The search assumption gap

That horrible feeling when you realize Google doesn’t have what you’re looking for, and probably never will

I stood transfixed in the basement of the Musee de L’Orangerie, wondering where Chaïm Soutine had been all my life.

Soutine’s La Village, a crazy whirlwind of colour and chaos that seems to capture a storm in the middle of a rampage, is the kind of painting I could look at forever. Which is why, once I came home from my vacation in Paris this summer, I immediately went online to see where I could find a print of it. I couldn’t find one. In fact, I could barely find any decent images of it, except for a few snapped by other tourists that don’t even come close to conveying its power, its fury. My disappointment was probably disproportionate to what I should have expected, but the fact is I walked away from the museum never suspecting I wouldn’t see it again. I was sure a print was out there, just a few clicks away. Like almost everything else is.

As more content gets digitized, or made available through online channels, I think more people are going to experience this strange sense of — not loss, exactly, but the realization that what you want is not available via Google. It’s like an anticipatory network effect: the growing volume of information and images on the Web, and the promise of ever-more growth will cause Internet users to reflexively look for things which just aren’t there, and which for many reasons may never be there. I’m calling this the search assumption gap, and it poses major implications for anyone who does business online.

Right now nearly every organization imaginable is doing keyword research to try and guess what people are typing into Google and then delivering Web pages that feature those terms as part of a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. This means you can find a result for almost anything to you look for, but not necessary a result you care about. SEO actually exacerbates the search assumption gap because it will extend the time people spend clicking through pages of useless content, only to realize that what they are really looking for just hasn’t made its way to the Web yet — if it ever reaches it at all.

The search assumption gap is probably widest in areas of “deep content,” or things that are of such a physical or information-rich significance that they are difficult to repurpose online due to copyright or other reasons. This includes not only paintings and sculptures but books (though Google is trying to close that gap), but probably also a lot of older content which is poorly archived or expires in some way. We not only begin to assume that everything is on the Web somewhere, but that it will be there forever. It’s not, and it won’t.

I would liken the search assumption gap to those early days when computers replaced typewriters. When we all started using word processing software, I suspect almost all of us had at least one incident where we forgot to save, or somehow saved improperly, and lost entire chunks of important work. For many of us, it was hard to believe after years of typing onto paper that it was even possible for so much work to vanish with the click of a button.

The search assumption gap is a similar feeling, where our faith in the power of technology falls short of reality and we learn that our approach to managing information needs to evolve. Just as there is always the chance that a delete key will be inadvertently pressed, there will always be a chance that what we are certain is posted, hosted or for sale via the Internet is just … not.

As we become more aware of the search assumption gap, the answer will not be better SEO but better habits among those of us searching. Just as word processing disasters taught us to save often (or print often), the search assumption gap will lead us to search often, to search earlier, or else pay better attention to what’s in front of us in the physical world. We’ll linger longer in the museum. We’ll treasure the pages we leaf through in the library. We’ll be reminded that the Web is truly worldwide, but it will never contain the world.