Google Now Searching For Synonyms

Blink, and you might have missed it. Google's now doing synonym searching. It's something they quietly noted in a past Google blog post and one that comes up again today in a post that covers how Google uses experiments to improve the search interface. Back to synonym searching in a moment. The main focus of today's post is how small changes can have a big impact on how users interact with search results. Some before and after screenshots of various search results are shown. Most compelling to me was how by making the + symbol thicker in a "Plus Box" that allows for stock quotes [...]

Filed in: Google: Search Customization, Google: Web Search, Search Features: General, Search Features: Query Refinement, Top News


Google Now Notifies Of “Search Customization” & Gives Searchers Control

Google is now showing "search customization" messages to inform searchers when their search results have been modified from "normal" due to a searcher's geographic location, previous query or web surfing and search history. It's a nice move to help searchers know what exactly is going on "under the hood" at Google and override it if the wrong choices are being made. I'd like to see more of it. What's Normal? There was a time when everyone saw exactly the same search results at the major search engines. Over time, this has changed. In particular, geographic targe [...]

Filed in: Google: Search Customization, Google: Web History & Search History, Google: Web Search, Search Features: General


How Search Engines Redirect Users To Country-Specific Sites

Yahoo just started redirecting people in the UK who are trying to reach Yahoo.com instead to its Yahoo UK web site, something that Google has done for a long time. With the change, this seemed a good time to revisit how all the major search engines may intercept people trying to reach their ".com" versions from countries outside the United States. Below, the examples are drawn from someone in the UK trying to reach .com versions of each of the major search engines. Those in other countries often will find similar interception in place. Yahoo If you are based in the UK, Yahoo will [...]

Filed in: Ask: Web Search, Google: Outside US, Google: Web Search, Microsoft: Live Search, Microsoft: Outside US, Search Engines: Outside USA, Search Features: General, Yahoo: Outside US, Yahoo: Search


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