March 20, 2009

The KGB is Available to Answer Your Questions (Via Text Search)

I have the tv on in the background while I blog from the comfort of my North Carolina home, and happened to catch a commercial advertising the KGB.

WHAT!?!?!?! I've seen enough spy shows to know that the KGB are Russian spies.

Well not anymore. The KGB has apparently changed its mission to providing a text search service. The U.S. number is 542542, which is quite close to rival text search company Cha Cha's number of 242242.

I like text search services because someone else does the searching while I go on with my business. Cha Cha usually takes about 5-6 minutes to return an answer. So, I decided to test it out....

99 Cents per answer? In addition to text messaging rates? I can tell I won't be using this service often. But let's see how they do, and how they stack up against Cha Cha and Google's Text Service. I asked each of the services the same question:

"Which team has won the most men's NCAA basketball championships?"

KGB took 15 minutes to answer.

With Cha Cha, I get an answer in 19 minutes, which surprises me. In the past, I've gotten answers as quickly as 5-6 minutes. (I also realize that they've adding advertising to their text search. Notice the Walmart ad. I was wondering how they'd monetize.)

Google Text Search is a non-starter. Check this out:

With mobile internet on the rise, it's nice to see some good competition in the text search space, especially since Google doesn't appear poised to play.

In the meantime, it's entertaining to see what other mobile users are asking via text, which you can learn on the homepages of KGB.com and ChaCha.com.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

September 30, 2008

Searching for Healthcare: How Online Communities are Changing the Face of Medicine

The New York Times has a great article about using the internet for information on medical conditions, including how search is involved in the process. As you know, results can change just by adding a keyword to the phrase you're already searching for.

Search for a condition and add the word community, for example, and you suddenly have access to patients dealing with the same issues, according to Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

I can personally attest to the power of the internet, especially the ability to communicate and share experiences with other patients. When I was diagnosed with Thyroid Cancer in 2003, the internet became the authority on my care. Because the cancer affects so few people, doctors with little experience in seeing patients with thyroid cancer can be misinformed on how to treat it.

Thankfully, I found an online community that helped me through every step of the process. I was able to find doctors that knew thyroid cancer and could adequately treat me. My experience greatly improved as the result of "meeting" other patients. (I did, also, eventually meet several in person as well.)

As much as social networking can sometimes get a bad rap for being an untamed jungle of wild party pictures and obscene comments, we can't forget the power of online communities and their role in so many important aspects of daily life. From jobs to cancer treatment, social networking is impacting lives. And that's something to feel good about - and get involved in.

Is your company there yet? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

February 26, 2007

Niched Portals and Vertical Search: The Catch Phrases of 2007

Seems 2007 is going to be the year of niched portals and vertical search.

Microsoft is buying Medstory, a health information search engine, and furthering their move into niched portals and vertical search. In China they have started development on a job search engine.

Yahoo is doing the same thing: business search in China, community portals covering specific audiences like Pontiac owners, investors and health sites.

Yahoo seems to be using the portal, community model with search ads as part of the monetization. Though they are trying to develop a business search engine as their primary perspective for the Chinese market.

Yahoo has created entertainment community pages for the Oscars; car fan sites using the manufacturers as support and advertiser.

This seems to be a repeating theme in the two months so far of 2007. Let's see where this all ends up.

Posted by Frank Watson at 4:56 PM | Permalink

February 14, 2007

Where the Influencers Roam

While getting the most buzz, “YOU” are not the only influencer out there. In addition to what's happening on social sites, let's identify where all the influencers roam. Here are sources that provide that extra punch to what's crawled, indexed and ultimately shown by the Big Engines today.

Taggers: Active taggers contribute through services like Del.icio.us, Furl, Flickr and many others. Bloggers fall into this arena too, because they actively tag their own content. Those who spend a lot of time and energy will be rewarded as big influencers. Those who are interested in specific long-tail items also can participate.

Verticals: Online publishers create their own vertical searches and bring some content expertise into the mix. These verticals often begin as destinations, and end up syndicating elsewhere too. Many well-known sites focus on Health, Sports, News, Entertainment, Autos, Employment and Shopping arenas.

Directories: Traditional publishers hire staff to create content, and then license to influential sites. Examples include InfoUSA business listings via Citysearch.com; or Columbia Encyclopedia reference from Answers.com or Infoplease.com. Trade publishers are more proprietary, such as industrial listings created by ThomasNet.com.

Guides: Some guided services also exist. About.com thrives with influential guides who present original material but also scour the web for what's interesting and appropriate in their specific topics. One might also include Wikipedia here, as openly-guided content that's edited by volunteers.

Libraries: Libraries still influence end users. Increasingly, you can remotely search your library's electronic databases and holdings. This previously hidden web of content indices and abstracts is getting exposed by suppliers. Examples include Gale's AccessMyLibrary.com and ProQuest CSA's newspaper archives from the mid-1800s.

Posted by at 11:12 AM | Permalink

January 24, 2007

Reed's Zibb.com asks competitors to participate in its vertical search initiatives

Marrecca Fiore of Folio Magazine reports that Reed Business Information is inviting all publishers, including its competitors, to be a part of Zibb.com, its new business-to-business vertical search engine. According to Fiore, "Reed's Zibb.com offers business-to-business Web users more targeted searches than broader search engines such as Yahoo and Google, similar to that of Business.com."

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 1:44 PM | Permalink

January 13, 2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Gary Price at 2:03 PM | Permalink

September 2, 2005

Yahoo War -- Pit Two Terms Against Each Other To See Who Wins By Count

We've written many, many times before that search result counts can mean little in terms of actual popularity. With that caveat in mind, have fun with Yahoo War. Enter two terms and get back the counts for each term, highest count wins. Technorati versus Feedster? It's Technorati. Google versus Yahoo? It's Yahoo. (But do it manually on Google, and it's Google that wins, 232 million to 168 million). Danny Sullivan versus Gary Price? Sorry, Gary -- I win. But hey, I've also got references to Danny Sullivan the race car driver to help me out.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:40 AM | Permalink

May 2, 2005

Xtra-Google Puts Many Google Searches On One Page

Spotted via Google Blogoscoped, Xtra-Google offers what Google itself should -- an easy way to access Google's many specialty services and a few it doesn't even really offer (such as MP3 search) via a single page.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:59 PM | Permalink

April 19, 2005

Searching For Gas Prices

High Gas Prices Fuel Search Engine Usage from Jennifer Laycock at Search Engine Guide talks about two gas price search engines (GasBuddy.com & GasPriceWatch.com) that help those in the US find the lowest prices to fill up. FYI, both Yahoo and Ask Jeeves have shortcuts to get you prices, as well.

At either Ask Jeeves or Yahoo, enter "gas" plus a zip code, such as gas 92663, and you'll get links to the two sites mentioned above. Of course, it's faster to go to the gas price sites directly and get the answers. But, if you can't remember them offhand, this is a quick way to find them and have links already set for your local area.

Now what would be really cool is if someone whipped up prices placed against a map. When it happens, as I'm sure it will, we'll bring news.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:04 PM | Permalink

December 22, 2004

Searching for Joy in All the Wrong Places

Here's a trick question: When you're looking up a phone number, would you use a dictionary or an encyclopedia?

Neither? Good answer. But how often do you ask yourself whether you're using the appropriate search tool when you automatically fire up Google, Yahoo or Ask Jeeves looking for a fact or other type of "ready reference" information?

Today's SearchDay article, Searching for Quick Answers To Odd Questions, covers covers a number of specialized resources that offer quick, reliable answers to questions that might take you hours to find using a general purpose search engine.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:33 AM | Permalink

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