May 15, 2008

Ask.com to Acquire Dictionary.com Family of Reference Sites

IAC-owned Ask.com has agreed to acquire Lexico Publishing Group, the owner of Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com.

The move will help Ask.com fulfill its recent strategy to focus on reference and providing answers to questions. More than half a billion monthly worldwide searches consist of dictionary, thesaurus, and encyclopedia queries, according to comScore.

The acquisition brings to Ask.com 15.6 million monthly unique users, growing 29% year-over-year, giving the combined entity more than 145 million unduplicated users worldwide, making Ask.com the ninth-largest Web property in the world. A full 88 percent of Lexico sites' traffic comes from direct navigation, where users type in "dictionary.com" or other site names in their browser.

"We think it fits in very nicely with what we have at Ask.com," Doug Leeds, chief strategy officer at Ask.com, told Search Engine Watch. "We're going to take some of the things that make Ask.com great, like related search and binoculars, and bring them to Dictionary.com."

The Lexico sites will also be redesigned to include the three-paneled Ask3D functionality for its search results, he said.

For dictionary.com, the move brings users closer to their next or previous destinations, which quite often is a search engine, Leeds said. The addition of Lexico's reference sites will improve Ask.com users' experience as well, since more than 30 percent of all searches conducted on Ask.com are in the reference category.

Terms of the all-cash transaction were not disclosed. Once the deal closes, the 16 employees of privately held Lexico are expected to join Ask.com's team.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 7, 2008

SEW Experts: Has Google Already Won?

With the imminent demise of Yahoo and Ask.com, Google seems to have cemented its near-total control of search. The monopolization of our industry is fast becoming a reality, and yet the users of search are oblivious. In today's SEM Crossfire column, "Has Google Already Won?," Frank Watson laments the downfall of Ask.com and Yahoo, and what that might mean for Google.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

March 6, 2008

Ask.com Stands Behind Search

The reports of Ask.com's death have been exaggerated. Despite widely circulated reports to the contrary, Ask.com remains committed to search, and not just for middle-aged women in the Midwest. In today's SearchDay, "Ask.com Remains Committed to Search," we outline what Ask.com's new strategy really consists of: recognizing the ways their best customers use the site, and building out additional services for those users.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 6:44 AM | Permalink

March 4, 2008

Ask.com to Cut 8%, Revamp Search Plans

Ask.com will stop trying to compete directly with Google as a mainstream search engine, and will instead focus on targeting niches where it feels it can prosper, based on the way users are searching with Ask.com now. Reports from Reuters and the Wall Street Journal quote new CEO Jim Safka saying "We are reorienting the company around where we can grow," and "If we can do a better job of understanding who these customers are and answering their questions, we will grow."

Safka took over as CEO in January, edging out popular Ask.com boss Jim Lanzone.

A total of 40 layoffs were made, across multiple departments. That 8-percent cut was designed to eliminate several areas of overlap, including some competing technologies, Safka told the WSJ. He also told the WSJ that one core audience Ask.com would focus on might be women over 30, asking questions about entertainment and health topics. Building out products for that group might include more community-generated answers.

Late last week, rumors were flying that Ask.com would get rid of its Teoma search algorithm and outsource search to Google. An Ask.com spokesperson told SEW at the time those rumors were "just plain false," adding that "There are no plans to 'pull the plug' on Teoma, our core search engine technology."

UPDATE: Gary Price, director of online information resources, evangelist of Ask.com, friend to librarians, former SEW news editor, and all-around great guy, was one of the 40 employees laid off today, he announced on his ResourceShelf blog. "Earlier this afternoon I learned that Ask.com is taking the company in a new and different direction and I will not be a part of it," he writes. "It's time to move forward and on to another full time job. Where it will be and what I will do is TBD but I am looking forward to seeing what's out there and where I might be able to contribute."

I've no doubt Gary will land on his feet, but we wish him the best of luck just the same. With the exit of Price, and the news that Jim Lanzone will be gone by August, Ask.com has most definitely moved away from "the little engine that could," with lots of personality, to just another IAC site in Barry Diller's empire. It's a sad day for Ask.com, and a sad day for searchers.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 4:20 PM | Permalink

June 29, 2007

WSJ's Mossberg Likes Ask3D

Wall Street Journal columnist and All Things Digital organizer Walt Mossberg compared Google's Universal Search with Ask.com's Ask3D, and found Ask3D to be a better way of presenting search results. In Ask.com Takes Lead In Designing Display Of Search Results, Mossberg writes: Now, Google and Ask each have rolled out new ways of presenting search results. Google's approach, which it calls “universal search,” is a modest thing, a first step in what it says will be a long effort to break down barriers between different types of information a user may be seeking, such as Web links, images and news.

But Ask's new system, called “Ask3D,” is a much bolder and better advance in unifying different kinds of results and presenting them in a more effective manner. It shows, once again, that Ask places a higher priority than its competitors do on making search results easy to navigate and use.

Ask.com is currently trying to become a legitimate contender in search, with a new ad campaign and new features like Ask3D. A favorable review from Mossberg can help spread the word to the masses, but it will take much more than that to get users to change their behavior.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:16 AM | Permalink

June 20, 2007

Ask.com Asks a Ninja for Ad Help

Ask.com has turned to Ask A Ninja for its latest online advertising effort, according to ClickZ. The live-read video campaign inserted into the popular video blog is the latest element of Ask.com's ad campaign for its revamped Ask3D search engine.

In the spots, which appear at the end of the ninja's videos, the ninja urges viewers to use Ask.com to find videos around made-up ninja words like "ningiants," "ninjuice," and "nonja": "This episode was brought to you by Ask.com," screeches the ninja as a search term appears below his face in the video frame. "Go to Ask.com, type in this ninja word twice as fast as you physically can, and you'll either get a cool ninja video treat or a sword in your head. That's a pretty good deal. I'd take that risk, but I'm a ninja."

Certainly better than the billboards that bring up the Unabomber, or ads with scantily-clad "chicks with swords" that likely offended at least half the intended audience.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 2:51 PM | Permalink

June 5, 2007

Ask.com: The Other Search Engine?

Ask.com is positioning itself as "the other search engine," making a play to get users to think about Ask in addition to Google when they think of search. While part of that plan is being carried out in its multi-million ad campaigns, the important part of the plan comes in the form of innovation in its search results.

Ask.com today launched Ask3D, a new interface and re-engineered product, with new features that are meant to align more closely with the way people actually search. Ask3D offers a three-paneled SERP, with query refinements, Web search results, and vertical search results.

Eric Enge gives some great examples in his blog post, Ask Launches Ask3D. I've also gone through the changes in detail in today's SearchDay. For more perspectives, check out the Techmeme coverage.

Many of us were wondering last week What Ask.com Should Do. Think this is the right answer? Will it be enough? Share your thoughts in the SEW forums.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 3:54 AM | Permalink

Ask Launches Ask3D

There is a new look at Ask. Following hot on the heels of the recent announcement by Google of its Universal Search, Ask has now released something with very similar attributes, but significant and interesting differences.

The new search is known internally as "Ask3D". The name is a reflection of both the 3-column design and Ask's integration of multiple vertical search properties into their search results. So far I have seen results from Image Search, Video Search, Local Search, News Search, and Blog Search.

Unlike Google's Universal Search approach, Ask3D presents the most relevant types of data in categories within the search results, segregated by content type. All the image search results are shown in one place, all the video search results are shown in one place, etc.

Here is a summary of what happens on a few example searches, starting with the search results you see when you enter in "Barack Obama":

Notice the Images, News Images, and Video results in the right column. What you can't see, because my screen shot is too small, is the News and Shopping links that show up further down on the right hand column. All of these data items are coming from vertical sources.

Here is what you see when you enter Gwen Stefani:

Notice how the results differ from the Barack Obama search results. The Gwen Stefani results show upcoming events, tied to my current location (I am in Seattle at the moment), and three of her most popular sound tracks. Click on a sound track, and it plays for you right then and there.

So now lets see when you search on Liverpool:

More changes still in this view. Now you see current weather and the current time in the right hand column. If this is the answer you are looking for, there is no need to perform a follow on search.

Lastly, let's look at what happens if you search on Boston Red Sox:

Now Sports Blogs and related Business Listings (places to stay) are brought into the mix.

The bottom line in all this is that Ask3D categorizes and presents the most relevant types of data into the search results presented. Unlike Google's Universal Search, the data is segregated by content type. All the image search results are shown in one place, all the video search results are shown in one place, etc.

This is a very interesting difference from Google's Universal Search. Google integrates its results into the "10 blue links". So if Google deems a search result from video search to be the fifth most relevant result, it will be mixed in with the rest of the web search results, and shown in the 5th position.

With Ask3D, the presumption is different. Ask3D presumes that the user wants to know where to find the video results (for example), and wants to see them grouped together, rather than mixing them into the web search results. So the results are shown on the right column, instead of in the middle. I can't honestly tell you which one is ultimately better for the user. But the fact that Ask has jumped into the game with this is pretty cool.

Kevin Newcomb has written up the changes in today's SearchDay. You can also read Gary Price's summary of the Ask3D announcement here.

Posted by at 12:00 AM | Permalink

May 23, 2007

What Should Ask.com Do?

An interesting discussion has begun on several blogs this week considering what Ask.com should do to be successful. It focuses on ways that Ask.com could compete with Google, both in search and advertising. While there are many things that Ask.com is doing right, it's hard not to wonder if it will be enough.

It's interesting that so much discussion is being devoted to Ask.com all at once. Is it a wish to back the underdog, or a dissatisfaction with Google, and a lack of faith in runners-up Yahoo and Microsoft? Let's start with a run-down of the conversation to this point, and see if we can come up with any answers to help everyone's favorite underachiever.

We begin with Allen Stern at Center Networks, who writes Ask.com goes "all in"... and my strategy suggestions to help them fight the beast. He outlines five areas of focus he'd suggest if he were asked:

Get site publishers to integrate Ask.com, with cash incentives, if necessary.
Focus on Google's potential data and privacy issues.
Look for categories to own, like Ask Kids.
Work with bloggers to educate them and create an 'Ask.com feeling."
Arrange local demos of Ask.com

Over at Read/Write Web, Josh Catone weighs in with The Future of Ask.com: Search? How About Advertising. He shares his opinions on Stern's suggestions, and adds another area of focus for Ask: advertising. This, I think, is an area that Google dominates which is currently ripe for competition (more so than search). Google's service isn't great (the most glaring check against them, in the eyes of publishers, is their lack of transparency -- they don't disclose how much of the ad revenue is being shared), and publishers are always willing to try out a new service to see if it makes them more money.

Catone also outlines several elements of an advertising program that Ask should focus on to match Google, including management tools for advertisers and publishers, contextual ad matching technology. He also names a few areas where Ask could potentially beat Google, including transparency with publisher earnings, a solution to stop click fraud, and the creation of "hybrid" text/image ads.

Over at Search Engine Guide, Jennifer Laycock asks the question, On Fire, or Going Down in Flames?, citing the latest Nielsen//NetRatings search share data that shows Ask.com losing ground after a year of slow but steady growth.

"It's a frustrating journey to watch as it seems that every time they do something great, they follow up with something that makes me cringe," writes Laycock.

At the Bruce Clay blog, Lisa Barone shares her hopes for Ask.com's success, and points to a major flaw amidst minor successes: Let's be fair. Everyone knows that Ask.com's tools are better than Google's, Yahoo's, or Microsoft's. AskCity is awesome, their blog search kills, and the Smart Answer and query refinement tools Ask has been using for years are just now starting to be adopted by the other engines. When it comes to advanced search tools, Ask.com is in a league of their own. This is great, but their traditional search results are still lacking. Without a strong SERP, Ask.com will never become more than a specialty engine. You'll use it when you need to find a local furniture store, but you won't trust it for everyday searching.

There are many things that Ask.com is doing right. It's clearly committed to developing both its search and advertising products, and has committed $100 million to a TV ad campaign to try to spur user interest.

On the search side, Ask has been innovating with its Smart Answers product, which searches multiple databases to return more targeted results on certain queries. They've made some strides in local search with their AskCity product. They're also doing some interesting things with Ask Mobile and the AskX interface.

Ask.com is also in the midst of combining its Teoma and Direct Hit algorithms, along with other technologies it has developed, into the upcoming Edison algorithm, which will roll out over the course of 2007.

And Ask.com is reaching out to certain niches, notably librarians. Gary Price, Ask's director of online information resources, told SEW recently that his primary roles are outreach to media, outreach to librarians, and outreach internally to other IAC properties.

As for advertising, Ask.com has been making moves there already. It expanded its Ask Sponsored Listings product last fall, and is in the process of launching a contextual ad network across its own IAC-owned sites and third-party sites.

But as Andy Beal points out on his Marketing Pilgrim blog, whatever Ask does may not be enough, if it doesn't change its attitude: "The problem is that Ask still seems to want to compete with Google and Yahoo. ... Edgy ads aren't going to cut it, you need to find a niche and fill it."

Will these moves be enough to give Ask.com a fighting chance? What's Ask.com doing right? What are they doing wrong? What are they missing? Share your thoughts in the SEW forums.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:12 AM | Permalink

May 3, 2007

Ask Brings the Algorithm Mainstream

Ask.com's recent offline advertising campaign is shifting into high gear to build up buzz around Ask's upcoming Edison algorithm, which Ask's Apostolos Gerasoulis spoke about at Search Engine Strategies in New York last month.

In The Algorithm is On The Move, Ask's VP of marketing Greg Ott explains that the campaign, created by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, will bring the term "algorithm" to the world outside of SEO. But it will not do it in a way that might hurt people, he says:

"No, the campaign won't go into detail about how an algorithm actually works. We don't want to make people's heads explode. We just want them to know there's something in there – think Intel Inside, Verizon's Network, Dodge's Hemi…heck, even VW's Fahrvergnugen – that's different and working to make search better for you."

The Edison algorithm is expected to combine into one engine the best of Ask's two technologies: the mainly clickthrough-based Direct Hit, acquired in February 2000, and the link analysis-based Teoma, acquired in September 2001.

Ask parent IAC reported its first quarter earnings today, including a 43 percent rise in media and advertising revenue, fueled by growth in search queries and revenue per query.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 8:21 PM | Permalink

December 18, 2006

2006 Top Searches

Following Yahoo's release on December 4 of its top searches for 2006, last week AOL, Lycos and MSN Live released their top searches for the year 2006. Google still has their 2005 review at Zeitgeist, along with recent monthly totals. Ask.com presents weekly lists, but has yet to release a 2006 year in review.

A closer look at these lists reveals some interesting questions about the differences in the data from engine to engine.

Looking at the slight differences between this data can be an interesting project, and can probably yield some good insight into both the user demographics of each of the engines

Paris Hilton is an interesting example to use in showing how search engines classify types of searches. In Yahoo! and in AOL, Paris is listed as a celebrity, yet she is found in top News searches for MSN Live. Does this mean that people search Live's (formerly search.msn.com) News category when they look for everyone's favorite socialite?

More can undoubtedly be read into the top overall searches reported for each portal. AOL reports: "weather" (does this mean they included all weather-inclusive searches or just the term "weather?"); Yahoo! says Britney Spears is number one (hmm...wonder if that includes people misspelling it?); MSN Live claims that the world wanted to know about Ronaldinho more than anyone or thing else; and Lycos puts Poker at number one. Again, others can fill in the blanks as to what they think the demographics most closely associated with each portal are.

It will be interesting to see what the top Google searches are. It would also be nice to have some more details as to how many misspellings were included in searches and perhaps how many of the searches for each top term were actually contained in a longer keyword phrase.

See also the discussions about this at the Yahoo! Search Blog, and the MSN Blog post that introduced their list. AOL has opened up the floor for discussion at the AOL Search Blog (thanks Susan for the link!). Lycos provides a platform for discussion which can be found at the Lycos 50 Blog. (Thanks Carolyn!)

(Note this story was edited after I discovered that Paris Hilton did make the top celebrity list at AOL. For some reason I missed that originally. Apologies to the AOL team for this oversight. CB)

Posted by Chris Boggs at 10:58 AM | Permalink

November 8, 2006

In The Election Results Race, Yahoo's The Winner

Like many Americans, I wanted to know what was up with the vote in the US midterm elections this morning. As a search analyst, I then wanted to know how the search engines performed in helping me find out. The results are in! Yahoo's the winner by far, but I'd still take the New York Times over it. Come along for an illustrated tour.

Google told us last month that Google Earth was all geared up to be an election guide. That's great if you've downloaded Google Earth and wanted to learn more before the election. But how about a quick, fast summary of what happened yesterday? What's Google got for us?

The Google home page is as minimal as always, no help there -- not even a special logo as in the 2004 race.

How about a search for "election results," which I think is a fair query to try. After all, using Google Trends, I can see a huge spike for that term after the last elections in the US:

I also checked the volume for just "results," and that was even higher whereas "elections" was much lower (see them all compared here). So my two queries for this test were "election results" and "results." On Google, both disappointed.

Here are election results on Google:

CNN's top with 2004 results! I know -- web search is always behind the times. That's why Google inserts that big news results OneBox unit above the regular results. Let's click on the main news link there, which takes us to news results:

Pretty bad. News about the dollar, stock prices -- but who won?!!! I've got to really work to figure this out, especially compared to the New York Times, as I'll show at the end of this story.

Maybe I head to the actual Google News home page:

Nope. I get some headlines telling me about the Democratic house victory, but it could be much better.

FYI, checking on a search for just results, I don't even get the news headlines inserted. Overall, I found Google to be a pretty poor resource.

How about Yahoo? The home page there immediately gives you some news:

If I actually gravitate to the picture and resist the pull of the search box, the "Full elections coverage" link takes me to a Full Coverage page with lots of info, including an interactive results page (my link takes that out of the normal pop-up box, but it still works great):

This is very, very nice. I can see at a glance who is ahead in the race for control of the US House Of Representatives, plus with a click I can check out the Senate or governor races. Selecting any state also gives me the information about races with that state.

I love this. It very similar to what impressed me at the New York Times. I hope Yahoo searchers found it. However, I suspect many bypassed it. To understand why, let's do that search for election results:

Similar to Google, Yahoo inserts a big "News Results" shortcut unit above the regular results, to help detour searchers into the freshest results. Of course, searcers might bypass that. If so, unlike Google, Yahoo has managed to get the CNN 2006 results page up rather than the CNN 2004 page. Nice. After that, there's Fox News 2006. But c'mon -- Yahoo's own special election results are third. This is one case where I'd totally applaud a little hand manipulation to get that to the top, especially to highlight that interactive results summary page.

Still, the web search results for this particular day at Yahoo far outshine Google. That's almost certainly due to some human editing, which is fine. Along with the sites I've mentioned, you get the New York Times politics page, USA Today's politics page, C-SPAN's 2006 results page, the ABC News politics page, CBS News's 2006 page, politics from the LA Times, then the Washington Post's 2006 results page. All of these are excellent choices. If Yahoo did human intervention to make this happen, kudos to them. You can check out a snapshot of the entire page here.

Over at Google, nothing is either timely or general enough. The Virginia state election board, California election info, assorted things dating from 2004 -- then oddly Virginia and California get another bump for their 2006 pages. Ugh. See the entire list in the snapshot here.

What happens if we detour into the news area that Yahoo promotes at the top of the page? Disappointment:

Yes, relevant news stories. And the image results to the side are kind of fun. But some hand help could have made a difference. How about a promo for that awesome election map of Yahoo's?

Let's go over to Ask, where I had high hopes. Ask has made a big deal of its special Smart Answers for the election, and they are cool. But will I see them? Yes, if I search for election:

I'd also get to this box if I went to the Ask home page and clicked on the Election Day link there:

But for election results (what I believe to be the more popular query), all I get is a small news unit:

The news unit will take me over to some news results, but like Yahoo's, these aren't thrilling. It's pick and choose through what you want, rather than any type of easy overview. As for a search on just results, that doesn't even bring back the news unit at all.

The overall web search results, similar to Google, are underwhelming. Nothing really helpful for the 2006 results pops up (see the full results in the snapshot here).

Even the special Smart Answers box, had it shown up, isn't that helpful for what I want now -- RESULTS! None of the featured links with it takes me to results.

Microsoft, what have you got for me at Windows Live Search? On the home page, nothing. For search on election results, it's disappointing old or non-targeted results (screenshot here). Unlike the others, there are no news results inserted above these. A search for just results is no better. If I specifically try a news search for election results, as with the others, there's no attempt to get me a comprehensive overview. It's up to me to review each story and hope for a good match.

Ironically, at the largely overshadowed MSN site, similar to Yahoo, I get a big election photo on the home page along with links, including one called "state-by-state results" that leads to MSNBC here. And over there is a pretty neat "Democracy Dashboard" giving me that type of overview I wanted:

It's a pity Windows Live didn't reach out to either MSN or MSNBC and do something special to point to this or somehow integrate it into the results.

What about AOL? From the home page, it's pretty easy to spot a link to a AOL election page with results for the House, Senate and more:

Searching for election results brings back disappointing Google listings in the main results. However, the new FullView column does a good job of dividing news into elections overall, US Senate coverage, US House coverage and more. And clicking on any of the "View all" links brings up the special AOL election page (see the full page here).

Now to the New York Times. I headed over there pretty much by chance. There are any number of newspapers I might of thought of off the top of my head, and usually its my original home town paper of the Los Angeles Times. But I hit the NY Times today, and boy was I glad.

Right on the home page, above the "fold" is an easy-to-spot election map. In seconds, it organized the most important information I was looking for into a way for me to know what was going on:

Drilling into the full map was even better. There, I could click on any state -- in particular the undecided ones -- and see the current situation:

Just when I was thinking "what if," I saw the "Create Outcomes" tab where I could click on a state and flip it to the Democrats or the Republicans to see how it might go with the Senate. Outstanding!

Other newspapers or web sites might have done as well with similar displays. If so, my apologies that this wasn't a review of the best election results sites. Instead, it was really meant to see how well the search engines held up as information resources for this particular news event.

Overall, I've written many times before that there's a role humans can play in search results. Today -- this was a perfect example of that. Yahoo almost certainly put some human effort into crafting results, and it was the clear victor in terms of quality of what was coming up in web search listings. AOL comes in second, again where human effort has helped its FullView listings help make up for the poor crawler-based results from Google.

In third, I put Google and Ask. Google's results were poor, but at least it floated some news results that may have helped. Ask, I was rooting for. But that Smart Answers box simply wasn't showing up for the queries I thought people were doing. Even if people were getting it for "election," it wasn't helpful to get election results. I really appreciate the effort, and if this had been for something other than actual results, Ask would have been great. In last place -- Windows Live.

This campaign of sorts is also one of those classic "what if" races. With just a little more effort, Yahoo would have had a landslide victory by getting people to its great overview page. The same is true for AOL. Ask, with just a bit more thought, could have had that box coming up for "election results" rather than just "elections" and added some links to get people to actual results. Windows Live, if it had remembered its MSN origins, might not be in last. And Google? A company that's all about organizing information might not have put in such a poor performance if it used some human power in the way the New York Times did.

Postscript: See also Case Study: Digg Versus Google News Traffic from me on my personal blog that covers how this article ultimately brought in lots of traffic from Google News from those unable to find election results there, along with lots of other data and a comparison to traffic from a top story at Digg on the same day.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:17 AM | Permalink

October 5, 2006

USA Today Asks Teoma Who?

The other day, Ask.com was featured in a USA Today article named What's Teoma, you ask? You could ask Jeeves, but he's become ... Teoma. Yes, a weird title for a USA Today post, in where USA Today goes into the past of Teoma, Ask Jeeves, Teoma, Rutgers, IBM and Apostolos Gerasoulis. The article is a fun read but it needs some clarifications that are either wrong or can be interpreted the wrong way. The article says, "Lanzone turned off Ask's technology and began to power Ask.com with Teoma." Lanzone, being Jim, the new CEO of Ask.com. The time they are referencing to turning off Ask.com is February 2005. That is actually not true, Teoma has been powering Ask for at least three years now. It did not happen when Ask.com changed their name from Ask Jeeves to Ask.com. Other than that, the article is short and enjoyable, so check it out.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:33 AM | Permalink

June 30, 2006

Ask.com Removes "Legacy Filters" To Enable Pedophilia Keyword Search

About a week ago we covered a story that Ask.com was blocking search terms such as laws against pedophilia and preventing child pornography, amongst others. Philipp notes that Ask.com has removed the "legacy filters" to enable those types of searches. In fact, for the search on preventing child pornography, you get a special "smart answer" for "Child Abuse Resources."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:19 AM | Permalink

June 23, 2006

Ask.com Too Strict With Child & Sex Keywords?

The Hammer of Trust writes that Ask.com is way too strict for searches on keywords about sex and children. For example, a search on Ask.com on [laws against pedophilia] brings back a message that reads, "This query does not comply with Ask.com Terms of Service." The "Go" button following the message links you to Ask.com Terms of Service. Other similar searches do the same thing, such as , talking to your children about sex, blocking porn from kids and warning your kids about sex offenders. I also tried searching on preventing child pornography and that also was blocked.

It is important to note that all these queries bring back results at both Google and Yahoo. Is Ask.com way too strict here? It appears that way. But is it better than being hit with a child pornography suit like Google was?

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:09 AM | Permalink

June 20, 2006

It's Not Just Google With Disappointing Results

We have been poking hard at Google for disappointing search results, but Google is not the only search engine that has been disappointing me recently. You can group Yahoo and MSN and even Ask.com into the search engines that I have been disappointed with.

Over at the Search Engine Roundtable, I cover what I call "forum buzz," the discussions taking place within the SEM/SEO community. I tend to pick up on algorithm shifts and post the details at my site.

Today, I covered two threads, one I named Yahoo! Also Easy To Spam and the other MSN Asks Webmasters What Are Quality & Authoritative Sites. But what really got me was Danny's postscript on Google Sub Sub Domain Issues Clearly Visible showing Yahoo has a similar issue.

Typically, I have always had a search engine to fall back on when one wasn't "doing it for me." Today, I don't have that search engine. Google pushed me over the edge with the Sub Sub Domain Issues. Yahoo is easy to spam with comment spam (ummm, nofollow not working?), and MSN is being laughed at, IMO. Ask.com, they are good, but way too slow to update at this point.

To make it even worse, Google still refuses to take a stand on the whole cloaking debate. Just take a look at the back and forth in our Search Engine Watch Forums thread!

So where does that leave me? Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com are all disappointing right now. Tomorrow? Well, I can always hope for a better tomorrow. Who knows, maybe a new Google will come along? Maybe AltaVista will rise up again?

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:25 AM | Permalink

June 19, 2006

New Search Patent Applications: June 19, 2006 - Autolinking, and Better Advertising through Deletion Predictions

Four patent applications from Google describe fighting spam in emails, providing product review searches, moving large amounts of data, and autolinking. Yahoo matches, and raises with five patent filings. One on watching deletions to choose better ads, another on serving dynamic information through a additional browser interface, and three more on multimedia and RSS.

Microsoft goes TV 2.0 with an electronic program guide, and describes a way of matching advertising content with certain search queries before those searches are made. IBM comes up with a unique way of presenting the results of a search from more than one search engine, and a way of reducing the amount of irrelevant results in a search by analyzing an initial set of results, identifying an appropriate additional query term from those results, and searching the original results again but with the additional query term included in the search.

Go Daddy describes a way of fighting spam in emails. Xerox employs collaborative filtering from previous users' searches to predict search results. Apostolos Gerasoulis, from Ask.com, with a couple of co-inventors, ranks and displays pages (objects) based upon linkage and textual data, and then defines a way to identifiy and assign topics to them.

Google

Email Spam

Emails with links in them could be considered spam if the links point to pages that are in a conceptual category considered spammy. This patent application really doesn't describe the concept categorization part of the process. That's done in a related patent application mentioned within this document, and the related document lists Georges Harik as one inventor. Dr. Harik's name is on a very large percentage of the patent applications involving Gmail-type processes.

Method and system to detect e-mail spam using concept categorization of linked content Invented by Johnny Chen US Patent Application 20060122957 Published June 8, 2006 Filed December 3, 2004

Abstract

A system and method for detecting undesired electronic messages (e.g., spam) using concept categorization of hyperlinks is disclosed. A server receives an electronic message and retrieves web pages that correspond to hyperlinks in the message. The server performs concept categorization on the retrieved web pages based on semantic relationships in the received information to determine whether the electronic message meets predefined criteria associated with undesired messages.

Searching and Aggregating Product Reviews

If Google wanted to get into the product or services review business, the next patent filing describes a blue print for the process that might make an effective and innovative system.

Method and system for finding and aggregating reviews for a product Invented by Jan Matthias Ruhl and Mayur D. Datar US Patent Application 20060129446 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 14, 2004

Abstract

The embodiments disclosed herein include new, more efficient ways to collect product reviews from the Internet, aggregate reviews for the same product, and provide an aggregated review to end users in a searchable format. One aspect of the invention is a graphical user interface on a computer that includes a plurality of portions of reviews for a product and a search input area for entering search terms to search for reviews of the product that contain the search terms.

Scaling and Distributing Data

Arvind Jain is the head of Research and Development in Google's Bangalore office, and has spoken at a number of conferences on infrastructure projects and issues involving such things as Google's crawl and indexing system, distributed file replication system, and compression techniques for large scale storage systems. He's listed as the inventor for this next Google filing.

System and method for scalable data distribution Invented by Arvind Jain US Patent Application 20060126201 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 10, 2004

Abstract

A system having a resource manager, a plurality of masters, and a plurality of slaves, interconnected by a communications network. To distribute data, a master determined that a destination slave of the plurality slaves requires data. The master then generates a list of slaves from which to transfer the data to the destination slave. The master transmits the list to the resource manager. The resource manager is configured to select a source slave from the list based on available system resources. Once a source is selected by the resource manager, the master receives an instruction from the resource manager to initiate a transfer of the data from the source slave to the destination slave. The master then transmits an instruction to commence the transfer.

Autolinking

Google's Autolink raised a lot of eyebrows, and brought some negative reactions. A Search Engine Watch Blog post from Danny Sullivan, Google Toolbar's AutoLink & The Need For Opt-Out defined many of the issues around the toolbar feature. The following patent application explains how such a system might work from the search engine's perspective.

Providing useful information associated with an item in a document Invented by Gueorgui Djabarov US Patent Application 20060129910 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 14, 2004

Abstract

A method includes recognizing an item within a first document based on a pattern associated with the item but not the exact content of the item. The method further includes identifying a link for the item and providing a second document that includes information associated with the item when the link for the item is selected.

Yahoo

Choosing Better Ads through User Behavior

Some queries involve the use of concepts and units, as described in at least five Yahoo patent filings (see previous patent posts in the Yahoo sections from Yahoo Units and Microsoft Redundancy Filters and More Yahoo Concepts and Google Predictive Searches.)

But sometimes a two term query isn't a concept as much as it is a couple of keywords that someone may use to search for something. If that person performs a second search after deleting one of the words, then the record of that deletion and second search might help Yahoo calculate "deletion probability scores" for words being used in these kind of two term queries.

This can be helpful when there isn't a good keyword based advertising match for that query, but there might be a good match individually for each of the terms that make up the query. The "deletion probability scores" can help determine which of the two terms to show keyword-based advertising for in search results.

System and methods for ranking the relative value of terms in a multi-term search query using deletion prediction Invented by Rosemary Jones and Daniel C. Fain US Patent Application 20060129534 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 14, 2004

Abstract

The likely relevance of each term of a search-engine query of two or more terms is determined by their deletion probability scores. If the deletion probability scores are significantly different, the deletion probability score can be used to return targeted ads related to the more relevant term or terms along with the search results. Deletion probability scores are determined by first gathering historical records of search queries of two or more terms in which a subsequent query was submitted by the same user after one or more of the terms had been deleted. The deletion probability score for a particular term of a search query is calculated as the ratio of the number of times that particular term was itself deleted prior to a subsequent search by the same user divided by the number of times there were subsequent search queries by the same user in which any term or terms including that given term was deleted by the same user prior to the subsequent search. Terms are not limited to individual alphabetic words.

Browser Interface Helpers

This next document describes some ways to provide additional dynamic information to someone via a toolbar styled interface, while they are browsing pages on the web.

Method of controlling an Internet browser interface and a controllable browser interface Invented by Thomas J. Shafron Assigned to Yahoo US Patent Application 20060129937 Published June 15, 2006 Filed February 2, 2006

Abstract

The present invention is directed to a method of dynamically controlling and displaying an Internet browser interface, and to a dynamically controllable Internet browser interface. In accordance with the present invention, a browser interface may be customized using a controlling software program that may be provided by an Internet content provider, an ISP, or that may reside on an Internet user's computer. The controlling software program enables the Internet user, the content provider, or the ISP to customize and control the information and/or functionality of a user's browser and browser interface.

RSS Enhancements

The following three Yahoo filings all list the same inventors, including John Thrall who is the head of media search engineering, for Yahoo Search. They provide different aspects of using RSS with multimedia files.

Syndicating multiple media objects with RSS Invented by Andrew R. Volk, David D. Hall, and John J. Thrall US Patent Application 20060129917 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 1, 2005

Abstract

System and method for syndicating more than one media object in an element using Real Simple Syndication (RSS). In one embodiment, multiple media objects with at least one shared characteristic are syndicated under the same element. For example, a single media object can come in multiple formats and/or compression rates.

Syndicating multimedia information with RSS Invented by Andrew R. Volk, David D. Hall, John J. Thrall US Patent Application 20060129907 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 1, 2005

Abstract

System and method for adding descriptive information to a Real Simple Syndication (RSS) document. The descriptive information describes the content of media objects syndicated through the document. The descriptive information can be used to provided additional information to a subscriber, and can be used in searching for syndicated media content.

RSS rendering via a media player Invented by Andrew R. Volk, David D. Hall, John J. Thrall US Patent Application 20060129916 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 1, 2005

Abstract

System and method for syndicating media objects through a link to a media player using Real Simple Syndication (RSS). A content provider may not want to give direct access to a media object to a subscriber. Instead a content provider can give the subscriber a link to a media player that can access the media object.

Microsoft

Searching electronic program guide data Invented by Pradhan S. Rao, David Hendler Sloo, Daniel Danker, and George K. Nyako Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060130098 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 15, 2004

Abstract

Searching electronic program guide (EPG) data is described. The EPG data may be compartmentalized into channel metadata that describes characteristics of one or more channels and content metadata that describes characteristics of one or more content items. In a implementation, a method includes searching channel metadata and content metadata. A result of the searching is formed for output in conjunction with an electronic program guide (EPG).

System and method for indexing and prefiltering Invented by Brian Burdick, Joshua J. Forman, Kevin P. Kornelson, Murali Vajjiravel, and Rajeev Prasad Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060129555 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 9, 2004

Abstract

A method and system are provided for selecting advertisements for presentation to a user in response to a user search query. The system may include a keyword server for parsing the user search query and an index server for receiving the parsed search query. The index server may include an index of advertising phrases and pre-filtering components for comparing index entries to the parsed user search query in order to discard non-matching index entries and locate matching entries. The pre-filtering components may include either a phrase length pre-filtering component or a word hash pre-filtering component. The system may additionally include a listing server for sorting through the matching entries located by the index server and further filtering the matching entries for retrieval and presentation to the user.

IBM

Ring method, apparatus, and computer program product for managing federated search results in a heterogeneous environment Invented by Wade Shelby Beavers and David Joseph Borrillo Assigned to IBM US Patent Application 20060129530 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 9, 2004

Abstract

A method, apparatus and computer program product are provided for managing federated search results in a heterogeneous environment. A user enters a search term and the search term is submitted to multiple selected search engines. Search results are gathered from each selected search engine. A search ring is generated including a ring section to represent each of the selected search engines for enabling the user to view search results from one or more of the selected search engines.

Method and system for suggesting search engine keywords Invented by Cary Lee Bates Assigned to IBM US Patent Application 20060129531 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 9, 2004

Abstract

A search engine receives a search query having one or more keywords. The documents in the result set from that search query are analyzed to identify one or more additional keywords that further segment, or separate, the initial result set. These additional keywords are presented to the user who then selects whether to include or exclude documents matching the additional keywords. In this way, the number of documents in the initial result set is reduced in a relatively quick and effortless manner.

Go Daddy

Email filtering system and method Invented by Brad Owen and Jason Steiner US Patent Application 20060129644 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 14, 2004

Abstract

Systems and methods of the present invention allow filtering out spam and phishing email messages based on the links embedded into the email messages. In a preferred embodiment, an Email Filter extracts links from the email message and obtains desirability values for the links. The Email Filter may route the email message based on desirability values. Such routing includes delivering the email message to a Recipient, delivering the message to a Quarantine Mailbox, or deleting the message.

Xerox

Personalized web search method Invented by Lisa S. Purvis Assigned to Xerox Corporation US Patent Application 20060129533 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 15, 2004

Abstract

A method for contextualizing search results is disclosed. The method includes performing a traditional web query that returns a set of result pages, using collaborative filtering techniques to generate a set of predicted pages, comparing the set of predicted pages with the set of result pages, and ranking the set of result pages so that result pages that are also included in the set of predicted pages are ranked higher than those that are not. Methods herein also contemplate using the search history of the user or others to refine the results of searches.

Ask.com

Relevancy-based database retrieval and display techniques Invented by Tao Yang, Wei Wang, and Apostolos Gerasoulis US Patent Application 20060129552 Published June 15, 2006 Filed February 2, 2006

Abstract

Techniques to retrieve, rank and display data objects retrieved form a database are described. In particular, methods to assign a global ranking value to a data object based on a combination of that object's link-based (e.g., vector-space cluster analysis) and text-based (e.g., word frequency) ranks are described. Additional techniques to determine a set of concepts, topics or key words associated with each retrieved data objects are described.

My usual reminder about patents: Some of the processes and technology described in patents are created in house, and some are developed with the assistance of contractors and partners. A percentage are never developed in a tangible manner, but may serve as a way to attempt to exclude others from using the technology, or even to possibly mislead competitors into exploring an area that they might not have an interest in (sometimes skepticism is good.)

There are times when a Google or Yahoo acquires a company to gain access to the intellectual property of that company, or the intellectual prowess and expertise of that company's employees. And sometimes patents are just purchased.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 8:42 PM | Permalink

May 16, 2006

Ask Binoculars Improving Search Results?

On its surface, the Binoculars feature in search results at Ask.com seems to only provide a preview of a page that you can visit. But, there may be more going on beneath the surface than a simple preview. There are attributes of this preview that may not have been rolled out yet, and the way that people interact with Binoculars might help the search engine improve their search results. A patent granted today for Ask.com has more details.

The Ask.com patent, Methods and apparatus for mouse-over preview of contextually relevant information (US Patent 7,047,502), appears to describe their Binoculars feature, and some interesting alternatives that it could display in addition to a preview of a page.

Information that could be displayed in a preview window

On search results pages at Ask.com, the Binoculars let searchers sneak a look at a screenshot of a page they could visit, when they mouse over a preview icon. The patent document spells out some other options. These alternatives might be shown in a single window, or even in cascading or adjacent windows.

Examples include:

Other web pages that have relevant and similar content,
A list of URLs representing all or some of the links contained or identified in the page,
A view of the home page associated with the web page returned, or other pages within the same domain,
A view of the page on the domain with the most click throughs to it,
The creation date of a web page,
The last refresh date of a web page,
The file size of a web page,
The number of links-in on a web page,
The number of links-out on a web page,
Registration information associated with the domain,
Geographic information relevant to the site,
A directory structure of deeper pages leading from the page returned,
Query refinement suggestions, such as alternative search terms with a list of sites received in response to that query,
A language translation of a page,
A definition, or a list of synonyms or antonyms, and;
Part of the page where the queried terms are located.

The patent document also discusses how the preview window might be configured; what preview icons might look like; and how previews might be displayed, including inline windows, floating windows, and multiple windows per result.

User Behavior and Binoculars

We know that Ask.com is no stranger to the click through methods that were used by Direct Hit in an attempt to improve query results. Can the use of previews also allow them to glean information about how users respond to the pages that are returned in a query?

The preview information is intended to provide users with a way to effectively gauge search results before they click through to a page. Tracking how people use those features might help the search engine. It's noted that this could be done by monitoring keystrokes, mousing, and related timing for a user reviewing a search results page. This information might be collected in query logs or host log files of the search engine. This is the kind of information that might be measured:

Which result is being previewed by order or rank,
The length of each preview,
The order of previewing,
The number of results previewed per page, and;
Whether there is a click-through.

What conclusions might be drawn from this collected information?

A long preview time might indicate that a result is fairly relevant to a query and may increase the relevance ranking for a page in relation to that query. A very short preview may indicate the opposite.

The number or percentage of previews for each results page could tell the search engine how easy it was for the user to find an acceptable document. So a small number of previews before a click through might indicate that it was easy to find an acceptable result. If the searcher looked at all of the previews on a page, but didn't visit any of them until looking at most or all of the results, then an assumption might be made that he or she "settled after looking for a while."

The rank of a previewed site may be relevant in that a preview indicates user interest. Therefore, if the original rank was low, but a site receives a good percentage of previews and click throughs, there may be cause for improving its ranking.

The order of previews may also provide a clue as to which results were relevant to a particular query.

It's also noted in the patent that the methods described here to improve query results might also be used in conjunction with some of the processes described in Ask.com's patent on Personalized search methods (U.S. Pat. No. 6,182,068)

I'll be looking at those Binoculars a little differently now that I've read this patent.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Ask.com area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 4:07 PM | Permalink

February 6, 2006

Ask Jeeves Opens European R&D Center; Several Interesting Live Demos and Papers by AJ R&D Center Leader Also Available

We've been posting about several new R&D centers from Yahoo and Google in the past few week's and today we've learned that Ask Jeeves has opened an R&D center in Pisa, Italy.

From the announcement, The research center will serve as Ask Jeeves' European hub for search technology research and development, working directly with the company's U.S.-based research centers in Campbell, Calif. and Piscataway, N.J...The company recently launched two European Web search sites, Ask Espana and Ask Deutschland, with additional European launches planned later this year...Lead by Antonio Gulli, an expert in search engine technology and the creator of Italy's first search engine, Arianna, the Ask Jeeves European research center will support all of Ask Jeeves search sites, including the flagship Ask.com.

In April 2005, we blogged a quick entry about a paper Mr. Gulli was presenting at WWW 2005 Conference titled: A Personalized Search Engine based on Web-snippet Hierarchical Clustering (PDF).

Gulli's home page is not only home to a treasure chest of interesting reading, slide presentations, tutorials, etc. but also to several live web demos including:

+ SnakeT (Alpha) "Hierarchical Clustering Engine for Book, News, Blogs and Web-Snippets." This is the search tool described in the paper linked above.

+ ComeToMyHead: a News Search Engine with Images, Classification and Personalization

+ Comparison Engine: Find Your Own Rank on Many Engines

Postscript: Here are a few other papers that Gulli co-athored for WWW 2005.

+ Ranking Stream of News (PDF)

+ The Anatomy of a News Search Engine (PDF)

+ Building an Open Source Meta Search Engine (PDF)

+ The Indexable Web is More than 11.5 billion pages (PDF)

Posted by Gary Price at 2:09 PM | Permalink

January 18, 2006

Ask Jeeves: Cache Includes the Date and Time Pages Were Last Cached

I was doing some searching with Ask Jeeves today and noticed that that cached pages that Jeeves includes in its database now include the date and time (to the second) the page was last cached by the AJ crawler. Look for it in the box at the top of cached pages.

Although I'm not 100% sure if this is a new feature (I'll check), I haven't noticed it before.

AJ began offering cached versions of some content in late 2004.

Here's a quick review of what some other engines offer in terms of date and time info with cached pages.

Others + Google also offers both a time and date stamp on cached pages.

+ MSN Search provides a date stamp but doesn't include a specific time.

+ Yahoo does not offer either a date or time stamp but does provide a direct link to The Wayback Machine for the specific cached page you're viewing.

+ Gigablast offers a date stamp at the top of cached page and a direct link to The Wayback Machine as part of each snippet.

Postscript: I also noticed that date and time info is also visible with pages from the Ask Jeeves UK cache and other Ask sites like Ask Spain.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:50 PM | Permalink

January 13, 2006

Show Me the Content: Web Search, Verticals, and Metasearch

Putting the Screws to Google, by Jon Fine from BusinessWeek offers a look at how, "old media could take back its share of search's ad bounty." So, in a sense it's not only putting it to Google but to Yahoo, Ask and other general purpose web engines. Of course, the word Google in a headline gets people to look.

It's an interesting read. How would these "old media" players do it? Fine offers an example of Walt Disney, News Corp., NBC Universal, and The New York Times, joining together to form a "Content Consortium" that offers a search engine containing content that, "no outside search engines can access."

Of course, Google is well aware of proprietary content issues that Fine raises. If you look at the "Risks Related to Our Business and Industry" section of many of Google's SEC filings (including their IPO filing) you'll read:

Proprietary document formats may limit the effectiveness of our search technology by preventing our technology from accessing the content of documents in such formats which could limit the effectiveness of our products and services. A large amount of information on the Internet is provided in proprietary document formats such as Microsoft Word. The providers of the software application used to create these documents could engineer the document format to prevent or interfere with our ability to access the document contents with our search technology. This would mean that the document contents would not be included in our search results even if the contents were directly relevant to a search. These types of activities could assist our competitors or diminish the value of our search results. The software providers may also seek to require us to pay them royalties in exchange for giving us the ability to search documents in their format. If the software provider also competes with us in the search business, they may give their search technology a preferential ability to search documents in their proprietary format. Any of these results could harm our brand and our operating results.

From the BusinessWeek article: "For the life of me, I can't imagine why they haven't done it," says Tom Curley, CEO of Associated Press. Here's one reason: Doing it would require spinal implants for intimidated media barons. But the notion that some pushback is pending is not far-fetched. Curley says he is talking with potential partners about setting up subject-specific Web packages -- say, for travel or basketball -- that will include content from multiple media. Once partners are on board and packages are finalized, search engines will be invited to bid for that traffic.

So the AP might be getting into the vertical search business, interesting.

For a long time I've said verticals will continue to grow in popularity and importance as meta search tools which are getting better all of the time will allow various database and content publishers to offer material (free or fee) to end users who will select these databases at the time of their search based on their information need. Of course, database selection tools to assist users in making these decisions that incorporate personalization, social networks, etc. will also be available.

The metasearch tool could be sponsored and/or have contextually based advertising included as a part of it.

Fee-based content could be made available for free if, for example, the user would view a certain number of ads over a given period of time. Marketers could also sponsor access to databases with fee-based content. For example, Kayak or Expedia might sponsor access to a database containing digitized travel books and videos.

Smaller but focused databases, can potentially offer more precise results (higher precision, lower recall). Don't forget that for many web searchers, the Invisible or Deep Web is everything beyond the first six or seven results. Advanced searchers might also benefit with a unified interface versus numerous interfaces and syntaxes. Training sure would be easier.

In many respects, what I'm talking (in concept not content) has been around for years with services like Dialog and LexisNexis. For example, Dialog offers access to over 1000 databases with many coming from various database producers. I often describe it as a supermarket of databases with a common syntax. Users select various databases depending on their information need.

Another example. I've written numerous times about the many full-text databases (available for free, without going to the library, for personal use). Well, the San Francisco Public Library offers searchable access to many of these databases using a single interface. They call it a cross-database search. Instead of having to go to 20 databases and then search each one, you can pick and choose databases depending on what you're looking for. Articles? Reference answers? Images? Directory info? Business? Local?

The SF Public Library is hardly the only organization offering this type of service. The topic of cross-database (aka federated or metasearching) is a hot topic these days. In fact, NISO, the National Information Standards Organization, has a large initiative in developing metaseach standards.

Postscript: Cold North Wind is another company involved in large newspaper digitization projects. Their PaperofRecord.com site is their public database where you can actually see what they have digitized to this point.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:03 PM | Permalink

September 29, 2005

Listings Hijacked At MSN, With A Little Help From Google

Google 302 and MSN from Dave Naylor is chock full of badness on the parts of both Google and MSN, showing how Google redirections are causing it to hijack listings in MSN's search results. Dave gives you the short rundown. Here's the spelled out version, and thanks for his help in assembling it.

Look at this search result at MSN UK for batman animated bean bag.
See how the first result is for this page at Kids UK?
Now look at the URL MSN UK lists for that page: http://groups.google.co.uk/froogle_url?q= http://www.kidsuk.co.uk/shop/catalog/ Batman-Bedding-p-1-c-1288.html %3Fsource%3Dfroogle&fr=AJrr2tQq23-_SJjef Mma5wwNUyhA6FBUGEdlEBymj9jJAAAAAAAAAAA
See the bold part? That shows that MSN believes this page is hosted at groups.google.co.uk.
What's happening is over at Froogle UK, all links you click on there are redirected out of Google and to the destination sites, but...
Google is using 302 temporary redirection, which is causing MSN to let it "hijack" these listings.
To be clear, MSN is NOT listing a Google page, even though the page has a Google URL. Look at the cached copy of that page, and you can see that it is the same page as at Kids UK. But Google has control over the URL in MSN's results.
In other words, should Google lose its mind, it could at any point send MSN a cloaked version of the Kids UK page and likely maintain the ranking while showing human visitors something else entirely. Kids UK is not in control of that listing on MSN, even though it currently leads to the Kids UK site. It's been hijacked by Google! If Google were using a 301 redirection, however, this shouldn't be happening.
Side point. If this is a Froogle UK thing, why does that URL say GROUPS.google.co.uk? Google UK has some domain madness going on. Visit the home page. Click the Froogle link to get this page. Now click the Groups link to reach this page. Notice now how even though you are in Google Groups, the the froogle.co.uk domain is what shows in your address bar. That shouldn't be happening. Other mix-ups like this are leading to the confusion.
Hey! What's MSN doing crawling Froogle anyway? The robots.txt file there should be keeping it out, right? Sure. But if some site has made copies of Froogle results, scraped the content as fodder for a fake blog or something else to attract traffic, MSN might crawl that and thus see the Froogle redirections.

Overall, a nice demonstration of why MSN needs to consider how it handles redirection. My Revisiting Hijacking & Redirects: Moving To A Solution story gives you more background on the hijacking situation as it especially has impacted Google.

I also wrote that story as a lead in for our Indexing Summit 2 session as SES San Jose that was held last month, to see if we could get a standard solution to handing redirection and eliminate these type of problems. I was planning to finally write up what happened at that session next week, and I still will, promise. But here's the summary:

Yahoo: We have a solution (as described in my article) that seems to work.
Google: Matt Cutts wants to use the Yahoo solution but the engineer overseeing how redirections are handled says they've solved it another way. Matt said if you still see it happening, report it to Google, and then he's got some ammunition to say "I told you so" and get the Yahoo solution going. It's been reported at least once already. Bacon polenta on Matt's blog explains that and more important, gives updated instructions on how to report a hijacking in Google's listings.
Ask Jeeves: Thinks it has a handle on the situation and doesn't need to follow the Yahoo solution.
MSN: Didn't take part in the summit.

Want to discuss or comment? Visit our forum thread, Google Hijacks Batman Room Decor Listing At MSN!

Postscript: I was incorrect on the robots.txt banning. The robots.txt file for Google Groups wouldn't have prevented MSN from crawling Froogle results that can be accessed under that domain. More in the forum thread above.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:42 PM | Permalink

August 4, 2005

August 2, 2005

Ask Jeeves Will Cut Number of Paid Listings on Web Results Pages

Ask Jeeves plans to reduce the number of paid links on a search results page from about ten to two or three.

Both the Financial Times and Search Engine Roundtable have info about this and other changes that should be visible on the AJ site by tomorrow.

Bottom Line:

Fewer Paid Links on Results Pages
Increasing the Amount of Direct Advertising (Jeeves launched their own sponsored listings progam yesterday)
Improving the search function in consumer categories such as concert tickets

Back in April, I posted reducing the number of paid ads on results pages by 31%.

I think today's news is a win-win for both AJ and web searchers. One of the most frequent complaints I hear from potential AJ users is that the number of paid ads on results pages make web results page busy and downright difficult to navigate and use. Reducing the number of ads on a results page will, if marketed correctly, hopefully get more people to take a look at what AJ has been up to since things began to improve past five years ago. At the same time fewer ads will make the ads that are visible more noticeable to the searcher.

From my April post: The company's tests show that a smaller number of ads boosts the frequency with which people use the site and aids user retention. As such, Jeeves expects the change to help lift query volumes and ad revenue later in the year.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:15 PM | Permalink

May 26, 2005

Ask Jeeves Gains "Zoom" Query Refinement & "Web Answers" Features

In today's SearchDay, Chris Sherman and Gary Price look at new features added to Ask Jeeves. The new "Zoom" query refinement feature lets you better locate alternative topics that you may wish to search for. The web answers feature generates answers to questions from content found across the web. More in the SearchDay article, Ask Jeeves Serves Up New Features.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:45 AM | Permalink

April 6, 2005

Google SEO Support Given To Advertisers

Google & SEO Support For Advertisers now posted for Search Engine Watch members looks at how increased editorial listings support being given to large advertisers is raising concerns with search marketers and threatening the "church and state" division between ads and editorial results that Google has long sought to maintain.

In the story, I look at how Google will provide large advertisers with guidance on getting listed in its editorial results, upon request. The company has also provided this guidance to potential advertisers it seeks to gain.

Google acknowledges both points but stresses that only basic information is provided, similar to what someone might read on its web site or hear at a conference. Marketers I talked with for the story agree that no "insider" information to produce top rankings is being provided. However, the story does look anew at how some may get the go-ahead to do things that Google's public guidelines don't allow.

I also do a review of the situation with other search engines, in terms of what they say they do -- or do not -- provide in terms of express support. The story touches on how Ask Jeeves may finally come up with a free Add URL system of some type, while Yahoo hints at some type of new support system.

Overall, that's what I urge in the story -- a new, guaranteed paid support system that isn't tied to cost-per-click paid inclusion fees that all the major search engines should provide.

Be sure to also see For Whom the Search Bell Tolls out yesterday from Kevin Ryan at iMediaConnection. Kevin's heard the same stories that I've been told recently and touches on them in his piece that focuses on whether support provided by the search engines in part threatens the survival of SEM firms.

Meanwhile, see this post over in our forums that talks about how being a certified AdWords Professional wasn't enough for one search marketing company to be deemed big enough by Google to handle a large client.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:43 PM | Permalink

February 24, 2005

Interview With Ask Jeeves On Search

Mike Grehan has an interview up with Jim Lanzone, senior vice president of search properties at Ask Jeeves and Apostolos Gerasoulis, founder of the Teoma search engine that powers Ask Jeeves: In conversation with...Jim Lanzone & Apostolos Gerasoulis of Ask Jeeves/Teoma.

Gerasoulis remarks that he feels competing search engine Google is now calculating link values "locally" in the way that Ask Jeeves has long done, that meaning to find all the pages that match a certain criteria and THEN calculate which are most popular by analyzing links within them.

Ask said similar things after the infamous Google "Florida" update of Nov-Dec. 2003, and my Speculation On Google Changes article for Search Engine Watch members written back then explains more about the local ranking idea along with comments from Ask Jeeves.

Want to discuss that more? Our Ask Jeeves's Apostolos Says Google Doesn't Use PageRank forum thread is a place where some are discussing, as is our Google Feb. 2005 Update: Observations About Changes thread.

Lanzone comments on the heavy number of paid listings some have found at Ask Jeeves and how these don't show up that way for all searches. Indeed, our recent forum thread The Little Engine That Could - Part II notes how for Firefox users, Ask Jeeves seems to be deliberately showing even fewer sponsored links perhaps to please a perceived "techie" audience that might dislike them.

The interview also dives into more about the history of Ask Jeeves and Teoma, plus Ask feeling they'll maintain the Ask Jeeves brand as well as the other brands they acquired through the ISH purchase last year (want to discuss that more? See our The Little Engine That Could - Part II and Ask Jeeves is One Brand - Teoma Who? forum threads).

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:43 AM | Permalink

January 25, 2005

More Answers (Not Only Links) from AJ's Smart Search

One of the "Smart Search" tools that Ask Jeeves offers (its been around for about a year) is called Famous People Search. FPS offers biographical info and direct links to key resources about celebrities and newsmakers that are placed at the top of a results page. Info comes from mining specialty databases like Who2.com, AllMusic.com and other sources.

Today, I've noticed that for some types of queries you not only get the biographical info but you also get an answers for certain queries. For example: When is David Bowie's birthday At the top of the serp (before the organic results) you'll see the answer (David Bowie was born January 8, 1947) along with more bio info and direct links. How Old is Robert DeNiro?

On a related note, this is Academy Awards season and AJ provides answers for queries about past Oscar winners. Examples: + Best Picture 2001 + Best Actress 1967 + Best Actor 1972

Posted by Gary Price at 2:23 PM | Permalink

November 23, 2004

A Positive Look at the Butler

The USA Today's Jefferson Graham with a positive look at Ask Jeeves in the article: In search, the butler did it.

Jeeves has its own search technology and is proud of it.

"We look at the Web differently at the credibility of a source, as opposed to just the popularity of a site," says Jim Lanzone, Jeeves' senior vice president.

Web sites rise to the top of Google's index based, in part, on how many other sites link to it. Yahoo, which dumped Google as its search engine in February for its own, uses similar search attributes. So does MSN, which is testing new search technology at a "beta" site.

Teoma's difference is that instead of just looking at the links, it also factors in the likely credibility of the site itself. For instance, a search for "Bay Area airports" on Jeeves displays official airport sites for San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose. The same search on Google highlights local newspaper articles about the airports.

Danny is quoted throughout the article.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:38 AM | Permalink

November 14, 2004

Cached Pages at Ask Jeeves

When Ask Jeeves launched their Teoma 3.0 technology about six weeks ago, company officials said that cached pages would be available sometime in Q4.

In the past day or two, I've started to notice links to cached copies (for some pages) on serp's.

Note: I'm unable to find cached pages via Jeeves UK.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:23 PM | Permalink

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