day 1235: New Search Algorithm

"Search for the Lord and for his strength; continually seek him."

A little known fact to most of us, well very well known to those who manage and watch search engine optimization (SEO) is that Google just changed their search engine algorithm, again.  They don’t change it every day but this latest change follows a recent overhaul in 2010. Google calls their new updates interesting things like, “Caffeine Update” and “Hummingbird” (the latest version).  Along the way they released partial updates like “Panda” and “Penguin”.  If you are wondering, what does this mean to you, well, maybe nothing, but it’s a good chance that your search results are going to change.  What is new is further advancement of “Conversational Search”, which should give us all a more natural way of typing in our queries and getting back what we wanted. Danny Sullivan of SearchEngine Land describes an example this way:

“"What’s the closest place to buy the iPhone 5s to my home?” A traditional search engine might focus on finding matches for words — finding a page that says “buy” and “iPhone 5s,” for example. Hummingbird should better focus on the meaning behind the words. It may better understand the actual location of your home, if you’ve shared that with Google. It might understand that “place” means you want a brick-and-mortar store. It might get that “iPhone 5s” is a particular type of electronic device carried by certain stores. Knowing all these meanings may help Google go beyond just finding pages with matching words. In particular, Google said that Hummingbird is paying more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole query — the whole sentence or conversation or meaning — is taken into account, rather than particular words. The goal is that pages matching the meaning do better, rather than pages matching just a few words.” So, we could be at the dawn of a new era of search, or maybe not.  But, if we have a website, we should be watching to see if our SEO is improving or not and then adapt as needed.  
 
I love that God gives us always available search access to Him and He always answers.  Of course, like some search results, we may not understand how that answer is what we were looking for, but what we can hold onto and always trust is that His answers will always come back to us and whatever they are they will always be the right answer for us at the time.  Our search engine?  Prayer!  What have we been holding back that needs a little searching done today?  He’s waiting on us with His divine algorithm!

Reference:  Psalm 105:4 (New Living Translation)
 

day 1151: The Search Is On!

"Be sure to do what you should, for then you will enjoy the personal satisfaction of having done your work well..."

Many of us who are working today can remember work before the times of voice mail, email, cell phones, air cards, texts, wifi, gogo, and even the internet. It's hard to think about work before all of these great tools. They have made us more productive and yes, probably because of the always connected nature of these tools we have added some stress to our working (and outside of work) lives. I also marvel at what we did for knowledge accumulation and knowledge dissemination before the advent of the search engine. Google is a verb and a household word today. We turn to Google first (sorry bing and yahoo) to find something we don't know, for quotes, for articles, yada, yada. We turn to Google and the other search engines for just about everything we need or want to know. What did we ever do before search engines? But search engines can't tell us everything we need to know. We are faced with decisions each day at work about what is right and what it wrong. We can't (yet) put a decision in a search engine and have the search engine run an algorithm that will spit out what the is the right thing to do in that situation. Fortunately, for us we have the ultimate combination of a search engine that leads us in what these right and wrong decisions should be.

Between our prayers, the Holy Spirit, and the words given to us in the Bible and those who we are closest in our faith, we have our own algorithm that are built for each of us personally. And we can see in Galatians 6:4 that when we search to God for what is right and wrong that we can find what it is that we are supposed to do and find the outcome that we can expect; "Be sure to do what you should, for then you will enjoy the personal satisfaction of having done your work well..." Today you may be searching for what is the right thing to do, the right decision, the right words to resolve a situation with a co-worker, or you may be looking for the right decision for what to do with your career. Today you can know that you have an even more powerful search engine to access for these decisions. You don't even have to be online as God is much closer even than that to you, if you allow Him to be so. A search engine even better than Google? Yes, you have it even closer to you than your fingertips.

Reference: Galatians 6:4 (New Living Translation)

day 1001: Inquiring Minds Want To Know

"Go to the Temple and speak to the LORD for me and for the people and for all Judah. Inquire about the words written in this scroll that has been found."

I have taken liberty with the pun, "Inquiring minds want to know". I knew this quote back in the day as the first word being spelled, "Enquiring".  That is from the tabloid rag, "The Enquirer".  Regardless, it holds up that those who are inquiring do want to know more.  The new TV ad is out with the blind test between Bing and Google as search engines.  I had to laugh the first time I saw it as someone in the ad agency must have come in and showed the Microsoft marketing team the power of the Pepsi vs. Coke blind taste tests of the 1980's.  And why not, as that advertising campaign worked then, and it can work now, just in a different age.  What I also find interesting about this ad campaign is that the premise of a better search engine is one that does the better inquiring for us.  For instance, if we wanted to search blue, we can't just put in the word blue and get what we want. That is because the painter is looking for different shades of blue, the psychology student is looking for how people use the word to describe their mood and the Will Farrell fan wants to see the clips from Old School. So, we have to modify the search.  What technology can do for us to get us the best search results is yet to be seen.  It's not only about how we inquire, but how the technology knows us. That is where it is all going and in our businesses knowing how someone inquires about our products and services so we can deliver to them what they want in the fastest and fullest way is a competitive advantage.

I am finishing up a biography on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I'm actually listening to it as an audiobook and it is fascinating. Bonhoeffer was a true student of the God's Word and he came up with his ways to study and learn the Bible.  I was most struck by a statement that he said about how his life changed when he stopped reading the Bible and instead began to "Inquire it". I'd never thought about using the word inquire as a verb when it came to reading the Bible, but that pivot of thinking can be a real life changer if we let it be so.  God's Word is there to open up Him to us, if we decide to truly get inquisitive.  There is no substitute for what was written and prepared as a direction gift for our lives.  How much we want to inquire defines how much we want to know. Let's be people who always, when it comes to God's Word, have inquiring minds that want to know.

Reference: 2 Kings 22:13 (New Living Translation)

day 853: The Interest Graph

"I love all who love me. Those who search will surely find me."

It's been at least two years ago now when Bill Gurley, a venture capitalist from Benchmark Capital, and Max Levchkin, one of the founders of Pay Pal, sat on a panel together and defined the "next big thing" as the "Interest Graph". What we have known to date has been the "Social Graph". This was MySpace and now is Facebook, LinkedIn, Tagged, Google+, etc.; the connection of our "friends" and the ability to share, publish and converse across a network. Certainly this is compelling enough to have created all of the companies above. But what happens when we have connected with everyone who matters and there aren't any more old high school, college and lost work acquaintances that would be meaningfully additive to our lives if we were to reconnedt? Then what? That's where we have gotten to and thus the rise of the "interest graph". Pinterest has successfully blown up because it doesn't run on the social graph, but cuts across interests. And Pinterest is not alone as we are seeing new interest graph services arriving weekly. We'd be well served to understand and follow this next trend as each of our businesses and services fit into someone's interest graph and finding the intersection between what we provide and what our consumers are passionate and interested in, opens up an all new way to connect with them.

This is simple, but complex; Jesus rolled together for us in Himself the ultimate search engine, social network and interest graph. Stay with me. He said to us, "Seek first the Kingdom of God". He said to us, "Go into the world and share the Good News". He said, "No man comes to the Father but through me". See! Search/Seek, Share/Social Network, I am the Way/your interest! As believers we have found Him. He then expects us to share His Word and message to all, especially those closest to us as our neighbors. And, he asks us to make Him our first and foremost interest and then to fellowship with those who share the same interest in Him. I am constantly amazed at how we can find all that we work, live and do, right back in the messages and the life of Jesus. Let us finish this week strong knowing that our interest graph is alive, well and aligned!

Reference: Proverbs 8:17 (New Living Testament)

day 166: Search Engines

Many of us who are working today can remember work before the times of voice mail, email, cell phones, air cards, wi-fi, and the internet. It's hard to think about work before all of these great tools. They have made us more productive and yes, probably because of the always connected nature of these tools we have added some stress to our working (and outside of work) lives. I also marvel at what we did for knowledge accumulation and knowledge dissemination before the advent of the search engine. Google is a verb and a household word today. We turn to Google first to find something we don't know, for quotes, for articles, yada, yada. We turn to Google and search engines for just about everything we need or want to know. What did we ever do before search engines? But search engines can't tell us everything we need to know. We are faced with decisions each day at work about what is right and what it wrong. We can't (yet) put a decision in a search engine and have the search engine run an algorithm that will spit out what the is the right thing to do in that situation. Fortunately, for us we have the ultimate combination of a search engine that leads us in what these right and wrong decisions should be. Between our prayers, the Holy Spirit, and the words given to us in the Bible we have our own algorithm that are built for each of us personally. And we can see in Galatians 6:4 that when we search to God for what is right and wrong that we can find what it is that we are supposed to do and find the outcome that we can expect; "Be sure to do what you should, for then you will enjoy the personal satisfaction of having done your work well..." Today you may be searching for what is the right thing to do, the right decision, the right words to resolve a situation with a co-worker, or you may be looking for the right decision for what to do with your career. Today you can know that you have an even more powerful search engine to access for these decisions. You don't even have to be online as God is much closer even than that to you, if you allow Him to be so. A search engine even better than Google? Yes, you have it even closer to you than your fingertips.

Reference: Galatians 6:4 (New Living Testament)