The beginning of month few specialists have discussed the future of search in year 2010 and share some of their ideas. Future of Search 2010.

The discussion was hosted by Gord Hotchkiss and included professionals from the leading search engines.

Partakers:

• Larry Cornett - VP, Search Experience, Yahoo
• Daniel Read – Senior VP of Site Product Management and User Experience, ASK
• Greg Sterling - Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence
• Marissa Mayer - VP, Search Products and User Experience, Google
• Justin Osmer - Senior Product Manager, Live Search, Microsoft
• Chris Sherman - Executive Editor, Search Engine Land.
• Jakob Nielsen - User Advocate and Principal of Nielsen Norman Group

Highlights:

Universal search / blended search will be more striking. (Google and Microsoft). The “interface" will be improven.

Jakob Nielsen - mobile phone

Yahoo - "user intent" is going to be understood by search engines.

Greg Sterling required more structure and personalization.

Each engine provided a "discovery" search for the singer-songwriter Feist. All search engines (Ask, Google, Live, Yahoo) try to find the dints and provide "contextual relevance". All the engines accepted the idea of disambiguation. From now on Google also show relevant words at the bottom of the page.

Google improved by creating snippets on it.

Time constraints of iphone coming to Canada were also discussed. Out of four search engines Ask was the weakest one for current material. But all poor in the summaries.

Yahoo tries to have a conversation with the searcher through Search Assist.

Mayer doesn't think it will be possible to figure our the interests of users though the next year.

How much traction can be possibly received in disambiguation through personalization?" Related Search at Ask helps user to improve the search combining it with patterns in use of verticals. Hopefully the result will be seen in three years.

Personalization will also lead to the improvement of the local search which in future will benefit mobile.

It was also offered to divide pages into sections and deal with them separately – it will make it easier for people to look at. E shaped scanning rather than F. More attention to the left than the right. To hold to the margin on the left Google uses the "golden triangle". Images and videos introduces are disruptive to the scanning and create new challenges. Ask moved images and videos to the three columns since when they interleaved video and images with web results found that use of those became more complicated. Enquiro in its studies on the same query at Google and Ask found people spent the same amount of time.

How to put important marketing messages in front, and keep balance between sponsor results and organic results? Marissa Mayer says there is a sophisticated algorithms for selecting and ranking - and some new methods of presentation - richer content such as video and maps. Richer format ads are coming and higher relevance with more "brand relevance". Still there are dangers that people will be turned off. Nielsen advises targetting ads based on personalization elements or simple profiling.

How will community patterns influence results? Larry Cornett at Yahoo has several social services - finds that people will trust others. Gord asked "Will there be a merging of Facebook and search?" Greg Sterling - social search in a vertical may work better because of shared interests and values. Jakob Nielsen - social networks will be too small - need to be able to capture across a large number of people - Facebook etc won't cut it.