WebProNews » Search Engine

Google Being Challenged By Italian Professor

Zach Walton — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:04:56 +0000

The man who helped inspire Google has created a new search engine that will directly compete with the search engine giant.

Massimo Marchiori, an Italian computer science professor, launched Volunia to a select group of users on Monday. It’s an interesting mash-up of a search engine and social media platform. The service will allow users to “view the components of particular Web sites to find the subject of interest more quickly and to interact with registered users who might be looking at the same Web pages,” according to The Economic Times.

“The web is a living place. There is information but there are also people. The social dimension is already present, it just has to emerge,” Marchiori said.

Marchiori used to teach at MIT where he came up with the algorithm for the Internet page ranking system service “HyperSearch” in the 1990s.

The project has been under development for the past four years in Italy.

He has been quoted as saying that Google founder Larry Page came up to him after a conference on HyperSearch. He says that Page asked to use the search algorithm. Since it was not patented, Page reportedly implemented it into Google. Marchiori holds no ill will against the search giant, however, and says that Page used his algorithm in the “best possible way.”

Marchiori believe that all search giants will soon be implementing a combined search/social media platform soon.

Volunia was launched to power users on Monday to test out the service, but it will be rolled out to all users in 12 languages over the coming days.

They hope to keep the site up and running by selling advertising space.

Here’s a few videos that explain in detail what Volunia is and how it works. With Google already implementing “Search, Plus Your World” across its service, it’s only a matter of time before they integrate the ideas that Volunia brings to the table.

Google Still Dominates Search

Chris Richardson — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 20:37:10 +0000

Water’s wet, sky’s blue, and Google is still king of the search engine industry. So much so, in fact, the amount of search queries conducted on Google more than double Yahoo and Bing (one and the same now?) their combined output.

In the latest study from Experian Hitwise, Google’s position as top search engine dog was confirmed in black and white with the following quote:

Google accounted for 66.05 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending July 30, 2011. The combined Bing-powered search comprised 28.05 percent of searches for the month, with Yahoo! Search and Bing receiving 14.49 percent and 13.19 percent, respectively.

The remainder of search engine industry, which Experian states is at 73 engines, only account for less than six percent of all Internet searches.

Again, considering Google’s financial success, this news should come as no surprise, although, the spin Experian offers is perfect example of twisting statistics to fit a theme. Take the following for instance:

Yahoo! Search and Bing achieved the highest success rates in July 2011. This means that for Yahoo! Search, more than 81.36 percent of searches executed resulted in a visit to a Website. Google achieved a success rate of 68 percent, an increase of 1 percent in July 2011. The share of unsuccessful searches highlights the opportunity for both the search engines and marketers to evaluate the search engine result pages to ensure that searchers are finding relevant information.

That’s all fine and good for Bing/Yahoo, but when you consider the sheer number of Google’s search volume compared to Bing/Yahoo, it stands to less successful searches were conducted. Once again, the sample size in the statistics need to be considered. Smaller sample sizes lead to higher degrees of variability, something stated quite clear in Wikipedia’s entry concerning Sample size determination:

Larger sample sizes generally lead to increased precision when estimating unknown parameters.

With less people using Bing/Yahoo, but more clicking over to sites, in order to make this a little more reliable, the same amount of Google users would have to use Bing/Yahoo. If the site-visiting results were similar, then you’d be onto something.

As it stands, sorry International Business Times, the findings about site click-overs comes across as meaningless, as well as skirting the “correlation does not imply causation” territory as well.

Bing Needs Users to Break the Google Habit

WebProNews Staff — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 13:15:11 +0000

One of Bing’s Facebook fans brings up a good point about the search market. Google is simply ingrained in so many people’s online habits, Bing’s biggest challenge is to simply keep Google users from being sucked back into the Google way.

Have you tried to use other search engines besides Google, only to find yourself coming back? Was it for the quality of results or just out of habit? Let us know.

Daniel WillisHow can I adjust to bing? I like the search engine just I am in the grip of google :/ I always end up using google again.18 hours ago Like 1 comment

Bing reminded everyone this week that it is still behind in some aspects of search, when it announced personalized search results based on location and history.Google has been personalizing search results based on these factors for quite some time. The announcement doe show that Bing is improving, however.

Meanwhile, as Google’s search quality is repeatedly called into question, one of the biggest things it has going for it is probably the fact that it is indeed a habit for so many people, because it has simply dominated the search market for so long.

Bing has a new weapon in this battle, however. Last year, Microsoft launched Windows Phone 7. Initital sales of the devices that run this platform weren’t too mindblowing. Now, as you may have read, Microsoft has entered a strategic partnership with Nokia, which will see its phone OS being used across Nokia devices. And guess what – Bing will also be used across these devices as the default search.

Habits are a lot easier to break when the default is the alternative. Of course, it remains to be see just how well this partnership will pay off for Microsoft. They are, after all, competing with the likes of iOS and Android, not to mention BlackBerry and webOS.

On an interesting sidenote, Google has been making job offers to Nokia engineers.

Do you think the Nokia deal will give Bing a significant push in search market share? Comment here.

Google Enables Tweets Via Phone in Egypt

Rich Ord — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 00:43:44 +0000

Google has devised a way for Egyptians to tweet by calling a phone number and leaving a voicemail. The voicemail will be automatically interpreted into text and tweeted in real-time. This is extremely important to the democracy movement in Egypt in light of an attempt by the Egyption government to close Internet communication. Here is Google’s blog post announcing the arrangement:

"Like many people we’ve been glued to the news unfolding in Egypt and thinking of what we could do to help people on the ground. Over the weekend we came up with the idea of a speak-to-tweet service—the ability for anyone to tweet using just a voice connection.

We worked with a small team of engineers from Twitter, Google and SayNow, a company we acquired last week, to make this idea a reality. It’s already live and anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voicemail on one of these international phone numbers (+16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855) and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt. No Internet connection is required. People can listen to the messages by dialing the same phone numbers or going to twitter.com/speak2tweet.

We hope that this will go some way to helping people in Egypt stay connected at this very difficult time. Our thoughts are with everyone there."

Select Droid Devices Now Getting Google Instant Beta

Jeremy Muncy — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 21:50:27 +0000

It appears as though a beta version of Google Instant has been spotted in the wild, according to Droid Life. If you have an Incredible, Droid, or Droid X chances are you now have the ability to use Google Instant.

Do you like Google Instant? Tell us your thoughts.

A Droid Life forum user posted the following…

”Hey everyone. I looked around for this and didn’t see anything so this might be breaking news. On my moto droid, on the google search page, under the search box, there is a line that says "instant (beta) is on". Never noticed that before. It works alright, it is a bit slow on bringing up the instant results.

Posting from my phone, so I’m not sure if I can post the screenshot I took, will post it tomorrow morning.”

It was rumored that Google planned an Instant mobile rollout shortly after the browser based one was complete, which appears to be the case here. With some phones already having a beta test a full rollout shouldn’t be far behind.

Would you use Google Instant on your mobile device? Let us know.

This story is still developing so stay tuned to WebProNews for further information as it becomes available.

Top Tech Blogs in The UK During August

Neville Hobson — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:23:38 +0000

Next week, European search engine and news portal Wikio will be publishing the rankings for August 2010 of their lists of the top blogs in the many categories under which they’re classified.

For the past 18 months, I’ve been posting an advance look each month at the top 20 or 30 technology blogs in the UK from the data my friends at Wikio have let me see. Last month, that advance look also included the top 30 online marketing blogs in the UK.

I’ve just received the latest details for both categories:

Top 30 Tech Blogs in the UK: August 2010

Full list at Wikio: Top 100 Technology Blogs in the UK

Top 30 Online Marketing Blogs in the UK: August 2010

Full list at Wikio: Top 100 Online Marketing Blogs in the UK

If you want to suggest others blogs for inclusion in Wikio’s tech or online marketing lists that aren’t there already, either let me know or apply on the Wikio website.

Comments

Where Does Yahoo Fit Into Your Search Strategy?

Chris Crum — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:48:06 +0000

In search, a lot of what Yahoo has done has been overshadowed by what Google and Bing have done, simply because Google controls such a huge piece of the search pie, and Bing is still a relatively fresh entity. All eyes are still on Bing as it grows. That leaves Yahoo somewhere in the middle, where it technically sits in terms of market share.

How important is Yahoo to your search strategy? Let us know.

Yahoo has done quite a bit over the past six months, and has a lot more going on in the coming ones. Regardless of whether or not Yahoo’s deal with Microsoft finally goes through, and Bing takes over the algorithm side of things, Yahoo is still very much focused on search.

"Yahoo has been in search, is in search, and will continue to be in the future," says Yahoo’s new senior VP of search products, Shashi Seth. "We’ll continue to drive innovation. It’s our stake in the ground."

According to the latest data from Experian Hitwise, Yahoo’s market share in the U.S. declined by 2 percentage points from December to January as Bing and even Ask grew by 5% and 4% respectively. Regardless of this data, there are still plenty of people using Yahoo, and that means businesses shouldn’t ignore it. In fact, businesses should do all they can to understand the audience they are reaching with each individual search engine.

An interesting study from Wunderman, ZAAZ, and Compete suggests that the demographic and psychographic profile of each loyal search engine user is different. Bing users, for example, tend to be mostly from the tip of the adoption curve (innovators and early adopters) where Yahoo and Google’s passengers tend to be middle majority, according to the report from these firms.

The point is that it is easy to get wrapped up in specific search engines, but Yahoo is still a key player and it is worth paying attention to all of the things they are doing to improve their own users’ experience, because you might find specific ways to reach Yahoo users that might be slightly different than ways you might try to reach Google users (or Bing’s users).

What Yahoo Has Done Lately

In September, Yahoo launched a completely new version of Yahoo Search. In addition to being faster, this new version included things like:

- SearchMonkdey structured data, which lends to richer results from an increasing number of sites

- Search Scan and Safe Search, which help protect users from viruses, spyware and spam

- Search Pad, which lets users take notes for research as they search

- Query assistance, which has been extended in the left-hand column to let users browse concepts related to their queries

- Image and video search refiners

Yahoo has expanded its coverage for enhanced results to formats like video, documents, games, products, local businesses, events, discussions, and news. In November, Yahoo extended its Search Assist features from the web search box to the search box on every Yahoo property. They also began including photos, videos, and tweets about news stories in search results.

Yahoo! Search Highlights at SearchSpeak @ Yahoo! Video

"We’re focused on making it easier to search for local businesses," says Larry Cornett, Vice President, Consumer Products, Yahoo Search. "Starting in December 2009, we display more Yahoo! local business shortcuts when you search for a business, even if you don’t include your location in your query. We also began providing new functionality directly within the local shortcut to refine results by neighborhood or nearby city right on the search results page. This further enhances an already great shortcut that provides more of the information you care about most directly on the search results page; including ratings, reviews, photos, and directions." (emphasis added)

In December, Yahoo started integrating tweets in the form of a shortcut from search results pages (separate from the news tweets) when users search for "buzzy" topics. Finally, Yahoo added more entertainment refiners within its image/video search products.

What Yahoo Will Be Doing

One new innovation that Yahoo unveiled this week is called "Sketch-a-Search". It’s a mobile app that lets users pull up a map and user their fingers to search by tracing a line around the area they want to search. An image of it can be seen here.

As far as advertising, Yahoo says it’s focused on three key areas: better value, transparency and control, and innovation. The company says it is making pricing adjustments, and will allow advertisers to pay different rates for different traffic sources across Yahoo’s network. The company said it knows most people focus most of their campaign son Google, and they’ve created an import campaign tool and a new desktop tool for Yahoo Search Marketing, which will be available next month. They are putting ads into Search Assist, and they’re doing re-targeting of ads based on users’ search history.

Do you like the direction Yahoo’s headed in? Do you use Yahoo for search? How important is it to your marketing strategy? Comment here.

New Bing Commercial Inspired By The Shining

Jeremy Muncy — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:10:01 +0000

Microsoft must be really into Halloween this year, as they’ve relesaed two "Halloween oriented" commercials for their latest search engine, Bing.

The first advertisement, which we told you about earlier this week, features the latest craze for "tweens" everywhere a Vampire. The latest commercial, entitled Haunted Hotel, was inspired by the great Stanley Kubrick film, The Shining. Below is the description that accompanies the video on YouTube:

"You know what they say- all searching and no deciding makes the Web a dull place. And a confusing one as well, from the look of things. Don’t get lost in the search overload maze: use Bing."

So, what did you think of the latest Bing commercial? Tell us what you think.

Related Articles:

> Watch: Bing Goes the Bloodsucker Route

> Have You Seen Bing’s Commercials Yet?

> Bing Commercials Infringe on Patent?

Hulu Follows Proverbial Suit, Creates Social Network

Jordan McCollum — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:23:37 +0000

Nielsen Online’s VideoCensus indicates that in February, 17-month-old Hulu grew to become the second most popular video site (after the behemoth YouTube)—so, Hulu, what are you going to do now? ~~“We’re going to Disney World!”~~ “We’re building a social network!”

It feels like a long time since we’ve been reporting on every search engine and funeral home opening a social network, but the trend is obviously far from over.

If the social network can bring them even more traffic, so much the better. Though their 309 million monthly video views have nothing on YouTube’s 5.2 billion, Hulu still stands to make a great profit from its current traffic. AdAge reports that television shows online command $40 to $50 per thousand viewers.

And Hulu admits that this is the thinking behind the social network:

“From an ad perspective, this is about bringing users to Hulu and having them spend more time on the service,” said J.P. Colaco, Hulu senior VP-sales.

The point here is to encourage users to spend time on Hulu itself, rather than third-party distributors such as Yahoo TV and TVGuide.com. Hulu gets a higher percentage of the gross advertising sold against viewers on Hulu (30%) vs. those watching Hulu on partner sites such as Comcast’s Fancast or TVGuide, which take a 10% cut. Community functions will also keep viewers around longer, and allow Hulu to show them more ads.

Go ahead and rag on Hulu for being concerned about money instead of fostering a community—but I, for one, applaud Colaco & co. Thank you for being honest and not sugarcoating this.

I think it’s a pretty good idea—visit any cable or network television website and look at their message boards to see that people do want to connect about their favorite shows. It doesn’t hurt that it is planned to help Hulu’s bottom line—because let’s face it, if online TV shows aren’t profitable, no matter how much people want them, they’re going to go away.

What do you think? Are you ready to socialize with your fellow Hulu viewers?

Comments

Is SEO’s Demise On The Horizon

Peter Da Vanzo — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:01:28 +0000

"SEO as we know it will be dead within the next 2 years – true or false? With the wealth of info at their fingertips combined with localized, customized search to name but a few Google will no longer need to do what it does now to determine rankings?"

I’d say "false".

People have been predicting the death of SEO since, well, the beginning of SEO. Here’s a debate from 2004, and another from 2006. These arguments probably started around 1995.

So long as search engines display a list of sites, for which payment is not required, SEO will exist.

How SEO is done will change. It has always changed. In the bad old days, SEO was all about getting listed in the Yahoo Directory. If you didn’t, you were pretty much invisible. There was a time that listing with Looksmart got you decent rankings in MSN. These days, few of those new to SEO have even heard of Looksmart.

Google will certainly adapt and change, and use a variety of metrics in order to determine relevance. SEOs will adapt and change, trying to work out what these metrics are.

Recently, Eric Schmidt made the following comment:

The internet is fast becoming a "cesspool" where false information thrives, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said yesterday. Speaking with an audience of magazine executives visiting the Google campus here as part of their annual industry conference, he said their brands were increasingly important signals that content can be trusted"

So, having a brand might be a signal of quality, which may, in turn, lead to a higher rank. Or perhaps Schmidt was just playing to the audience of newspaper owners. Difficult to tell

Google collects a wealth of usage data from toolbars, analytics, and their ad systems, so it is conceivable they might fold these metrics into their ranking systems. Marissa Mayer recently suggested that SearchWiki data might be used ranking calculations.

Will the bar get raised? Will SEO become more difficult? Of course. But a raised bar works two ways. If you can reach it, there’s a new barrier between you and those who follow you. That gives you some level of defensibility.

So how do you do SEO going forward?

I’ve written a lot about the importance of holistic strategy. Your aim should be to sell something to people – be it an opinion, a product, a service. All your endeavors should support this goal, and most of the time, that means doing the basics well – make your site crawlable, well linked, and solve a genuine problem for people. If your SEO efforts are not resulting in an improvement in the bottom line , then there is little point doing SEO.

Bob Massa put it well:

"I believe anyone can be successful at online marketing or even traffic generation and search engine placement specifically, if they just stop looking for ways to trick machines and instead look for ways to connect with humans".

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