Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

July 23, 2013

I’m Feeling Lucky

Filed under: Marketing,Topic Maps — Patrick Durusau @ 4:04 pm

You have to feel lucky to use an Internet search engine or play the lottery.

Similar activities.

With the lottery, you and the lottery invest very little effort in the result, but you are hopeful of a high payoff.

With an Internet search, you and the search provider invest very little in semantics, but you hope for a “smoking gun” result for your search.

“Something for nothing” is a popular wish but it is just that, a wish.

Not to say some searches do turn up “the” best answer. But then some people do win the lottery.

Not to mention it is hard to not “win” with a search. Even an obscure one will (reported to the user) result in several hundred thousand search “hits.”

See how good you are! How much information there is on your subject! But nobody ever looks at the 100,000th “hit” to see.

If you do “win” a search, by finding the perfect answer/data/document, do you keep it where others can find it?

Or do you toss it back into the sea of data for someone else to be lucky enough to find?

Is your retirement plan based on playing the lottery?

If not, why is your business plan based on Internet searches?

1 Comment

  1. […] unlike my comments yesterday about the similarity of searching and playing the lottery. The more you invest in the search, the more likely you are to get good […]

    Pingback by Improve search relevancy… « Another Word For It — July 24, 2013 @ 4:05 pm

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