How To Overhype Your Search Engine
(Search Engine Land)
After covering search for 13 years, I’m more than a little jaded. I’ve seen any number of search start-ups promise to revolutionize how we search. None of them have in the huge way they’ve promised, other than Google — and it’s a special case. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been watching Wolfram Alpha walk the same hype path so many have followed before. So I thought I’d offer a little advice, for what it’s worth. Here’s how to set your search service up for a disappointing fall.
1) Fail to brief those in the know
2) Use controlled demonstrations
3) Claim you’re the “next Google” or fail to set expectations
4) Trot out big names with no connection to search
5) Offer me or anyone an “exclusive” to break your launch
1 comment:
Hi,
Thanks, Tim, much appreciated. Like I said, I count your opinion pretty highly. And if it’s not really a search engine like Google, that explains a lot. But they’ll still have expectation problems. The reviews so far have, to me, positioned it as somehow a rival to Google (even in another area) or bigger than Google. They aren’t responsible for the slant of those reviews, of course — though they can help influence them one way or the other. But I guess I figure when they launch, we’ll see lots of people who aren’t in the scientific community assuming it’s like Google (journalists among them), doing a search, perhaps coming away disappointed and feeling it was all hype.
Thanks
Peter
Outsourcing Services
Post a Comment