SES Chicago - December 7-11, 2009

August 27, 2006

New Search Patent Filings: August 27, 2006 - Google's Recommendations, IBM's Speedier Pagerank, Napster's Search

Google looks at search history and user behavior to rerank results and offer ecommerce recommendations, provides a way to rewrite navigation on web pages for users of a proxy system to access the web, and shows some of the inner workings of Desktop Search.

IBM was granted a patent based upon providing advertisements to people based upon sites that they have visited, another that allows people to download information from specified pages which can be indexed and searched locally, a way of speeding up pagerank, and a method for organizing bookmarks.

Microsoft published a couple of patent applications, one which looks at using game playing to provide user rankings for web pages, and a method of providing contextual advertisements for non-textual content.

Napster's peer-to-peer filing sharing system is described in a patent originally filed in August, 2000.

Google

This patent from Google describes a way to use past search history and user behavior to rerank search results and provide ecommerce based recommendations.

Interface and system for providing persistent contextual relevance for commerce activities in a networked environment Invented by Donald R. Turnbull and Hinrich Schuetze Assigned to Google United States Patent 7,089,237 Granted August 8, 2006 Filed on January 26, 2001

Abstract

A search and recommendation system employs the preferences and profiles of individual users and groups within a community of users, as well as information derived from categorically organized content pointers, to augment electronic commerce related searches, re-rank search results, and provide recommendations for commerce related objects based on an initial subject-matter query and an interaction history of a user. The search and recommendation system operates in the context of a content pointer manager, which stores individual users' content pointers (some of which may be published or shared for group use) on a centralized content pointer database connected to a network. The shared content pointer manager is implemented as a distributed program, portions of which operate on users' terminals and other portions of which operate on the centralized content pointer database. A user's content pointers are organized in accordance with a local topical categorical hierarchy. The hierarchical organization is used to define a relevance context within which returned objects are evaluated and ordered.

Rewriting parts of pages through a proxy server, for use with mobile devices, is the focus of this patent granted to Google. It shows a method of understanding what parts of a page is navigation, in addition to determining which navigation may be ideally rewritten for a handheld.

Identifying navigation bars and objectionable navigation bars Invented by Chade-Meng Tan and Daniel Dulitz Assigned to Google United States Patent 7,089,490 Granted August 8, 2006 Filed on November 30, 2000

Abstract

Detecting so-called "navigation bars" (or "nav bars") in a (Web) document by determining whether or not nodes of a parse tree of the (Web) document are "anchor-heavy". Generally, a navigation bar can be thought of as text, such as a hyper-text link or anchor text for example, without any immediate content. Once a navigation bar is detected, objectionable navigation bars (i.e., navigation bars, the rendering of which would be objectionable to users without special re-authoring), can be distinguished from non-objectionable navigation bars (i.e., navigation bars which would not be objectionable to users with no special re-authoring). Objectionable navigation bars may be distinguished from non-objectionable navigation bars by: (a) determining whether the navigation bar is so small that normal rendering would not be objectionable; (b) determining whether the navigation bar presumably conveys meaningful content; and/or (c) determining whether the navigation bar is a component of a non-objectionable navigation bar (where all components of the non-objectionable navigation bar are navigation bars themselves).

One of the inventors listed in the following patent application, Tomas Gunnarsson, is a Google Desktop Software Engineer according to a post he made in the Google Blog on a "quick search" for Desktop Search. It appears that this patent filing looks at some of the inner workings of Desktop Search.

Access to a target object with desired functionality Invented by Johann Tomas Sigurdsson and Tomas Gunnarsson Assigned to Google US Patent Application 20060179441 Published August 10, 2006 Filed on February 10, 2005

Abstract

A system and method provide access to a target object associated with a desired functionality. This is accomplished by creating an instance of a pre-existing object, replacing one or more functions of a table shared by all objects of the object's class, and triggering a call that ultimately causes the replacement functions to be called to allow access to the target object. The system includes software portions for enabling the method.

IBM

As a person surfs the web, the process in this patent describes a way of collecting keywords from pages visited to target appropriate advertising for that user.

Method and apparatus for providing reduced cost online service and adaptive targeting of advertisements Invented by Viktors Berstis and Herman Rodriguez Assigned to IBM United States Patent 7,089,194 Granted August 8, 2006 Filed on June 17, 1999

Abstract

A method and apparatus for adaptively targeting advertisements to a specific client computer from a server within a distributed data processing system is provided. As a user of the client browses the World Wide Web, the material that is downloaded to the client constitutes a datastream. At some location during the routing of the datastream, either on the server or at the client, the datastream is scanned to generate a list of keywords that are present within the datastream. The datastream may be analyzed in real-time or cached and analyzed on a delayed basis. The generated list of keywords represents a summary of the content that appears to be the focus of interest of the user. The keywords are compared against a database of advertisements, and the server selects an advertisement that matches the user's area of interest in comparison to the analysis of the user's browsing history. The selected advertisement is then inserted into the datastream to be routed to the client. In consideration for viewing targeted advertisements and to entice a Web viewer to allow the monitoring of a datastream so that targeted advertisements may be placed into the datastream, a Web viewer may receive online connection service for free, for a reduced cost, at a premium level of service, or for other some other value, such as frequent viewer credits that may be exchanged for goods and services.

Method and system for searching for web content Invented by Michael James Osias Assigned to IBM United States Patent 7,089,233 Granted August 8, 2006 Filed on September 6, 2001

Abstract

The present invention provides a method and system for searching for web content. Specifically, the present invention provides a system and method for retrieving web content from designated web pages and hyperlinks, indexing the retrieved web content in a local database, and searching the local database for desired web content. Retrieved content is indexed in the local database so that future access of the web content can be more efficient.

System and method for rapid computation of PageRank Invented by John Anthony Tomlin, Andrew S. Tomkins, and Arvind Arasu Assigned to IBM United States Patent 7,089,252 Granted August 8, 2006 Filed on April 25, 2002

Abstract

A method of ranking a plurality of linked documents. The method comprises obtaining a plurality of documents, and determining a rank of each document. The rank of each document is generally a function of a rank of all other documents in the plurality of documents which point to the document and is determined by solving, by equation-solving methods (including Gauss-Seidel iteration and partitioning) of a set of equations wherein:.alpha..alpha..times..times..times..times. ##EQU00001## where x.sub.i is the rank of the page indexed by i, .alpha. is a number strictly between 0 and 1.0, the summation is over all indices j such that page j points to page i, and a.sub.ij is defined to be the reciprocal of the number of links pointing out from page j (denoted d.sub.j) if page j points to page i, and zero otherwise.

Conditional promotion of bookmarks Invented by Cary L. Bates, Gilford F. Martino, John M. Santosuosso, and Vincent T. Timon, III Assigned to IBM United States Patent 7,089,305 Granted August 8, 2006 Filed on September 25, 2001

Abstract

A method and system for organizing bookmarks. A bookmark structure includes a main bookmark list and at least one bookmark folder. A bookmark search list, which includes at least one bookmark in the bookmark structure, is generated. Software is executed, wherein the software searches each bookmark on the bookmark search list through depth N (N.gtoreq.0). The searching determines whether the bookmark satisfies an upgrade condition. The upgrade condition includes a boolean text expression and may also include at least one of: a client visitation condition, a general visitation condition, a bookmark existence condition, a content-type condition, a URL-age condition, and a Top-Level-Domain (TLD) condition. If the searching determines that the bookmark satisfies the upgrade condition and that the bookmark is not in the special bookmark location, then the bookmark is moved to the special bookmark location.

Microsoft

Improving quality of web search results using a game Invented by Luis von Ahn Arellano and Josh D. Benaloh Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060179053 Published August 10, 2006 Filed on February 4, 2005

Abstract

A system combines individual estimates of the subjective appeal of web pages into a combined rating for each web page that can be used to rank web pages during a web search. In a gaming implementation, a web page recipient estimates the combined rating that other recipients of the web page have formulated. The recipient can be rewarded for accurately estimating the combined rating by receiving a subsequent web page that possesses a high rating.

Image and other analysis for contextual ads Invented by Carl M. Kadie, Joshua T. Goodman, and Christopher A. Meek Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060179453 Published August 10, 2006 Filed on February 7, 2005

Abstract

The subject invention provides a unique system and method that facilitates providing contextual advertisements based on one or more identified terms extracted from a non-text object such as an image, video, and/or audio object. Terms can also be identified and extracted from metadata associated with or other data derived from text objects such as email messages and attached text documents. One or more recognition techniques can be employed to identify data found in the non-text object (including the metadata or any other data derived therefrom) and data found in the metadata associated with the text object. Once the identified terms are analyzed, an appropriate contextual advertisement can be presented to the user. If the content of the non-text or text object is deemed of a negative nature, no contextual advertisement is provided.

Outland Research

Napster

System and method for searching peer-to-peer computer networks by selecting a computer based on at least a number of files shared by the computer Invented by Wilburt Juan Labio, Giao Thanh Nguyen, Winston Wencheng Liu, Gurmeet Singh Manku Assigned to Napster United States Patent 7,089,301 Granted August 8, 2006 Filed on August 11, 2000

Abstract

A method and system for intelligently directing a search of a peer-to-peer network, in which a user performing a search is assisted in choosing a host which is likely to return fast, favorable results to the user. A host monitor monitors the peer-to-peer network and collects data on various characteristics of the hosts which make up the network. Thereafter, a host selector ranks the hosts using the data, and passes this information to the user. The user then selects one or more of the highly-ranked hosts as an entry point into the network. Additionally, a cache may collect a list of hosts based on the content on the hosts. In this way, a user may choose to connect to a host which is known to contain information relevant to the user's search. The host selector may be used to select from among the hosts listed in the cache.

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 11:34 PM | Permalink

August 15, 2006

103 Links About SES San Jose 2006 (AKA The Big Recap)

Couldn't make it to last week's monster Search Engine Strategies show in San Jose? Well, maybe next time! In the meantime, I've compiled a list of coverage from across the web, even somewhat organized into topic areas.

Our San Jose show is always tough for me, as I arrive a week earlier to visit with the various major search engines out there. That means two weeks of news and email to dig out from, since you can never get it all done on the road. All that digging out means I know I don't have everything listed below. But you'll find plenty to keep you entertained.

General Recaps

Eric Schmidt Appearance

Eric Schmidt & Search Privacy

Click Fraud Panel & Related Coverage

Yahoo's Panama Ad Platform Preview

Social Search & Related Topics

Organic Listings Sessions

Search Advertising Sessions

Issues Sessions

News, Blogs & Public Relations

Big Sites/Budget Sessions

Small Sites/Budget Sessions

Conversion & Metrics

Other Sessions

Google Dance & Parties & Pictures

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:50 PM | Permalink

June 6, 2006

Facelift, New Features For Yahoo's MyWeb Bookmark Service

Yahoo's MyWeb bookmark service has gotten a facelift and new features to make it easier than before for people to find what others are saving and sharing on the service. Yahoo MyWeb Gets New Look, Easier Browsing & Viewing Features in today's SearchDay from me covers the changes and revisits how the system works in general.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:04 AM | Permalink

May 10, 2006

Google Notebook Comes Next Week

Announced today as part of Google Press Day is a new Google Notebook service to go live via Google Labs next week. The service will allow you to add notes to search results, which in turn can be saved into one or more notebooks. Notes you make about a site also will show up when you visit those sites, similar to how the A9 Your Diary feature works. Yahoo and Ask also offer the ability to add notes associated with search results.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:22 PM | Permalink

December 22, 2005

Your Own Personal Google Zeitgeist

Setting trends on the Official Google Blog covers a great holiday gift, a way to see your own top searches on Google. Very, very cool. You need Google Personalized Search active. Got it? Good, now go to your trends page. There you'll see the top 10 searches you've done, the top 10 sites you've visited and the top 10 things you've most clicked on.

The time period isn't given, and I'm gong to follow up to find out more the difference between sites visited and top clicks, since they feel very similar. You also get nice charts of monthly, daily and hourly search activity -- though what time zone that hourly activity shows isn't said. I'm guessing Pacific. If so, nice if you could adjust this to your own time zone in the future.

By the way, click on any of the bar charts, and you'll see details of the particular time period you've selected, in terms of top queries and top sites.

Finally, you're shown the top five things other people searched for that are similar to your searches. That's less than impressive, at least for me. Check out my list:

  1. christmas party games
  2. بنك الرياض
  3. backrub
  4. santa gif
  5. joe clark

None of these seem remotely to anything I've searched for, I'm afraid, especially number two.

Postscript: I sent across these follow-up questions to Google, and here they are, with responses:

1) What period covers the top tens? These my top ten searches today, this week, last 30 days?

Those are top 10 of "all time" (since you started using Personalized Search).

2) Monthly, if I click on a bar, is that the last month? Daily, the last particular day in a given week or all days (ie all Wednesdays) over a period of time. Same thing on hourly.

If you click on a month, those are the top queries/sites for that month. If you click on a day (e.g., Wednesday), those are the top queries/sites for all Wednesdays. Same thing for hourly: that's the total across all days' searches during that hour.

On hourly, what time zone. This all in Pacific? If so, plans to allow changing to your own time zone coming?

It uses the user's local time zone (or to be more specific, the time zone of the user's computer). In fact, all of a user's search history is in their local time zone.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:26 PM | Permalink

November 9, 2005

Google's Personalized Results Patent

Patents, patents. Yes, another Google patent to talk about, this one related to personalization of search results and which is getting the attention of many search marketers. Let's dive in!

Personalization of placed content ordering in search results (PDF file) is the actual patent, for your reading pleasure.

Patent reading is never a pleasure for most, of course. That's why it's nice to have someone break it down for you. Who've we got? C'mon over Loren Baker! He takes you through a summary over at Search Engine Journal in his Google Patent : Organic Results Ranked by User Profiling post.

Not enough? Rand Fishkin over at SEOmoz is usually all over doing a patent breakdown but hit with time issues, he summarizes Michael Nguyen's in depth rundown, which you'll find here.

Is Google Messing With Organic Algos? from Paul Bruemmer steps beyond the patent to ask what's going on with personalization more generally.

Finally, there's our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Google to Manipulate Organic Rankings with User Profile, where there's lots and lots of discussion.

In particular, I want to highlight my comment in the thread. Like Paul, I'm stressing not what's in the patent (which may or may not be in use) but rather what's actually happening in terms of personalization at Google, Yahoo and elsewhere.

If you're worried about personalization, it's especially a look at what's actually happening now that I'd encourage you to read up on -- and I provide lots of links in that post.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:28 AM | Permalink

October 11, 2005

Google Lets You Manually Save & Tag Results Through New Bookmarks Feature

Google Adds Tagging from Nathan over at InsideGoogle is a nice look at how Google now gives you the ability to manually save results via a new "Bookmarks" feature and assign labels and notes to them. He calls it tagging, while Google uses the term "labels." I suppose the only difference is that tags are often used for content shared with others, and so far, none of what you tag within Google Search History gets shared.

First, the how it works part. You have to be using Google Personalized Search, also explained more in our past article, Google Relaunches Personal Search - This Time, It Really Is Personal.

If you are using that, you'll automatically have your searches recorded. However, the new Bookmarks lets you manually save any results you might want to file away.

Next to any item in in your Search History results, you'll see a star. Click on the star, and you'll have saved the item. You'll also see a new Edit link appear. Click on that, and you can add labels/tags or organize items and also notes.

For example, I could save items about cars under the "cars" label and items about mp3 players under the "mp3 players" label. I could also assign an item with both labels, if I wanted to. After doing this, I'll then have these labels showing up under the Bookmarks heading on the left-hand side of the page. Clicking on a label link brings back the results I've tagged this way.

I found the label system buggy, however. Supposedly, you could type in a bunch of labels separated by commas, such as:

apples, bananas, oranges

In fact, text in the label box encourages you to do just that. But if I try to under commas (using Firefox 1.6), they simply won't take. Instead, I have to save with one label, reedit, add a comma and the next label, save, and so on. Hopefully, it's either just a problem I'm having or a problem everyone's having that will get fixed soon.

None of the labels or tags you save for a result will show up if you do a regular search and see a result you've tagged in the future, as how Yahoo's My Web works. I thought that's how Ask Jeeves also worked, but it doesn't appear to be the case when I looked again today. But like Yahoo, you can save and tag and annotate results with the Ask Jeeves My Jeeves service.

Overall, Google's playing catch-up here. It's definitely nice to have the new feature, and I want that in addition to automatically saving, but there's no new ground being broken with this. Indeed, what's especially needed is for the feature to jump out of being within the Search History area and into Google's main results.

What I mean is this. If you're logged into Google and using personalized search, you can't save anything in the results you get back. Instead, you can only save and edit results that are automatically saved after you click on them.

I want the feature to evolve similar to what you see at Yahoo, where you can manually save a result and annotate it right within the regular results page.

Google recently mimicked Yahoo's Block feature by adding a "Remove result" link to the listings anyone sees when using Google Personalized Search. Making a step beyond that to add Save, Label & Note buttons similar to what Yahoo does, as well as Ask Jeeves and even AOL, is a no brainer step to make.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:18 AM | Permalink

September 29, 2005

Preview New Saved Searches & Clip Feature At AOL Search

While I was looking at the AOL Search home page this afternoon, I noticed some text (near the bottom the page) that invited me "preview new features" as AOL continues to enhance its search site. So, what did I find?

After clicking the preview url (http://aolsearcht.aol.com/aolcom/webhome) I arrived at a page that allowed me to save my searches. Look for the green box and scissors icon on the right side of the page. Clicking this green box took me to another page where I could turn off the feature and erase everything (searches are saved for 30 days) or sort my past clips and searches by when it was saved or what I searched for.

Web search results page also allow you to easily clip and save results. For example, I searched for "Search Engine Watch" and was allowed to clip results (note how the scissors icon moves from result to result). Clicking the icon saves a copy of the result link and snippet. It does not save the full text of the underlying page. It's also possible to clip and save sponsored links. You you can "clip" up to 25 results per search.

I was not asked to sign-in with my AOL ID to preview. However, I would imagine that in the future, signing-in will allow me to view my saved results and searches on any computer. Make sure to take the proper safety precautions if you share your computer with others.

A final note, this time on image searching.

When you run an image search, here's a set of thumbnail results for "Golden Gate Bridge" the image(s) you clicks appears along with the full page of where the image appears embedded on the page directly below the selected image.

Remember, this is a preview and not all features work with all search types. Still, it's good to see AOL continuing to improve their web search offerings. Kudos. Given the ephemeral nature of the web, I would love to see AOL begin offering what others (Filangy, Yahoo, etc) offer and begin locally caching copies of pages viewed by the searcher for future reference and use.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:47 PM | Permalink

June 28, 2005

Findory and Filangy Also Offer Personalized Web Results

Since it seems to be all about personalized search today, I think it's worth mentioning that Findory has been offering personalized web search results (in addition to personalized news and blog search results) since November 2004.

Comments from Findory CEO, Greg Linden, about Google's latest offering and how Findory's personalized web search results work in this blog post. He also shared the following with me via an e-mail this afternoon: For example, Google's personalized web search might detect that you tend to be interested in computers and library search results and bias all of your searches generally toward search results about computers and library. In contrast, Findory might notice that you just looked up a movie on IMDB.com and then did another search for a movie, so it would move relevant IMDB search results up higher. Or Findory might notice that you clicked on a research paper on a related topic in a search earlier that day and surface another, related research paper in your latest search results. Findory's technique is more fine-grained, focusing in on your mission -- what you are doing right now -- and helping you find what you need.

Also, Filangy, the impressive web tool that I've blogged about several times (and use frequently) also provides personalized results based on recency and frequency of usage of pages. Btw, the Filangy beta is now open. You no longer need an invite to check out the service. It's more than worth a look.

Only a Thought One question I have about personalized web results is: Does your web search history and what you've already looked at always provide a good indication as to what you want you might want to find during a future search session? I'm not so sure.

A searcher is likely to have interests, needs, and a knowledge base that change from day to day, if not from minute to minute. A tool that would allow a searcher either build a more personalized query or quickly tweak their search results based on criteria important in a specific search situation (intent, time frame, reading level, currency, type of content, features on page, etc.) might be useful. I'm thinking of something along the lines of what Yahoo offers with SmartSort and Mindset.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:31 PM | Permalink

April 22, 2005

Do You Want to Demo Filangy?

Filangy, the web search history tool that I posted an overview about the other day remains in a closed beta. However, I just noticed that I have a few (about 30) invites to share. If you're interested, send me a note and I'll send one to the first 30 people I hear from. If you don't here back in the next day or so, sorry. Please send your requests to resourceshelf@myway.com.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:03 AM | 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

Filangy: Another Search History Tool; Search the Full Text of Your Cached Pages

I thought I would toss out another web-based search history resource called Filangy. Unfortunately, it's a limited beta and you'll need (at least for now) to sign-up to get a login. Here's a link to send them an email. Let's hope they open their beta to more users soon. I've only been using the service for a short time but so far I like what I've seen. I'm looking forward to comparing it to what Google has just released.

Filangy is a free service.

It provides web-based: + Automatic (easy to turn on/off) full text caching of every web page viewed in your browser + Web search, results from your cache are integrated onto results pages + Import your bookmarks, what Filangy calls "WebMarks" + Access and search your search history + Search the full text of all of your saved material + Clustering of results + Page preview feature that embeds live pages into the results list (Clusty.com also offers this feature). + Export your "Webmarks" (only) and syndicate via RSS. You can also mark any/all Webmarks "private" and they will not be included in your RSS feed.

Privacy is also taken seriously, read about what they offer here. Btw, https pages are not cached.

With Google's move today, you've got to wonder if Filangy will jump onto the radar screens of other search companies as a possible acquisition.

In addition to developing their service, Filangy faces the same challenge many other web search resources face today, getting the word out and then getting those who know about the service to try it. How do you do this? I'm not a marketing expert but one thing that could help is user education. A very little of it goes a long way. Users might be more likely to use new services if they can understand and experience how a new service might give them more value. Current and well established services can also use education to teach users how to take full advantage of what their technology has to offer. Udi Manber from A9 said a few weeks ago that search engines are not mind readers. I agree and again education could help.

I'll keep using Filangy and will report back soon.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:40 PM | Permalink

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

April 11, 2005

Ask Jeeves Enhances MyJeeves; Tagging Option Added

Ask Jeeves has just released an upgrade to their MyJeeves personalized search tool that Ask.com launched last September.

New for MyJeeves users are several enhancements including:

+ An option to add your own "tags" to any item. To do this, save an image or web page and then click the "modify" link next to the entry on your MyJeeves "Save Results" pages. You'll then find a box labeled "tags" to add your metadata.

+ My Jeeves integration into the Ask Jeeves Toolbar. In other words, save any web page without having first find it from an AJ web results page. Big improvement! + Save images into My Jeeves from any web page (right-click) or directly from an AJ Image Search results page.

+ Important your bookmarks from IE and Firefox into MyJeeves

+ Organize your saved material into hierarchical folders.

Btw, MyJeeves is still not permanently caching pages. Other services like Filangy Nextaris, and Furl do offer a local cache option and then allow you to search the full text of these pages. I hope the next round of MyJeeves enhancements includes this feature as an option.

A tour of the new MyJeeves services is online here with more in the news release.

MyJeeves is also available from: + Ask Jeeves Spain + Ask Jeeves Japan + Ask Jeeves UK

Posted by Gary Price at 10:15 AM | Permalink

December 8, 2004

More On Ask Jeeves UK Gaining Personal Features

Gary blogged earlier about how Ask Jeeves UK has gained the My Jeeves personal features added to the main US/global Ask Jeeves site back in September. As I'm in the UK, I took a look to see how it works compared to the US side.

At either site, after you do a search, you'll see a "Save" link that appears below each listing. Click on that link, and information about the listing is saved to your "My Jeeves" area.

You can bookmark a link to this area (here's the US one; here's the UK one), or you'll find a link to it at the bottom of the Ask Jeeves home page in either country or at the top left-hand corner of search results pages. Once saved, you can search through things you've saved or organize results.

Though both Ask and Ask UK seem to offer separate personal search features, from what I can see, all information is combined. In others, if you search on Ask UK, save something, then search on Ask in the US and save something, both listings are saved in the same place. Going to MyJeeves in the US will still show UK listings you've saved and vice-versa.

The plus to this is that those who've already used the US version of Ask and saved material won't lose anything. The downside is that those who for some reason would like searches on the UK site separate from those on the US site can't do that.

For more about My Jeeves, see:

  • Ask Jeeves Serves It Your Way from Gary looks more at how the feature operates, in terms of searching and saving.  
  • Ask Jeeves Personal Search Goes Live from me looks at how you can use the service without registering, though you risk perhaps losing material if your cookies change.  
  • MyJeeves FAQ has information about the service from Ask Jeeves. There's also a UK version of this FAQ, though they seem to be the same.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:45 AM | Permalink

December 7, 2004

Getting Closer to the Searcher

BBC Online takes a look at My Ask Jeeves (just launched on Jeeves UK) and Blinkx in the article: Search sites get closer to users.

"Blinkx users do not stop using other web search systems," he [Suranga Chandratillake, co-founder of Blinkx] said.

"They might use Google to look up a company, or Yahoo for travel because they know they are good at that," he said.

The variety of ways to search data was only helping users, said Mr Chandratillake and that it was likely that in the future people would use different ones for different tasks.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:21 PM | Permalink

December 5, 2004

My Ask Jeeves Comes to Jeeves UK

Ask Jeeves UK The MyAskJeeves "personal search system" is now available on the Ask Jeeves UK site.

MyAskJeeves UK offers the identical save, store, annotate, and organize services that are available on the .com site. MyAskJeeves launched in September on the .com site.

You can review what the MyAskJeeves and MyAskJeeves UK offer in our September overview: Ask Jeeves Serves It Your Way.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:33 PM | Permalink

November 19, 2004

Findory Begins Personalizing Web Search Results

Since launching in early 2004, Findory has focused on "personalizing" news and blog content.

However, as of this week, Findory is beginning to "personalize" web search results.

Today, Greg Linden, the Founder/CEO at Findory, has posted news on his "Geeking with Greg" blog that his company is now personalizing web search results using the Google database.

Linden's blog post provides a couple of examples. He also notes that today's annoucement is just a "baby step" in what Findory plans to offer.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:55 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)

October 5, 2004

Search Everything You've Seen

Allow me to suggest a personal search option that I would like to see one or more of the "big guys" offer in the future.

How about a feature that allows you the option to automatically record and save EVERY html page that appears in your browser and then offers you the option to keyword search the full text of this material?

A kind of Tivo for the web.

It would not only potentially save you time (compared to saving a page at a time) but would also allow you to easily and efficiently build your own Wayback Machine. You might also be able to share your personal archive with others.

Of course, users would be able to remove any page at any time from their archive and also go back and annotate pages with metadata and notes.

This is not a new idea.

Battelle calls this the saving of "search streams" and compares it to Bush's Memex tool.

In this SearchDay review of , a product called Seruku, currently offering this type of service, I also compare the idea to the Memex.

A new product, Recall Toolbar, offers something similar.

Microsoft Research is also doing work with the "save everything" concept. It's called Stuff I've Seen, part of their MyLifeBits research.

Since many companies want to play in the "personal" search game these days it's going to be important for these organizations to differentiate themselves from one another. Why should I try Service A when Service B offers the same thing? Why should I switch services?

Because everyone uses the web in a different way, a variety of options will be the spice of life when it comes to personal search.

NOTE: Yes, it is possible to search your cached pages with IE and Mozilla. However, this feature does not allow you to annotate and search your pages, limit by date or date range, mark important pages, search phrases, etc. Also, since your cache is a dynamic entity results will also could change on a regular basis.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My Yahoo Search Offers Personal Search Features

Just a day after releasing Yahoo Local, Yahoo has launched My Yahoo Search, offering several new features that allow you to save, annotate and search listings from Yahoo search result pages.

Chris Sherman has a full rundown here in SearchDay: Yahoo Introduces Personal Search. I've written a companion piece for our Search Engine Watch members looking at how personalization impacts the task of search marketers and especially how Yahoo's new "Block Site" feature operates: Search Personalization: A Marketer's Perspective.

Chris finds personalization at Yahoo is nicely done but underpowered compared to some other similar services and more a good start than a must-use application, in his view. I'm much more positive.

Talking with both Chris and Gary, they seem to especially like services that let you both save sites you've visited and search against the text of the pages you've found. That's why they love things like Furl, which LookSmart recently acquired.

Me, I'm not so bothered about needing to search through the pages I've found. Heck, I found them. I know what's on them. Instead, I find myself more interested in trying to recall what I searched for originally and remember sites I found as matches for a query.

For that, I've been loving a9's features. It's automatically keeping track of things for me, but it also gives me the quality of Google's results. In fact, I find myself more and more disliking the fact that Google itself isn't keeping track of things for me automatically.

Now Yahoo's jumped in with great search quality and easy to use "search memory" features as well. For an ordinary searcher, I think it's really compelling. I especially like the simple way someone can make a note right within the search results, plus the ability to have things remembered automatically if the Visited Results feature is enabled.

Ask's new personalization features are compelling in much the same way, to me. So in a matter of just weeks, I find these tools to me now being an essential part of any search engine's offering -- and a nice return for the majors since the last time they were tried, by MSN back in 1999.

What about Google, the most notable of the majors now without them? Google tells me it has no future plans for search memory-style tools to announce at this time. Instead, personalization remains restricted to the Google Personalized Search beta service that alters things based on interest areas and Google's Site Flavored Search, which operates in a somewhat similar manner for publishers.

Want to discuss or comment? Please visit this thread in our forums.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 21, 2004

Ask Jeeves Personal Search Goes Live

Ask Jeeves released its new personal search service today, My Jeeves, with features that let you easily track your searches over time, organize them into folders and save the sites you've visited.

Gary's got a full write-up in today's SearchDay on those features and other changes: Ask Jeeves Serves It Your Way. I wanted to add a bit more from my perspective.

The heart of both Ask's new features and those a9 rolled out last week is the ability to save what you've searched for and found. I love seeing the return of this to the major players.

Return? Yes, because MSN had exactly this type of feature back in 1999 (see my Internet Explorer 5 Makes Search Easier article). Sadly, the feature was withdrawn the following year. This was because searchers weren't making much use of it.

Why should things be any different for those searching at a9 and Ask Jeeves now? In a9's case, searches are saved automatically. That's a plus, though also worrisome. As I wrote for the Eurekster personal search launch earlier this year, having the default NOT to save searches might help preserve privacy.

Over at Ask, that's how it works. Nothing is saved unless you explicitly choose to do so. Downside? People might not make use of the feature. However, I find the little "save" links next to each description very intuitive. I think they'll catch on.

Upside? Those with search privacy worries feel better, as user testing showed Ask Jeeves.

"This comes out of consumers who thought that was icky [automatically saving things]. They said, 'Don't do that unless I tell you'," said Jim Lanzone, senior vice president of search properties at Ask Jeeves.

Keep in mind that you don't need to register to start saving things at Ask Jeeves, which is great. But this also means you'll lose data, if you delete the cookie on your computer or it is somehow otherwise corrupted. So if you really get into the search history feature, you'd better make an account.

Why has it taken so long for one of the majors to bring back saved searches? For its part, Lanzone had a pretty honest answer on behalf of Ask.

"This was the first we could actually get around to doing it as a business," he said. The company's much smaller than players like Google and Yahoo.

Lanzone also thinks the industry as a whole is evolving to catch-up with the experiment MSN initially tried.

"A few years ago people were still making the claim that as people became more mature as web users, they would use search less, because they knew the web better. The opposite has happened. As search gets better, as broadband comes in, people search more. More successful searches give you more confidence. Search is become the gateway to all that information," Lanzone said.

Search history fits into that gateway idea. It effectively grows as a permanent map to your travels across the web. It also helps the search companies in an increasingly competitive market further lock you into their services.

No doubt we'll see Yahoo, Google, MSN and AOL all bring out similar search history features in the future -- or search workspace, as a good word Jeremy Zawodny's coined. Logistically, it's not hard to set these up. And competitively, it's something they'll all have to follow with.

It's also important to keep in mind that so far, "personal search" for Ask Jeeves and a9 only extends to letting you track search history, not to actually reshaping your results in the way Eurekster does.

Actual personal search, where relevancy is impacted, has yet to come to any of the major search engines as part of their regular search results (for more, see my Is It Really Personalized Search? article). Even Google's personal search remains a tucked away beta project.

Lastly, it's cool that you can search through all your favorite pages saved with Ask Jeeves. But that's not as good as being able to pick a number of entire web sites that you'd like to build a custom search around. Hopefully, one of the majors will bring this feature out. Ask itself is working on this and expect to release it in a matter of months.

Want to discuss issues raised in this post? Got a number of relevant threads in our forums for you:

Also see Gary's Don't Forget Findory post that covers some of the interesting news personalization it offers.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 20, 2004

Ask To Release My Jeeves Personal Search Tomorrow

It's fairly common that we and other news outlets are prebriefed about upcoming search features, agreeing to "embargo" the information until an agreed release date.

That's the case with the new personalization features that Ask Jeeves is debuting tomorrow. They're pretty cool, and Gary will have a full write-up on them when the embargo lifts.

Another publication broke that embargo today, apparently accidentally. Since the embargo was broken, we provided a few more limited details about what Ask Jeeves planned in my original blog post.

Ask was still uncomfortable about even those limited details going out. Out of courtesy to them, I've dropped a key sentence from the original post.

Along with the personalization features, Ask is also officially releasing its new Citysearch-powered local search this week (see more from Gary on this: Ask Jeeves Local: CitySearch Data Begins Appearing. Also, the Ask-owned Teoma crawler is now reported to have reached 2 billion English-language pages indexed.

Want to comment or read discussion of this topic? Please visit this thread in our forums: Ask Jeeves Adds Personal Search Features and Ask Gains Citysearch-Powered Local Search.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 15, 2004

Amazon's a9 Launches

The press is buzzing today with news of the launch of Amazon's a9 search product. Battelle offers an overview. You'll also find stories in the NY Times, News.com, and the SF Chronicle.

a9 launched as a beta last April 2004.

Some Comments + I'm not "blown away" by a9 (at this point). However, this doesn't mean that some of the features a9 offers might not be useful for some of you.

+ To harness a9's full power you'll still need to register (you're Amazon.com login will work). Of course, some a9 options do not require a login.

+ a9 is still using Google as it's underlying database. IMHO, the more voices the better and I would love to see a9 create their own web database and ranking algorithm. This is another way they could differentiate themselves from Google and other players.

+ Today's launch uses new default color theme from what we saw with beta release. It's much easier on the eyes. You can also change the color theme (several options are available including the orginal color theme) and font size using the preferences page. This is also where Google's SafeSearch filter is located.

+ The basic interface is sleek and easy to use. Most of a9's features can be activated by simply clicking on one or more of the options listed on the right side of the page. Doing this opens a new "column" that can easily be resized. + a9 Web Results contain one or more ads sponsored listings. They also contain a direct link to the Alexa database (an Amazon.com company) to learn more about the page.

+ To run your search on another database a9 offers access to simply click one of the buttons on the right side of the page and a box containing these results will open. You can open, close, or resize these columns at any time.

+ Other databases now available from a9: ++ Reference (dictionary, thesaurus, and other tools) via Gurunet. Full access to Gurunet requires a subscription. ++ Movie info (via IMDB.com, another Amazon.com company) ++ Images (via Google Images)

+ Other options allow you to view your search history (all of your queries are stored on the a9.com server), remotely store bookmarks and view your diary entries. The diary is where you can add notes about any web page. To make diary entries you must use the a9 Toolbar.

+ At the present time the a9 Toolbar is only available for IE (using Windows). I'm surprised that for the launch other versions (Mozilla, Safari) are not available since two key features require it.

+ Finally, another option (still in beta) and only triggered from the a9 homepage is called Discover. Here you'll find: ++ Related Websites (based on what you've already looked at, updated at least twice a day) ++ "Web categories are based on your recently visited sites. Each category entry links to detailed information at Alexa." ++ Frequently Visited Sites "Links to your most frequently visited sites (listed by domain). The number of recent visits is displayed in parenthesis." ++ Movers and Shakers [what's this?] "Movers and shakers are those sites that have had the largest rise in average traffic the past week compared to previous weeks. This data is provided by Alexa."

You can learn more about these and other features here.

Bottom Lines I think you'll either love a9 (this is the greatest!) or find it not all that impressive (what's the big deal?). a9 has taken ideas available from disparate services (remote bookmark storage, being able to add and store notes about pages, see results from various databases) and has placed them within easy reach of the web searcher as they search. That said, MyYahoo! has offered some of these services for several years. However, utilizing them while you search is much easier with a9.

An idea. How about a feature that allowed the searcher to add any specialized database (vertical) to their personalized page? It would be also be exciting for a9 to work with libraries and create customized versions that would allow the researcher to access and search databases that the library licenses.

I also think a9 offering some type of dynamic clustering (Vivisimo like) of all results would be very useful.

We will be watching a9 very closely for new features.

Btw, Udi Manber, a9's creator, spoke at the University of Washington last November. You can watch an archived version of his lecture here. It's titled, "The World's Information at Everyone's Fingertips."

Posted by Gary Price at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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