Google, Yelp, and the Future of Search
by Joshua Gans
July 10, 2015
hbr.org
Why aren’t things better? This is something that I often feel these days when searching for information on the internet. And it is especially something I feel when I am searching for products where quality matters. This applies to restaurants, tradespeople, and books, for example. In each of these cases, I am looking for not just anything — but something that is good or even high quality. When I search on Google what I often find is a mess of links to sellers of those products and also lots of review sites. But I can also confine my search to something narrower. I can use Yelp, Zagat, or TripAdvisor for restaurants. I can use Amazon to search for books and read reviews even if I don’t purchase there, although the chances are surely high that I will make a purchase if I find what I want.
Not surprisingly then, the business of matching my search behavior with suppliers and information is a big one. There are people who will pay – usually suppliers themselves – for matches that work out. Google’s entire business model is based on that. People search and reveal their intent, giving advertisers who might satisfy that intent a clear in. All Google has to do is, literally, sit back, ask the advertisers to express just how much they are willing to pay for that connection and then connect accordingly.
There was a time, perhaps five or so years ago, when it was hard to imagine anyone being better at Google in finding stuff. But things have changed. Google is great for finding out the date of the Defenestration of Prague without even knowing what that is, or that there were actually two of them. But if I want a hairdresser who will do a decent job or someone to fix my air-conditioner, I’m never feeling lucky and know I’m in for more work in the form of “click – read – back arrow – click again.”
Many startups have realized this problem and have come into the breach to fix things. They offer specialized search (as distinct from Google and Bing’s universal search) which requires (a) consumers know they exist and (b) that their specialized search can actually give consumers the information they desire more efficiently.
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