SES Chicago - December 7-11, 2009

February 24, 2006

Google Mac Widgets for Blogger, Gmail and Search History

Yesterday the Google Blog informed us that three new Google Widgets for the Apple Macintosh's OS X Tiger have been released. Widgets on a Mac come by way of Apple Dashboard that basically allows you to press a key on your keyboard, and these widgets begin to hover over your desktop and applications. Widgets allow you to perform routine tasks quickly but I have disabled dashboard on my computer due to performance issues (that is an other story). The three widgets released are for;

  1. Posting Quick Blogger Entries
  2. Checking your Gmail Account
  3. Viewing Your Past Search History at Google

You can download these widgets to your Apple computer by visiting http://www.google.com/macwidgets/.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:47 AM | Permalink

May 18, 2005

Google My Search History Spam

Using the Google My Search History feature? Make sure you're logged in, then visit Google Blogoscope's Planting My Search History Entries page. Now go look at your search history. You will likely see a link saying:

Google Blogoscoped sneaked in through the backdoor

Click on it, and it takes you to the "search" you never did for those words on Google.

What happened? The comments to Google Blogoscoped's post explain how clever Philip Lenssen put this in a hidden iframe on that page:

<iframe src="http://www.google.com/search?q= Google+Blogoscoped+sneaked+in+through+the+backdoor" border="0" style="width: 0; height: 0; border: 0; overflow: hidden"> </iframe>

That means by visiting the page, you also generated a query sent to Google. And if you are reading this article, the same thing was done to also put this in your history:

Search Engine Watch snuck in as well, right behind Google Blogoscoped

Now to see if Google has a way to block such spamming of search history. Hopefully it will.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:25 PM | Permalink

April 21, 2005

Comparing Search History Features

With Google having released its new Google My Search History feature yesterday, I wanted to spin back around and look at where we stand in terms of search history offerings across a number of major search engines. I've done so in chart format below.

Before diving into the chart, let me stress that this isn't a "have the most features and win" contest. Some features you might not ever use. What search history features seems to work best, like the search engines themselves, may fall to your own personal decision.

Even among the editors here at Search Engine Watch, we all love different things. Personally, I find the A9 and Google tools the most compelling, because they automatically save what I'm looking for. I think it's cool that Ask, Yahoo, and A9 have categorization and annotation features in various manners, but those aren't something I expect to use myself. Others may -- and that's why it's great that they are offered.

Chris and Gary are very much into tools that save the full-text of documents and let you search against them. I'm leaving it to them to them to do a separate recap on how tools stand on that front. Gary's also playing with the Filangy, which is a closed beta, and reviewed it yesterday here. It's not on the chart below because being a closed beta, it's not something everyone can use yet.

Personally, I've loved the Google Desktop as a way to keep track of everything I've seen exactly as I saw it when visiting pages across the web. It's largely solved my own search history desires at Google, as I've written before. But the additional features from Google are definitely welcomed.

On to the chart! A guide to categories follow it below.

Feature

A9

Ask

Eurek ster

Find ory

Furl

Google

Yahoo

Auto Save

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

Pause

No

n/a

No

No

n/a

Yes

n/a

History Search

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

No

Yes

Yes

Date Sort

Yes

Yes

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Term Sort

No

Yes

No

No

No

No

Yes

Site Sort

Yes

No

No

No

No

No

Yes

Notes

No

Yes

No

No

Yes

No

Yes

Tags

No

Yes

No

No

Yes

No

No

Folders

No

Yes

No

No

Yes

No

Yes

Launch

4/04

9/04

1/04

11/04

2003

4/05

10/04

Auto Save: Means that your searches are automatically saved. My Yahoo Search does have a Visited Results feature that's supposed to be able to do this, but I found it's not working for me in either Internet Explorer or Firefox. So I've marked it as No, for the moment.

Pause: If searches are automatically saved, this means that you can temporarily pause saving. If pause isn't offered, you have to sign-out of the system to prevent saving.

History Search: Means that you can do a search just within the things you've searched for previously. For example, if you knew you looked for something related to "cars" but didn't know exactly how you searched, you could search for "cars" and find all the queries containing that word. In some cases, a history search may also search against the content of the web page or notes and annotations you've made.

Date Sort: Means that you can sort your history by date in some manner. The degree and flexibility of which may vary.

Term Sort: Means that you can sort your search history by term (the title of the search), in alphabetical or reverse-alphabetical order.

Site Sort: Means that you view your search history by seeing it listed in order of sites you clicked on.

Notes: Means that you can annotate things you've found in your search history with comments. At A9, these notes aren't stored in your search history, so I've marked this as No. However, annotation of sites you've visited can be done using the diary feature, if you use the A9 toolbar. More info here.

Tags: Means that you can annotate items in your search history into categories by tagging them with keywords.

Folders: Means that you can organize your search history into folders, such as if you want to group certain queries into a particular subject heading.

Launch: When the search history feature was launched.

Other Notes: All the services give you the ability to delete what you've searched for in some way, so I've not made that a column on the chart. In addition, using toolbars or desktop software, you can extend the functionality of search history features, in some cases.

Looking for more background? Here are some past reviews of each tool from Search Engine Watch and some related stories:

Search history tools also raise privacy issues, so here are some past stories to consider reading:

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:06 AM | Permalink

April 20, 2005

Google's My Search History Remembers Your Searches

Moments ago, Google launched a new feature called My Search History that automatically remembers every query and search result page you viewed, making everything searchable. In my opinion, it's the strongest personalization offering from a major search engine to date. See my SearchDay article, Google Personalizes the Web, for a detailed run-down of the new service.

Search Engine Watch members will also want to read Danny's article, Search Personalization: A Marketer's Perspective which offers tips for search marketers on preparing for the coming of personalized search results. Click here to learn more about becoming a member.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 3:29 PM | Permalink

Google Opens My Search History Feature Please see Google now Remembers your Search History.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:24 PM | Permalink

October 18, 2004

Brin on Personal Search and SEO

Sergey Brin let's us know that Google is working on a personal search application similar to My Jeeves and My Yahoo Search.

"We'll keep on developing new kinds of applications but we are fighting against limitations in mail and the OS. But we'll be expanding in all those areas," Brin said.

The comments were made during a visit to Japan where the company is setting-up an R&D center.

On the Google browser, Larry Page repeated what he said last week about Google not intending to "reinvent the wheel."

Brin also made a brief comment about seo.

"There are many SEOs that are trying to manipulate Google. Our biggest message is that by our products we always want to promote a better and healthier service," said Brin.

More in the article: Google tests personal search service.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

See More Posts From:

This Week | This Month

  var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-564586-7"); pageTracker._setDomainName(".searchenginewatch.com"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); window.collarity_appid = "incmedia"; //> //>
Top Jobs
more Jobs

Senior Digital Planner
U.S. International Media Los Angeles, United States

Senior Search Analyst
U.S. International Media Los Angeles, United States New York, United States

Webmaster - Marketing
West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine Lewisburg, United States

Web Marketing Manager
Harvard Business Publishing Watertown, United States

White Papers
more Research

0