Thanks to Google, we are all familiar with search. Nevertheless we should remember two things. First, how new it is – it hardly even existed just ten years ago. Second, how revolutionary it is – this is a disruptive new technology which puts individuals in control of seeking out and accessing the information they want (as opposed to their former role as an audience for the information publishers wish to disseminate)

.

 Seach is driven by ‘bottom up’ information volunteered by the individual – the search term. This is in contrast to the ‘top down’ flows of information of the industrial era. Search generates as well as accesses valuable information: it generates information about the intentions of the searcher: what he is interested in (i.e. planning to buy), and when. This is a hugely powerful and valuable resource, which opens up new opportunities for improved relevance and timing in information exchanges between buyers and sellers. 

But search also has its limitations: Search engines never reveal the algorithms by which they pick some information as relevant and some as not, and by which they rank their search results. It is therefore quite possible that search results are biased in ways that do not fit the searcher’s purposes or interests. So there remains a big trust question mark over search.

Also, search engines:

• can easily generate a mountain of information that the searcher can never sift through. While search has massively improved the costs of information access it still hasn’t cracked the problem of accessing exactly the right information.do not help you understand the meaning or significance of the information they present.do not help you assess the quality and accuracy of this information.
• cannot advise you on what your search terms should be in the first place. They assume that you already know precisely what you are looking for.

For all these reasons, search is a necessary but insufficient part of the buyer-centric infrastructure. The existence of search simply adds impetus to the quest for other forms of person-centric service that help individuals identify and articulate their needs better and which provide impartial trustworthy advice that helps them achieve their desired outcomes (see Problem Solving Communities for example).

Over the coming years, there will be intense competition and rapid innovation in the whole arena of search – innovation that addresses the above drawbacks and makes search an essential part of the buyer-centric framework.