Mobile Answer Engines Battle Search Engines

Oct 20, 2009 at 2:39pm ET by Greg Sterling

A class of mobile "help" or "answer engines" has arisen as an alternative to traditional search engines. They hold out the promise more efficient, relevant or direct responses to queries than search engines can provide on the small screen. In several cases they involve the use of live human agents or a community of users to answer questions. Examples include Aardvark, ChaCha and kgb Answers. This "community answers" capability is also nascent within Facebook and Twitter. Also in this category is the yet to launch "personal assistant" Siri, which taps artificial intelligence rather that rea [...]

Filed in: Google: Mobile, Search Engines: Answer Search Engines, Search Engines: Word Of Mouth & Buzz Search Engines, Search Marketing: Mobile

Marchex Releases Powerful SMB Reputation Management Tool With “Search Inside”

Oct 13, 2009 at 9:14am ET by Greg Sterling

Consumers care about online reviews; small businesses (SMBs) care about what's being said about them online. Most small businesses that are aware of the phenomenon of online reviews (and care) try to monitor those reviews by using a search engine or alerts with their business name. They also visit specific sites like Yelp or Citysearch to see what's being said about them. It's an awkward process that is time consuming, but increasingly necessary. Large corporations have had various "buzz tracking" tools at their disposal to monitor "brand chatter" but these have not been available for SMBs. [...]

Filed in: Search Engines: Buzz Search Engines, Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines, Search Engines: Other Search Engines, Search Engines: Word Of Mouth & Buzz Search Engines

Will Social Nets Replace Search For Content Discovery?

Oct 6, 2009 at 8:56am ET by Greg Sterling

Nielsen offers a blog post that shows the various ways that people discover content online. Search is at the top, followed by "portals" (which feature search boxes); at the other end are blogs and social networks. However Nielsen argues that certain categories of people are increasingly social media tools as content discovery sources: We saw the power of opinions posted online in our global study earlier this year about trust in advertising, and the point came up again in our recent findings. Social media is becoming a core product research channel. Almost 15 percent of Socializers most trust [...]

Filed in: Google: General, Microsoft: Bing, Search Engines: Social Search Engines, Search Engines: Word Of Mouth & Buzz Search Engines

Idearc Brings True Local Search To Twitter

Sep 2, 2009 at 10:02am ET by Greg Sterling

A version of local search has existed on Twitter for some time: asking your followers for local recommendations about places to stay, things to do and so on. One can also use Twitter search itself, though it's very hit and miss in terms of the quality of results. And there are also the third party search engines that use the Twitter API. Yet those typically produce the same uneven results. But in what is a first (to my knowledge) Idearc's Superpages has brought true local search to Twitter through Twitter.com/sp411. Twitter users can now conduct searches of the Superpages database and get r [...]

Filed in: Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines, Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines, Search Engines: Real Time Search, Search Engines: Word Of Mouth & Buzz Search Engines, Top News, Twitter

FriendFeed Joins The Real-Time Search Race

Jul 2, 2009 at 7:28pm ET by Matt McGee

Add FriendFeed to the long and growing list of players who are trying to win the race for comprehensive and quick real-time search. FriendFeed has always had a real-time element -- the ability to track social activities almost as they happen. But the company has announced the addition of real-time search today. If you've used search.twitter.com, you'll be familiar with FriendFeed's real-time search -- the interface is almost exactly the same. One difference that FriendFeed is quick to point out is that its results update automatically and scroll down the page, without the need to click [...]

Filed in: Search Engines: Buzz Search Engines, Search Engines: Word Of Mouth & Buzz Search Engines

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