Over the past nine months I have been finding myself using Google search less and less. In fact it is no longer my first option to find relevant material in my field of expertise.
My loyalties have shifted to Twitter, and turns out that I am not alone in this behaviour!
Listening to “This WEEK in TECH – TWIT” both Leo Laporte and Kara Swisher talk about using Social Media more than Google Search for locating relevant stuff, 50:50 I think Leo said. They also highlighted that there is vast amounts of data on the web that Google just cannot get hold of, Facebook being the prime one.
And the simple truth is that you are more likely to find more relevant, high quality information on Twitter because the data has been pre-vetted by the “tweeter”. Coupled with the fact that you get some kind of consensus amongst your searchers and followers, that information is usually worth a read. Obviously this is only as good as the credibility of the people you follow.
Maybe this subtle movement has led to the tuning of Google’s Secret Source – the search ranking algorithm, made late last week, to improve the quality of search results (Google declares war on content farms).
Searching for relevant information is time consuming and as a Project Manager at Caplin, my time is precious – so if a tool gives me back time, it’s priceless.