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

I suspect that most college basketball fans will be following the NCAA College Basketball Tournament on TV and via their favorite bracket contest website, but they could follow it via a simple Google search, too, if they want. As Google's Dan Vanderkam shared this afternoon on Twitter, certain college hoops-related searches are now showing the entire NCAA tournament brackets. You can see it via searches like [march madness], [ncaa bracket] and even just [bracket]. By default, it shows eight games from round one this week ... err, "round two" by the NCAA's weird current system ... [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: OneBox, Plus Box & Direct Answers | Google: Web Search | Search Features: Shortcuts

Yandex, the company behind the leading search engine in Russia with a presence in Turkey, has taken a radically different direction to its search activities by launching a voice social search app called "Wonder" on  Apple's iOS platform for the US market. Described by the company as "experimental," the app responds to users' spoken queries and displays results from that user's social connections in a horizontal format which Yandex believes may be the best way to display social search for the future. One key aspect of the app is the historical nature of the data queried. "Wonder" is not [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Search Engines: Yandex | Search Features: Search By Voice | Top News

Foursquare has made a quick response to Monday's announcement of Facebook Nearby, with its own announcement today that Foursquare Explore is cranking up its personalization. The irony? It's going to use Foursquare activity from a user's Facebook friends to improve the recommendations in Explore. Think of it as Foursquare judo: It's using Facebook data to battle against Facebook itself. Touché! Here's Foursquare's explanation of how it's using Facebook to turn up the personalization dial: When your Facebook friends do public things on Foursquare, like write a tip, like a place, or ta [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Foursquare | Search Engines: Location / Checkin Services | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Features: Search History & Personalization | Top News

There's no escaping it: It looks and acts a lot like Google's Knowledge Graph. But Bing calls it "Snapshot" -- that middle column in between its main search results and the social sidebar on the far right. And today, Snapshot expands to begin showing facts and related information for both people and landmarks. So, on a search for famous artist Pablo Picasso, the middle column shows his image and a few facts about his life, along with related search links to get information about his family, artwork and more. Here's a look: The small print at the bottom of the Snapshot results for [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing Snapshot | Search Features: Direct Answers | Top News

Semantic markup is becoming more and more popular in conjunction with large scale SEO. Adding rich snippets to send rich signals to alert search engines as to the relevancy of your content − whatever vertical they may appear in − is not only a wise move, but an SEO best practice. Included below is an illustrative guide highlighting currently available Chrome extensions, which you can leverage to both test on-site markup as well as expose any information regarding your competitors. An example is illustrated below, and what follows is a guide to getting the information.   Installi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Enterprise SEO | Google: Rich Snippets | How To | How To: SEO | Intermediate | Schema.org | Search Features: Enhanced Listings

Microsoft is expanding Bing's capabilities in the living room with news today that Xbox users can search the web via their console. It's part of the "new entertainment experience" that Microsoft is pushing out this week via the Xbox. Bing Voice Search has been available on the Xbox since June 2011, but it could only search content available via the console itself -- games, movies, TV shows, music and so forth. But Microsoft has added Internet Explorer into the mix, and with that comes the ability to do Bing voice searches of web content, not just Xbox content. Here's how Bing explains it [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing Voice Search | Search Features: Search By Voice | Top News

DuckDuckGo's ongoing mission to challenge Google (and other search engines, but mainly Google) on privacy issues has taken another turn with the recent launch of a video that accuses Google of putting searchers in a "bubble" of personalized results. The video hits on a few of DuckDuckGo's consistent talking points in its ongoing battle to educate searchers on privacy issues and, more specifically, what it considers to be the benefits of using its own search engine instead of Google. Almost two years ago, DuckDuckGo launched DontTrack.us, a website that details how Google tracks its users an [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | DuckDuckGo | Google: Personalized Search | Google: Web Search | Search Features: Search History & Personalization

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]. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | DuckDuckGo | Search Engines: Academic Search Engines | Search Engines: Other Search Engines | Search Features: Direct Answers

In How Search & Social Engines Are Using Semantic Search, I started this series with an overview. This article will give you a walk through on generating local and organization markup for a store. We will look at an alternative vocabulary, namely GoodRelations, and take a deeper dive into the specifics of generating semantic markup for the e-commerce domain using GoodRelations. To clarify, GoodRelations is a vocabulary for e-commerce. Microdata and RDFa are syntaxes. Schema.org for product is an alternate vocabulary for e-commerce. The diagram below from Linked Open Commerce gives an [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: General | Schema.org | Search & Retail | Search Features: Enhanced Listings | Series & Special Topics

The term "Semantic Search" is certainly not new. However, it has taken on a new dimension and implications in both search and social engines today. In addition, it has had a strong impact on targeted semantic advertising. This special series of forthcoming articles on semantic search will take a look at the history behind the development of semantic technology and why it has now become so commercially viable and topical. It will also take a look at how the technology enables "answer engines," rather than simple search engines, to improve the user experience. For example, look at the dire [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features | Features: General | Schema.org | Search Features: Direct Answers | Search Features: Enhanced Listings | Search Features: Natural Language | Series & Special Topics

In the beginning, Google matched the words in a searcher's query to the words on a web page and ranks those pages (roughly) based on how many external links each had. Over the years, Google's algorithms have evolved  in numerous ways, including with how Google figures out what the searcher is really looking for. Now, for instance, when you search for [U2], not only does Search Engine Land Executive News Editor Matt McGee's site appear at the top of the results (go Matt!), but so do images and video from the band even though the words "images" or "videos" weren't in the query. Searcher In [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Google: SEO | Search Features: Spelling Correction | Top News

Although there were so-called "virtual assistants" before Siri, consumers had only limited experience with them and may not have even realized what they were dealing with at the time. United Airlines' "virtual agent" Alex is one such automated assistant, though it doesn't use speech and currently doesn't work on mobile devices. At least a dozen companies have created enterprise-focused assistants, based on "artificial intelligence," which today are mainly used for customer service online. However increasingly they extend into mobile and seek to offer Siri-like capabilities. Siri has become [...]

Related Topics: Apple: Siri | Channel: Mobile | Features: Analysis | Search Features: Natural Language | Top News

Want to know the how various countries are doing in the London 2012 Olympics? For finding out using a major search engine, I give the gold to Yahoo, with Google narrowly missing to earn silver and Bing getting bronze mainly by virtue of being third in a three contestant race. Ready, Set, Search! Checking for results today on my phone, I was pretty impressed with Google's Knowledge Graph box that came up at the top of my results, showing the medals won by various countries. Kazakhstan was ranked seventh? Cool to discover! Plus, I was able to quickly learn this was for winning gold in road c [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Google: Knowledge Graph | Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | Search Engines: Olympics | Search Engines: Special Events | Search Features: Direct Answers | Top News | Yahoo: Search

Bing's search results are getting a bit more interactive with the integration of machine-generated videos from Qwiki. The companies have just announced that some search results -- currently those where a Wikipedia page appears -- will offer searchers a chance to see and hear a Qwiki video about the search topic. The integration shows up as a single line below the main search result with a small "play" icon and a "Watch the Qwiki" call to action. Clicking that launches Qwiki's machine-generated video right in the search result. Various elements that appear in the video are clickabl [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Microsoft: Bing | Search Features: Direct Answers | Search Features: Enhanced Listings | Top News

Apple at their World Wide Developer Conference today announced iOS6 with some really nice features to Siri, their voice search engine. You can see a preview of some of these features at Apple.com but here is a snapshot showing enhancements including: Sports Search Restaurants with Reservation Booking Movie Search & Ticketing Search For Apps On Device Support for iPad2 Maps by Apple (see Apple Gets Into Local Search With New Maps App) Language Support For 15 Countries and more... Siri uses apps already on iOS to provide answers such as Yahoo Weather, Maps, Yelp and o [...]

Related Topics: Apple: Siri | Channel: Mobile | Features: Analysis | Search Features: Search By Voice | Top News

Bing's search results are getting a bit more informational thanks to a new partnership with Encyclopedia Britannica. They're calling it "Britannica Online Encyclopedia Answers," and it adds extra information about a search result right within the search results page. As the screenshots below show, it looks quite a bit like Google's recently-launched Knowledge Graph feature, but there are some differences that I'll mention below. I've used red arrows to highlight one of the main differences with how Google presents this data and Bing's version -- Bing links out to several third-party [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Partnerships | Search Features: Direct Answers

Searches are up in the two weeks since Google launched Knowledge Graph, its database of facts that adds context to a variety of search results. Although the company didn't share specific numbers, Google Fellow Amit Singhal told the Wall Street Journal that "people are interacting with it [the Knowledge Graph] more" and "doing more [search] queries." Those comments were made Friday, and Google spokesperson Jason Friedenfelds told the WSJ on Tuesday that internal stats show that users are still "doing more searches as a result" of Knowledge Graph. That makes perfect sense since the Knowled [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Knowledge Graph | Google: Web Search | Search Features: Direct Answers

Hinted at for months, Google formally launched its "Knowledge Graph" today. The new technology is being used to provide popular facts about people, places and things alongside Google's traditional results. It also allows Google to move toward a new way of searching not for pages that match query terms but for "entities" or concepts that the words describe. Knowledge Graph? "Graph" is a technical term used to describe how a set of objects are connected. Google has used a "link graph" to model how pages link to each other, in order to help determine which are popular and relevant for part [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Google: Knowledge Graph | Google: Web Search | Search Features: Direct Answers | Top News | Wolfram Alpha

Microsoft is closing down their toll-free voice search program named Bing 411. I have confirmed the Bing 411 service is closing by calling the service and hearing immediately the message: Bing 411: On June 1st, we are discontinuing the Bing 411 service. There were reports of this via LiveSide where they said they "received a tip" on this news. But this is indeed happening and Bing is closing down their 411 service. Google shut down their GOOG-411 service back in 2010. Bing kept theirs live hoping to fill that void, but clearly with the rise of smartphones and voice search embedde [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Microsoft: Bing 411 | Microsoft: Bing Mobile | Microsoft: Bing Voice Search | Search Features: Search By Voice