Google is known for coming up with “Innovative” products. I was wondering why Google is getting into such a massive advertisement spree for this new form of search. Google advertisement hoadings are visible on road bisectors along most of the heavy traffic drawing roads in Bangalore since last friday. All this hype for their SMS search feature launch in India. Nice concept and surely it is a nice way to tap into mobile frenzy Indian market. Now let me outline my experiment observations on this new search!
My experiment search term is ‘megamart’ – If you don’t know, MegaMart is a chain of apparel outlets across India. As soon as I sent a message to 9773300000, it took around a minute to respond back with an SMS saying
“Your request is being processed by Google SMS Search. Please be patient for few moments. For Help on Google SMS, please reply with ‘help’ .”
No response for the actual search query that I sent even after 4+ minutes. After approximately 10 minutes, I get another SMS from Google which says
“Looking for businesses around you? Please send business name or type of business followed by location followed by city name. e.g. Pizza hut indira nagar bangalore.”
Hmm… So, it is obvious that Google is not smart enough yet to figure out where the request is coming from. It needs additional information. They too know about this hence the standard disclaimer * on their page too which talks about personalization. Even after providing an exhaustive search query “megamart banashankari bangalore”, Google SMS search results weren’t anywhere close to relevant results. I agree, that there is still a long way to grab a bigger pie from Indian local listings.
After 12 hours from the initial search query sent, I got a response! This is what it said:
Sorry, ‘megamart’ did not return any results. For HELP on Google SMS, please reply with ‘help’ or go to http://sms.google.co.in
I will write more on my experimentation on this SMS search soon.. keep reading this space. I have integrated my site feeds with feedburner. Feel free to subscribe here to get e-mail notifications.
Mohan says
@idigital
Like I have mentioned above, it is new form of search that google is providing in India. You just need to send a plain text sms to a specific number and Google will send back the search results for your query through text message again. This is useful when there is no web access on a mobile phone.
idigital says
what’s the sms google for?I never try this
Mohan says
@Rajesh
Valid point Rajesh. I agree with you. However, we haven’t yet reached the information era in India where in a mobile use can have all the info on a hand held device. The very fact of our technology lagging can be understood by looking at our mobile operators. We are still in the era of 2G while US lives on 3G iPhones!
Rajesh says
I tried Google too but yeh the results take time and are not relevant.I was looking for LCD TV dealers got some confusing text back. I think Just Dials SMS search on 53999 throws very relevant results. I use it frequently and i am impressed.
Mohan says
@yinheli
Everyone loves most of google products.. but not all 🙂 Hope they make it better.
yinheli says
I love Google products….
Mohan says
@budeen
Thank you 🙂
@Nitin
Amidst of the financial crisis, the google stock has come down from around $600 to below $300. However that is very much in par with other companies as well. Let us see if contines…
Nitin says
Google making Crap software!!This is what happens when you step into too many boats.
Chrome is one of the worst browsers I’ve come across. Is the Google story fading??? Lets wait and watch.
budeen says
nice blog. nice theme.. 🙂
Mohan says
@Srinath
Yeah Srinath, Yahoo’s SMS search is anytime better but the issue is it is a premium service. One has to send a message query to number 58242 for Yahoo’s OneSearch SMS and user will be charged 3 rupees per message. There it welcomes the drawback.
Srinath says
yahoo onesearch via sms works a lot better in india.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2007/10/20/stories/2007102052050400.htm
Deepak says
This is crazy.. I couldn’t believe it took 12 hrs to get you the search results until I experienced my self. Yes. you are right. This was not the kind of quality expected from google anyways.
Even I am not satisfied with the relevancy of search results provided over SMS. Hope they better themselves as the days progress.