The Inquisitr » search engines

Search Engines Increasingly Becoming Part of Modern Day Learning Process

AHN — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:03:44 +0000

University Park, PA (AHN) – According to Penn State researchers search engine use is not just part of our daily routines; it is also becoming part of our learning process.

The researchers seeking to discover the cognitive processes underlying searching studied the search habits of 72 participants while conducting a total of 426 searching tasks. What they found is that people tend to use search engines to fact checking users’ own internal knowledge, meaning that they are part of the learning process rather than simply a source for information.

Furthermore people’s varying learning styles can affect how they use search engines.

“Our results suggest the view of Web searchers having simple information needs may be incorrect,” said Jim Jansen, associate professor of information sciences and technology. “Instead, we discovered that users applied simple searching expressions to support their higher-level information needs.”

Internet search engine analysts say the study results provide useful information about how search engine use has evolved over the past decade and clues about how to design better search engines to address users’ learning needs in the future.

Twitter Lists and Real Time Search deals – The Big Picture

Paul Short — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:32:16 +0000

I’ve spent the past few hours searching around the tech blogs, SEO blogs, forums and Twitter but haven’t been able to find anyone who has made the connection between the recent Twitter Lists feature and the Twitter search deals between Bing and Google. Surprising, really, so I’ll take a stab at it.

On September 30, 2009, Nick Kallen wrote an official Twitter blog that they had just rolled out a new lists feature to selected users. Rather than rewrite a summary of that blog here, I’ll quote the main points below, followed by my thoughts. Nick wrote:

“The idea is to allow people to curate lists of Twitter accounts. For example, you could create a list of the funniest Twitter accounts of all time, athletes, local businesses, friends, or any compilation that makes sense.”

Essentially, Twitter users will be able to categorize the people they follow. How does this have anything to do with the later announcements of search deals between Microsoft’s Bing search engine and the Google search deal?

Categorizing accounts adds a new layer of meta data to the enormous amount of random bits of information spewing out of Twitter at any given point in time. That meta data makes it much easier for the search engine software to quickly crunch the data for search queries. For instance, someone goes to Google or Bing and searches for “Lakers game tonight.” Rather than having to crunch all the data coming out of Twitter in the past 24 hours, then find and output relevant tweets, the software first looks for tweets by members who are on lists categorized as Sports, Basketball, Lakers, etc. and give those tweets priority.

Nick then goes on to say:

“This means lists have the potential to be an important new discovery mechanism for great tweets and accounts.”

See the paragraph I wrote above…

“We started working on this feature because of the frequent requests we received from people who were looking for a better way to organize information on Twitter. Of course, that means not just twitter.com – the Platform team will follow up in a few days with information on the Lists API. This will allow developers to add support for Lists into your favorite Twitter apps.”

And the new lists API will no doubt be used by Bing and Google as well.

There have been rumors swirling around for nearly a year now about real-time search. Pundits and tech bloggers have been wondering which of the big search engines would be the first to do “real” real-time search and do it right. The biggest problem that’s been standing in the way of real-time search, in my honest opinion, is the sheer amount of random data being produced by social media and the real-time web. Or rather, no plausable way to make that data easily discoverable on the receiving end where the search engines are.

Other big user generated content sites have turned to allowing their users to categorize and tag things in the past. Look at how Flickr encourages it’s users to tag, categorize and comment on photos and video. From the beginning, Myspace and Wordpress.com have benefited tremendously by making it natural for users to categorize, comment on and tag stuff. And long before Facebook started tearing down it’s walls, much of it’s tremendous growth has been due to making it easy for users to grow content and networks by making their data easily discoverable. Of late, Google itself has been encouraging searchers to interact with it’s content by voting up and down, removing items from their search pages and add tags or descriptions to photos.

All of what I mentioned above adds meta data that can be used to deliver more relevant results to searchers, faster.

Twitter is a business with a massive amount of user generated data being produced 24 hours around the clock. Those speculating about Twitter’s business model can finally put the subject to rest. They’ve made their product more usable and at least 2 huge companies have jumped committed to using that product.

Meta data. Twitter lists are just the beginning.

Goby is a new search engine, for finding “stuff to do”

Kim LaCapria — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:16:08 +0000

A new search engine quietly joined the fray in another attempt to slice and dice search results in a way you didn’t know you needed.

This year saw the launches of engines like Wolfram Alpha, Google Squared and Hunch, and let’s not forget Microsoft’s “decision engine.” The only thing worse than the Bing commercials that seem to still run ad nauseum is that my mother thinks they’re some sort of PSA for internet addiction, never passing up and opportunity to say, “see, Kim? SEE?” when I have the misfortune of catching one with her. While Bing is grabbing a bit of a foothold, it seems from a broad perspective that all of these upstarts are going to have to wake up a bit earlier to grab even a few stragglers from Google’s massive throng of users. (Also known as the internet in general.)

The general premise behind Goby is cute, but essentially sounds like the same song all the other “new” search engines this year are singing. “Google sucks at returning X-type of results, so Goby will optimize your X-search. Of course, it won’t catch on ’til it catches on, so please keep using it while it gets to where it needs to be.” Goby’s singular focus (find me thing to do in place at time) may give it some foothold, but the internet has marinated in Google, and old habits are hard to break. Giving Goby an initial spin seems to indicate some potential in doing what it says it does, but do we really need another search engine to do it?

Test driving Goby returned mixed results. Checking out the pre-listed categories, I did a search under “family fun” for playgrounds near my hometown of Babylon, NY. (Nightlife and restaurants are well-populated and I wanted to see how I fared with something less chronicled on the web.)

Results were fairly useless in this regard, a list of schools which could have been easily located by a Google Maps search for schools.

Next I tried “Indian restaurants,” a cuisine that is sorely underrepresented in this region of NYC suburbs. The results I returned were mainly for restaurants that have closed years ago, something I’d not have known if I were from the area but not a curry slurping fiend or were I merely visiting Long Island, assuming anyone would want to visit Long Island. One last attempt was for general “events” this weekend in my area. The number one result, and one that repeated throughout the top ten (amidst results for a car show, a pumpkin festival and a kids’ play) was “soccer registration” in Stamford, CT. Connecticut is a constant annoyance in search results for Long Islanders, as maps generally don’t recognize the Long Island effing Sound that’s wedged between Long Island and Connecticut. So while it may technically be under 25 miles away, I’m not hopping in my boat to go get samosas and biryani in New Haven. Ain’t happening, Goby.

While Goby may yet find an audience, those who are a little skilled in returning better Google results will probably end up sticking to what they know.

Microsoft’s ‘Bing’ Is Anything But Bling As Marketshare Keeps Slipping

AHN — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:00:07 +0000

Two new surveys looking at Internet search engines show Microsoft’s massive effort to rebrand and relaunch its ‘Bing’ portal is facing some growing pains.

September’s poll from NetApplications found Bing fell to just 3.39 percent of the global search market, trailing the dominant Google and Yahoo.

A different survey from StatCounter says Bing received only 3.25 percent of the global search market in September.

Bing, formerly Microsoft Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search, debuted in June, taking direct aim at Google by positioning itself as a “decision engine.” Ads targeted consumers who are overwhelmed by an allegedly dizzying array of answers from other search engines, claiming Bing is faster at simple searches like booking a flight or finding a restaurant.

Nonetheless, Google’s stranglehold on search remains dominant. In September, 89.92 percent of all Internet queries worldwide were carried out on Google, according to StatCounter.

Revolutionary search engine #2394: Hunch

Kim LaCapria — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:40:26 +0000

From a Flickr founder, new search engine Hunch is out of private beta today.

So if you’re Binged out, you’ve been Google Squared and got your kosher-search on, you might need a bit of a helping hand with your next search. Hunch promises to help you find what you’re looking for on the web in “ten questions or less.” Huh. But in a searchy world where Google Answers, Wikia Search and MSN QnA have all disappeared from the landscape, will users trust the collective opinion?

Caterina Fake thinks so. Fake co-founded Flickr and had something to do with Yahoo! Answers before moving on to create Hunch. As you use it, Hunch asks a variety of seemingly irrelevant questions about you- are alien abductions real? Who makes the best fries? Do you like bumper cars? Building on your answers, the site compiles a demographic profile to find the best search results when you need them.

Clearly the site needs more input to work as intended. Earlier today, as I answered the random questions (not geared to a specific search) it would indicate that X% of users responded with that answer. But if it was a choice of three answers, my result was always the same as 33% of respondents, with no variance.

So I took the direct approach, selecting a question from the dropdown menu at the upper right hand corner of the page. Typing in “is” lead to a bunch of questions- I chose “is my partner cheating on me?” (Sorry, honey, it’s for work!)

A series of questions followed- does he tell you where he’s going? Do you both say “I love you?” Does he let you in on his schedule? After the promised ten questions, I was awarded with this result:

I don’t think Hunch will replace Google, nor is it looking to. But it might provide a comfy home for the legions of search engine surfers seeking answers to more personal questions like should I marry my boyfriend or is my son gay?

Hunch currently has a user satisfaction rate of 80%, and Fake believes with more users, it can go as high as 90-95%. So, what do you think? Will you be using Hunch?

From the “if it ain’t broke” files: Google Squared

Kim LaCapria — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:54:43 +0000

Met with much head scratching, search engine king Google released a new and perplexing search tool today called Google Squared.

Designed- sort of, I suppose- to cut down on users having to perform multiple searches of different type (news, image, web)- Google Squared returns search results in a spreadsheet-like form that leans more toward dada than dynamic content.

Creative soul that I am, I looked about for something common to search and get an idea for how results were returned. I tried coffee (first thing in my line of sight) and received a bunch of random results that didn’t really seem to serve any conceivable quest for coffee knowledge. Undaunted (and still apparently low on ideas), my eyes traveled to my browser window. Inquisitr, I figured, might return something more judgeable… Alas, no, just a random collection of articles from the site and no information that would be of any use to me if I hadn’t already visited the site.

“Aha!” thought I, cleverly adding my own (somewhat uncommon) name to the search query box. Surely being clearly a person’s name, with a date of birth and location attached, it would return some worthwhile results. Not the case- amid random license numbers (not attached to my name and with no clear connection to my search) were a few entries on “Computer Literacy,” “Consumer Science,” and a random picture of the food pyramid.

Are you trying to tell me something, Google? At once I felt fat, stupid, unlicensed and wholly irrelevant.

Reaction to the new Google product seems to be a chorus of “meh.” To save you the clicks, I performed a sample search on “your mother.”

Ha, ha! Okay, on to the results:

As you can see, results contained several references to How I Met Your Mother, the reality guilt-cruise Intervention (illustrated with a cute but ostensibly not-related web comic) and references to a sex act involving Maple Syrup. (Is your mom Canadian?)

The real downside to this initiative, I suspect, is the relative ubiquity of Google already. Power users have tweaked and shortcutted their way to a real Google dependence (google-fu even shows up on resumes) and won’t want to learn a new system even if it is really funny when you’re high. Less web-savvy users like your parents and the dude you share a cubicle with already use their AOL mail for everything. So Google Squared might have a hard time catching on with either segment.

But Google is quick to point out that Squared still needs a lot of tweaking- it may prove relevant. Continued usage may make the content less ethereal, but for now, it’s a little like a Google-based Magic 8 Ball. Amusing, but not really real-life useful.

Google Tweaking Its Search Results Pages

JR — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:09:41 +0000

Google is making some changes to its search results pages. The G-Team announced two sets of tweaks this morning: expanded “related searches” lists and longer search result descriptions.

Associated Search

The first change is designed to provide better “related searches” at the bottom of your search page. Google describes it as a “new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to your search.” The system, engineers say, will recognize a greater number of queries and languages and deliver more relevant terms.

Longer Descriptions

The second change simply extends the excerpt quoted under each result in certain circumstances. Basically, Google will show longer snippets for longer search terms: If you enter a four-word search term, for example, Google will add extra lines onto the snippets to give you a more detailed view of the various pages.

Exciting? Not exactly. But one of the changes could theoretically come in handy at some point, I guess. Maybe.

Google

Should Original Content Providers Get Higher Google Priority?

JR — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:13:22 +0000

An interesting debate is brewing around Google’s mystery-shrouded page-ranking system. Some big name media companies are lobbying for Google to give them increased weight in search results over blogs and other Web sites sourcing their news, AdvertisingAge reports. BusinessWeek, ESPN, Hearst, Meredith, The New York Times, Time Inc., and The Wall Street Journal are among the publishers said to be included in the efforts.

An unnamed executive argued the case by suggesting those “who are essentially parasites off the true producers of content benefit disproportionately” in the current Google ranking system.

Don’t Misread This

Here’s where the argument has been misconstrued, though: The media giants aren’t asking for automatic preferential treatment based on their brand names alone, as some commentators have suggested. Rather, according to AdAge, the publishers are asking for original content providers — whether it’s them, a blog, or whomever — to receive an elevated result.

“This would in no way mean that only professional content publishers would get an advantage,” another unnamed executive is quoted as saying. “It really just says that the original source, and the source with real access, should somehow be recognized as the most important in the delivery of results.”

Google Talks

Google, for its part, has indicated it does place some value on original content but also looks at other factors. (How enlightening.) A spokesperson told AdAge there are “many shades of gray” even within the designation of “original content.”

The subject is expected to be discussed at a meeting of Google’s Publishers Advisory Council at the end of April.

Some Thoughts

I could understand an outrage if the media companies were asking for preferential treatment based on their names alone. The idea of giving stronger weight to an original content provider, however, seems to me to be a reasonable enough concept. While secondary sources often provide valuable alternate perspectives to news coverage, it is sensible to say — from both a content provider perspective and an end-user perspective — that the publication that broke the news should be credited as such. As long as the weight is given equally for any original content provider, be it a major media site or an independent blog site, I think it’s a notion worth Google’s consideration.

With that being said, of course, no single factor can determine search ranking. Without having any direct knowledge of the workings of Google’s current system, though, I can say from anecdotal experience that being an original provider often doesn’t seem to be significantly rewarded within results. It’s impossible to surmise how much that designation does play into a rank, or even how that designation is determined. As long as Google keeps its transparency curtain closed, we’ll never know the specifics of what really goes on or whether it changes over time.

Google Gains Another Winning Month

JR — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:23:29 +0000

Google’s got another strong month under its belt in terms of web traffic.

Media measuring company HitWise released its May data this morning. The researcher found Google took a full 68 percent of all U.S. searches in the month, followed by Yahoo at just under 20 percent, MSN at about six, and ask.com at four. Other smaller engines made up the remaining searches.

In the UK, Google’s lead is even stronger. HitWise measured Google getting more than 87 percent of all searches in May, leaving Yahoo and Microsoft-based searches with only about four each, and ask.com with just over three percent.

It’s an increasingly common trend for the search giants. Both ComScore and HitWise showed Google with a sizeable lead in April as well, though significantly less extreme than the May results show. That data also marked the first time Google had overtaken Yahoo in terms of overall traffic, not specific only to searches.

“Democratic” Search Engine Unveils Improvements

JR — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:59:11 +0000

A newly improved search engine aims to redefine the way we think about rank by putting power into the users’ hands.

Wikia Search is relaunching with several new features today. As the name might suggest, the utility lets you actually customize and edit search results. You can add or delete results from any given search — something the big league search sites would sooner shut down than allow.

The updated Wikia Search includes the ability to rank items, add “related site” entries to a find, comment on entries, and even access a Google or Yahoo search from within the Wikia results. The site is also toying with the idea of some social networking features such as personal profiles and the ability to make “friends.”

Wikia makes its belief in transparency quite clear. You can look at a list of recent changes to entries to track how and by whom any given result was modified. The site’s list of principles even takes a shot at the major search engines’ insistence upon keeping their results and their methods so closely guarded.

So can searching really work as an open and democratic process? It’ll sure be interesting to watch this one and see how it affects things. We’ve all grown accustomed to Google’s complex and untouchable algorithm-based methods. I don’t know that Wikia Search’s concept will ever knock that kind of system out of the mainstream, but it definitely adds an interesting twist into the equation — particularly for SEO-focused web developers who might have to cater to a different kind of ranking protocol.