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How Do Google Web Search And The Darwin Awareness Engine Stack Up?
By Bill Ives
Expert Author
Article Date: 2010-01-25
I want to share this post I first wrote for the Darwin Awareness Engine blog last week to see what you think and what questions you might have. Google has been the dominant web search engine for years now for good reason. It is the default opening screen on my laptop and I use it multiple times every day. It brought the innovative concept of Page Rank to gauge popularity and provide us with useful, quality content.
The Darwin Awareness Engine™ brings a different approach through its use of Chaos Theory and the concept of correlated content. I am certainly not attempting to equate these innovations but I want to attempt to better explain what the Darwin Awareness Engine does by comparing it to the well-known Google Web Search. First, let's review what Google does.
You put a search term or phrase into Google. It brings back a list order by its algorithm based on reputation (link popularity), relevance (based on content), and currency. Google decides what is important for you to see. Lately Google has started to try to better understand what you do to bring more focused and personalized results. However, they are still the "decider" and the list is one dimensional with the recent addition of some social media sidebars.
This works very well but it can be subject to spammers who attempt to manipulate the dimensions of reputation and relevance through nefarious means. There has been some concern of the impact on legit content (see ReadWriteWeb on Content Farms: Why Media, Blogs & Google Should Be Worried and Tech Crunch on The End Of Hand Crafted Content). There are also the more honest search engine optimization people (SEO) who are simply trying to get the best returns for their honest content. For example, I help companies with their blogs and one of the services I offer is SEO for legit content.
Applying SEO to Google can lead to some interesting results. A Google search on - beach bars Sardinia - finds a blog poston beach barsin Sardinia I did based on a vacation trip as number one out of over 250k results. As far as I know it has held that position for the past four years. Now granted I did original field research with a friend and it is part of a series, Rating the Beaches of Italy, which also remains number one in Google (out of 800k) for that term. While my content is legit, I have to admit that I am far from the best expert on Italian beaches and their bars. The listing on Google is more the result of using good SEO to get there and the fact that it is a niche topic.
Google is trying to determine the proper order of the universe of content. It does a great job but it is up against an impossible task according to Chaos Theory. It will not achieve perfection and it will have to try to stay ahead of spammers and coexist with legit SEO along the way. Darwin's Awareness Engine does not attempt this task. It accepts there is no order in the universe of content and let's you be the decider. It just tries to expose you to the different dimensions and themes in your topics of interest. It tries to make you aware of what is going on so you see trends and find things you were not aware of.
The Darwin Awareness Engine uses the concept of attractors (based on Edward Lornez's attractor concept - see math model in illustration w via Wikipedai) to let the content order itself through correlations of relatedthemes that emerge. Instead of a list ordered by Google you get a Scan Cloud™ that displays the content related to your chosen topic that is organized by the themes that have emerged that correlate with your content. Under each theme is a set of related content and you can drill down to this content. You can decide which themes to explore. You can also decide whether you want to see the results form informal (blogs, etc.) or formal content sources (mainstream news sites, etc.).
If you are interested in climate change you see content organized under such themes as - threats - or - hoax - depending on your view and, of course, see what the other side is saying. You can also see what the English speaking press is saying about the Copenhagen conference or what the French speaking press is sawing by looking under the English or French spelling of the term Copenhagen.
You can see content emerging in real time that is not order by popularity links and does not have to wait for the links to be created for it to emerge in search results. This allows for unanticipated results that might be buried in the back pages of a Google search for days, if not forever. For example, when looking at content related to the prime minister of Quebec we found coverage of the current initiatives in electrical service to the Canadian Maritime provinces. This was expected. We also found some unexpected emerging concern by the oil companies over this move as the theme - oil - appeared in the Scan Cloud. This was not expected.
The Darwin Awareness Engine is not designed to replace Google or other search engines. These tools are largely designed to help you find what you know you are looking for. With many search engines you can narrow this focus with filters but these are filters that you select. In contrast, the Darwin Awareness Engine is designed to provide an alternative way of letting you discoverer what is happening in your areas of interested, even the unexpected. Here is more.
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About the Author:
Dr. Bill Ives is an independent consultant and writer who has worked with Fortune 100 companies in business uses of emerging technologies for over 20 years. For several years he led the Knowledge Management Practice for a large consulting firm.. Now he primarily helps companies with their business blogs. He is also the VP of Social Media and blogger for TVissimo, a new TV schedule search engine. Prior to consulting, Dr. Ives was a Research Associate at Harvard University exploring the effects of media on cognition. He obtained his Ph. D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Toronto. Bill can be reached at his blog: Portals and KM. He also writes for the FastForward blog and the AppGap blog.
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