1. High level site previews in search results
2. A multimedia search within a site function
3. A social layer which, among other things, allows Volunia users to share information and connect to one another

My sense is that it is the social layer which will be most appreciated by Volunia users. Let’s look at each.

Volunia Search Result Previews Offer A “Fly-Over” Site View

During his launch presentation, (in Italian, starts at 40 minute mark) Volunia founder Massimo Marchiori described search users as similar to chickens, trapped in cages and incapable of flying.

Users have been forced to choose search results by consulting one of those classic 10 item title, summary and link lists for too long. Wouldn’t it be nice if users were freed from their cages, and not only, were actually able to fly over a site, viewing a visual or a grid map, before committing to visit it?

Volunia, perhaps from volare, to fly, offers two types of high level site map previews, potentially freeing users from commitment tyranny. The first type, a visual map, aims to group areas of a site together in neighborhoods.

Figure 1: Volunia search result site fly-over: visual map

The second site preview map is in the form of a grid, reminiscent of computer folders. The expectation is that this format will be more useful to people searching from devices with small displays, like smartphones.

Figure 2: Volunia search result site fly-over: grid map

Interactive drill-down versions of the maps are also available from a Volunia menu bar which is visible while navigating a site. Site owners can improve the maps using a Volunia provided sitemap editor.

Figure 3: Volunia sitemap editor

Result previews aren’t exactly a new concept – Ask.com introduced their binoculars feature in 2004.

Where Volunia differs is in their choice to show a site map preview instead of a page preview. Many searches are indeed navigational in nature, one reason Google provides their sitelinks for some queries.

Volunia may be on to something.

Volunia Wants To Surface Multimedia Otherwise Hidden In A Site

Initially the primary focus in Web search was on textual documents, particularly the html kind, rich in semantic structure with their glorious title, heading and paragraph tags.

Oh, I didn’t mention the links between documents, did I? Other Web content formats, from PDF files to images and then video posed much greater obstacles to search engine indexing for a number of reasons.

Today, major search engines like Google offer navigation links to enable a user to search just images or video.

Ambitious searchers can usually find an advanced search syntax page which allows them to limit their searches to specific sites and file types, but for the most part major search engines have taken the “don’t make me think” approach, providing searchers with a blend of media types in search results, what Google calls universal search.

Volunia on the other hand wants to make it easy for a user to discover the multimedia richness hidden in sites like NASA by providing a very visible multimedia site search filter.

Figure 4: Volunia's multimedia search filter

The Web Has Come Alive, Says Volunia: Volunia’s Social Layer

It isn’t immediately clear how useful this feature will prove to be: after all, even if we want to follow the “wisdom of the crowd”, there’s no way to know if the site’s current visitors from Volunia are actually happy with their choice, nor would it be clear to what extent one searcher’s expectations for a page align with those already visiting that page.

The same visitor counts are also available as layers on the site navigation maps.

Seek & Meet: Interact With Other Volunia Users

What might arguably be Volunia’s greatest innovation is in letting fellow search travelers to a page interact with each other, what Volunia calls seek and meet, a feature which feels very reminiscent of Google’s now closed Sidewiki, albeit with two key differences. The first is that users can interact in realtime.

Figure 6: Volunia seek and meet interactive site chat

This birds of a feather real time information sharing might prove useful in a number of situations where people are looking for pre- and post- purchase information.

In the pre-purchase phase, a searcher might want to interact with other users to better understand the product or service they’re considering, not to mention to discover what alternatives others are considering.

Sometimes, it’s nice just to have confirmation that we’re making the right choice. In the post-purchase phase, searchers might be able to resolve support issues by consulting with other searchers – potentially reducing a company’s support costs while providing interactive peer to peer support 24 hours a day.

Each Volunia user is able to fill in a personal profile, much like any social network. The matchmaking possibilities are clearly endless, but I suspect it would be best if I don’t go there….

It isn’t rare to see glowing online reviews written by someone with a connection to a product or service, and equally harsh reviews from competitors or ex-employees with an ax to grind. It doesn’t take much to imagine people attempting to scam the system by introducing fake search users to interact with other searchers.

It remains to be seen if “seek and meet” really is something people will take to. Real time search collaboration will well depend on a critical mass of socially oriented searchers congregating on the same sites at the same time, no easy feat for a niche search engine.

Site owners will undoubtedly be pleased with the second apparent difference to Google’s Sidewiki: commenting can be disabled if desired, something Google didn’t allow.

Volunia, The Company, And A Few Volunia Tidbits

According to data published by Italian business paper Il Sole 24 Ore, Volunia was founded in 2008 by Massimo Marchiori and entrepreneur Mariano Pireddu, with Pireddu providing €2 million in funding to date. You might not immediately recognize Massimo Marchiori’s name, yet as an academic Massimo has been working on the theoretical issues of Web search for years.

His seminal 1997 paper, The Quest for Correct Information on the Web: Hyper Search Engines, would serve as one of the sources of inspiration for two Stanford students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who would acknowledge Marchiori’s contribution to their own work, Google.

During Volunia’s beta phase, over 100,000 people are being invited to become “power user” beta testers. The Volunia user interface is in 12 languages but Marchiori said during the launch presentation that the actual index coverage isn’t limited to those languages.

The Volunia team has ideas for Volunia “extensions”, i.e. new functionality, which will be added to the core, the hard part which has already been done. Advertising will be added to the service.

Marchiori Says Social Needs To Emerge In Search

In an introductory video, Massimo notes that Volunia stems from an idea he’s harbored for several years, an idea for a “different perspective of what the search engine of the future should be”. In the Il Sole 24 Ore report Massimo said “The Web is a living place, there’s information, but there’s also people. The social dimension, already present, just needs to emerge”.

Bing, which started incorporating social signals from Facebook in 2010, and Google, which launched its social search in 2009, would probably both argue that the social dimension to search has already emerged. So would upstart blekko and to a lessor degree, the Russian Yandex.

Armani, Chianti, Ferrari… And Volunia

Volunia is based in Italy, not in Silicon Valley as one might have guessed. Italy actually has a history of search engine excellence. Google may well power most Italian portals today, but the talent behind a now defunct Italian search engine, Arianna, led Ask.com to locate its European R&D headquarters in Pisa.

The Reality Check: Search Isn’t Easy: Volunia Faces Many Challenges

The basic task of a search engine, finding, indexing and retrieving the world’s information, is a complex one. The size of the Web is immense. There’s the problem of searcher intent: we know what we’re looking for when we type a brief search query, but those few words are often open to multiple interpretations.

Google has conditioned searchers to expect lightning speed and mostly fresh and relevant results. Volunia will have to perform well on all these fronts and navigate thorny issues of privacy.

Many start-ups have nonetheless tried to compete with Google and Bing. Some, like Cuil, ran out of funding before gathering significant market share; others like blekko, with far greater funding, are still working hard to win over hearts and minds. Whether Volunia will be able to pull this off remains to be seen.

Kick The Volunia Tires Yourself!

Volunia has a sign-up form for those who want to try it out. Go kick the tires and support the underdog! From messages that I’ve seen on Friendfeed, Twitter and Facebook, very few have actually had a chance to actually use Volunia, credentials are only dribbling out, most likely in an attempt to avoid problems similar to what Google faced when they first opened Google Analytics to too many people at once. I based the considerations made (and images) in this article on demo videos released by Volunia in order to give you a preview of what to expect.

Google was actually advertising Quality Rater jobs in late 2004, but today the Quality Raters don’t actually work for Google; they work for contractors such as Lionbridge, Leapforce, Butler Hill and possibly others. According to Lionbridge’s Internet Assessors Program job page, it has more than 4,500 people around the world rating search results. Leapforce’s website doesn’t indicate how many are in its program, but the job listings page includes opportunities with names like “Search Engine Evaluator,” “Social Search Engine Evaluator” and “Search Quality Judge.”

The Quality Raters’ work has become more widely known over the years thanks to a couple occasions when the guideline document that Google provides as part of their work has been leaked online. (See our posts in March 2008 and October 2011.) Webmasters have also noticed unique quality rater referral strings, indicating when one of the evaluators had visited a website.

After Jennifer Ledbetter posted about the program last fall, one current Quality Rater contacted Search Engine Land wanting to explain and clarify some of what’s been written and said about the program. Since then, with a couple breaks for holidays, I’ve traded numerous emails with this person … who, in addition to working for Lionbridge as a Quality Rater, also happens to work for a US-based search marketing agency.

To help ensure that this person, whom I’ve never met, is actually a Quality Rater, I asked for some screenshots from inside the website where the rating work is done. A couple of those are inserted within the interview, and here’s an image of the rating tasks home page showing an empty task queue.

Below, we talk about the hiring process, what Quality Raters look for when they examine websites, details of the different evaluation tasks they do and much more.

Q&A With A Google Search Quality Rater

SEL: Tell me how, when and why you got started with the Quality Rater program.

Quality Rater: I first started with Lionbridge in May of 2011. I was looking for work because my then current employer had told me I was taking a pay cut, so I needed a way to add income. I began searching all the normal places for job listings and came across one on Craigslist for a Quality Rater. It sounded cool, so I sent them my resume and they got back to me the next day saying they were excited to have me and if I could just pass a few simple tests I would be hired. That was the easy part.

Did the job listing specifically mention Google?

The listing didn’t mention anything about Google but as soon as they contacted me, they said I would be doing work related to Google.

So, you knew it was Google-related. At what point did you know that you’d be rating Google’s search results?

I knew before I got hired.

One thing I think the SEO community is missing is that this program has nothing to do with SEO or rankings. What this program does is help Google refine their algorithm. For example, the Side-by-Side tasks show the results as they are next to the results with the new algorithm change in them. Google doesn’t hire these raters to rate the web; they hire them to rate how they are doing in matching users queries with the best source of information.

Let’s talk about the hiring process. There’s some kind of test. Was it difficult?

I had six days to complete both parts of the test, with the second part opening after I passed the first test.

The tests turned out to be a 24-question, essay-response theoretical test that asked questions based on a PDF they had sent me. The questions were designed to test my ability to take the rules and apply them to situations that weren’t covered in the PDF. One that I vaguely remember was about spam and what to do if the site didn’t show any signs of spam, but it gave off a spammy feeling. It was the hardest test I have ever taken (for a reference point, I’m a Literature major who has taken graduate-level courses).

Only after having passed that test did I get to take the practical exam, which had more than 140 questions. This test had actual results that I had to rate. In order to be hired, I needed to score a 90% or higher in each of the four categories (which were Vital, Useful, Relevant and Off-Topic or Useless). Ideally, these represented the actual tasks that I would receive as a rater.

What were the questions like?

To give you example of questions asked:

Query [crispy cream], English (US)
URL: http://www.treblebooster.com/

It would then be up to me to visit the page — something that I want to stress, because blogs out there have been saying that a rater can rate the page without visiting it — decide if it fits the query and then assign a rating. It really is up to the rater, but the correct answer here is Useful because of the spelling. If the user had typed “Krispy Kreme,” than this result would be off-topic, but because it is “crispy cream,” and the guitars on this page are called Crispy Cream, this could be the page the user is wanting.

There were 143 just like that. It was good times.

Do you have any direct contact with anyone at Google, or do you only communicate with Lionbridge?

I have no contact with Google; it’s only Lionbridge.

After you get hired, is there some kind of training?

After I got hired there was a weekly, two-hour webinar along with training modules to complete. It was very intense training. During the first four weeks, I was required to comment on every rating I gave. These comments were then reviewed and commented on, giving me feedback on my ratings.

At what point do you get the raters’ handbook?

I got this the moment I got hired.  It basically is just a list of tasks we perform along with examples of how to rate them.

How does Lionbridge (or Google) describe the handbook?

They refer to it as the guidelines, not a handbook.

While we are on the subject of guidelines, one thing that really impressed me was how they have more than one rater looking at a site. I believe (I’m not sure, I’m going off the comments left by other raters) that there are about six raters looking at each task. If I rate something as useful but another rater says it’s off-topic, we must come to an agreement (through comments and debate) before the rating is submitted.

How much do you make and how often do you get paid?

I get paid $14.50/hour and I am paid once a month. I’m only able to work a max of 20 hours a week and a total max of 80 hours a month.

In one of the recent articles about the Quality Raters, it says you can only work for a year and then you have to wait three months before you can re-apply. Is that true?

I know they say you can only be a rater for a year, but everyone I’ve talked to says that, as long as they get their hours in and keep up the quality they are allowed to rate.

Is the schedule completely up to you, or do they give you assigned hours?

I schedule my own hours; as long as I get at least 10 but no more than 20, I stay on pretty good terms with them. They are very strict, but allow you to make up hours that you missed. So, if I only did four hours the first week, I could make up the hours by doing 16 hours the next week. Still only allowed 20 hours a week max, so if I miss more hours than I can make up, I’m out of luck.

They also tend to be really strict about their productivity goals. There is a certain number of tasks that I must complete every minute, depending on the task type. If I fall short of those goals, I am put on probation, during which I can not work. If my quality isn’t up to par, they fire me. It’s a very controlled work environment.

You mentioned there about getting fired “if my quality isn’t up to par.” How do you know if you’re doing a good job? It seems to me that in a lot of cases, rating search results is pretty subjective.

Results are subjective, but they have a quality center that shows your progress over time. They track how many returned results you have, how long it takes you to take care of a troubled rating, etc. While the rating is up to me, it has to be similar to what other raters have said. So, they track quality based on staying within the time period for rating tasks and the number of tasks you have returned to you.

They return tasks to you — what does that mean?

It means that there has been a disagreement on the rating and you have to go back in and come to an agreement with the other raters.

So, the rating of search results is a group project. Is it difficult to come to agreement?

Sometimes it’s harder to agree with raters, especially if they haven’t read the guideline like they should or if they are just starting out. However, after enough exchanges, they have a moderator come in and choose which rating matches it best. This moderator looks at our comments and makes a decision off of that.

How often does that happen in your experience?

Not very often. Most of the time if you give your reasoning for why you rated something one way, the other raters will agree with you. Most of the time, these types of disagreements occur when something is either slightly relevant or off-topic. Once in a while, someone will think that a page is spam that isn’t, or the other way around. I’ve only had a moderator step in once.

What do you know about the moderators? Are they Lionbridge employees?

Yes, they work for Lionbridge. From what I know of them, they used to be raters and then got promoted.

Do you only look at organic results, or are you also grading ads/PPC landing pages?

We look at any type of page on the web. Most of them are organic results, but some of the tasks are geared towards more ad-related topics.

Do you remember an example of an ad-related task?

Not really. Most of what they were was placement on the page, order in which they are presented and which one would I click, etc.

Do you look at Google Places results and other Universal results, like News or Videos?

Yes, we do. I can think of many tasks where it shows the map of what a user was looking at before they typed in a query, and we are then to rate the results of that query based on the map they were looking at. We also rated news based on how current it was, how relevant it was to the query, and if it came from a trustworthy source. As for videos, we had to watch the video to determine if it was a match for the query and rate it Useful, Relevant, Slightly Relevant, or Off-topic.

That part about Maps is really interesting. So, in that task, they were putting you in the middle of some process — you’re not just doing tasks that involve standalone searches, but sometimes taking into account what has happened before? Does that also happen with other searches, too?

Almost all of the tasks given have to do with user experience. Even with just the basic searches, we are given the user’s language and location before we can rate a page. It’s not about if a page fits a query, it’s about if a user would find the page useful. The Maps queries (called local queries) are the only ones that give what the user was looking at before searching, but we are supposed to keep in mind what a user is expecting to see from that query with every task type. For example, if someone was in Seattle and typed in the query “weather,” they would find a page showing the weather in Florida slightly relevant; however, someone in Tampa would find it useful.

Aside from the collective rating that you described above, do you ever have other communication with other raters? Are there official or unofficial places where you can chat back and forth?

There are lots of places — forums and such on the Lionbridge site — where raters can talk to each other, but I never interact with them. I was always stressed getting my hours in for the week, so I didn’t have time to mingle.

Can you share a specific example of one of your recent tasks?

I can’t think of the exact URLs I rated, but the keyword was “Nike Women’s Running Shoes.” It gave me a list of 20 URLs to rate (10 on each side) [Ed. note: he's referring to the "Side-by-Side" tasks mentioned earlier.] and I visited each one in order to determine whether they were vital, useful, relevant, slightly relevant, or useless. With a recognized brand name like that, it wasn’t hard to determine quality. For example, I think the Nike site was one of the options, so that would get a “vital” rating. I remember a couple of sites sold the shoes, so I gave them a “useful” rating and the Wikipedia entry on Nike was giving a rating of “slightly relevant” because I believe not many people searching for Nike Women’s Running Shoes want a history of the company.

Do you click through and review all ten results that show up for a given task?

I always click all the links simply because I’m not good enough to tell what the site is about by just reading its description. No one is good enough, that’s why they give us the links.

When you click through from a Google search result page, what are you looking for on the web page that you visit?

When looking at a site, I always check for spam signals first — keyword stuffing, hidden text, sneaky redirects, and the like. Once I know it’s a good site, I start to look at the page as a person who would type the query in Google and whether or not the content on the page would help me fulfill my needs. There are some tasks that ask about design and layout and the like, but for the normal URL rating or Side-by-Side tasks, I really just look at content and figure out if it would be a worthwhile page for a user to see.

Do you ever look at the source code or anything like that? Are Raters asked or trained to look at source code of the web pages being rated?

There is a quick primer on looking at the source code in the guidelines, nothing in depth. Basically we look for hidden keywords and other spammy tactics discussed in the guidelines.

You mentioned URL rating tasks and Side-by-Side tasks, but also some that involve design and layout. What are those tasks like?

Design tasks ask if the page has a good ratio of main content, supplemental content, and ads. It also asks about the overall design, is it easy to read, clear communication of information, and the like. It’s not about whether the page is beautiful or amazing, but whether or not the normal user could find what they need on the page without getting lost.

Do they give you a single web page and ask you to rate its design, or are you still going through a page of search results and then rating design?

They are specific tasks, not part of rating a URL.

Are spelling and grammar part of the design-based tasks?

Spelling and grammar are something we look at in all tasks (at least I do) but there’s not a ding for it.

When looking at design and layout, do your criteria change based on the type of site you’re looking at? For example, a web page on a big brand site might be expected to have a more professional design than some small business sites.

Like I said before, it’s more about the layout than the actual design. A company with a simple design would be rated just as well as a big company with a professional design as long as the information is clear and presented in a way that is easy to understand. To give you an example, a page where you can tell what the main content is with ads taking second page in the design would get a high rating. A page where the ads are confused with the main content, where you can’t tell the difference between content and ads would get a low rating.

How many different kinds of tasks are there? The guidelines I’ve seen begin by saying “you will work on many different types of rating projects.”

There are a lot of different tasks but they are all grouped under four main groups: URL, Side-by-Side, Experimental, and Result Review.  The big one there is the Experimental tasks which have a ton of different types of tasks in them. I’ve included a picture that lists all the task types and how long they are supposed to take, as well.

What are “Display Block” and “TTR” tasks?

Display Block, if I remember right, is a block of images that we rate as a whole rather than one at a time. TTR stands for Time to Rate, which is the baseline task they use to determine how long it should take to get a task done. It has all the different tasks in it, but instead of looking for accuracy it just cares about time.

Do they try to give you tasks related to topics and things you know about, or do you review pages about things you’re not very familiar with?

If someone types in “Best Dog Food for Puppies,” it’s not very hard to know what they are wanting and most queries have a fairly obvious meaning. However, once in a while I’ll get one that I can’t figure out and that’s when I do research to figure out what they want. For example, if someone queried “Release Liner,” I would need to do some research to figure out that it’s something used in cutting vinyl for signs and the like. At that point, I could determine whether a site is worthwhile or not. Granted, it’s not a perfect system but it works most of the time.

Are there specific industries/niches that show up more than others in your rating tasks?

Not that I have noticed.

How does your work affect Google’s search results — do they tell you anything about that?

They don’t talk about that; however, I know that what it really does is perfect the algorithm instead of changing actual live search results. I gathered this from the way that Side-by-Side are the most important tasks because they show the old algorithm versus a change in the algorithm that they are testing.

Are you an active Rater these days? How long do you think you’ll keep doing it?

I still rate on the weekends. I like doing it, so I’ll keep doing as long as I can.

Does Lionbridge and/or Google know that you work in the search marketing industry?

No. I got this job after I got the Lionbridge job.

Do you know of any other search marketers who are also Quality Raters?

I don’t know any personally, but I bet there aren’t a lot of us.

What’s your opinion of Google’s search results, and has that opinion changed since you became a Quality Rater?

I’ve always used Google as my “go to” search engine; however, since I became a rater, I’ve started using it more because I can see the behind-the-scenes improvements they are trying to make.

I like the idea that they have an army of actual people working towards bettering their engine. I know some people might think this wrong or even that raters have a negative effect on their rankings. Well, I can honestly say that they don’t. The whole point behind quality raters is not to rate the actual web, but rather rate how well Google is doing at providing quality results.

Almost every company has some form of quality control. Do people get upset that McDonald’s has someone check the quality of their food? I don’t see what Google does as any different than wanting to present the best possible product they can to their users.

So, to answer your question, yes, my opinion has changed for the better.

The end result confirmed what I had long anecdotally experienced – the difference in result relevancy between the engines was really not that much. In fact, Bing bested Google slightly.

Admittedly, my little test, with n=20, had the academic rigor of a Sarah Palin geography lesson. I was rightly skewered by some readers, including one who called the article a “shitpost”.  But the concept of quality parity between the search giants was so unexpected that some other media outlets picked up the post.

Among all the comments, this one, by Cathy Reisenwitz answered the big question, “if there is such little disparity in quality, why  is there such huge disparity in market share?”

“People aren’t switching to Bing because Bing needs to be much better than Google to make it worth the switch.”

Time to revisit the question – is there really a big quality difference between Google and Bing?  Over the past 12 months, many things in search have changed.

We’ve seen an unprecedented reversal in transparency from the engines, the explosion of social as a factor, modest Bing marketshare gains, stronger anti-competitive allegations and a (an?) hiybbprqag search dragnet.

Google vs. Bing:  Round II

The objective was to test and the search engines’ ability to deliver quality results, admitting that quality is a very subjective term, but includes things like timeliness, 1 click access to info, volume of content and lack of spam.

The Rules

I expanded the data set from 20 to 100 – collecting results over the past 4 months or so on real search terms from yours truly – (thus the inclusion of “clean crayon off a lcd t.v. screen“). Again, I included terms that were obscure, or could be difficult for engines to handle.

For example, “attorney Tom Brady” meant I was looking for an attorney named Tom Brady, but a logic-driven computer might confuse that for interest in the hunky quarterback’s legal troubles.

I also wanted to capture any personalization so stayed logged in to all accounts (which should have given Google a slight edge.) Paid results were not included in the evaluation set.

Scoring

• A number one result earned 5 points, top 3 earned 3 points and a page one showing earned 1.
• Failure to show up on page one cost an engine 5 points.
• 2 bonus points were awarded if the answer to the question was delivered on the SERP page.

An additional 2 bonus points were awarded if at least one of the top 3 results was from an authoritative site, as determined solely by yours truly . . . Wikipedia in, eHow out.

Sampling The Search Data

Interestingly, there were many queries that didn’t return any results. This was certainly due to user error (but is that really the user’s problem?). But in many cases, the content just simply (and surprisingly) didn’t exist on the Web.

For example, Salomon, sells a full line of ski boots in a highly competitive industry. The only explanation I could find for the stiffness index difference between the Salomon Impact 120 CS and the Salomon Impact 110 CS was by subtracting 110 from 120. Hmmmm – not much info to go on when dropping $500 on a pair of boots.

Likwise, the answer to “who was Kim Jong Un’s mother?” was surprisingly difficult to find.

I remain amazed that neither Google nor Bing has really figured out the people/address side of search – my default when looking up someone’s address is still a direct load of 411.com; despite the fact that site invariably tries to upsell me on some affiliate cyberstalking product.

This is particularly painful when updating a Christmas cards list. Perhaps this is the engines’ deliberate decision to mollify those concerned about privacy issues, but it is very frustrating.

I ran some searches that had an unwritten time element to them, like “wii new release rumors”. These searches are particularly difficult for engines to understand the users’ intent. In that case, I was wondering if I should delay a purchase, instead of researching past rumors about wii launches.

For the query, “distribution of type of search engine queries”, Google sent me to Wikipedia, but unfortunately the data on there cited studies from 2001. Likewise, “what percentage of people online use Twitter” – Google sent me to current data while the only results on page 1 from Bing went back to studies from 2010.

The most interesting result was for the query “perpetrators behind rick santorum googlebomb”. I’m not sure if it was the inclusion of “googlebomb” or “santorum”, but Bing initially gave me a no results page. (Although when I checked it again while writing this, they served up Danny’s post on Santorum.)

Another one that begs for a conspiracy theorist was Bing’s results for “google analytics import match type data from adwords”.

Page 1 was littered with anti-Google sentiment, including headers like: “Comparative Analysis:  Omniutre SiteCatalyst, Google Analytcs” and “STOP Google Analytics from Stealing your valuable Adwords Keyword data“, neither of which have anything to do with match types. Did we catch Bing favoring certain results? Or is this a natural occurence?

I could smell the impact of Panda in the results . . . . Bing seemed to heavily favor some weak UGC sites like eHow and a chacha, (which looks like the ugly lovechild of Entertainment Weekly and Quora.)

My favorite garbage content came on eHow – for “how do you change the water filter on a frigidaire professional series”.  “Step 1:  Open the freezer or refrigerator door . . . “

Having said that, Bing’s overall score was buoyed by a slick incorporation of a travel widget for all airline related queries.

The Results

Same as last year – a statistical dead heat; meaning overwhelming parity between the engines.

Google:  296

Bing:  274

While the marketshare and tech sentiment suggests the score should have looked like the college football West Virginia beatdown of Clemson, it looked much more like Romney squeaking out a win over Rick, errrrrrr Santorum in Iowa. And like Romney, this isn’t a win for Google.  I suspect we will continue to see Bing make very slow inroads during 2012.

One final note – you can see the raw data by downloading the Excel spreadsheet from my test here.

Remember, I ran the searches on my computer at work over a period of four months and you most likely won’t get the same exact results if you recreate some of these searches on your own. In fact, as I reran some queries while writing this story, I got completely different results.

The quiz tests your Search IQ with 20 questions about all aspects of search marketing, including paid, organic, and the occasional history question such as this one from a previous quiz: What was the name of Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s 1996 research project that laid the foundation for Google’s search engine?*

The winner must answer the most questions in the shortest amount of time.

Grand Prize is an iPad2 plus a free trip for two to SMX West in San Jose, California, Feb. 28 – March 1, 2012. The prize includes round-trip airfare, hotel accommodations, and two All Access Conference passes to SMX West 2012. The winner will also receive an award on stage from SMX West chair and Search Engine Land editor-in-chief Danny Sullivan, and will gain national recognition as the SMX Biggest Search Geek for 2012. Check out the conference agenda to see what you are playing for!

Feel like you’ve got what it takes? Then head on over to the SMX Biggest Search Geek Contest sponsored by Marin Software and get going — we’ll see you at SMX West!

PS: Early Bird rates for SMX West available until January 21 – register now and save $250 off full price. Don’t worry – if you win SMX Biggest Search Geek we’ll refund your registration fee ASAP!

*A. Backrub

The search results will become so hard to see that you will instinctively want to wipe the screen clean with your hand. Instead, use the mouse and it will help you wipe off the snow. Don’t have any patience for that? No worries, click the “Defrost” button at the top and the snow will melt away.

Finally, you can draw shapes in the snow and share them on Google+ with your friends.

Here is a video of it in action:

This should work in all modern browsers.

Related Stories:

• VIDEO: Google’s “Do A Barrel Roll” Search Is Latest Easter Egg
• Funny: Search For “Tilt” On Google

For example, two weeks ago, Wolfram|Alpha launched a new real-time flight tracking feature that displays information about flights flying close to your own location.

I’m a major Wolfram|Alpha user and supporter. However, since Wolfram is using GeoIP, which approximates location rather than using something more precise like GPS coordinates or ADS-B data (more on that below), accuracy can be a problem.

So here are several additional specialty web sites and mobile tools that provide both near real-time and historical data for tracking flights.

FlightAware

The web version of FlightAware is my all-time favorite resource for air traffic info, primarily for flights in the U.S. and Canada, or flights to and from both nations, though more and more data for flights, airlines and airports around the world are becoming available from FlightAware. Not only can you map many flights in the air (data is anywhere from real-time to delayed five minutes), but you can also slice and dice the data in a number of ways. The company has been around for more than five years.

For example:

• Flights headed to and from a specific airport
• Minute by minute air speed and lat/long
• Real time flight cancellations
• Flights in the air by type of aircraft
• Flights in the air by carrier

FlightAware provides some historical info for free. You can access even more if you’re a registered user (free) and, as you might expect, even more for a fee. They also offer a number of business services and open source software.

Also, I encourage you to take a look at the lengthy FAQ. It answers a lot of questions including where the data comes from.

Flight Aware Mobile

Apps are available for five different mobile device platforms as well as a mobile optimized site.

Since many mobile devices have GPS built in, FlightAware (and other apps) offer a “nearby” feature that provides much more precise info about planes nearby compared to what’s available using GeoIP (what Wolfram|Alpha uses).

Plane Finder

This service from pinkfroot provides air traffic info for flights globally, and the service is especially useful for flights outside of the U.S.

Plane Finder uses data sent directly from planes equipped with ADS-B technology monitored by ground stations. For more on how ADS-B works see Plane Finder FAQ and this extensive Wikipedia entry.

Plane Finder offers a free, near-real-time map at Planefinder.net. If nothing else, this free resource is great eye candy and will likely wow them in your office or at family events. The plane icons representing flight paths move as planes move.

Also, with two clicks you can begin tracking a flight using Google Earth.

One note: Plane Finder does not provide departure and arrival times.

Pinkfroot offers Plane Finder apps (fee-based) for iPhone, iPad, Android, and Windows Phone.

Finally, pinkfroot offers Plane Finder AR for iPad.

This is one super cool app. You can point iPad camera-phone at a plane in the sky or on the ground at an airport. If it’s transmitting the ADS-B, you’ll get details about the plane and flight. In other words, flight tracking plus augmented reality.

More Apps To Track Flights

Two additional aviation apps to mention.

First, Flightwise Tracker Pro (iOS). This free app does not provide arrival and departure times but does near real-time info using several types of maps, weather, a limited amount of historical data, nearby flight info, pictures of the aircraft, and aircraft registration information for some planes (although this feature will hopefully improve).

Second, FlightTrack, FlightTrack Pro, and FlightBoard.

These apps are available for several platforms from Mobiata, a company that was acquired by Expedia in 2010. They’re all excellent resources that look great and are worth the price. I love the many ways you can receive flight alerts from FlightTrack (and the company has a sense of humor—many alerts are accompanied by the familiar “ding” sound that you hear when you press a flight attendant call button on a commercial flight).

My favorite Mobiata app is FlightBoard. This app provides arrival and departure information (real-time) for flights at more than 1,400 airports around the world. It also looks great. In fact, its design is based in part on the flight information boards at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

Listening Live To Pilots & Air Traffic Controllers

A visit to LiveATC.net (they also have iOS and Android apps and mobile-optimized site) provides links to aviation radios in locations around world. An online archive of all recordings is available for 50 days after a flight.

One final thought: These resources are fantastic for educators wanting to enhance geography, social studies, and math lesson plans—kids of all ages will love tracking flights in real time.

NOTE: For the latest news on the 2011 Santa Tracker, see our post: Where’s Santa Claus? The 2011 Santa Tracker List, From NORAD To Your Phone!

Where’s Santa? Google & NORAD Know

Let’s start with Santa. Since it’s not Christmas Eve, the site has a countdown until it begins Santa tracking operations for 2011:

The site also has holiday video messages and “Countdown Village,” where kids try to discover which part of the village is busiest:

On Christmas Eve, the real action begins. You’ll be able to track Santa Claus on a map, through your phone and watch videos. Google’s blog post explains more, as does our story from last year. Here’s also highlight from last year:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bing’s Calendar Of Surprises

Over at Bing, the Bing Magical Holiday Calendar is brand new. Like an Advent calendar, you can “open” one of the many items each day for a suprise:

Currently, selecting the first day plays a video highlighting key events from the year:

The video often swoops back to put the subjects in the context of a search at Bing:

Bing doesn’t have the video up on either its own Bing Originals channel or its YouTube channel, but it’s pretty nice.

The Bing blog post about the calendar says that it’s also offering the chance to win prizes, but I saw nothing like that myself. Perhaps that will be part of future surprises under those numbers.

Bing also has some cute Christmas TV ads running. See our previous post about that:

• Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Search Engine? Bing’s New TV Ads Have A Ranking/Bass Stop-Motion Flavor.

As for the Google-NORAD Santa Tracker, be sure to return to that on Christmas Eve.  To really understand all you’ll be able to do, see our detailed review from last year:

• Where Is Santa Claus? The 2010 Santa Tracker List, From NORAD To Google Earth

Get the answers. Attend SMX Social Media Marketing next week in Scottsdale, AZ and you’ll hear from the pioneering internet marketers who are inventing social media marketing.

Learn the latest tactics and best-practices for Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. Whether you’re managing your brand’s reputation, driving traffic with content or buying paid ads, SMX Social Media Marketing is for you. Check out the agenda.

SMX Social Media Marketing is programmed by internet marketing experts Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman, the editorial leadership of Search Engine Land. They have been covering internet and search marketing for over a decade, and organizing events marketers have raved about nearly as long.

Don’t Miss Conference, Still Time to Attend

SMX Social Media Marketing will be held next Monday and Tuesday December 5-6. Compared to other cities, Phoenix-area flights and hotels are inexpensive. So is your conference ticket. Just $1295 for two days of conference sessions, networking and the conveniences that make SMX conferences exceptional: free Wifi, breakfast, hot lunches, and all day snacks. You’ll be satisfied. We guarantee it.

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Helpful Links:

• Where to stay and get great conference rates
• Need to get approval to attend? Use our Get Your Boss Onboard form
• Want to send your team? Save up to 20% with our group rates

The Microsoft search engine’s newest video spots play off the classic Rankin/Bass Christmas TV specials, updating the plot and inserting Bing into the action.

One spot shows the Abominable Snow Monster trying to roar ferociously but evoking laughter rather than fear from those who hear him. So, he returns to his cave and searches for “scary monster,” watching and listening to videos until he perfects his frightening roar technique:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another shows Abominable, prospector Yukon Cornelius and Hermey use Bing to find an island vacation destination. They end up at the Island of Misfit Toys:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another spot has Hermey searching for videos and finds one showing Santa and Mrs. Claus playing with bubble wrap:

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the last spot, Yukon Cornelius complains of back pain from pulling his sled, and Hermey uses his smartphone to find a remedy — hot yoga.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The videos were produced by Bent Image Labs, a Portland, Oregon, company specializing in stop motion animation that has previously done “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”-themed work for Saturday Night Live and Aflac.

The Bing spots are viewable online and will appear in holiday TV programming throughout the season, including specials like “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” “Frosty the Snowman,” and “South Park Christmas.” They will also be seen during previews in advance of upcoming feature films in theaters, including “Arthur Christmas,” “The Muppets,” and “Happy Feet Two.”

Google Music Vs. Android Market

Google Music is Google’s cloud-based music service. Until today, you could listen to a few songs it had in there already offered for free, or anything that you uploaded from your own computer, but you couldn’t buy new music to put into your “locker” directly.

That was part of today’s big news. Now you can buy music through Google Music. Except that really, you can’t. You buy music through the new music store that’s part of Android Market, which in turn you can bring into Google Music.

If you use iTunes, think of it this way:

• iTunes = Google Music
• iTunes Store = Android Market

Sharing From Google Music

Now if you’re like me, you may have listened to or read about today’s Google Music launch event and come away thinking there was a way for you to share music from Google Music. There is, but only if you’ve purchased a song.

Consider this song within my own Google Music collection, 100 Years from Five For Fighting:

I’ve right clicked on the song, but there’s no option to share. That’s because I didn’t purchase it from the Android Market. Now consider this:

See the second option at the bottom,”Share song.” I get this because this is a song I purchased from Android Market. When you click on it, you get the option to share:

By the way, when I originally started this story a few hours after Google Music launched, I didn’t see a sharing option even for my purchased songs. That seems to have since been switched on. If you don’t see it yourself, it could be that it hasn’t quite rolled out.

Google Music Doesn’t Link Songs To Android Market

How do you share songs you already own but didn’t get from the Android Market? Unfortunately, there’s no easy way.

See that “Shop this artist” link in the options above? It might help if that took you to the page for the song in Android Market, where you could then share the song.

Instead, it takes me to a strange sub-set of Google Shopping, where I can see prices from a variety of vendors for the artist (not for the actual song):

It’s kind of nice that Google Music isn’t hard-wired into forcing purchases from Android Market, but the user experience could be better. And to the main point, it means that if you want to share a song you already have in Google Music but purchased elsewhere, Google Music offers no extra help.

Sharing Samples From Android Market

So how about sharing from within Android Market? Find the song either listed on the song’s own page or in the track list of its album, such as here for Teenage Dream:

 Hover your mouse next to the time length of the song, and you’ll see a “Share” button appear, as the red arrow above points to. Click on this, and a share box will appear:

Because you haven’t purchased the song, you’ll share only a sample (I’ve seen anywhere from 30 seconds to 1:30 being shared). Here’s how it looks, when you’re done:

I’ve seen conflicting reports about whether those outside the US can hear these previews at all. Google Music itself is only open to those in the US.

Sharing Full Songs From Android Market

How about sharing full songs? That’s possible, but only if you actually buy a song. In that case, after you’ve made your purchase, you’ll get this option:

Use the Share button that the red arrow above points to, and you’ll get a sharing dialog similar to what I showed above. The difference is that after you share, anyone who is in one of your Google+ circles can listen to the entire song once:

See how it says “Listen Once For Free” as opposed to “Listen To Preview,” as with my earlier example? If someone’s not in one of your circles, then they’ll see the preview option, even though you already own the song.

Once you’ve purchased the song through Android Market, you can go back to the song and share it again, if you decide to at a later time. You can also do this within Google Music, by clicking on the purchased song, as I explained above.

Could Be Better, Could Be Worse

I was fairly annoyed when I realized that songs already in my library, that hadn’t been purchased through Android Market, couldn’t be shared. There’s no good reason for this. All Google Music needs to do is match up songs to their pages in Android Market, and it could be done.

Indeed, consider this:

That’s me using Ping from within Apple’s iTunes to share a song with my friends. I didn’t buy the song from Apple. Instead, I’d purchased it from Amazon. But Apple still manages to figure out the right song and generate a link that shares it this way:

I’m not limited to sharing only songs that I’ve purchased, which is nice. But then again, the link that I generated and shared out to places like Twitter brings up this fairly unfriendly response:

Yeah, no thanks. Who wants to share music outside of iTunes when people are going to get an annoying, unfriendly message that a bloated software app now has to launch.

Of course, you could turn to something like Spotify, which has music sharing, such as helping you send out a tweet:

But then the follow-through disappoints. Again, software is demanded:

On Facebook, where I gave up on Spotify after it wanted to share anything I was listening to without pause, a quick revisit today suggests that you still need to listen to the sample in the Spotify application, rather than on the web.

Compared to all this, if you want to share the occasional song, creating a Google+ account just to find and share samples from Android Market is pretty nice. That’s because once you share that to Google Plus, you can in turn take that Google+ link and share to Twitter or Facebook if you wanted, so that friends in those places could listen, at least to the sample:

But then again, without a Google Music account, without an Android Market account, you could do the same thing through Amazon:

You don’t even need an Amazon account to do that, nor does someone who wants to hear the sample need an Amazon account to listen.

Hopefully, Google Music will improve, allowing you to share any song, not just purchased ones. We’ll see. If you want to try sharing yourself, a good place to start is this page at Android Market that lists many free songs.

By the way, if you use the iPhone, definitely check out Soundtracking. It makes it very easy to share whatever you’re currently listening to out to Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. Here’s an example of a song I shared on Twitter and the landing page it takes you to, where you can hear a short sample (warning, explicit lyrics!).

Google Makes Music Social, Skips Search

While we wait, pause a moment to reflect on Google Music Search 2.0, launched back in Oct. 2009. That allowed anyone to search for a song from within Google Search and listen to samples or full-length clips of songs.

Official: Google Stops The Music Search covers how that service was formally made “unavailable” earlier this year while Google made “some updates” to the service.

It’s disappointing that with the new Google Music now launched to the public, there was apparently no provision made for integrating some of its features — or the music preview features of Android Market — to restore what was taken away from search.