January 16, 2007

Jimmy Wales Discusses Search Wikia on MarketWatch

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales went face to face with Bambi Francisco on today's MarketWatch, and shared more about the concept of Search Wikia, a new social search engine designed to combine algorithmic results with user voting and contribution features. Francisco questioned whether or not this social search technology had the power to dethrone Google.

During the TV interview, Wales declined to put a specific number on the "substantial investment" for building out the new search engine, although he said the service should be in open beta within 2-3 months.

Wales fully admitted that the early days of Search Wikia may not produce quality results, just as the initial stages of Wikipedia had its challenges. However, Wales was clear that the ultimate goal is complete transparency and high quality search results.

Danny Sullivan wrote earlier this week on the poor quality of the new Wikiseek tool, though the purpose and functionality is worlds apart from the new engine in the works. Sullivan had previously discussed the driving forces of Search Wikia in another interview with Jimmy Wales.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 8:34 PM | Permalink

January 12, 2007

A Search Engine For Search Marketers

Lee Odden recently released a list of search marketing blogs, which he plans to update every Friday. The article has received well-deserved accolades for its nearly exhaustive collection of links related to search marketing.

The list and its accompanying OPML file has led to the creation by Alister Cameron of a Google Custom Search Engine to search specifically within the listed blogs. Ideally, this could be used by search marketers to create a well-rounded view of search expert opinions on particular subjects. To conduct a search, see Alister's post Introducing The Search Engine Marketing Search Engine or the SEM Search Page. Following is a review of a few searches conducted today, and a link to the SEW Forums thread to discuss the idea.

The first search conducted on 1/12/06 for “301 redirect” yielded the following top 5 results (descriptions omitted):

Permanent 301 Redirect - High Rankings Search Engine Optimization www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=5644

David Naylor » DaveN » 301 Redirect on page code301 Redirect. www.davidnaylor.co.uk/archives/2005/12/22/301-redirect-on-page-code/ - Similar pages

URL Redirect www.seocompany.ca/seo/url-redirect.html

301 Redirect Help! www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/11903.htm

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO » SEO advice: url… (tsk tsk Matt Cutts for that long title) www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/

By Comparison, a regular Google search yielded the following top 5:

301 Redirect - How to create Redirects301 www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php

Giving search engine spiders direction - 301 redirect www.tamingthebeast.net/articles3/spiders-301-redirect.htm

How to Do a 301 Redirect www.internetbasedmoms.com/seo/301-redirect.html

How to Redirect a Web Page Using a 301 Redirect www.isitebuild.com/301-redirect.htm

301 Redirect - 301 Permanent Redirect by Brian V. Bonini www.gnc-web-creations.com/301-redirect.htm

My Score: SEM Search 1, Google Search 0 Perhaps I am biased, but the 5 top results for that particular search yielded far more answers and thought-provocation that the Google results. However, the Google results may be of more use to “regular searchers” that do not have as much skill in SEO as SEM's may have. Note also that this search only yielded one Paid result when I conducted it. (Hmm wonder how many there will be in a few days after some SEM's read this?)

The next search for “duplicate content” yielded far more Sponsored results – 4 on top and 4 more on the side. Note also if you are concerned with every impression that an ad may receive, the Paid listings are repeated on the subsequent results pages. The top 3:

Duplicate Content Issues www.seroundtable.com/archives/003398.html

» Duplicate Content - Penalize Me, Please (yes the >> is in the Page Title…nice trick) www.pandia.com/sew/169-duplicate-content.html

Duplicate Content - Get it right or perish www.webmasterworld.com/google/3060898.htm

Regular Google results:

Duplicate Content Issues www.seroundtable.com/archives/003398.html

Avoiding Duplicate Content Penalties www.elixirsystems.com/seo_tips/avoiding-duplicate-content-penalty.php

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Deftly dealing with ... (ahem perhaps Webmaster Central Blog should get shorter Titles too?) googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/12/deftly-dealing-with-duplicate-content.html

I would give this one a tie. It is probably due to the fact that the term “duplicate content” is so often used by bloggers and in forums that the top three are all SEO-related in the regular results of each of these searches. It seems interesting and also a good sign that Google's Webmaster Central Blog does not show in the top three on the SEM-search feature (they are on the list). Obviously Google is not trying to manipulate any results in favor of their own blog.

I feel very confident that I will be using the SEM search blog almost exclusively to search for SEO and Paid Search topics in the near future. Thanks for this great tool, Alister, Lee and Google – I am pretty certain that you better get ready for lots of traffic from search marketers and students interested in the subject as well. In fact, if I was to advertise, student-populated sites would probably be my first target. After all, this will probably end up getting blogged failry heavily so those in the SEM community should find out very rapidly.

Please share your thoughts on this search function at the thread at SEW Forums, Google Custom Search For Search Marketers and Search Students

Posted by Chris Boggs at 10:13 AM | Permalink

October 25, 2006

Customized Search From Optevi And Microsoft

In writing about the launch of Google Custom Search Engine, I neglected to mention a couple of other companies doing similar things. The first one omitted from my post was consumer-focused customized search engine Optevi. Optevi allows users to choose from or create "bundles" of sites that influence search results.

The selections that users make affect the inclusion or prioritization of the websites presented in results. Those who may be initially confused by the interface can take the tour and hear founder Daniel Abrams explain how it works.

The second company I neglected to mention was Microsoft, which also offers the ability to build a customized search engine.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 11:33 AM | Permalink

October 23, 2006

Google Offers Customized Search With A Social Twist

Google has long distributed its search engine on third-party content sites. But until today you could only search the individual site or the Web -- and the branding on search results was practically all Google. Now Google will allow site owners to customize its search index and the look and feel of the results. Think industrial-strength Rollyo, with a twist of Swicki.

Google is releasing Google Custom Search Engine, which enables publishers to set up site search together with a limited index of sites (domains or sub-domains) that they specify, up to as many as 500,000 sites I was told. Google's Custom Search is "free," but comes with AdSense alongside search results. That requirement is exempted for governments, non-profits and educational institutions. Perhaps the most basic and obvious aspect of this is that it potentially creates more AdSense inventory for Google.

But what is perhaps most interesting about the new Custom Search is that publishers (large or small) can allow anyone or selected colleagues, friends or community members to contribute to that index. For example, if I own a site dedicated to stamp collecting and have a group of regular contributors or trusted readers I can allow those individuals to contribute their selections to this index. This gives the index the ability to evolve and grow over time -- and makes it "social."

Seen in a different way this is Google doing an interesting version of "social search." Google is distributing its engine and giving potentially thousands of human editors the ability to slice and dice its index in myriad specialized ways, creating vertical and sub-vertical search results. (All results are not new crawls of the included sites but rather slices of the larger Google index crawl.)

Political or ideological groups can use this to offer only those results that affirm their world views or screen out those that contradict it. And there will certainly be some of those uses. But equally sites could develop niche indexes that are more vertically rich than general Web search, drawing upon the specialized knowledge of their communities.

This project is largely under the umbrella of Google Co-op, which was launched with considerable fanfare earlier this year but confused many people. The project was intended as a way to be help Google offer deeper and more vertically authoritative results in different content categories, and a way to enable experts and publishers to contribute their content to Google search results -- if users subscribed to those "feeds."

Google hasn't formally indicated any specific plans regarding how it might or might not tap the collective wisdom of these Custom Search Engines. It's my guess that Google will find ways to leverage all the work that these publishers and human editors will do with the product to make its own search results better.

In September Phil Bradley profiled "custom search" offerings from Yahoo Search Builder, Eurekster, PSS! and Rollyo in two Search Day articles, "Your Search, Your Way" (part I, part II).

Postscript from Chris: I've got more on the new service, including instructions for building your own custom search, in today's SearchDay article, Google Launches Custom Search Engine Service.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 10:02 PM | Permalink

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