Haiku's are easy....

Thinking clear haiku's

Autumn

Smile

Really? I have no idea if that is even a good one. But I know that it is a much better one, than the one my son has on his T-shirt. His goes something like this:

"Haiku's are easy

But often they don't make sense

Refrigerator"

Seriously? What does anyone know about what that means? How does that even make any sense at all? But! Inoun Point! Besides the point on the top of my head, there is one (a point) I would like to make.

It occurred to me today that haiku's are not unlike search. "Inoun Example!" How many times have you typed something in a search box, knowing full well what you were thinking, and all you got back was a bunch of haiku's? And if you think about it, you know exactly what I am talking about.

Haiku's? Inoun, what are you even talking about? Haiku's, are you cereal?

Okay, all of this does have a point. But I may be getting a - head of myself. You may not "no" anything about Haiku's!

Haiku's are a type of Japanese poetry that started, oh, I don't know, either a little before my birth, or maybe even before politics was invented. Pick one. Either one.

Basically, the concept is simple. Come up with a few key words that describe your "intent" to the reader. Do it in a way that has a certain phrasing to it (5, 7, etc.) Usually based on the number of syllables. Then wrap the whole thing in a type of poetic form. I am hugely over simplifying here, but the idea is to transfer at least 60-70% of the meaning, or your intent, to the reader. But not all of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_in_English

Okay? Got it? Now, back to search. What does this have to do with search? Well, everything actually. Search engines by their very nature (think computer), are very different from you and me. (I know what you are thinking. Inoun, you are nothing like me.) And because of this, they speak a very different language. So when we type something in for them to figure out, they have to translate it into their own language. And this language is very different from how you and I speak. Well, you anyway. And when it is all said and done, it looks very much like a Haiku. Often, and here is the key, it doesn't make a lot of sense. To either one of us.

So do youself and poor Bing (a search engine) a favor. For now, and more on this another time, I plead with you. I beg of you! If you are going to ask a search engine like Bing a question, please do it in a way that is going to make sense to both of you. Please? Pretty please? With a refrigerator on top?

But I digress.

How about another Inoun example?

I looked at a query log the other day.... We don't know why he looked at a query log, we'll never know. I guess he'll die....

And I know from long, hard, and painful experience, that people don't like to type. Plain and simple. One word baby. That's all you get. So sorry.

In the query log, I found that someone had searched for the word, "Orange"

I could still hear the search engine screaming at me. "What am I supposed to do with that!?!???" Think about it for a second. What popped into your head when I said "orange"? Well, if you were hungry, maybe you were looking for some really good fruit. On the other hand, if you were a fluffy, apple, pear, peach, cornucopia, kind of person already, like I don't know, some kind of creative, engineer, artist, hack type, maybe you were looking for "all color varieties that are similar to the color orange."

Well then, why didn't you say so? Try this one on for size:

http://www.bing.com/search?q=orange

Can you see how stupid this really is? Look at all of those nasty little haiku's. I can just see it now. A friend sees his friend at school and says, "Hey John, dude, how ya doin man?"

"Orange"

I can't think of a worse haiku. Why do we persist in this kind of nonsense? Nobody talks to each other this way? Why do we continue to abuse Bing this way?

So if you have gotten this far, first of all, I am very proud of you, I am going to give you a trade secret (well, not really), that everyone and their dog should know (bow wow, I didn't know that dogs actually knew anything about search.)

Here is the secret.

USE LOTS AND LOTS OF NOUNS!

You know the previous query? Orange? What was I really thinking? For example, only using nouns:

Orange Car Orange County John Smith Auto Disneyland

Did you see how well that works? I have no idea if there even is a John Smith Automotive dealer in California.

Just a Sec. Nope, isn't. Checked. Maybe that wasn't really what I was thinking about, but if it was, and there was, should be, thought, then I would be (How is that for a sentence? Must be my German creeping back in.) If you are German, and translate this, you will realize that that sentence was really funny. (that that? Seriously? Don't know where that that came from. That there doesn't make any cents. Huh?)

So my point is, in the industry, and as an industry, we call those little pieces of nouns noun phrases. NP for short. A bunch of nouns all strung together in nice little noun text chunks that mean something. I personally, and from now one, :-) would like you to think of them as noun haiku's.

"And as the sunsets on my very obtuse blog entry, the two little love birds (Bing and a new friend) are all learning to communicate with each other."

Which, in the end, is the best way to have your search actually mean something to both of you.

How sweet.

Now, go back and read the "post" "hole" again. You will understand a lot more the second go around. Learning and association just kinda work that way. Search works that way. Haiku's and this blog work that way. And, finally...

"Now that is a haiku!"

Hiy!

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• Anonymous
  December 15, 2010
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