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The problem is that the sort of stuff you need to tune a search engine to actually perform well doesn't look like work. It simply can't be broken down into del

The problem is that the sort of stuff you need to tune a search engine to actually perform well doesn't look like work. It simply can't be broken down into deliveries that provide incremental business value, and throughout the entire process it's going to look like a bunch of fiddling with numbers with nothing to show for it.

toast0 3y ago
Does any product feature that requires care and maintenance easily fit the model of delivering incremental value? But for a search engine, showing incremental value should be easy if you have a real product reason to do it. If you expect search to help people find content, then you look at statistics on engagement --- in aggregate did people use search, does it look like they found what they wanted, did they return and use search again. In specific, which queries seem popular and provide good results, which queries seem popular and don't provide good results. You provide incremental value by moving queries from the second to the first category, where possible. If you can kind of classify some of the less popular queries, there's value in improving results for those too, but classification is also hard. Sometimes the numbers are easy... I participated in an application of search where a support request hit the FAQ before submission --- if search works, there should be fewer tickets and especially fewer tickets where the user can easily solve their own problem. Search in a shopping context should lead to more sales. Etc.
- pixl97 3y ago
  I think you may miss how many technology projects fail in companies. A company may have no internal knowledge or skill to make search better, so they get an outside contracting group that produces a shitty product that doesn't improve sales and costs an extraordinary amount for the lack of results. Quite often the company won't make any more in those long tail sales, but instead better placement of the products they buy in mass.

toast0 3y ago

Does any product feature that requires care and maintenance easily fit the model of delivering incremental value? But for a search engine, showing incremental value should be easy if you have a real product reason to do it. If you expect search to help people find content, then you look at statistics on engagement --- in aggregate did people use search, does it look like they found what they wanted, did they return and use search again. In specific, which queries seem popular and provide good results, which queries seem popular and don't provide good results. You provide incremental value by moving queries from the second to the first category, where possible. If you can kind of classify some of the less popular queries, there's value in improving results for those too, but classification is also hard. Sometimes the numbers are easy... I participated in an application of search where a support request hit the FAQ before submission --- if search works, there should be fewer tickets and especially fewer tickets where the user can easily solve their own problem. Search in a shopping context should lead to more sales. Etc.

pixl97 3y ago
I think you may miss how many technology projects fail in companies. A company may have no internal knowledge or skill to make search better, so they get an outside contracting group that produces a shitty product that doesn't improve sales and costs an extraordinary amount for the lack of results. Quite often the company won't make any more in those long tail sales, but instead better placement of the products they buy in mass.