The mobile-PC cross-pollination continued yesterday as Foursquare brought some of those enhanced search capabilities back to its iPhone and Android mobile apps. Now you can filter mobile search results by places “I’ve been,” “new to me” or places “my friends have been.”

In addition Foursquare made it easier to set or change your location. You can now drag, pinch, double tap and zoom the map and find places within the desired neighborhood or city more quickly and easily.

The release notes also indicate that the company has introduced “improved handling of duplicate venues” and restaurant “menus and hours.”

Related Entries

• Foursquare Launches “Personalized Search For The Real World”
• Foursquare Redesign Creates Expanded Opportunities For Users, Advertisers
• Foursquare: More Than Fun & Games, A Potent Local Search Tool
• Foursquare Adds ‘Lists’ Functionality For Profiles & Pages
• Foursquare Launches ‘Self-Serve’ Pages For Businesses
• Foursquare & American Express Specials Rolled Out Nationwide
• Foursquare 3.0 Aims To “Redefine Loyalty”

Wolfram|Alpha is by no means a mainstream search engine, yet it has managed to establish something of a beachhead and has a growing fan base. It owes some of that to Apple’s Siri, which chose Wolfram|Alpha as one of two structured data providers that tie directly into the personal assistant. The other is Yelp.

Wolfram|Alpha gets about 3.7 million daily page views and 17.3 visits per month in the US, according to Alexa data the site itself provides when you ask it about its own traffic.

According to an article in the New York Times tied to the Wolfram|Alpha Pro launch, “Siri accounts for about a quarter of the queries fielded by Wolfram Alpha.” However the company receives no branding on those results. Here are some examples of how Siri presents Wolfram|Alpha content:

Apple and Siri’s relationship with Yelp and Wolfram|Alpha are a kind of template for how the personal assistant will likely work with other third party data providers in the future.

Since Wolfram|Alpha launched in 2009, I’ve often wondered if the company would allow users to use their extremely powerful computing infrastructure to analyze their own data along with data sets available on the open web.

Well, they have and that’s what Wolfram|Alpha Pro is all about. As I wrote a few week’s ago, I’m a frequent W|A user and long-time admirer of the company and it’s founder, Stephen Wolfram. I think they’ve scored again.

The service has an introductory rate of $4.99/month with a reduced rate of $2.99/month for students. The company offers pricing for the enterprise. So, what does this initial launch offer?

Wolfram|Alpha Pro: Key Features

• Ability to Analyze Your Own Datasets Input of upload a data set and let Wolfram’s technology automatically recognize and analyze the data. For example, a timeline of your email, your credit card expenses, or a data set obtained from Data.gov.

• Data in more than 60 file formats can be uploaded and analyzed. From an XLS spreadsheet to an HTML document to the audio in a WAV file. Image files (in many formats) can also be analyzed. As you would expect, many science and math formats are also included.

• Access to extended keyboards like the one available with the Wolfram|Alpha mobile apps.

• Visualized and interactive results using the CDF (computational data format) that Wolfram launched last July.

What’s not available today is the ability to publish and compare, comment on or share results. According to Stephen Wolfram, these options are forthcoming.

I’ll can say now that while some of what Wolfram|Alpha Pro has to offer might not be for everybody today it very likely will be in the future as the amount of data available to analyze (personal data and publicly available datasets) continues to skyrocket.

In other words, Wolfram|Alpha pro is getting in on the ground floor of personal data analysis with a powerful but at the same time very easy to use tool that will appeal to everyone as data analysis moves out of the lab and office and into just about everyplace else.

Postscript by Barry Schwartz: On February 8th, Stephen Wolfram posted more details about this Pro offering on their blog.

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.

I once sat in front of a dark, Netflix-enabled flat-screen, watching Netflix on my iPhone. It was just easier, and I had it on, and I could switch back and forth with Facebook, and… ok, maybe I have a problem!

In any event, our personal fascination with mobile phones shouldn’t dictate our work decisions. And one question that needs deciding more and more these days is around mobile search: is there a mobile audience for this particular client? And how do we measure the success of our efforts to get a mobile website in front of mobile searchers?

Of course, our past experience with desktop search gives us a great starting point. Search volumes, traffic, and even rankings are useful metrics, both here and there. But mobile SEO brings some special considerations, not least of which is credibility: we need to prove that mobile SEO provides value.

To that end, I’ve been working on a set of metrics to help me get some perspectives on these questions. These aren’t replacements for visitor counts or conversions – rather, think of them as supplements to help us compare the new and somewhat unfamiliar mobile SEO data to our tried-and-true desktop data.

Today we’ll look at one of the most useful, particularly in the early stages of a campaign.

The Mobile Ratio

One of the challenges in getting started with mobile search is proving the value of your efforts: is anyone using a phone to search for this client’s products or services?

To answer that with a simple, understandable metric, I’ve added a Mobile Ratio to the keyword research process. Basically, I’ll start by taking a desktop keyword list, and running the numbers to add mobile figures alongside. I’ll also expand the list if I find any mobile-specific keywords that seem interesting.

Then I’ll take the desktop and mobile volumes, and divide one into the other to compute the Mobile Ratio. For example, if I have a Mobile Ratio of 10, then I can tell the client that for every ten desktop searchers, we have the opportunity to reach one mobile searcher.

Straightforward statements like that allow a client to get their bearings, and start to form a mental model of what mobile means to them. Maybe they’d really like to add another one-tenth to their reach. Or maybe they have easier ways of getting access to those extra eyeballs. Either way, they now have some useful infomation on which to base a decision.

Getting Granular

Doing this at both the keyword and aggregate level allows you to compare and contrast mobile activity for different keywords. So if my aggregate Mobile Ratio is 10, but I have a group of keywords that have ratios in the 5-6 range, then I know these keywords are mobile-heavy: they are more likely to be of interest to mobile users.

This is key info for site-planning and budgeting activities, as it can provide a business justfication for heavying-up on landing pages that address those keywords. Likely examples of keywords that are mobile-heavy could include coupon keywords, or keywords that include a location name.

The Mobile Ratio lets you identify keywords that are mobile-heavy. Here, "pocket knife" searches are strong, while branded searches ("Victorinox") are relatively light. Good inputs for planning a mobile content strategy. (Not one of my clients, by the way.)

Driving Strategy

In the end, the Mobile Ratio doesn’t create another data point. Instead, it offers a more intuitive way of looking at the data you already have, turning it into a KPI that you can use to make decisions about your mobile marketing plans.

In upcoming articles, we’ll take a look at some other useful metrics for managing mobile SEO.

Yandex . . . has purchased a license for digital maps supplied by the leading global location content provider, NAVTEQ. These digital maps will be used in the development of a detailed world map for the Yandex.Maps service.

NAVTEQ has provided Yandex with maps from all over the world, including highly detailed maps of Europe, North America, Australia and developed countries in Asia. These maps show intercity motorways, urban traffic networks, streets and buildings. Yandex.Maps will gradually add new content both to its desktop version and to its mobile application that supports all major platforms. Using the Yandex.Maps API, website owners can embed maps of various countries into their resources.

The company has been running a test with Navteq data in Turkey. Above is an image from Yandex Maps (pre-Navteq) of the San Francisco Bay Area. Yandex now joins Bing and Yahoo in heavily or totally relying on map data from the Nokia subsidiary.

The reliance of major search engines like Bing, Yahoo and Yandex on Navteq for mapping data sets up a kind of global divide of sorts among mapping sites “powered by” Navteq and Google Maps (and those in its network). There are other, independent mapping providers out there like deCarta as well.

Yandex recently lead a $30 million round in independent search engine Blekko. Yandex operates in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Turkey and has a presence in Palo Alto, where its Yandex Labs is based.

Related Entries

• Nokia Now “Powering” Bing Maps
• Bing Maps To Be Powered (Replaced) By Nokia?
• Powered By Nokia, The New Yahoo Maps Goes Live
• Microsoft vs. Google: Street Photography Rigs Compared
• Bing To Become Default Search (And Maps) On RIM BlackBerry Devices
• Bing Maps Overhauls Interface, Exposes Map Apps To All
• Yandex Expands To Turkey, First Shots Fired In New Google, Baidu & Yandex Stand Off
• Yandex, Facebook Strike A Deal For Status Updates
• Yandex Launches English-Language Version Its Webmaster Tools

FAA Mobile Web App

• Since it’s a mobile app nothing to download
• Lookup aircraft tail numbers, get airport status, and several tools for aviators
• Learn more
• Direct link to FAA Mobile App

New From The IRS: Exempt Organizations Select Check

• Learn if an organization has tax exempt status or if that status has been revoked
• Data sets can also be downloaded
• Learn more
• Direct link to Database

USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map

• From the U.S. Department of Agriculture
• Use Zip Code for local info
• Learn more
• Direct link to Interactive Map

Interactive Access to CDC’s HIV and STD Data

• Uses GIS Software
• Download/export data
• Interactive charts, graphs, and of course maps
• Learn more
• Direct link to New Interactive Resource

National Archives Transcription Pilot Project

• Crowdsourcing from the Feds!
• Help transcribe about 1000 pages from 300 documents
• Documents date back to late 18th century
• Learn more
• Direct link to Pilot Project

Maplight.org Company Pages

• MapLight is an excellent resource for political contribution info
• New “Company Pages” feature aggregate contribution data, recent articles, positions on legislation and more
• Currently available for U.S. Congress, California legislature, and Wisconsin legislature
• Remember, this is a beta resource. Pages for some companies not yet available.
• Learn more
• Direct link to Company Pages Interface

Global Think Tank Directory

• From the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania
• More than 6500 institutions included in the directory
• Search or browse by continent and country
• Direct link to Global Think Tank Directoryy

So, queries like:

• Tom Brady Joe Flacco Passing Yards
• 49ers 2011
• New York Giants field goal attempts, field goals made
• Chicago Bears Record 1985
• Ray Lewis Tackles
• Detroit Lions vs. Denver Broncos Passing Yards

all return results that often include visual elements like a graph.

Statistical data for every NFL team and every NFL player back to 1985 are available and the number of statistics and the combinations you can create are endless.

What’s available? This page lists all of the categories of stats available. A guide like this is something new for Wolfram|Alpha and I’m very happy to see it. Hopefully, more of these guides are in the works.

Where Is The Data Coming From?

It’s one thing to provide access to statistics, but it’s quite another to make sure they come from a reliable source.

Wolfram has partnered with STATS based in Chicago’s northern suburbs. STATS is the leading provider of sports data. It’s you follow a sport or sports, play in fantasy leagues, or just look at the latest scores, you’ve seen and used their services.

STATS has been around since 1981 and I’ve been watching them grow ever since. The STATS first office was only a few blocks from where I grew up. Currently, the company is owned jointly by the Associated Press and News Corp.

The one caveat (at least for now) is that NFL statistics are NOT real-time or near real-time. In other words, if you’re watching the games on Sunday, the stats accessible via Wolfram|Alpha will not be updated after every completed pass, made field goal, etc. Currently, NFL data is updated weekly.

Hopefully, this will change by next season and real-time data will be available. Also, I would love to see all-time statistics included in the database. For example, all-time NFL rushing leaders, all-time Chargers passing leaders, all-time Bears vs. Lions record, etc.

Wolfram will also be working with STATS to provide the same type of info for other sports including baseball and basketball.

Wolfram|Alpha’s Largest Hurdle

I said even before Wolfram|Alpha launched that the company’s biggest challenge is not the technology or data sources. They’re experts in this area and continue to do a great job.

The biggest obstacle Wolfram faces is marketing. Marketing Wolfram|Alpha in a time when most people live in a Google or Bing-centric world, is a serious challenge. Of course, this is challenge is one for many companies.

Luckily, after many years, I’m slowly starting to see more people open to trying something different and adding more tools to their search toolkit.

Of course, what search tool you use and when you use it all depends on what you’re looking for and your information need. More and more often, Wolfram delivers not only the data you need but also visualizations and related material.

Comparing Wolfram|Alpha to other search tools can be unfair. It’s not a general purpose search tool but rather a “fact engine” or interactive reference resource that you can query using natural language using data from curated and trusted sources.

I speak from experience that once people understand what Wolfram can and cannot do then see practical examples of what Wolfram has to offer, they’re often hooked.

By adding NFL statistics (and soon more sports statistics) Wolfram|Alpha has powerful ammo to reach out to new users with and not only provide them authoritative American football statistics but also show them all that their product has to offer.

Exciting!

An easy to use but powerful web tool (it’s also free) named PolitickerUSA can save you a lot of time and effort informing you as to what members of congress are tweeting about right now.

In one location you can quickly access the non-stop real-time stream of tweets from Senators, Reps, President Obama, governors, and a few of the republican presidential candidates.

You can also filter the entire PolitickerUSA stream of tweets using a hashtag or word into the filter box. You do not have to click <enter>.

But Wait, There’s More

Here are a few other things you can do with PolitickerUSA.

1. Clicking any word or hashtag in a word cloud will run a search on Twitter for that hashatag or word.

2. Politician Trends allows you to quickly isolate and visualize the latest tweets from a specific politician.

3. A table of all politicians accessible using PolitickerUSA is available linking to their Twitter stream and providing their handle.

Kudos to the PolitickerUSA developer Brian for making the site available. You can read more about how he built the site here.

You’ll now see an Explore button or tab in the upper right on the website. It’s obviously been on the mobile app for some time but not on the site until today. Because I was so used to seeing Explore on the mobile client I didn’t remember it wasn’t previously available on the website until Foursquare pointed that fact out.

Users can now search on categories or business names. You can also browse categories.

Where Foursquare’s new search capability shines, however, is on highly specific queries. Foursquare told me that all the “Tips” content is now searchable, so obscure or very specific information can be discovered in results.

Below is the result of a (not so obscure) search for “fish tacos” in New York. I get to see the full set of results from Foursquare users who’ve talked about places with fish tacos.

Yet I can also drill down on these places with four filters:

• “I haven’t been to yet”
• “I have been to before”
• “My friends have been to”
• “Have Foursquare specials”

The filters enable users to see only those results that, for example, have Foursquare specials or where my Foursquare contacts have gone before. The value and benefits of these filters are self-evident. Foursquare said it may add other filters over time after it sees how users interact with these.

The existence of the new Explore filters and features will engage users and reward them for greater participation. Where badges created an incentive system for some people to use Foursquare in the past, these search-related tools offer a new set of practical incentives for people to use Foursquare and benefit from increased participation.

As I’ve said in the past, I’m very impressed by the way that Foursquare has evolved and transformed itself from a geeky “game” into a much more mainstream product — and now local search utility.

Related Entries

• Foursquare Redesign Creates Expanded Opportunities For Users, Advertisers
• Foursquare: More Than Fun & Games, A Potent Local Search Tool
• Foursquare Adds ‘Lists’ Functionality For Profiles & Pages
• Foursquare Launches ‘Self-Serve’ Pages For Businesses
• Foursquare & American Express Specials Rolled Out Nationwide
• Foursquare 3.0 Aims To “Redefine Loyalty”
• Report: 7 Percent Of Mobile Internet Users Have Checked Out Location-Based Services
• Euclid Offers “Google Analytics For The Real World”