Why Doesn’t Google Search the Mind?

I recently read The Google Story and am currently reading In the Plex, both of which are biographical pieces covering the history of Google, its founders Brin and Page, its employees, business relationships, and so forth.

As I’ve read these books I’ve been able to get some insight into Google’s core business model, which is that every time someone searches something, anything, there is an opportunity to place an ad and make money. Thus, it is in the interest of Google to make the web ever more accessible and valuable. Why? Because more people using the web means more people using Google which means Google makes more money. Why Android? It makes the web more accessible. Why YouTube? It makes the web more valuable.

The more content that exists on the web, the more valuable the web becomes, and the greater the need for an effective means of searching through that content to find what is relevant to you. If the web consisted of five pages there would be no need for Google. If the web doubled in content tomorrow, Google would become that much more valuable to individual users. If the number of web users doubled tomorrow, Google would become that much more valuable as a company, since it’s revenues would double, all other things being equal.

And so the questions for Google become; 1) how do we make the web more valuable to individual users, and 2) how do we get more users online and using the web? For the purposes of this post, I’d like to focus on the first question by asking what is the final frontier of search? I would posit it is the human mind.

It’s not hard to imagine a creepy sci-fi movie in which Google has evolved to the point where everyone has a device in their brains, or is subject to worldwide scanning devices, that index and make publicly available the contents of all the minds of the entire world, creepy overlords being excepted, of course. To an extent this is already happening. As you read this you are gaining access to something that was very recently only contained in my head. The fact that you are now capable of searching what was previously in my head is not creepy, in large part due to the fact that I am willingly sharing my thoughts. The problem is that while it is relatively easy for me to share my thoughts, it is relatively difficult for others. This is an access problem of a different sort than the one that prompted Google to acquire Android. The challenge here is how does Google go about lowering the barriers for those who want to access the web in order to create the content that make the web more valuable to individual users?

One thing Google did was to acquire Blogger. The platform makes it easy for just about anyone with basic computer skills to set up a blog in a few minutes. These amateur bloggers create content that is valuable for the long tail of search, and in some cases they graduate to the shorter part of the tail, creating content that is valuable for many Internet users. But this is one small step towards getting the vast amounts of information contained in people’s heads online where it can be searched, and it is not very proactive. So why would Google, rather than merely providing tools that enable people to spill their thoughts out onto the online page, proactively promote this practice? Here is one idea of how Google could take a  step in this direction:

Yahoo! Answers, but better. Yahoo! Answers is a site where you can go and ask questions, and other people can answer those questions. The questions and answers are public so that other people with the same question end up finding the answer and don’t have to wait around for it. It’s a good service, but Google could make it better. Imagine that you come to Google and enter the question “What is SEO?” You get “answers” from Wikipedia, a beginner’s guide to SEO from SEOmoz, a page from Google’s Webmaster Tools Guidelines, etc. Fair enough. It’s a generic question, and there is ample reason for many people to proactively answer the question in order to get traffic from Google. Google still works well enough if you want to get more specific and you ask “What are SEO best practices for a dentist website?” You end up with a list of companies providing SEO services for dentists, which may be what you’re looking for, although if you’re a dentist who wants to do SEO for yourself, it’s not quite as helpful. Where Google falls flat is when someone asks “What SEO stuff should I do for my website at www.whatever.com?” The search results you get are going to be of not much use, and you probably wouldn’t search for this because you wouldn’t even expect to get results for it. But what if you could? Imagine being able to ask that question, and get 20 responses within an hour, for free.

You might be saying “Yeah Josh, you can get that information, just go post on an SEO forum or go look at the SEOmoz Beginner’s Guide.” But you see, while that may be no hurdle for you or me, it’s an enormous hurdle for average web users–I would argue the vast majority of web users. Being able to type a question into Google and receive answers is easy. Figuring out what other website will give you the right answer, signing up for a forum account, etc. is hard.

Now unbeknownst to many, there is a Google Answers site, but it was retired and no longer accepts new questions nor answers. But that’s not what I would envision anyway. I’m not necessarily advocating that Google be a content platform. I’m advocating that Google make it easy for those with questions to submit that query to be answered, enter their email so they get a Google Alert when the query is answers, and then Google proactively contacts those who are likely to be able to answer the question. Those who answer the question would do so on the content platform of their choice, be it on a blog, company website, personal website, or what have you. In a way, I’m thinking of a two-way Google Alerts. Here’s an example:

User submits question: “What are the best SEO practices for my website www.whatever.com?”

Google displays standard search results, but at the top includes “Would you like to receive a Google Alert whenever we find new answers to your question? Yes/No” If the user is signed in to a Google Account they merely need to click Yes. If they are not signed into a Google Account they have the option to sign in, or quickly create an account.

Assuming the user proceeds, at this point it gets interesting. The question is sent out via a sort of Google Alert for search queries. That is, you can subscribe to be alerted when certain queries are made, or queries dealing with a certain keyword.

The content creator or answerer/responder can then create or find the content to answer the question, and respond with a link. In the case of someone with a Blogger account Google could even say “Simply respond to this email and we’ll automatically post it to your Blogger blog.”

Google would screen that content for relevancy to the question, and return those results to the user who submitted the question according to the preferences the user specified for receiving updates.

Over time, Google would amass a huge index of “answered questions” so that they could also provide links to popular answers right off the bat. The data they would collect would be invaluable for improving search results both for this type of search as well as normal searches. Content creators would love this because they would be better equipped to create content people find useful, and it would give them ideas when they would perhaps have writer’s block. Users would find it valuable to get specific answers to specific questions, not to mention more general questions. More content, more searching, more value online…it all adds up to more revenue for Google. They would just need to be a bit more proactive about soliciting content creators.

Thoughts?