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Chapter 7 Telecommunications, the Internet, and Wireless Technology 303

to a site. Merchants do not have to pay for ads that don’t work, only for ads that
receive a click. Consumers benefit from search engine marketing because ads
for merchants appear only when consumers are looking for a specific product.
There are no pop-ups, Flash animations, videos, interstitials, e-mails, or other
irrelevant communications to deal with. Thus, search engine marketing saves
consumers cognitive energy and reduces search costs (including the cost of
transportation needed to physically search for products). In a recent study, the
global value of search to both merchants and consumers was estimated to be
more than $800 billion, with about 65 percent of the benefit going to consumers
in the form of lower search costs and lower prices (McKinsey, 2011).

Social Search One problem with Google and mechanical search engines is
that they are so thorough: enter a search for “ultra computers” and in .2 seconds
you will receive over 300 million reponses! Search engines are not very
discriminating. Social search is an effort to provide fewer, more relevant, and
trustworthy search results based on a person’s network of social contacts. In
contrast to the top search engines that use a mathematical algorithm to find
pages that satisfy your query, a social search Web site would review your
friends’ recommendations (and their friends’), their past Web visits, and their
use of “Like” buttons.
For instance, Google has developed Google +1 as a social layer on top of its
existing search engine. Users can place a +1 next to the Web sites they found
helpful, and their friends will be notified automatically. Subsequent searches
by their friends would list the +1 sites recommended by friends higher up on
the page. Facebook’s Like button is a similar social search tool. So far, neither
Facebook nor Google has fully implemented a social search engine (Efrati,
2011). One problem with social search is that your close friends may not have
intimate knowledge of topics you are exploring, or they may have tastes you
don’t appreciate. It’s also possible your close friends don’t have any knowledge
about what you are searching for.
Semantic Search Another way for search engines to become more discrimi-
nating and helpful is to make search engines that could understand what it is
we are really looking for. Called “semantic search” the goal is to build a search
engine that could really understand human language and behavior. For
instance, in 2012 Google’s search engine began delivering more than millions
of links. It started to give users more facts and direct answers, and to provide
more relevant links to sites based on the search engines estimation of what the
user intended, and even on the user’s past search behavior. Google’s search
engine is trying to understand what people are most likely thinking about when
they search for something. Google hopes to use its massive database of objects
(people, places, things), and smart software, to provide users a better resulting
than just millions of hits. For instance, do a search on “Lake Tahoe” and the
search engine will return basic facts about Tahoe (altitude, average tempera-
ture, and local fish), a map, and hotel accommodations. (Efrati, 2012).
Although search engines were originally designed to search text documents,
the explosion of photos and videos on the Internet created a demand for search-
ing and classifying these visual objects. Facial recognition software can create a
digital version of a human face. In 2012 Facebook introduced its facial recognition
software and combined it with tagging, to create a new feature called Tag Suggest.
The software creates a digital facial print, similar to a finger print. Users can put
their own tagged photo on their timeline, and their friend’s timelines. Once a
person’s photo is tagged, Facebook can pick that person out of a group photo,

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