Google’s Promising, But Yahoo’s Doing, Cross Language Information Retrieval
May 17, 2007 at 12:05pm ET by Chris Sherman
Yesterday, Google announced that it will soon be launching a cross-language information retrieval (CLIR) feature. As Greg Sterling wrote:
“Search queries will be entered in the native language, translated into English and run against Google’s index. Any retrieved pages/sites will then be translated from English back into the native language. [Google's Udi] Manber said it “opens up the Web universally to the whole world.”
Translation in search isn’t really new—Yahoo has offered cross-translation search in a few languages since July 2005. If you can’t wait for Google’s CLIR which will be rolled out “soon,” you can try it at Yahoo Germany, Yahoo France and Yahoo Japan (I couldn’t find a link as I don’t speak Japanese); read more about Yahoo’s translator on the Yahoo Searchblog.
Share, Bookmark & Discuss This Article
More:
Keep Updated: News Via Email | News Via RSS Feed | News Via Twitter
See more stories like this in the Members Library! Check out the Yahoo: Translation sections of the Members Library where this story is filed. Members also get access to exclusive video content, a members-only weekly & monthly newsletter, plus more. Check out all the benefits!
2 COMMENTS ON Google’s Promising, But Yahoo’s Doing, Cross Language Information Retrieval
TOP STORIES
SEARCH NEWS BRIEFS
FEATURES & ANALYSIS
RECENT COMMNENTS
- Buy Advertising said " I've been experimenting with the merger of advertising and entertainment. I think that it can be bot"
- nickstamoulis said " Wow, this is very interesting, I was not aware of the the Google Books case at all, I will be sure t"
- nickstamoulis said " These are all very cool, my personal favorite 4th logo is the Ask.com layout, it is very creative!"
FREE DAILY SEARCH NEWS RECAP!
Stay on top of all the search news with our daily summary, the SearchCap newsletter. View a sample ›
STAY CURRENT THROUGHOUT THE DAY
Search Engine Land produces SMX, the Search Marketing Expo conference series. SMX events deliver the most comprehensive educational and networking experiences - whether you're just starting in search marketing or you're a seasoned expert.
SMX Web Site » | SMX Difference » | SMX News »
Join us at an upcoming SMX event:
- SMX Singapore - July 2-3, 2009
- SMX São Paulo - August 4-5
- SMX East - October 5-7, 2009
- SMX Stockholm - 12-13 October, 2009
- SMX Mexico - November 11, 2009
Learn more about search marketing with our free online webcasts and webinars from our sister site, Search Marketing Now. Upcoming online events include:
- How Large Offline Marketers Drive Superior Search Marketing Results - July 21, 2009
- Trademarks, Brand Terms and PPC Advertising: Updates You Must Know - July
22, 2009
- Attribution Management Buyers Guide - July 28, 2009
TRACK US SOCIALLY
- Wall Street Journal Recommended Reading
- Ad Age Power 150 Blog
- Technorati Top 100 Blog
- Techmeme Leaderboard Source
- Best Search Engine Community/Forum
Featured sites from our Blogroll
- Bloglines | News
- Adventures in Search | Elisabeth Osmeloski
- Inside AdSense
- Small Business SEM
- Mashable!
Get Your Search Engine Land
Premium Membership!
Become a premium member today and receive:
- Express commenting privileges & photo.
- Exclusive videos & newsletters.
- Discounts to our SMX conferences.
- Access to "How To" & Other Archives.
© 2009 Third Door Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Google, Yahoo & Microsoft logos trademark respective companies and used with permission.
Sorry, but the Yahoo! service doesn’t even come close to delivering what Google is promising. I went to Yahoo!’s German search interface and entered a query that brought up a site in English to ensure the access is there. I then searched for that site in Deutch-only sites and out of 4 results the site was not returned.
What Google said will happen with their service is, if you run a query in non-English language A and get only a few results, they’ll populate the results set with more pages drawn from other languages.
You don’t have to go to a special translation page and already know the URL. That’s a wholely different thing.
Both Yahoo! and Microsoft have gotten into the picture by claiming that they’re already doing some of the things Google announced. The claims are exaggerated.
AOL and A9 went much farther down this path than either Yahoo! or Microsoft. They’re both going to have to play catchup, not only to Google but also to AOL and A9 (and A9 search is currently powered by Live Search).
As Greg pointed out the translated queries will not be perfect. This may make phrase searching fairly worthless, but it is good to see Google opening up English content to the rest of the world. Of course the same could be said in reverse. If you had the ability to search for English phrases in a Japanese search engine maybe it would be easier to find Yahoo’s translator page :)
Still a step in the right direction for Google though.