April 17, 2007

RightDot Awarded US Patent for Web site Verification Process

A U.S. Patent (#7,191,210) was recently awarded to RightDot, a “computer implemented system and method for registering websites and for displaying registration indicia in a search results list”. The new technology would allow search engines to clearly distinguish between official and non-official Web sites through visual, audio or embedded identification on Internet search page site descriptions.

This could potentially impact search results, should the major search engines decide to use the technology as a method to compare valid or official sites with sites consistenting of autogenerated or questionable content, in an effort to protect consumers and provide greater relevancy.

Among the patent's most significant claims are:

Web-Site Search Result Identification and Validation – On search page result site descriptions, Web sites of legitimate, official validated organizations or individuals are identified in any of a variety of visual, audio or other methods.
Inclusion of Immediately Actionable Information Within Search Results – Either through verifiable seal display, visual scroll over or other techniques, useful information about a verified Web site is made instantly available on the search page site description itself. This could include specific product or retail location information, third party recognition, affiliated Web site identification, immediate email contact/response links and additional branding and marketing tools to facilitate the immediate exchange of information.

“Search engines have failed to provide Internet users with a way to verify that they've really found what they're looking for when conducting a search,” said James Grossman, RightDot inventor. “In addition to clearly indicating legitimate, “official” sites, RightDot enables verifiable, faster, actionable and more useful searches, providing new tools that improve the experience for users, businesses and the search engines themselves,” Grossman added.

A key component of RighDot is the visual, audio or other representation on a Web site search result description that a Web site has completed a registration process and been designated as an “official” site. As outlined in the RightDot patent, this may include distinctive markings consisting of a:

Seal
Color
Symbol
Embedded Data
Hyperlink
Highlighting
Biometric Data
Type Font
Type Size
Graphical Layout
Graphical Data
Audio Data
Video Data
Product Identification
Product Model
Logo
Slogan
Combinations of above

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 12:33 PM | Permalink

November 3, 2006

Ask.com Creates Flash Demo To Explain Why Ask.com "Is Better"

Ask.com released a new flash demonstration that goes through all the features of the search engine. The purpose of the demo is to illustrate to standard web users, how Ask.com provides easy to use tools and quick "smart answers" to give you a "better" overall search experience. I think they did an excellent job with it, starting the demo off explaining that Ask.com is different, in that they help you "Find" and not just "Search." The demo is linked to from the Ask.com home page but if you are on a Mac you won't see it. You will have to go directly to the demo at http://searchtools.ask.com/.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:13 AM | Permalink

See And Find With Quintura

Quintura is the latest in the line of visual search engines such as Kartoo, Mooter and WebBrain. Quintura basically takes your search term, runs a search and then translates the results into a tag cloud effect on the screen. Users can then simply look at the results (powered by Yahoo) listed under the tag cloud and click on the link as per normal, or they can explore words displayed in the semantic map to focus the query more closely.

The results section of the page is not exciting - title, URL, keywords in context and sometimes the size of the page, but that's about it. I'd like to have seen more information, and keywords in context are no more than a word either side, which doesn't provide any guidance at all. This section of the page is also squeezed into the bottom half of the screen, giving it a cramped feeling. This is probably the weakest element of the search engine, and clearly the one that the developers spent least time on because they wanted to get onto the interesting and fun section of the semantic display.

This is where Quintura does become more interesting and quite fun to play with. After the search runs the search terms appear on the screen and are surrounded with other hopefully appropriate terms. My search on 'search engine watch' for example returned keyword suggestions such as 'blog', 'forum', 'search engines' and so on. The closer to the search terms, the larger the keyword suggestions (both in terms of font size and bold), the more relevant they are deemed. Holding the mouse over a term - note that you don't need to click - will display a new set of results in the bottom window and will also show another keyword cloud overlaying the original, which does get a little confusing at times, and it's quite hard to work out exactly what you're searching on.

However, it's an interesting approach to search, and users who enjoy different approaches to the display of search results will enjoy using it.

It does obviously have more flexibility though, as it's a reasonably well rounded search engine. Keywords can be dropped from the semantic display by clicking on the appropriate icon, and any associated keywords are also dropped at the same time. Excluding 'baseball' from the search on my name also excluded 'statistics' for example. Words can be added to a search by simply clicking into a blank area in the screen and typing them into the search box that appears; words can be excluded in a similar manner as well with the usual minus sign in front. It's possible to save searches as a favorite or it can be emailed to a friend or colleague.

There are additional things that I'd like to see with Quintura; a more indepth 'help' guide, RSS feeds, greater search functionality by type - at the moment it's limited to web or images, and news, blogs and so on would be a nice addition. Equally however it's in beta mode, so it would be unfair to be overly critical.

As previously mentioned, people who enjoy visual search results pages will get a kick out of this one, while for everyone else it's a bit of an oddity they'll ignore. While the semantic element is clearly the emphasis I personally found the cramped results section too irritating to want to use this engine for any length of time.

Posted by Phil Bradley at 5:39 AM | Permalink

November 1, 2006

Live Search Box Allows You To Add Live Search To Your Site

Microsoft's Live Search Blog informed us of a new feature where you can add the Windows Live Search box to your site. I have implemented the "Basic Search Box" on the Search Engine Roundtable, which means the box will display results on the Windows Live Search page. Below I will implement the "Advanced Search Box," which means the box displays results on this site. More details at http://search.live.com/siteowner.

var WLSearchBoxConfiguration= { "global":{ "serverDNS":"search.live.com" }, "appearance":{ "autoHideTopControl":false, "width":600, "height":400 }, "scopes":[ { "type":"web", "caption":"SEW & SER Test", "searchParam":"site:searchenginewatch.com OR site:seroundtable.com" } , { "type":"web", "caption":"Web", "searchParam":"" } ] }

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:38 AM | Permalink

October 26, 2006

AOL Scores with Newly Enhanced Search Features

AOL has quietly rolled out a major upgrade to its search service, adding new "FullView" links that automatically pull in multimedia, local, news or other types of content to supplement Google-powered web search results. Others have experimented with including non-web search content on result pages, but AOL has really pushed the idea to a new level with this release, and I highly recommend you try it out. More on the new release in today's SearchDay article, AOL Enhances Search with FullView Results.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 1:36 PM | Permalink

October 2, 2006

Google's New SearchMash Test Site

Google's gained a new unbranded site called SearchMash where it plans to test user interface ideas without Google's brand somehow skewing the tests. Below, more about the site and comments from Google about it.

Currently, SearchMash allows you to perform a search and get web and image results presented side-by-side. It's similar to how A9 has long allowed side-by-side results, ironically a feature that A9 has made much harder to implement after a recent redesign over there.

Web results are presented in the main left-hand column after a search and seem ranked the same as at Google. Unlike Google, presentation is different. Results are numbered. Clicking on the URL line makes a box pop-up with options to:

open the listing in the current window
a new window
to see more pages from that web site
to find similar pages.

After the first ten results, there's a "more web pages" link at the bottom. Click on this, and you get another 10 results magically appearing on the same page, inserted below the first 10. You can keep going, adding 10 more results at a time.

It's pretty slick. Microsoft's Windows Live had a somewhat similar "infinite scroll" feature that allowed you to keep getting more and more results, as you went down the page. Unveiled in March, it was dropped in September for web results (it still works for image results) when Windows Live came out of beta, as Microsoft felt it slowed performance.

While A9 dropped so many features, "continuous scroll" is something it gained. Do a search there, and as you scroll down, more results keep magically appearing, 10 at a time.

Unique to SearchMash is the ability to drag-and-drop web search results. Click on the number next to any listing, and you can move that listing higher or lower in the search results. The number doesn't change after you move it. The feature also doesn't seem that useful. Far better would be a scratch pad-style feature such as Windows Live offers for image search. Being able to drag-and-drop web results into some type of collection area would be handy -- and it's something that Microsoft is promising.

Those are the features at the moment, which you can also find described on the site's features page. What you won't find is much about Google on the site. The About page doesn't mention them. You've got to go into the privacy page where you discover:

SearchMash is a website operated by Google Inc. The Google Privacy Policy describes how we treat personal information when you use our products and services, including information provided when you use SearchMash. In addition, the following describes our privacy practices that are specific to SearchMash.

So what's up with SearchMash. I fired some questions off to Google, and here's what I got:

Q. When did this go up from Google?

Very recently.

Q. Why are you doing it?

SearchMash is an experimental search site operated by Google. The goal of SearchMash is to test innovative user interfaces in order to continually improve the overall search experience for our users.
The site does not include Google branding to help us gather more objective data about user response to new interfaces.
There is no guarantee that the features tested on SearchMash will be seen on Google search. As with all of our experiments, one of the main factors we will consider is user response to the feature and how well it addresses their needs.
This site is only a test and has traffic limitations so may be unavailable at times.

Q. Why is it not on Google Labs?

Google Labs continues to be a great site for Google to launch new products that may not be ready for prime time yet, frequently and quickly. In this case, one of the important factors we wanted to address was the influence that may come from Google branding. Creating a separate site will help us gather more objective data about user response to new interfaces.

OK, next some follow-ups and speculation. First, how can a site that no one knows about be useful to Google? Pretty much no one heard of it until the past day. As best I can tell:

The Word "Mashup" Key to Newly Registered Google Domain Names from Gary Price yesterday at ResourceShelf noted that searchmash.com was one of many mash-related domain names registered by Google, leading to...
Google Registers Search Mashup Domains from Google Blogoscoped getting a comment from Peter Warden, who runs a different SearchMash site, noticing that SearchMash.com was active now when only a few days ago, it wasn't. That lead to...
What's A SearchMash.com From Google? from Gary Price again at ResourceShelf, highlighting the new domain and service in more detail. Similarly, SearchMash, a New Google Search Site from Google Operating System is a shorter highlight. And now you've got me talking about it, along with no doubt many other reviews and mentions to come.

So the site's going to have plenty of visitors, but all the wrong type, people who are the influencers or tech-heads or early adopters that Google's not trying to test against.

Remember, Google's been doing a lot of testing over the past year or so. Barry Schwartz just noted yet another sidebar navigation experiment yesterday. The experiments became so frequent and much discussed that I was begging Google in March to provide more official notice about what they were doing. Google's response to me was that announcing the experiments would skew the results.

Still, with everyone watching them so closely, experiments were quickly noted by the blogging community. That may have helped Google decide in April to blog itself about how it tries to test things against small groups. It even illustrated some of its experiments.

Now SearchMash gives Google an experimental playground, one similar to how AllTheWeb is supposed to operate for Yahoo, though aside from LiveSearch being launched there in May, Yahoo's not done much with AllTheWeb.

Google can play with weird stuff at SearchMash without worrying about "normal" users having the Google brand set up expectations. But how do those normals (or "mundanes" for you Babylon 5 fans) get to the site? From Google:

We have various methods for driving traffic to search and UI experiments that we run but we don't share details regarding the methodology to help keep the results as objective as possible.

A couple of guesses here. Google is likely (or will be likely) to divert people to the site in various ways, such as perhaps if someone uses an AdSense For Search box on a content site. It might simply push some people trying to reach Google to SearchMash (perhaps with some interstitial page warning them beforehand). It also gives them a site to put before controlled focus groups, where they might not know Google is behind it.

What about the skewing that will happen now that early adopters and the Google-obsessed will be all over SearchMash? They can be filtered out. If Google is directing certain groups to the site in various ways, it can then filter studies of user behavior to just those groups.

OK, one last thing. What about the idea that SearchMash will be the new place for Google to allow people to create custom search engines of their own, similar to Yahoo Search Builder launched last month or the older Rollyo or Eurekster Swicki services?

Garett Rogers last week wondered if the IndexBench trademark Google applied for recently was a sign that Google was planning custom vertical search engines. Now he wonders if SearchMash will instead be the place for this, after Google Operating System highlighted a Time Magazine article confirm that Google plans this:

Marissa Mayer, who manages search products, says the company has assigned more engineers to search than ever before and plans to release a new search tool that will enable users to design and build their own flavor of Google search, scanning just the sites they're interested in.

So yes, custom vertical searches are coming, likely more substantial and customizable than the long-standing Site-Flavored Google Search that's been out since 2004 and recently upgraded this year. But Google wouldn't say if it will be on SearchMash or not. So wait, watch and see.

Finally, the feel of SearchMash to A9 in many ways is uncanny. As I noted in my Amazon's A9 Becomes, Well, Sort Of Nothing post earlier today, A9 was an experimental playground for Amazon that seems to have lost its way after it lost its CEO Udi Manber to Google. I haven't heard back from Google on whether Manber is now running SearchMash. But seeing the side-by-side results that were a hallmark of A9, plus the infinite scroll similar to what A9 just rolled out (and what may have been in the works before Manber left A9), it sure feels like he's running a new playground search engine -- this time for Google.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:26 PM | Permalink

The Accent Is On Search

An interesting article in Pandia about an overlooked area of search - Searching Google for words with accents. The bottom line is that it's difficult and fiddly to do it, and it depends on a number of different factors that the searcher cannot control. Let's take the example (as given) by Pandia for Mexico and MÃ©xico. A search will probably return sites that contain either word, but to force the engine to return hits with the accented version a search for +MÃ©xico will pretty much work (though there may be a few oddities caused by inbound links.

However, results will differ depending on IP address, language of the Google home page being used, and preferred language. Now, this is useful as far as the searcher is concerned, since it should result in rather more accurate results, but it's going to be a concern for search engine marketers, since it makes the idea of being (say) #8 in Google a rather moveable feast, - is it #8 for Google.com users, or for Spanish language users? Still, no-one said that internet searching was supposed to be easy, did they?

Of course, it doesn't help either when we start to look into the results in a little more detail. Searching on Google.co.uk (searching the web, not just the UK) a search for Mexico returns 671,000,000 results, as does mexico (with a lower case). However, searching for MÃ©xico gives me 665,000,000 results, but a search for mÃ©xico 6,000,000 less, with 659,000,000. When we get into the insanity of searching for mÃ©xico -mexico with a result of 725,000,000 things certainly get a little more confused again. My one crumb of comfort is that searches on Ask.com tend to be rather more stable, but even then, not perfect. All goes to show - don't trust search engine results!

Posted by Phil Bradley at 8:53 AM | Permalink

September 20, 2006

The Unchanging Search Interface

Why Search Sucks & You Won't Fix It The Way You Think from me on my personal blog Daggle covers a session I did at Euro Foo Camp this week. It looks at how the search interface of major search engines has largely stayed unchanged over time. We're still using what I call the "DOS of Search." Interestingly, the Google Base change that just happened is a unique event -- the first major search engine to have an important property without that all-important search box on the home page. For me, it's just another sign of how Google Base is not intended to be a consumer-facing product, as I've written before.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:22 AM | Permalink

September 19, 2006

URL Vs. Navigational Queries Explained: AKA, Why Did URL Searches At Google Change?

Matt Cutts from Google has a great follow up on our reports that Google Modifies Navigational Search Results from about two-plus weeks ago. In his post, he explains that when you search on a URL (i.e. www.searchenginewatch.com), Google has stopped showing the information for the URL and now shows a standard search on the words in the URL itself. I learned two things from Matt's post.

(1) Entering in the URL of a site into to a search box is not labeled as a "navigational search" it is labeled as a "URL search." Navigational searches are when you search on a company name, i.e. Search Engine Watch versus a URL search is when you search on a company URL, i.e. searchenginewatch.com.

(2) To a normal user, bringing back search results for a URL search is more useful then bring back the information on that URL, in Matt's opinion. If SEOs and webmasters want to pull that information, we still can still do this by using the info:www.domain.com command. It works like this for this blog, [info:blog.searchenginewatch.com] and it shows you information for this URL.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:51 AM | Permalink

September 1, 2006

Google Modifies Navigational Search Results

I reported this morning that Google has changed the way they handle navigational like searches. For example, if you do a search on a site's name (i.e. navigational) you now get a different type of result set then you did a week or so ago.

For example, a search on the popular buy.com will now show: Show Google's cache of www.buy.com Find web pages that are similar to www.buy.com Find web pages that link to www.buy.com Find web pages from the site www.buy.com Find web pages that contain the term "www.buy.com"

Instead it will show you results that match the keyword phrase "buy.com." That includes links to possible competitors. I wonder if that will upset geico.com?

In any event, I have compared how Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com handle these types of navigational queries at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:27 AM | Permalink

July 24, 2006

Google Versus Yahoo: Consistency Or Wow In Product Development?

An article over at the New York Times 'In the race with Google, it's consistency vs 'wow'' discusses the differing approaches of Google and Yahoo to the introduction of new technology and resources. The fact that Google hasn't added some of the basics to its mapping service in comparison to the Yahoo and AOL offerings is the starting point for an indepth discussion on how both engines (MSN, AOL and Ask get very short shrift) are trying to increase their user base.

Alan Eustace (Senior VP at Google for engineering and research) is quoted as saying "We are trying to come up with something that is new and different, that makes people say ?Wow.? " Yahoo on the other hand is taking a rather different approach of ensuring that their services are predictable and consistent.

Although the article doesn't use the analogy it does remind me very much of the tortoise and the hare story, with Google of course being the hare, bouncing along, playing to the audience, not really looking where he's going, but getting there very quickly. The Yahoo tortoise carefully places one foot in front of the other, and it isn't very exciting, but you know where you'll be with it.

Is one approach better than the other? Clearly there are examples that can be drawn from both camps; the speed of Google mapping with its click and drag approach certainly did draw 'wow' responses. 'Wow' is exciting - it gives bloggers something to write about, teachers something new to teach and industry commentators something to talk about on the conference podium. On the other hand consistency is rather dull, but ultimately important if you want to provide a raft of integrated services.

I'm as guilty as the rest - when demonstrating features from search engines I like to demonstrate all the 'wow' functionality, and the delegates love it and enjoy playing with it. But at the end of the day, when it comes to answering quiz questions they tend to go for the resources and functions that work, and that they can rely on.

What I'd like to see is a situation where I can look at a search engine, with all of its offerings, search syntax, extra resources and so on and go 'Wow - all this stuff works well together, and it's really exciting', but perhaps that's asking too much?

Posted by Phil Bradley at 12:36 PM | Permalink

July 11, 2006

Windows Live Adds Search/Personalized Toggle & 34 New Markets

Gary Price points to two Windows Live blog posts including, search/personalized toggle and now in 34 new markets. The first describes how you can now toggle between search and personalized experience. Your last selection will be remembered for your next session. The blog says that this "replaces our old 'hide' option, with a much improved experience in 'search only' mode that is faster and includes search filters." Windows Live also entered 34 new markets including;

China ? Simplified Chinese
Netherlands ? Dutch
Belgium ? French
Belgium ? Dutch
Brazil ? Brazilian Portuguese
Denmark ? Danish
India ? English
Russia ? Russian
Sweden ? Swedish
Taiwan ? Traditional Chinese
Arabia ? English
Argentina ? Spanish
Austria ? German
Chile ? Spanish
Finland ? Finnish
Greece ? Greek
Hong Kong SAR ? Traditional Chinese
Hungary ? Hungarian
Indonesia ? English
Ireland ? English
Malaysia ? English
New Zealand ? English
Philippines ? English
Poland ? Polish
Portugal ? Brazilian Portuguese
Singapore ? English
South Africa ? English
Switzerland ? German
Switzerland ? French
Turkey ? Turkish
Czech Republic ? Czech
Slovakia ? Slovak
Slovenia ? Slovenian
Latin America ? Spanish

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:22 AM | Permalink

July 10, 2006

Google Binary Search Not Only Finds Malware But Also Shows Signs Of More

PCWorld reports that Google's binary search feature came in handy to locate "thousands of malicious Web sites, as well as several legitimate sites that have been hacked." The feature reads executable files and can locate some malicious code within those files. It was used to help find malicious sites and programs by a security vendor named Websense. The article also explains that binary search may be a sign that "Google may be thinking about becoming a file searching service."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:15 AM | Permalink

June 22, 2006

Google, Kill The Web Search Counts!

Number one on my 25 Things I Hate About Google list from March was "web search counts that make no sense." This week's fiasco with the "5 billion spam pages" in Google only underscores that those counts really are a big issue that can be noticed by more than a few tech heads. Fix them or get rid of them, I say.

Adam Lasnik from Google's search quality team has been running around to various public forums explaining that it really wasn't 5 billion pages that got indexed from one master domain but instead a counting glitch that makes the problem seem worse than it was. We noted Monday that he commented over at Threadwatch:

We have noticed that some site: queries are showing bizarre results and it's turned out to be tied to a bad data push. We're fixing it now....

I'm saying that the results counts are drastically off.

Adam's also been at Digg:

Our engineers recently noticed that our site: queries (number of results listed for a search) were showing bizarre results. This has turned out to be tied to a bad data push, and we're fixing this right now.

In the case being discussed above, the number in "about [x billion]" is currently incorrect. We haven't indexed anywhere close to as many pages of these sites as is currently suggested. It's a significant results estimation error, thankfully limited in scope but clearly pretty stark when it appears.

And over at John Battelle's blog:

Compounding the issue, our result count estimates in these contexts was MANY orders of magnitude off. For example, the one site that supposedly had 5.5 billion pages in the index actually had under 1/100,000th of that.

John's post is probably the most important illustration of why those counts really do matter, given that he took them at face value -- and so many others will, as well.

When I saw the story on Monday, I doubted Google really had indexed so many pages, especially given the known problems with the site: command recently. While Google doesn't report the total number of pages it indexes any longer, it wasn't that long ago when 5 billion pages would have been over half the reported size, as John noted:

5 billion pages is the entire size of the Google index just a year or so ago. The last claim, before they stopped MAKING claims, was 8 billion...think about that.

Now sure, maybe Google really did index that many pages. Maybe they've expanded so much that there's plenty of room. More likely, adding that massive amount of pages really should have caused a lot more good pages to go missing, to make room for them. There would have been a ton of screaming *widely* across the web from site owners big and small.

I know, I know -- some believe Google's running out of space, and Eric Schmidt even commented on a "machine crisis" which the company later denied was an issue with web search. Certainly many webmasters have long been reporting missing pages in the wake of shifting to Google's BigDaddy crawling infrastructure. But many webmaster also have not been having problems.

Maybe Google is so screwed up that it IS picking up billions of spam pages from a few sites and dumping good stuff. However, I think that's unlikely. I think lots of pages did get in from this site, though maybe in the millions rather than billions. And perhaps collectively, millions of pages of spam from a number of sites are pushing good stuff out. But that 5 billion figure for this particular site (and its subdomains)? I do think it was a counting error.

That counting error is a big problem in and of itself. As said, many people take the counts at face value, even trying to use these meaningless figures in court cases as Fox News once did or the US Attorney General once did before the US Supreme Court.

Enough is enough. Make the figures accurate or stop reporting them at all. Last year, I lobbied for Google to drop the index count on its home page, something that eventually happened. Now they should strongly consider doing the same thing with results count.

Time For Results Counts / Number Of Matches To Go? from Gary Price last year talked about this perhaps being a good next move for Google and the other search engines to make. Certainly the time now seems right.

Google, like Yahoo won't let you go past the first 1,000 matches anyway (Ask goes to 200; MSN to 250). So who cares about showing how many matches there are? Counts like these are remnants of the days when search engines first appeared and showing that they had lots of matches helped perhaps make you think they must be good or comprehensive. But if the counts mean nothing, why keep using them?

Ah -- but it's only an issue with the counts if you do a site: command, you might say. Certainly we've known about a bug with that since May. We've been told some of it has been fixed, but clearly bugs are still being worked out.

But are regular search counts accurate? If I search for djkfdkjfdkjddfdfdd, I get told there are no matches. So if I shift to -djkfdkjfdkjddfdfdd, I should get a count of all pages in the index that don't contain that word -- and since we know there are no pages with it in the index -- I should get a count of ALL pages Google has indexed. And that count?

Results 1 - 10 of about 25,270,000,000 for -djkfdkjfdkjddfdfdd. (0.07 seconds)

So there we have it -- Google has 25 billion pages indexed. Maybe. Or maybe not. This type of search sometimes has produced figures in the past that you knew couldn't be right. Plus, as I wrote before, Google's long had counting problems. I don't know whether to trust that count or not. And if I can't trust it, why offer it to me? Especially why offer it to me if after a glitch, you have to run around doing damage control to say the count is wildly inaccurate. Just get rid of it.

Instead, this is what I want to see in the future:

Results 1 - 10

OK? And how about giving an option to have a number show up next to a result, for those who want it. That would be nice if I want to refer to the exact position of a particular listing to someone else. But the total number of matches? It's meaningless. And the time it took to search? Chest thumping we don't need anymore.

One exception, however. Google Sitemaps has just added a bunch of expanded reporting. I want them to go further and let site owners get accurate index counts through that system.

Keep in mind that a site: command is incredibly processor intensive. It's not something most searchers do, so spending the time, energy and machine power to get hyper-accurate results for regular Google searches isn't a priority.

Instead, move site: searches to work within Google Sitemaps, and you take the burden off your main machines. It's also something you can perhaps have scheduled to run as a report, something generated en masse during slower periods for anyone who wants to get that type of data. If three people all want site:amazon.com data, you run that once and give all three the info on a scheduled basis.

Yahoo rolled out a similar Yahoo Site Explorer tool last September. It was a good move. It would be a good move for Google to also make, along with dropping the general results counting on Google results pages.

Want to comment? Please join our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Get Rid Of Results Counts On Google?

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:32 AM | Permalink

April 26, 2006

MSN Live Tests Search Within Site Feature In Search Results Page

Nathan Weinberg points to a blog that has documented Windows Live testing a feature that enables the searcher to search within a site, from the search results page. What this means is that you search on a keyword at live.com, you are presented with search results. Under each of the results, you are presented with a sub-search box. If you enter in a keyword phrase into that sub-search box, you will be limiting your search, to only show results from within that site (a site command search). I personally do not see it, and I wonder if it searches the whole domain name, or limits it also to a subdomain site search.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:02 AM | Permalink

March 31, 2006

MSN Local Adds Send To Mobile Phone Feature

Russell Beattie reports that MSN Local has added "Send To Mobile" feature from your business listing. For example, go to my listing here and you will see a link under the address that says, "Send to Mobile." Click on it and a DHTML popup will ask you to input your mobile number. I tried it myself and it sent a text message, with a mobile link to my Treo. Russell accurately notes that Yahoo Local has a similar feature, just the link placement is at the top of the result, on the right and the text used is "Sent to Phone". See my Yahoo Local listing here, to see for your self.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:18 AM | Permalink

December 29, 2005

The Big Stories in Search, 2005

Danny wraps up our look back at the year in search in today's SearchDay article, 2005 in Review: The Top Search Industry Stories of the Year.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 11:24 AM | Permalink

December 20, 2005

Answers.com's New "Find As You Type" Feature

We see to be talking about UI tests at Google all of the time but how about a test from Answers.com? From what I've heard, most people should now be seeing a "preferences" link that's been added to their home page. So what, what's the big deal. Actually, it's not only this new link but more importantly the introduction of a new feature that I'm happy to see. It has the potential to save the typical user some time and effort with little to no learning curve.

In case you can't see it yet, here's what I'm noticing: Cap 1: Answers.com Home Page Note the preferences link, upper-right corner. Cap 2: Answers.com Preferences Page (New)

Ok, now head to the Answers.com search box. Begin entering letters into the search box. As you type, you'll notice a dropdown box that dynamically produces the titles of various entries in the Answers.com database even before you click the search button.

If one of these entries is what you're looking for, simply highlight and go directly to the entry. It's another example of a searcher identifying potential results even before they have to begin browsing a web search results page. If a user doesn't find the service useful (it's turned "on" by default) they can turn it off via the preferences page.

If this idea of getting results before clicking the search button looks and sounds familiar, it should. It's a growing trend that I've been blogging about for some time.

In September, I authored this SearchDay article about a new service called LookAhead that any webmaster can license and use on their site. Btw, the LookAhead web site has numerous demos of this technology in action.

The article also includes several of the reasons why I believe that what Answers.com is doing and what LookAhead offers any webmaster can be so useful to both the searcher and the webmaster.

Finally, Answers.com is not the first to offer this type of feature. Here are a few others that are worth a look: + SurfWax News Accumulator + WikiWax (Wikipedia fans make sure to check this out) + AOL Pinpoint Shopping + AOL Pinpoint Travel

Postscript: Word from Answers.com that the test is now over (that was quick) and everyone should now have the option to use the ""Find As You Type" feature.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:27 PM | Permalink

November 30, 2005

Mobissimo Launches One-Box Air Fare Search

Now doubt that travel search is one of the hottest vertical search markets out there. Today, Mobissimo, a travel meta search site that brings together results from many travel databases and sites (137 to be precise), has released a new feature (it was officially announced today) that allows the searcher to enter a query in a natural language format in what Mobissimo calls a One-Box search.

In other words, no more filling out from/to boxes, entering dates, etc. Just type in a query like Chicago O'Hare to Honolulu, February 1-15 (sounds nice, doesn't it) and away you go. If further info is needed you'll be prompted to clarify the info. Btw, One-Box search only works for air travel at this point. It's a neat idea and one that I wouldn't be surprised if we this concept elsewhere in the future. More about One Box Search in this Mobissimo blog posting. Btw, the "traditional methods" of searching Mobissimo are still available.

Postscript: The Mobissimo One-Box kind of reminds me of a feature that MSN Maps has offered for over a year. It's called "Paste an Address" and allows you to simply copy and paste a location into the search box and have it format automatically. No more filling out a form. It's available for 20 countries or cities.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:04 PM | Permalink

November 9, 2005

Search & Portal Features Charted

Reading the Google Tea Leaves has Tristan Louis doing a nice job charting various search and portal features that the major services offer, reminding me exactly what I used to do back in the late 90s. But maintaining those charts is a nightmare! If you need a quick rundown, definitely check it out. Tristan also uses the charts to speculate on what products Google might offer. No real revelations there, however.

Audio search? Sure, that's kind of obvious without the charts and overdue, especially with Yahoo's continued expansion.

An encyclopedia partnership? Google kind of has that already with the existing Answers.com deal, which sometimes brings up encyclopedia info along with dictionary definitions, including that from Wikipedia. Plus, it's hard to do a search these days it seems and not run into Wikipedia on the first page of Google results.

Google also talked with Wikipedia about a hosting deal, though I don't recall seeing anything further on that. FYI, Yahoo did do a partnership with Wikipedia, but looking today, that seems to have ended, with the Columbia Encyclopedia being used instead.

Clustered results? Google's got the technology already, just not the desire to use it nor really a pressing need since clustering's hardly been a category killer (Ask Jeeves used to offer it. So did FAST. Clusty still does. None of them have seriously rivaled Google for traffic).

Calendar? Again, obvious portal feature, especially for a company with a mission of helping people organize information. So much info is calendar driven that this is a necessity. Jeremy Zawodny asked for one earlier this year, and we've had recent signs one may be coming.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:34 AM | Permalink

September 27, 2005

Time For Results Counts / Number Of Matches To Go?

As Danny mentions, it's good to see the total size war go away for at least the time being. Danny also points out this page from Google that lays out there thoughts on comprehensiveness. A couple of quick comments, including wondering if the results counts that every search engine shows should now go away.

From the page:

The basic test for search engine comprehensiveness is whether you can find uncommon information. Popular queries return millions of results, but even the most obsessive searcher isn't about to surf a few million pages, or even a tiny fraction of them; in most of these cases, you'll either quickly find what you're looking for or refine your search to be more focused.

Perhaps it's time to take a look at the usefulness (asides from their marketing value and likely the reason they don't point out this fact) of the page estimates that Google and others provide at the top of results pages.

Just how accurate are they? What are they telling the typical searcher? It would be useful if all search companies (not only Google) would let the public (including many journalists) know that they're just estimates and often far from accurate.

Yes, some people will refine (if they know how, do they?) their searches. However, don't forget that even if you wanted to view all of the results, you couldn't. Most web engines will only show the first 1000 results.

Are the estimates on web results pages going to be the next battleground? I wonder how many people even noticed the total that Google used to list on their home page vs. the estimates they see each and every time they run a search?

June 14, 2005

Google Scholar Link Showing Up For University Users

On Google Scholar noted that some going to Google from within university campuses were seeing a new Google Scholar link on the Google home page. Google confirms this is the case.

We have been offering Google Scholar as a tab [link] for the .edu domain for a few weeks now. We have expanded this to a larger set of universities. This includes a large number of universities around the world, not just .edu.

In other words, if Google can tell you are coming from within an institution using IP addresses that resolve to an .edu domain, or from a list of universities it chooses to target, then you'll see a new "Scholar" link on the Google home page, as the screenshot shows below:

Thanks to CKP for the screenshot!

We asked Google if there was a way for those who wanted to add the Scholar link to the home page to do so if it doesn't show up automatically, but the company didn't respond. We think it would be a good idea.

For that matter, if would be nice if people could pick and choose exactly what links they want on the home page, given that Google offers a variety of search services that aren't normally shown. Perhaps that's something the Google personalized home page launched last month will allow, as it matures.

FYI, Yahoo's pure search page has an edit option just above the search box that lets you add and remove links to many of the company's vertical search services. A9 also allows you to pick-and-choose from hundreds of sources.

Postscript: Gary points out that you can also do something similar on the main Yahoo home page, if you are logged in as a registered user. Look for the very small edit link in the upper right hand corner. That will let you change three of the home page "buttons" to the left of the Yahoo logo to whatever you'd like.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:21 AM | Permalink

May 18, 2005

SortPrice Gets Drag-And-Drop Shopping Feature

The SortPrice shopping search engine has added a neat drag-and-drop shopping feature to its service. Do a search, then you can drag images of products you are interested in and drop them into the left-hand side of your screen, to build up an interest list. Sadly, it only seems to work in Internet Explorer.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:23 AM | Permalink

March 31, 2005

Google Prefetch Will Autoload Some Results

Google released a new feature today for Firefox and Mozilla users that allows them to "prefetch" the first result from a serp into their browser even before clicking the result link. If you're interested in trying this out, it's an easy tweak. You'll find the instructions here.

The Google FAQ also includes this important piece of info:

With prefetching enabled, you may end up with cookies and web pages in your web browser's cache from web sites that you did not click on since prefetching happens automatically when you view Google search results pages. You can delete these files by clearing your browser's cache and cookies.

Webmasters will want to take a look at this info about how prefetch pages will be noted in user logs since a prefetched page doesn't necessarily mean the page is actually viewed.

The News.com article: Google enhances search for Firefox users, has more including comments from a few people about problems that prefetching pages might cause.

Prefetching content is not a new idea. In fact, a couple of months ago Browster, a plug-in that prefectches pages, received lots of buzz and press attention.

Most things that can save the user time are good ideas in my book. The only issue I have with prefetching only the first result is that many times the first result isn't the best result. However, due to the "principal of least effort" users take what they can get quickly (prefetching makes it even faster) without looking at other and possibly better results.

Btw, while we're talking about Google and a new service for Firefox, Philipp reports that yet another Firefox developer is now on the Google payroll.

Want to discuss? Join our forum thread, Google Prefetching for Mozilla Browsers.

Postscript: See also some further discussion with Google comments in this WebmasterWorld thread: Google Enables FireFox Prefetching.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:00 PM | Permalink

March 22, 2005

Get Your Facts Straight

When you need to quickly look up factual information, search engines typically aren't the best tools for the job. Sure, the majors are all continuing to introduce shortcuts that provide ready reference information, either directly or through links to partner web sites. But you're never really sure what you'll get until you try a search.

You're almost always better off going directly to an online ready reference source. In today's SearchDay article, Just the Facts, Please, guest writer Mary Ellen Bates writes about two free, comprehensive and usually reliable sources that can help you find quick answers to factual questions in a hurry.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:37 AM | Permalink

March 17, 2005

Are You Experiencing Google X Withdrawl?

If you're having Google X withdrawl or never even got to use Google's "homage" to Apple's OS, a mirror of the site and service is available here. I wonder if either Google and/or Apple will have anything to say about it.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:02 PM | Permalink

March 16, 2005

Where Did Google X Go?

Earlier today Danny blogged about the new Google X interface from Google Labs. Now, a day after launching the service, it's already offline. Philipp and News.com report that Google X was taken down sometime this afternoon. Why? Google isn't saying. Earlier, Danny wrote, "Google X comes from apparently similar functionality in the MacOS system." Hmm, perhaps Apple had a few issues with the "look" and "feel" of the service and Google decided to simply kill their "homage" to OS X. According to the News.com article, both Google and Apple were unavailable for comment. As of 9pm EST, the Google X remains unreachable.

Want to discuss? Visit our forum thread, Google X.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:53 PM | Permalink

Google X: Icons Above Search Box For Specialty Search Google X is a nifty new interface for hitting Google's specialized services. Instead of the usual hyperlinks that site above the search box, allowing you to hit things like news or local search, there are little icons that represent various services.

Perhaps these will turn out to be more effective than the current hyperlinks. Like the tabs they replaced, these still seem little used by searchers. If so, they still don't solve the problem that down the line, you can't have a billion icons sitting up above the toolbar. My article Searching With Invisible Tabs article looks at that problem -- and illustrates it -- more.

It would be better in my view if the interface carried through on the results page. I also agree with some of the comments of those discussing the system about wanting to be able to customize what shows up there. FYI, at Yahoo, you can customize the hyperlinks it uses if you make use of the pure search interface and use the edit tabs feature. A9 also allows you to edit the search buttons along the side of its screen. Google offers no customization like this at all on either the Google X site or the main Google site itself. Neither does Ask Jeeves or MSN Search.

The name, by the way, comes from apparently similar functionality in the MacOS system. More about this and the service can be found on the Google Blog from the software engineer behind the interface: Google goes X.

Want to discuss? Visit our forum thread, Google X.

Postscript: See the Where Did Google X Go? post.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:47 AM | Permalink

January 23, 2005

Google Increases Maximum Number of Query Terms

Some exciting news for Google searchers.

Since Google's introduction the maximum number of search terms you could include in a query string was 10. As of today, that has changed. Tara Calishain at ResearchBuzz and Philipp Lenssen on Google Blogoscoped have posted that the maximum number of terms allowed in a search query is now 32. Lenssen's post includes several examples of how this might useful but also points out that the 10 word query limit is still in place for Google Groups and Google News. I can report that the 10 word limit remains the limit with Google Scholar.

Many of the other large general purpose web engines (Yahoo, Jeeves, MSN) don't place limits on the number of terms in a query.

With this change (good news and a long time coming) I think advanced searchers would now like to see Google offer (nested)(searching), remove the 101kb page cutoff, offer truncation, and be more precise about what backlinks they do and do not show. Oh yes, how could I forget, offer a proximity operator. As of today, Exalead is the only web engine to offer one. AltaVista used to make one available.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:34 PM | Permalink

January 18, 2005

Dogpile Adds New Features

I spotted this news release today announcing that Dogpile has added a few new features that build on the IntelliFind technology that launched last November (see: Dogpile Enhances Search Results). What's new?

+ The integration of yellow pages entries (beta release) on web search results pages if the yp info is relevant to a query.

+ Web Site Match WSM matches every query against a database of the most popular Web sites and "suggesting" exact matches at the top of serp.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:59 PM | Permalink

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