Google search is primitive

Well, when we talk about search today I think Google results are not that good, where good is defined by the quality of the answers people get. What Google does is match the search term with results in its internal database and returns the user a list of results it thinks are the best. It does that rather efficient, fast and manages to get regular website in its index very fast (better than the competition), but that’s pretty much it: many times results are not what you’re expecting and are the base for further personal investigations.

It’s like you go to a library, ask for a particular Jules Verne book and get his entire work on the desk, all books without titles. Then you start looking into each and everyone to find what you’re looking for.

What can’t Google do?

• search into picture contents with advanced filters for color and so on
• search into videos
• search into other content than your birth language and automatically translate relevant results
• compose similar pages with the same topic into one single document (text, images, video and social media mentions)

The future of search as I see it lies in the quality of the results, not the speed. That was also the case when Google enter the market and was more relevant than the competition at that time (competition that now has narrowed down significantly). If Google doesn’t do something to stay ahead of the game and come up with something evolved (I’m not talking about Caffeine) we’re looking at a dead man walking, don’t you think?

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This tool I’m talking about, that can help predict the future is Google Trends, a tool often forgot and used only by experts. I’ve recently started using it to get ideas about a new websites that will target new IT products that will grow big in sales in the future. I’m trying somehow to replicate my friend’s success with a netbook website, a relatively new hot IT trend, that he started a few months ago and already gets him a few bucks every months and rising.

How to spot trends with Google Trends?

It’s easier that you might think: just enter a term or two (each term must be separated by commas). Hit Enter and see what comes up. In the screen that now comes up you’ll see how many searches for these terms were performed in pasy years. You can see which countries got the most search volume for those trends, which cities and languages used.

This is crucial data that can make you discover things others will read in newspappers after a few months. Now all you need is patience and a few ideas to narrow down your trend search. Check out what Google Trends tell us about “past”, “present” and “future”: nobody cares about present and you get more chances of making money thinking about the future. But that we all knew, don’t we?

Google Trends search evolution

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Microsoft has a solution to this, called Desktop Search (now renamed to Windows Search 4.0), but that’s useless in Vista in Windows 7 as you already have the integrated search that caches and indexes various items (you can set up what you want indexed) and only occupies more resources. I’ve search for a long time for a solution to Outlook’s slow search function and found the Xobni plugin, which has a free and a paid version which offers some advanced feature, tough a regular user will only need the free version.

Xobni toolbar in Outlook

What Xobni does

First you have to understand that Xobni is an add-on which is installed on top of Microsoft Outlook (download it here). After install it is visible in the right part of Outlook. It can be minimized for your viewing convenience of course. At the first start it indexes your recent emails (you can then index all your email which took for me ~ 15 minutes).

The main functions performed by Xobni Free are:

• search in emails
• display someones detailed contact info with conversations (threaded view), exchanged files, mailing frequency statistics
• it integrates with LinkedIn, Facebook and Hoovers and allows you to see someone’s contacts
• auto suggest for new email recipients

Xobni Plus gets you more features:

• advanced search filters for emails
• unlimited Outlook Data files (PST), as the free version only allows for one
• it displays appointments and tasks with a certain contact
• more auto suggested persons when writing a new email

Auto suggest with Xobni

If you haven’t already tried Xobni you should as it’s free and easy to install and use. It also brings a few social media options to Outlook plus the aforementioned lightning fast search.

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• Why Google is a primitive search engine
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