An extraordinary day of breaking news on Thursday led to record-breaking traffic spikes as people searched online for information about the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and, especially, Michael Jackson. And just like their counterparts in traditional media, the news divisions of Google, Yahoo, and Bing responded with sometimes extraordinary measures to ensure they were giving searchers the most accurate and current news available. Below, a look not only at the extreme traffic spikes that took place, but also an insider's look at what happened as each search engine -- and Wikipedia -- grappled w [...]

Related Topics: Facebook | Features: Analysis | Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | Search Engines: News Search Engines | Search Engines: Wikipedia | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News | Twitter | Yahoo: News | Yahoo: Search

News.com reports that Wikia Search is giving up and closing up shop. Search Wikia launched an alpha release in January 2008, where Chris Sherman gave it a poor review. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikia, told News.com "It was going to take at least an another year to two before it's usable by the public, and we can't afford that right now." Due to the economy and the need to get to "profitability" right now, Wikia Search needs to shut down. Two full-time employees will be out of a job due to the decision. Wales said that Wikia Search only had 10,000 unique users a month over the past six mo [...]

Related Topics: Search Engines: Answer Search Engines | Search Engines: Search Wikia | Search Engines: Social Search Engines | Search Engines: Wikipedia

Ars Technica reports that Microsoft has decided to discontinue their encyclopedia software, Encarta. Both the MSN Encarta reference Web sites as well as its Encarta software will be shut down. Microsoft said: On October 31, 2009, MSN® Encarta® Web sites worldwide will be discontinued, with the exception of Encarta Japan, which will be discontinued on December 31, 2009. Additionally, Microsoft will cease to sell Microsoft Student and Encarta Premium software products worldwide by June 2009. We understand that Encarta users may have questions regarding this announcement so we have prepare [...]

Related Topics: Search Engines: Academic Search Engines | Search Engines: Answer Search Engines | Search Engines: Wikipedia

Like many people, I got a chuckle out of Jon Stewart's recent send-up of Twitter on the Daily Show. If you haven't seen it, the clip is below. I also thought it went nicely with the clip from Stephen Colbert on Wikipedia from back in 2006. So enjoy the double feature. Now if we can just get either of them to talk about Google. Jon Stewart on Twitter: And here's Stephen Colbert on Wikipedia and "wikialilty." [...]

Related Topics: Search & Society: General | Search Engines: Wikipedia | Twitter

Yahoo has just announced that the Wikipedia SearchMonkey App is now turned on by default for all Yahoo search users. Wikipedia becomes the sixth app that all Yahoo searchers will see, joining LinkedIn, Yelp, Yahoo Local, Citysearch, and Zagat. SearchMonkey adds enhanced content to the search results page. The Wikipedia app includes a snippet of text from the Wikipedia article summary, deep links to the first four sections of the article, and a photo if the article has one. Here's a screenshot that Yahoo provided showing the Wikipedia app in action: With the new app, Yahoo now joins G [...]

Related Topics: Search Engines: Wikipedia | Search Features: Enhanced Listings | Top News | Yahoo: Search | Yahoo: Search Monkey