Mar07
08
Why I Want Localised, Specialised Search
Dennis McDonald, an Enterprise 2.0 expert based in Washington D.C., commented on my recent post about Gargoyle (the SA Blog search engine), asking why I would be so interested in localised search when I have the all-powerful and pervasive alternatives in Google and Technorati (or del.icio.us from a semantic point of view).
The answer to the question was worthy of a new post. You see, the idea of a dedicated, local equivalent to Technorati or Google has been on the minds of many connected Africans for some time. We get lost in the sheer volumes generated on those sites. Yes, we are living in a global economy. But geographic boundaries still apply sometime, especially from a business perspective. Here’s why I want to see a local service that COMPLIMENTS my existence Google, Technorati and del.icio.us presence…
1. I want to be able to see Africa’s, and more specifically, South Africa’s blogosphere in one place. I want to be able to quantify it. I want the indexed sites to be reliable sources (moderated either by the community or by a dedicated team) to ensure the sites are indeed African in content or authorship (although this does raise some interesting questions about what would be ‘in’ and what would be ‘out’).
2. I want a centralised, reliable and objective directory that shows how my blog ranks in relation to the rest of the SA blogosphere. This is for my ego and no other reason whatsoever. I recently graduated into the top 20,000 blogs in the world, according to Technorati. Other bloggers trust Technorati rankings. I want the same here.
3. I want to be able to tell me clients when their customers are speaking about them, with some degree of reliability. I want to be able to set up watchlists for the SA blogosphere, which includes .com domains and M&G or 24.com blogs… a watchlist for Standard Bank on Technorati will produce 99% irrelevant result, whereas a similar search on a platform like Gargoyle will be 90% effective from a brand reputation management perspective.
4. I am frikkin’ proud of how we’re growing in diversity, quality and size, and would dearly like to be able to visualise and report on that.
Either way the only way any platform for localised content will work is for all sites to be submitted manually and be accepted based on their ‘South-African-ness’. This is the biggest challenge, but success will be driven by the desire from within the blogosphere (as is the case with Technorati) to be part of the community - to be seen and heard.
Lastly, no service will ever replace Technorati or Google seeing as I still have readers abroad and require global search. But it certainly could augment these already brilliant services.
Hope that all makes cents.
Very valid and so true Mike. I would also like to see South African Wordpress, Blogger and Typepad blogs included. Then comes in the question of how do we distinguish whether they are South African or not. I have to methods.
1) User submission and user moderation. Using the power of users again. Let the blog author or reader of the blog submit it as a South African blog, other users will surely be able to determine whether or not it is South African or not, if not it can be flagged or moderation / deletion.
2) Special meta tag. Users can insert a meta tag or maybe some other piece of code into their blog which the spider can detect and add as South African.
I prefer the 1st idea however.
Just a quick geek note, what is definitely coming out of the data is how many sites are so poorly configured from a semantic point of view. It seriously hampers search and research. For example if this is possible and yet there are bloggers who are not managing even their meta tags then there is a problem.
Oops, to give credit where credit is due, that link is to semantic info sourced from http:/ /www.powertrip.co.za. Jacques Marneweck’s site
[...] South Africa is starting to boast some really impressive sites based on international models. I prefer not to call them clones, they are built on foreign concepts / models. They are fundamental in the growth of the South African internet. Mike Stopforth has already expressed his need for a South African version of Technorati. [...]
Thanks Mike, this is a terrific explanation. We should be able to “slice and dice” the web anyway we see fit — even if it’s just to be able to search a specialized collection of movie reviews or a specialized set of blogs related to social media and social networking. Geographic orientation is an obvious segmentation variable and certainly one of the most important criteria relevant to personal and professional networking.
Two possible caveats arise if we add metadata-based or infrastructure-based identifiers that simplify geographic aggregation of sites:
First, do we risk some “balkanization” of the web if different regions adopt different geographic tagging or aggregation techniques?
Second, do we make it easier for internet-unfriendly governments to track and restrict the free flow of information?
Both very real dangers, but on the first point I believe if enough power is in the hands of users we’ll maintain a global approach to local categorisation, and possibly interface with the existing tools to avoid that issue. In terms of Internet-unfriendly governments - prohibition is guaranteed to do one thing - encourage growth. Ask the US in the 20’s and today, Egyptian bloggers. Same patterns.
Yes yes yes Mike. This is exactly what I want. Have been troubled with this thing ever since I became familiar with Technorati. Muti and Gargoyle!!! We’re catching on us SAFFAS and it’s great.
google’s hidden private project
see http://devshots.com
[...] A skeptical Dennis McDonald: Thanks Mike, this is a terrific explanation. We should be able to “slice and dice” the web anyway we see fit — even if it’s just to be able to search a specialized collection of movie reviews or a specialized set of blogs related to social media and social networking. Geographic orientation is an obvious segmentation variable and certainly one of the most important criteria relevant to personal and professional networking. [...]