2 ms·

What Can Search Predict?

6 points by bjonathan 16y ago

Terretta 16y ago
This article startled me into checking its publication date. The claim is so clearly obvious for the outlined applications (camera purchases, vacation bookings, movie grosses), it seems unreasonable to think nobody was doing this. Here's an essay on "trendspotting", suggesting the concept came into vogue in the late '90s: http://www.radosh.net/writing/trends.html http://www.radosh.net/writing/trends.html And here's an article citing analysis of AltaVista query logs in 1998 (and other query studies since): http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=224 http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=224 Perhaps because that was so hot at the time, folks I worked with in e-commerce in the mid to late 90's assumed this is what search engines were doing with their data -- data-mining it and selling the intelligence. Our reasoning was: "Well, if the grocery stores can predict what to stock on the shelves and what coupons to mail, surely the search engines can predict macro/economic/consumer trends, and that data must be incredibly valuable. That must be where they're getting their real revenue..." But maybe they weren't. A month ago, PG suggested Yahoo was making too much money from ads to bother improving commerce related results with "Revenue Loop". http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html Perhaps that held true of all the search engines? At least the idea was out there before this Yahoo research coverage. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/2003-01-02-web-monitoring_x.htm http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/2003-01-02-web-mon... http://www.pagetrafficblog.com/google-predicts-what-searchers-will-search-for-12-months-from-now/6851/ http://www.pagetrafficblog.com/google-predicts-what-searcher... http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17050-innovation-how-your-search-queries-can-predict-the-future.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17050-innovation-how-y... Hmm. Maybe Google is just a long-term ruse to collect data for a hedge fund management AI.

6 points by bjonathan 16y ago

This article startled me into checking its publication date. The claim is so clearly obvious for the outlined applications (camera purchases, vacation bookings, movie grosses), it seems unreasonable to think nobody was doing this. Here's an essay on "trendspotting", suggesting the concept came into vogue in the late '90s: http://www.radosh.net/writing/trends.html http://www.radosh.net/writing/trends.html And here's an article citing analysis of AltaVista query logs in 1998 (and other query studies since): http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=224 http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=224 Perhaps because that was so hot at the time, folks I worked with in e-commerce in the mid to late 90's assumed this is what search engines were doing with their data -- data-mining it and selling the intelligence. Our reasoning was: "Well, if the grocery stores can predict what to stock on the shelves and what coupons to mail, surely the search engines can predict macro/economic/consumer trends, and that data must be incredibly valuable. That must be where they're getting their real revenue..." But maybe they weren't. A month ago, PG suggested Yahoo was making too much money from ads to bother improving commerce related results with "Revenue Loop". http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html Perhaps that held true of all the search engines? At least the idea was out there before this Yahoo research coverage. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/2003-01-02-web-monitoring_x.htm http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/2003-01-02-web-mon... http://www.pagetrafficblog.com/google-predicts-what-searchers-will-search-for-12-months-from-now/6851/ http://www.pagetrafficblog.com/google-predicts-what-searcher... http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17050-innovation-how-your-search-queries-can-predict-the-future.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17050-innovation-how-y... Hmm. Maybe Google is just a long-term ruse to collect data for a hedge fund management AI.