SES Kicking off Strong! Search: Where to Next?

Panel experts for Search: Where to next? included Duane Forrester from Bing, Josh McCoy from Vizion Interactive, Rob Garner from iCrossing, and Eli Goodman from comscore. Questions  ranging from Facebook likes to personalization funneled through the moderator and the panel showed their expertise with many great answers.

“Will Facebook “Likes” replace links?”

• Social networks (likes) and search (links) is like comparing apple and oranges. They will not “eat each other” it’s more of a ying and yang. (Complementing each other.) Google and Bing may not look at Facebook or Twitter for search results in the future. – Rob Garner 
• Social today is a great signal and we are interested in what the signals are as they are the root of the intent for our customers . –Duane Forrester

"What are your thoughts on advertising personalization?”

• People don’t mind advertisements if they are relevant. Too much personalization can be a bad thing, the definition of who you are will change in ten year and the question is do we have sophisticated enough tools that will evolve with us? - Eli Goodman 
• People are so savvy with social media and the personalization that comes with this that they will want your site to be savvy enough to know who they are as well. Personalization needs to be in search to get you to the websites but must be also be on the websites for returning visitors. – Josh McCoy 
• Tailoring your results to who you are, where you have been, etc. is not always something you want that from a search engine. Customers want to see what the search engine thinks is the best answer vs. what is “best” for you.  It’s as if we, as search engines have an obligation to do something with all the data customers are giving us however there is a fine line of personalization and “creepy” factor. – Rob Garner

Craving more answers from Bing panelist Duane Forrester? Check out a video interview coming soon!

Thank you,

Christen

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