Apr 30, 2013 at 10:56am ET by Greg Sterling

Expect Labs, which is a small startup in the San Francisco Bay Area, has a very impressive list of investors. Today the company announced a new funding round, though the figures weren't disclosed. Investors are the venture or investment arms of Intel, Samsung and Telefonica. Telefonica is the world's fourth largest telco and owns mobile operator O2 in the UK. Previous investors included Google, Greylock, Bessemer, IDG Ventures, KPG Ventures, Quest Venture Partners. The company has one product called MindMeld. It's sort of a (video) chat app but really more of a technology demonstration. [...]

Search Engine Designed By Denmark Researchers Helps Medics Diagnose Rare Diseases

Apr 18, 2013 at 3:56pm ET by Amy Gesenhues

Technical University of Denmark researchers have designed a search engine that indexes specific sets of databases to help identify rare diseases. Users can query patient symptoms on FindZebra.com which crawls over 31,000 medical articles focused on rare and genetic diseases to deliver medically relevant search results. While the search engine's homepage includes a notification stating that the site is a research project and should only be used by medical professionals, the developers boast that it delivers significantly better results than Google when searching for rare disease content. [...]

Flush With New Cash, Structured Data Engine FindTheBest Ready To Make Its Move

Mar 5, 2013 at 12:44pm ET by Greg Sterling

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 [...]

DuckDuckGo Adds Zero-Click Info From Zanran

Oct 15, 2012 at 2:31pm ET by Matt McGee

DuckDuckGo has added new "zero click" information from Zanran to its search results, giving users quicker access to some of the deeper web content that Zanran offers. You may remember Zanran from my profile last year, Zanran: New Search Engine That Unearths Data In Charts, Graphs & Tables -- it's essentially a search engine for data that often gets lost in PDFs, Excel documents and even images. The new integration into DuckDuckGo is about a week old, and can be seen on queries like [aircraft production brazil], [adult obesity prevalence in indiana] and [child poverty uk 2012]. [...]

Quixey: A Search Engine For The Apps Era

May 7, 2012 at 10:00am ET by Greg Sterling

Are apps just websites in another form? Are they another way to package and sell software? Are they a successor to the "open web." Regardless of where you stand on the issue, the app has made its mark and doesn't appear to be going away any time soon. Many have lamented the rise of apps and the return of "closed" proprietary platforms (e.g., Apple, Facebook). Recently in a widely discussed interview Google's co-founder Sergey Brin pointed to "walled gardens" and government censorship as threats to the established web. He later clarified that the biggest threat to the web was from governm [...]

Former Lead Inktomi Engineer On Why Google Beat Them

May 4, 2012 at 8:42am ET by Barry Schwartz

Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Inktomi was the search engine that many SEOs focused on when optimizing their sites - they powered Yahoo, HotBot and many other portals and search engines. But soon later, Google began to dominate and Inktomi was bought out by Yahoo for just $250 million. Diego Basch, a former Senior Software Engineer at Inktomi, who is now Director of Engineering at LinkedIn explained why on his personal blog. He outlines the major signs of the fall of Inktomi when he noticed most of the engineers at Inktomi using Google to find content, instead of Inktomi. Bu [...]

New Search Engine Attrakt Focuses On Curated Content

Apr 24, 2012 at 9:20am ET by Sean Carlos

Ever amassed a collection of Web bookmarks on a particular subject and then wanted to search through their contents? Delicious users will be familiar with link curating and sharing, but there's no ability to actually search the contents of the bookmarked pages and sites. A few Florentines, mostly former colleagues from the Italian internet company Dada, set out in April 2011 to develop a new search engine, Attrakt, which would focus specifically on hosting specialized search engines curated by the Web community. Attrakt's Index Relies On Curator Contributions As such, Attrakt isn't a [...]

In Depth: Search Gear For The Titanic Centennial

Apr 13, 2012 at 3:36pm ET by Gary Price

[caption id="attachment_118292" align="alignright" width="294" caption="Credit: Library of Congress"][/caption] April 15th marks the 100th Anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, and there will be no shortage of news coverage (or hype) commemorating the event this weekend. The good news is that if you want even more information, facts, images and history, you can take a deep dive on the web to get to the bottom of the historic event. Here's a roundup of a few sources that we think you might find interesting and useful. Ancestry.com's The Titanic Collection Passenger Lists Crew Li [...]

Watch, Know, Learn: A Rich Online Video Academy

Apr 2, 2012 at 12:53pm ET by Gary Price

The Khan Academy gets a lot of deservedly favorable attention for its breadth and depth of online video instruction. But there's another, similar site that I think deserves applause for quality, authoritative online video instruction. It also happens to be a freebie. It's called WatchKnowLearn.org and it’s being developed for K-12 students and educators. While I don’t fit directly into either of those categories I like to think of myself as a "lifelong learner" and for that reason WatchKnowLearn has become an essential reference tool for me, perfect for a quick knowledge "tune-up," [...]

Comparison Engine FindTheBest Debuts Local Classifieds

Mar 20, 2012 at 11:33am ET by Greg Sterling

Structured data comparison engine FindTheBest has evolved impressively since its launch in August 2010. The site has become progressively richer and more usable. It has expanded into more categories. And, as of today, that includes local classified listings in jobs, cars and rental housing. FindTheBest is a kind of "anti-search engine" and the brainchild of DoubleClick founder Kevin O’Connor, who launched the site to provide better information than he believed was available in general search results: FindTheBest.com was created out of my desire to organize part of the Internet, filte [...]

Four Seriously Cool Information Resources

Mar 9, 2012 at 1:13pm ET by Gary Price

As a librarian, researcher and frequent blogger, I'm constantly coming across incredibly useful online information resources that are most effectively searched using their own site search tools, rather than relying on general-purpose engines to surface their valuable content. I plan to start writing about these on a regular, ongoing basis, using a bullet-point format that highlights the most useful features of each resource, rather than doing in-depth reviews. Without further ado, here are the first four (of many more to come). C-SPAN Video Library Cost: free In three words, amazin [...]

Volunia, A Social Search Engine, Says The Web Has Come Alive

Feb 7, 2012 at 2:20pm ET by Sean Carlos

Google might be synonymous with the word search in most of the world, but that hasn't dissuaded others from bringing new search engines to the market, usually aiming to innovate in an area where Google has somehow let up its guard. Volunia, launched this week, promises to help searchers with three distinguishing features: High level site previews in search results A multimedia search within a site function 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 apprecia [...]

Yandex Joins Bing, Yahoo In Using Nokia-Navteq Map Data

Jan 30, 2012 at 3:28pm ET by Greg Sterling

Russian search giant Yandex announced that it will be licensing data from Nokia-owned Navteq to offer better and more comprehensive maps coverage around the world: 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 tra [...]

FindTheBest Succeeds Where Google Squared Failed

Dec 7, 2011 at 12:59pm ET by Greg Sterling

During his written responses to questions from the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt identified a range of competitors that Google faces in the market today. Some were well-known and some more obscure. One of the smaller companies that Schmidt mentioned was FindTheBest. He identified the company in a list of "vertical search" providers: We do not have to speculate as to whether there are new entrants in vertical search services such as comparison shopping and local search and review sites. There are new entrants in these market segments all the [...]

The Right Stuff: Heavy Duty Real-Time Airline Flight Tracking Tools

Dec 3, 2011 at 4:00pm ET by Gary Price

Seemingly every day, more real-time or near real-time data becomes accessible on the internet. Over the next few weeks, I'll be writing about many different types of real-time resources, but today, I'll be focusing on real-time flight data—virtually addicting tools for frequent flyers and aviation geeks alike. 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 r [...]

U Can’t Make This Stuff Up: MC Hammer Announces Wiredoo Search Engine

Oct 19, 2011 at 6:19pm ET by Matt McGee

"If you want to swing the bat, why not swing for the fences?" With that statement, MC Hammer -- yes, that MC Hammer -- announced his new search engine, Wiredoo, during the Web 2.0 Summit today. The website says that Wiredoo is in pre-Beta right now, but there's a sign-up form for anyone interested in trying it out when the search engine is ready for real testing. Hammer explained that Wiredoo's focus will be on "deep search" and described that as another word for "relational search." He used simple query examples like "cars" and "homes" and showed how a search for the latter would produc [...]

Zanran: New Search Engine That Unearths Data In Charts, Graphs & Tables

May 12, 2011 at 3:02pm ET by Matt McGee

A few days ago, I was looking for a very specific piece of data: the average age of professors in the US. I did a Google search for "average age of us professors" and, after the obligatory and unhelpful Wikipedia result at the top, found some data that was good enough further down the search results. Google (and other search engines) does pretty well with some data-based searches, especially since many of us have trained ourselves how to phrase a query to get the info we want. But what about when the data we want isn't found in text, but is likely to be found in graphs, charts and tables [...]

Walmart Buys Former Search Engine Kosmix To Power Social And Mobile Shopping

Apr 19, 2011 at 10:18am ET by Greg Sterling

For those who follow search it was initially one of those "WTF moments": Walmart acquiring erstwhile Google challenger Kosmix. However AllThingsD reports that the price was $300 million-plus vs. $55 million raised. So the founders and investors get a seemingly nice exit. Kosmix will now become part of the newly established "@WalmartLabs." When it launched in 2006 Kosmix was building a better search engine that organized results by category and added numerous filters allowing users to drill down for more relevance and control. Below is an early Kosmix search results page (via DailyTech [...]

10 Alternate Search Engines To Look At Internationally

Feb 8, 2011 at 11:33am ET by Andy Atkins-Krüger

If you’re building a search marketing campaign globally, you want to know what your options are. What are the alternatives to Google? Are there still any alternative or do we just log on to Google and go?

Yandex & Seznam: Local Powers That Be In Europe

Feb 1, 2011 at 9:15am ET by Bas van den Beld

A few weeks ago, the Czech online industry suddenly was in an uproar. The search engine Seznam was seemingly outranked by Google in market share. With almost the entire of Europe being dominated by Google, the Czech Republic, together with the Russian Federation, held an exceptional position. In these countries, Google isn't the most dominant force in search. Instead, local search engines take the leading positions there. The shift in dominance from Seznam to Google was disputed by Seznam, and it seems they have a valid point in their criticism. The numbers provided by web measurement se [...]

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