), spoke at length 
about her vision of the future of Web technology. As a noteworthy  
search influencer and considering social search, she spoke in 
terms of waves of technology innovation and described a future of 
discovery from an 'Interest Graph' in response to traditional and 
social search that we're seeing the beginnings of today.

Interest Graph differs from Facebook's Graph Search and Google+ 
in important ways. With her mention of Twitter, it seemed to me 
like her vision might be informed by Twitter Discover and her 
awareness of the media advantage that Yahoo! enjoys. She spoke of 
catering to 'daily habits' and how well Yahoo! is suited to 
provide for it in a mobilized digital age. Daily habits can, in 
turn, inform a collection of interests mapped by hierarchy to 
populate a map or graph: Interest Graph.

Google Now compartmentalizes this with its 'cards' while Yahoo! 
has a much more mature hierarchy of information buckets with user 
history and its legacy services (which are to be refreshed). The 
discovery process takes on push services like that of old but in 
an entirely new way. It is intriguing to me for the future of 
information retrieval. Where "you are the query" a query process 
might begin to seem largely unnecessary with Interest Graph.

The way I picture it, historical queries of yours can be 
collected in a portable format for use with any open service. 
Imagine if you could export your search history from Google and 
map it onto the Interest Graph at Yahoo!, with all its media 
strength and partnerships. You'd get better information. The 
Yahoo! ontology of "you" and your topic interests are informed by 
everything from your personal preference settings to tracked 
interaction with media on the network.

The brilliance of this approach is its anticipation of perfecting 
behavior targeting beyond what Facebook and Google could do any 
near as quickly as Yahoo! could. Privacy will always remain a 
serious concern until such a time when standards are enforceable 
by law that automatically comfort users. It may be a long time 
off but data as sensitive as your search history should be 
portable, transferrable as your phone number in today's US 
telecommunications market.

Search is already viewed by smart engineers as a simple 
commodity, available at a moment's notice and applied with an 
easily coded search text field. This assumption gets furthered 
when looking at Facebook's Graph Search, a product that is merely 
a collection of utilitarian search features specifically for 
Facebook's walled-garden. It is the data underneath any search 
service that makes up the value of a search engine.

The algorithm is a necessary utility where the discovery magic 
can happen. The limits of relevancy by way of encoding an 
elaborate algorithm may be at hand. Google has not solved the 
search puzzle and WolframAlpha is too esoteric for wide 
commercial use although it handles computations for certain Siri 
queries (I like their chances in the long run. Alternatively, it 
is possible for information to bubble up without user queries. 

We are definitely moving in this direction with Google Now on 
Android and Twitter Discover. Google Now provides topical push 
'cards' that populate information based on the context of where 
you are and what you were last doing. Twitter Discover shows 
Tweets based on the context of who you follow. Twitter is its own 
Interest Graph with constant updating user-propelled media pushed 
to your Discover page. I look forward to seeing implementation of 
something further enhanced than these services at Yahoo!.

Stay tuned,
I-Search

 

----------------------------------------------------------------- // -- CONTINUING DISCUSSION -- // ----------------------------------------------------------------- ==> Social Search Optimization From: I-Search <> Discussion: What particular skills and or tech from traditional SEO do you find most useful for your social (search) marketing? Author tags get applied. Fun tips are appreciated! From: DJ Paisley html From: Steve Wiideman Hi Disa, great question! Having the right strategy has been at the core of successful campaigns I've worked with. Choosing the right themes, having the right creative writer tell the story and the right engager to influence sharing, and of course, having an editorial calendar for the content marketing is absolutely a must. I use this example when talking about SMM, syndicating/sharing to improve search value, and tracking to justify effort: Sample SMM Campaign Tracker (Google Spreadsheet). I hope that helps? From: Ashley Berman Hale Write like you're speaking to human beings, not bots.  Moderator Comment: I love how much you've compacted in that answer. First, write like you're speaking... yes! It's SEO Copywriting I learned from my time with Heather Lloyd-Martin which got reinforced elsewhere as I looked for writing advice. Then, of course, don't write to the robots because in search it defeats your potential for conversion and undermines the basic job. In social, you can't help but realize you're writing to users and not bots. From: Chris Butterworth Having a broad knowledge of the tools available is a massive help. But if you want specific skills: - PHP, HTML & CSS to a moderate level - Understanding of server side issues - Ability to use Excel for data analysis - Good knowledge of advanced search operators - Good English (under-rated sometimes) I think these are the basic requirements for any one starting out in SEO and are lacking in some people who "do" SEO. Having said that, just having the ability to learn those things quickly and enjoy it at the same time would be enough if someone was an absolute beginner. SEO is really easy, but you have to enjoy it. Bonus Fun Tip - Ability to get client engaged in the process. (Not sure that was a fun tip) Moderator Comment: Obviously coming from the tech SEO angle, a personal favorite old school skill of mine, I love to see English is even included. It brings back memories of when I moderated more than write, and now with social search optimization, writing well is even more important. I recall times when there was no PHP, so I would include Javascript, while that list of yours is a nicely comprehensive for anyone who likes the label 'tech SEO.' What a nice touch you left regarding loving what you do and getting your clients engaged in the process. I can say for one, that a tech SEO has a particular advantage if there are issues between marketing and IT in a client organization, since we have one foot firmly in both worlds. Tech SEO still has its intrinsic value in a tech world (no matter how warm and fuzzy social makes tech seem). Good Web server knowledge is key for so many important tasks. Just think of mod rewrite rules. From: Jackie Bese Me personally, I think finding ways to create killer content and then *really* encouraging people to like, share, +1, etc is essential. With the continued integration of social and search it will become that much more important to get those social signals towards your site. Make it easy and obvious to connect and share.  Moderator Comment: I definitely agree. One of the things it makes me think of next, is even a post that isn't necessarily shared as much as others you've added should do well if your profile is strong and in the search user's interests. Especially if you appear in their circle, it's a done deal IMO. That thought works for me with Google, Facebook and Twitter. From: Trey Collier Passion for constant learning! From: Frederic Chanut A sea of constant changes From: Luke Chapman Make your content interesting and relevant. From: Mansi Takyar Great Question! I guess the most important element of SEO is targeting at the right keyword. It applies to SMM too. If you know which keywords can bring you the right traffic, using those in your SMM campaigns, posts etc would be beneficial. Hope you would agree with me. Thanks Mansi Takyar LeewayHertz Moderator Comment: I absolutely do. Constant learning is part of the game and ever so with social search. I love how both interesting and relevant are keys to important concepts in both practices of social and search optimization. Interesting enough for links and shares, relevant with the addition of informed keywords for targeting your network. Nice! Stay tuned, I-Search
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