I have researched a lot regarding the next generation of search engines, and in this post I will relate to you guys my own definition about the 3rd generation of search engines.
As you know, the 1st generation search engines are known as indexing search engines or directories. People can use keywords, but that is really ‘searching’, no other process to determine the relevance of data. Directory is a really good idea and is invented by the portal giant, Yahoo. In this generation, at least people can find something from a huge set of data.
The 2nd generation which is the current generation is known as the core technology and of course, a great example would be Google’s powerful PageRank. PageRank is actually a set of formulas and equations which determines the relevance and reliability of every webpage for every keyword. People can find the most relevant and reliable data almost instantly. Also, Google is famous for its indexing engine too, because we can search over 1 billion webpages in less than 0.1s. This is indeed amazing! In this generation, we can all get the most relevant webpages, but of course, they are fetched and generated by machines.
So what will happen in 3rd generation search engines? In my own opinion, the importance and relevance of data will be determined by humans instead. At the moment, when we start searching, we are telling the search engine what we want to find, and the machines at the background will then return the result to us. This is actually known as one-way communication, just like Web 1.0 or Read-Only Web. Why not let the machines understand the information of searches we sent? Our searches may be very important for other users, because we are finding information according to computers’ mind, and the result may not be the best.
In the 3rd generation of search engines, machines will collect our searches and analyze them. For example, we will tell the search engine what we click, how long we stay, how many pages we view, etc. These actions will be able to be understood by the 3rd generation search engines and they will use them to improve the result for the next user who wants to find answers to a similar term.
Currently, Snap.com is one of the first 3rd generation search engines out there. It is a project developed by Idealab, one my favorite Internet corporation. Snap.com uses the searches made by users (besides the essential functions of a typical search engine) there is also a tracker inside it, and this might be the secret recipe of 3rd generation search engines.
But why Google never dare to experiment it? Well actually, there was an experimental version of Google which made used of the technologies of Snap.com, but now it no longer exist, probably because the US search engine giant is improving and developing the idea in another way – Open Search Engine Platform. Google has lost the chance to compete with Snap.com directly because Google cannot be the first one any more, so Google have to change their ideas.
Although Snap.com is powered by humans, but we still cannot do anything by ourselves, everything is controlled by machines. If Google manages to change it, Â then I think we will be entering an era whereby our minds can do the job rather than “dead” machines helping us. Open Search Engine Platform is a new concept, it’s something related to the content provider which means no longer spiders are required. From my perspective, the 3rd generation search engines will use the data from webmasters or even users directly, it will be changed from active to passive.
Why passive? When it is passive, it enables the search engine to grab information faster, and hence resulting in a lesser waste of traffic. For example, if Google wants to index all new statuses on Twitter, and keep updating every 1 minute, how much traffic will be used? I bet it can exceed 10Gbps very easily, but what about Twitter Search, the typical passive search engine? I think 1Mbps is more than enough. Why? Twitter Core System will transfer all new tweets to Twitter Search, only when there are new tweets. But if Google want to keep updating, it will keep browsing twitter website, and detect the new messages, there can be a huge amount of old pages that never be updated, but Google only knows that after accessing it.
So why not build a platform that provides an API for websites to submit the new information directly to the search engine? I think this is indeed a wonderful idea and I am also thinking about it. Recently, Baidu.com Inc has released a new platform, the code name is called Alading. It’s a new platform that resembles like Open Search Engine Platform that allows webmasters to post relevant information directly to Baidu, and users can search them and view the latest information in a flash.
Real-time search engines are good, but we need a stronger core, I think Open Search Engine Platform can be the stronger core, and I think it will be the next generation of search engines. So what’s your view or forecasts about the 3rd generation of search engines? Comment below…