In researching the potential applications for Yoogli , four industries emerged as having the highest interest. These industries will help provide insight to determine a target market segment for this semantically optimized content delivery application tool.
SEO & SEM
An interview with Todd Jensen, co-owner of Gravitate Online, an SEO based marketing company, provided some insight about the impact of Yoogli on SEO companies. According to Mr. Jensen the current state of SEO companies is that they are creating an echo effect and essentially repeating much of the information that is currently on the Web. Mr. Jensen described the Yoogli approach as “disruptive” and “exciting,” and said the impact on the SEO industry would be quite significant. Since the impact would be disruptive, there are likely to be mixed feelings among companies. “As a business owner, it is a bit of a threat but, as a technology lover, I think it is great,” said Jensen. Todd was one of the most excited interviewees during the research process. Targeting SEO companies that are ready and willing to progress in the SEO industry will be very helpful.
As with other markets it is important to identify companies that are preparing for change. In the SEO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization marketplace there are many companies that are trying to work the system over through traditional methods of manipulating online information. SEM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_marketing companies have recognized the evolving industry and are changing in order to move away from manipulation methods and adapt methods to actually improve content. “Engaging in SEO tactics that worked 5 years ago (even 2 years ago) now poses a big risk, not to mention rapidly diminishing returns. SEOs will need to adapt or die. Luckily, SEOs are really good at adapting to change.”
Analytics
Another industry that showed interest was data analytics. Dominic Widdows, director of Language Engineering at Serendipity Analytics and a former software engineer at Bing, talked about the need for structured data analytics. Mr. Widdows said “My goal is to make searches more meaningful. In order to make data more meaningful it needs to be more structured”. He added that a tool that can help provide syntax and semantics to traditional key word data and search results could be helpful not only to the user but to the companies collecting the data to be analyzed. Companies like Bing and Google have such tremendous earning potential largely due to the information they provide to other companies.
Retail
Wikipedia Search also garnered interest in the retail industry. Jay Myers, the emerging digital platforms product manager at Best Buy has been working with semantic technology for many years. According to Myers, there is a great deal of applicable growth in the retail industry. His focus is on creating stronger product relationships and leveraging those relationships to make more accurate recommendations. According to Myers, one of the most difficult things about integrating semantic technology in the retail industry is making sure the user interface is handled carefully. He said, “The integration should be seamless enough that the user does not realize that anything has changed. The social media aspect of Wikipedia Search will also add retail value to the search tool by leveraging the connections between the users”.