This morning, Foursquare is rolling out version 6.0 of its app. It puts a new search box "front and center" at the top of the screen to emphasize the local search capabilities of the app. It also adds or enhances other features to make it easier to find places and things to do. The company is using all its social and check-in data to generate greater utility, as well as create a discovery or recommendations edge over Yelp and Facebook's relatively new Nearby/Local Search. Below is the previous version of the app, which featured tabs at the bottom. Search was available under Explore and v [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Foursquare | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Top News

Developed by John Matherly, Shodan is a search engine designed to help users find certain pieces of software, determine which applications are most popular, identify anonymous FTP servers, or investigate new vulnerabilities and what hosts they could infect. It also serves as a window into millions of unsecured online connections. According to an article on CNN Money, Shodan runs nonstop, collecting data from approximately 500 million connected devices and services each month. Through a simple search on Shodan, a user can identify a number of systems that either have no security measures in [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Legal: Crawling & Indexing | Legal: Privacy | Legal: Security | Search & Society | Search Engines | Search Engines: Meta Search Engines | Search Features: Safety

The data analytics firm Chitika has created an infographic showing search volume for the final four teams in this weekend's NCAA basketball championship tournament. If search interest has any influence on game results, we'll all be watching the University of Louisville men's basketball team beating Michigan next Monday night at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. Louisville also ranks No. 1 for most searched teams according to Bing's Search Blog. Leading the list of most searched players is Kevin Ware, the Louisville player who suffered a severe lower leg injury during the Louisville-Duke game on [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Search Engines | Stats: General | Stats: Popularity

Google Public Alerts has broadened its service through a new partnership with Nixle, a company that contracts with public safety agencies to send alerts via cellphones and social media networks. Police, fire, and emergency management agency alerts will now appear when a Google search or a Google Maps search is performed in an area with an active emergency alert in effect. "Google Public Alerts provides people with information about how to respond in emergency situations," said Jonathan Betz, engineering manager for Google Crisis Response. "Nixle enables local response agencies to get tha [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: Analysis | Google: Alerts | Search Engines: Disasters | Top News

It seems people have strong feelings for or against responsive Web design. My thanks to those with open minds who responded to last month’s column on SEO problems with responsive Web design with either praise or reasonable criticism. While I answered the most common criticisms already, one recent comment from Google’s John Mueller stood out to me. When he posted Luke Wroblewski’s results of sites that have seen success with responsive Web design to Google+ with the caption #rwd #ftw, I wanted to remind Google and other responsive Web design advocates that responsive Web design, whil [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Mobile | Google: SEO | Mobile Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | SEO: Mobile Search

If job listings are any indication, Apple remains committed to improving its iOS Maps app. As the iDownload Blog spotted, Apple currently has seven job listings for what's called a "Maps Ground Truth Manager." The positions are based around the world -- U.S., Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, Asia-Pacific, the Americas and Middle East/Africa. The job description explains that these Ground Truth Managers will be responsible for improving and ensuring the accuracy of Apple Maps. The Maps team is searching for a manager for the team responsible for regional map quality and ground trut [...]

Related Topics: Apple: Maps | Channel: Local | Features: Analysis | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Top News

Search continues to shift away from the desktop toward mobile devices. That's one of the conclusions of the just-released Neustar Localeze/15miles/comScore Local Search Study, which is now in its sixth year. This year's study involves a sample of more than 3,000 U.S. adults that say they use the Internet to search for local businesses. Results aren't available online yet, but we'll add a link here when they are. The total number of U.S. searchers using mobile phones grew 26 percent between March 2012 and December 2012, from 90.1 million to 113.1 million searchers. Search on tablets was u [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Stats: comScore | Stats: General | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News

Several sites are touting a new voice search feature on the CheapAir.com app. The company says that it uses the iPhone's own speech recognition capability on the front end, but then does some semantic parsing on its side to deliver flight search results. I tried the app and found that its voice search fell quite short of my expectations. You can't speak "naturally" and get good results. For example, you can't say something like, "I need to go to Chicago on April 7 from San Francisco." If you form a query loosely or conversationally -- if you speak to it as you would an "assistant" [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Engines: Travel Search Engines

This weekend the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple had paid roughly $20 million for a company called WifiSLAM. The company was an early stage startup that had raised roughly $1 million in angel investment. It appears to have had some ambitious plans, according to a company description on AngelList: We are building the next generation of location-based mobile apps that, for the first time, engage with users at the scale that personal interaction actually takes place. Applications range from step-by-step indoor navigation, to product-level retail customer engagement, to proximity-based [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Apple: Maps | Channel: Mobile | Features: Analysis | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines

The 2013 SMX West conference could have easily be confused as the first SMX Authorship show with extensive interest in and questions surrounding Google's use of authorship and the prominence of those articles associated with verified authors. However, it was mobile that led the way with one of the first sessions of the conference being Trends in Mobile Search. The Trends in Mobile Search session was moderated by Search Engine Land's Greg Sterling and included Raj Kapoor of Microsoft, Jason Lehmbeck of DataPop, Bryson Meunier of Resolution Media, and myself. Raj and Jason [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Mobile | Mobile Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | SEO: Mobile Search

A story generating buzz and controversy earlier this week amounts to a stinging indictment of the paid search industry as a whole. It was based on new research from eBay that argues SEM is all but worthless and has little or no impact on traffic and sales -- except in marginal cases. However, Google studies argue SEM delivers clear and tangible benefits to advertisers and publishers. In a paper published last week eBay describes its study (.pdf) and related results. The company says it sought to determine the impact of pausing paid-search ads on its organic traffic and sales. eBay: SEM "In [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Google: AdWords | Google: Critics | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines | Search Marketing: General | SEM Industry | SEO: General | Top News

One of the very interesting things going on in search is the phenomenon of "predictive search" or personalized recommendations based on a range of user data inputs (i.e., behavior, context, etc). Effectively, these are search results produced without entering a query into a search box. Much of what is happening in mobile and Google Now is perhaps the best-known example. But, there's also the related concept of the personal virtual assistant, represented by Apple's Siri. Expect Labs and Grokr are both doing some version of these things, as are several others. You can now add real estate [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile | Search Engines: Real Estate | Top News

A "blind" study commissioned by directory publisher and local ad network YP, performed by Crowdflower, found that YP's local search results were better overall than those of search engines. This was measured as a function of user satisfaction rating. Thousands of queries were compared over a year-long period. I can hear the skepticism: "It's sponsored study" and "How can they be better than Google's local results?" Here's what the study says about the methodology: YP contracted CrowdFlower, an independent third-party, to employ an innovative and impartial methodology for the relevance meas [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Maps & Local | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Top News

VentureBeat reports Microsoft announced a new research project named ViralSearch. ViralSearch lets you search and navigate cascades of people passing content on social media and distinguish between things that are not just popular but also became viral in a sense that they are being passed from one person to the next over many generations. ViralSearch does this by analyzing news, videos, and photos shared within Twitter. It looks to see how many shares there were throughout the user base, over time and over generations of users. For example, in this screen shot, it shows a story Tim O [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Microsoft: Bing Social Search | Search Engines: Social Search Engines | Top News | Twitter: Search

It was unclear what to call FindTheBest when it first launched roughly two years ago: "anti-search engine," “decision engine” or “comparison engine." Today, it may not matter. The company just raised $11 million and has 22 million monthly users. (The site has raised $17 million to date.) CEO (and former DoubleClick founder) Kevin O’Connor sees the site as a way to help people make better decisions with reliable, structured data. Those data come from a range of public and private sources. Indeed, O'Connor says what he and his team have created is a "data platform" that can manage [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Search Engines: Classifieds Search Engines | Search Engines: Deals & Coupon Search Engines | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Engines: Other Search Engines | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines

In my January column I resolved not to discuss the responsive Web design issue anymore, as the One URL versus multiple URL issue is moot now that Google has announced a way to consolidate link equity for equivalent mobile URLs. Unfortunately, the rest of the SEO community isn’t following suit, as responsive Web design still seems to have the undeserved reputation for being the best option for SEO. In reality, mobile URLs could be the best option for SEO, depending on your circumstances. The Madness Of Crowds For example, though I praised her in my last column for sharing her mobile SEO [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Mobile | Google: SEO | Mobile Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Marketing: Mobile | SEO: Mobile Search

When the dust settles US mobile ad revenue will probably come in somewhere between $3 and $3.5 billion for 2012. Google is the clear market leader. But which company is number two? Facebook? Millennial Media? Twitter? Not according to a statement released this morning by YP (the former AT&T Interactive). YP said that it had "over $350 million in advertising revenue [in 2012] attributable to mobile, making it the number two company in the US mobile advertising industry." Analyst firm IDC is cited as support for the assertion. Facebook probably would dispute the claim, with over $ [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines

A study published today by Indiana-based Butler University compared the performance of a range of search engines and Q&A sites on mobile devices. It found that "ChaCha delivered the highest quality responses consistently across the largest group of categories and question types." The study was sponsored by ChaCha. However, ChaCha CEO Scott Jones told me via email that the company had no involvement with the study methodology, nor did it seek to influence the outcome in any way. Given that this is sponsored research, many people will undoubtedly be skeptical of the results, so I've emb [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search Engines: Help Engines

Chinese Internet company Alibaba has created a new search engine (Aliyun) to challenge Chinese market leader Baidu and more symbolically, Google. The new entity resides within Alibaba Group's AliCloud subsidiary. It offers all the standard features of search: Internet, news, images and maps (via AutoNavi). The appearance and functionality of the SERP on Aliyun is more like Google than a comparable page on Chinese search leader Baidu's site.   Currently, Google has a tiny share of the Chinese search market: less than 5 percent. According to data from October 2012, this is wh [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search Engines: China Search Engines | Top News

[caption id="attachment_136436" align="alignright" width="230"] Google's mobile search crystal ball with Chrome[/caption] Toward the end of 2012, I read an interesting article theorizing that Google will be crawling APIs instead of mobile websites in the future. API means Application Programming Interface which allows software, including websites and mobile apps, to provide direct integration based on functions permitted by the API. Websites and mobile apps use APIs predominantly to share content including photos and videos from one site to another, for example, posting a Flickr ph [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Mobile | Mobile Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | SEO: Mobile Search