May 11, 2010 at 5:31pm ET by Matt McGee

The biggest sporting event on Earth is a month away, and Yahoo is out of the gates first to announce special shortcuts focused on the 2010 World Cup. Already in place is a general World Cup shortcut, and once the matches begin, Yahoo will have specific shortcuts for countries, groups, and individual matches, like these examples from Yahoo's announcement: These shortcuts will be available on 27 Yahoo sites around the world. Yahoo is also adding World Cup flavor to its toolbar. In addition to tournament coverage, toolbar users can customize the Yahoo toolbar in the colors of their favo [...]

Google Disables Some Nationality-Based Search Suggestions

May 5, 2010 at 3:00pm ET by Matt McGee

Google has crippled its search suggestions tool for some search terms that refer to particular races and/or nationalities of people. The company says it's a deliberate move based on Google's policy against violence and hate speech, and not a technical bug like the one that led the phrase "islam is" to be disabled earlier this year. More on that in a moment; first, here's what's happening. Searches for some queries that combine a race/nationality and the word "are" are no longer showing any Google search suggestions. You can see below that typing "muslims are" into Google's search box shows [...]

Google Expands Rich Snippet Support Internationally

Apr 27, 2010 at 10:54am ET by Vanessa Fox

Nearly a year ago, Google announced that they had begun extracting metadata from microformat and RDFa markup on pages to display "rich snippets" in search results. They recently expanded this support to include HTML5 microdata. They now use this markup to enhance results for people profiles, reviews, videos, events, and recipes. Rich snippets provide additional information to searchers beyond the typical title and description (such as star ratings, address information, and social network connection details). Google has now expanded this support internationally. (While the documentation is [...]

Yahoo Goes Hollywood With New TV, Celebrity Shortcuts

Mar 12, 2010 at 2:46pm ET by Matt McGee

Citing the popularity of entertainment-related searches, Yahoo's search results have gone Hollywood with the announcement of new search shortcuts for TV shows and celebrities. The TV shortcut shows the title and a short synopsis of the next episode, along with video clips and links to see photos, the show's schedule, and an episodes list. All of this content comes from Yahoo TV. Although my LOST example above doesn't show it, Yahoo will occasionally show links in the left column for related actors, shows, or movies. I'm guessing the query [lost] was a little too generic to prompt th [...]

Math Engines: For Multiplying Mixed Fractions, It’s Wolfram Alpha Over Google & Bing

Mar 9, 2010 at 1:04pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Ah, math. It's why I became an English major. But now math is spinning back around and haunting me in the form of my fifth grader. Last night, I found myself dealing with how to multiply fractions as part of helping with his homework assignment. Um, yeah, I think I remember how. But to be certain, could search engines help as a double-check? Enter the awesomeness of Wolfram Alpha. Doing math through a search engine isn't new. One of Google's earliest parlor tricks was allowing people to enter math problems into its search box and get answers. Indeed, I use it for this more than my pocket ca [...]

Bing Adds Search History To Auto-Suggest

Mar 1, 2010 at 1:43pm ET by Matt McGee

Bing has announced that it's using your search history in its auto-suggest feature. In a post on its Search Blog, Bing says that "44% of non-navigational search sessions last longer than 1 week," meaning the inclusion of previous searches in auto-suggest adds to the convenience factor of searching similar topics/queries over time. Queries from your search history will appear in purple, while other queries will show in blue. The auto-suggest box offers options like "Manage History" and "History Off" for searchers who don't this feature enabled. [...]

Google Maps’ Search Suggestions Get Personal

Jan 28, 2010 at 12:34am ET by Matt McGee

Google has announced that it's now personalizing search suggestions that appear on Google Maps. It's an odd announcement to me, because I'm almost sure my maps search suggestions have been personalized for some time now. One thing that I haven't seen before, though, is the explicit notice beneath the suggestions that things have been personalized. You have to be signed in to your Google account and have Web History enabled for this to work. Mike Blumenthal raises the good point that having actual personalization in Google Maps would be a bigger improvement. [...]

Google Adds More Answers & Info To Search Results

Jan 22, 2010 at 2:59pm ET by Matt McGee

Google has announced a pair of changes to its search results pages that make its search results pages more informational and give searchers information they're looking for without having to click away from Google.com. Events In Rich Snippets Adding to last year's announcement of rich snippets for reviews and people, Google has created one for events, too. Using the hCalendar microformat, Google will show information and links to specific events as part of the snippet below a search result. If you offer event listings, check Google's documentation for more on how to use this. Note [...]

Bing Updates Autosuggest With News & Trending Queries

Jan 19, 2010 at 7:16pm ET by Matt McGee

Bing's autosuggest feature now provides more current suggestions as you type a query. Bing says that it's added "breaking news and hot trending queries" into autosuggest, with updates being pushed out every 15 minutes. So, for example, start typing "orange county" into Bing and the autosuggest feature will show a couple terms related to today's extreme weather. Bing hopes to improve some of the 45% of queries that it says "result in either a user conducting an immediate re-query, or abandoning the page altogether." But this is somewhat of a catch-up move, at least where Google is [...]

Google Changes How It Handles Synonyms

Jan 19, 2010 at 5:58pm ET by Matt McGee

In a post on the Official Google Blog, Google opens up the curtains a bit on how it handles synonyms in search queries and results. It's a fairly detailed peek inside one aspect of Google's search algorithms -- an aspect that Google says affects a lot of searches: "...our measurements show that synonyms affect 70 percent of user searches across the more than 100 languages Google supports. We took a set of these queries and analyzed how precise the synonyms were, and were happy with the results: For every 50 queries where synonyms significantly improved the search results, we had only one trul [...]

Study Looks At Personalization’s Impact On Search Results

Jan 18, 2010 at 8:15pm ET by Matt McGee

A group of SEOs is testing the impact that personalized search has on a search results page. David Harry, posting today on his blog, has shared some of the preliminary findings while also admitting that the testing is in its early stages and there are "no definitive answers" to be found yet. That said, it still makes for an interesting thought piece for SEO folks. Harry and friends ran a four-day test using a series of related search queries: "antique lamps," "buy antique lamps," and "buy lamps online." The test looked at each searcher's location, browser, most common Google app used, and u [...]

Google Loses French Lawsuit Over Google Suggest

Jan 6, 2010 at 1:44pm ET by Matt McGee

A French appeals court has ruled against Google in a case about the appearance of negative words in Google Suggest. According to the French legal site Legalis.net, and reported by BigMouthMedia, Google has been ordered to remove the word arnaque -- which translates roughly as "scam" -- from appearing as a Google Suggest term on searches for the Centre National Privé de Formation a Distance (CNFDI). Google argued that its Suggest tool is automated and based on the use of an algorithm applied to actual search queries. Google won the original lawsuit, but the appeals court didn't agree. I [...]

Islam Is … Blocked By ‘Bug’ In Google Suggest

Jan 5, 2010 at 5:41pm ET by Matt McGee

Google says it's working to fix a bug in Google Suggest that is blocking search suggestions related to Islam. As The Next Web has reported, typing Islam is into Google shows no terms from Google Suggest. But replace Islam with a number of other major religions -- such as Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, etc. -- and Google Suggest shows a variety of terms, including many negative ones like ... is a lie, is false, is a cult, etc. The discrepancy between how these religions are portrayed and the lack of suggested terms for Islam is led some to accuse Google of favoritism. Not so, Google [...]

Bing Tweaks Search History, Dings Google

Dec 15, 2009 at 7:45pm ET by Matt McGee

There's a new post on the Bing Search blog that talks at length about Bing's search history features, introduces a couple new features, and seems to ding Google a couple times along the way over its recent privacy-related stumbles. Bing has added its existing search history controls -- "Clear all," "See all," and "Turn off" -- to the Bing.com home page now. Those options appear when you click the new "History" link. Those same controls are still available in the left-hand column of a search results page, as they've been since Bing launched in late May/early June. The other piece o [...]

Climategate: Just How Popular Is It, According To Google?

Dec 5, 2009 at 9:10pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Is Google part of a conspiracy to keep the general public from learning about the "Climategate" scandal? Believers continue to point at the odd comings-and-goings of Climategate as a search suggestion on Google as a sign that the search engine is trying to foist its own political views about global warming on searchers. Not so fast, conspiracy buffs. Google Suggest & Climategate Let's start with supposedly the most damning evidence first. A system called Google Suggest automatically displays search topics that it believes you may be after, when you start typing any word. So con [...]

Google Now Personalizes Everyone’s Search Results

Dec 4, 2009 at 6:18pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Beginning today, Google will now personalize the search results of anyone who uses its search engine, regardless of whether they've opted-in to a previously existing personalization feature. Searchers will have the ability to opt-out completely, and there are various protections designed to safeguard privacy. However, being opt-out rather than opt-in will likely raise some concerns. The company has an announcement here. Below, a deeper look. How Search Personalization Works For those unfamiliar with how personalized search works, see my Google Search History Expands, Becomes Web Hi [...]

Yahoo’s Search Box Gets Smarter

Nov 24, 2009 at 11:00am ET by Matt McGee

Yahoo has announced a new set of features for its Search Assist service that makes the Yahoo search box a lot smarter. Perhaps the main innovation here is the inclusion of content and information right inside the Search Assist dropdown. For example, do a search for a company's stock symbol, and Yahoo will show real-time stock prices and a couple related links before you even execute the search. Yahoo says similar features are available for queries related to sports, travel, and movies. Search Assist can now also help users reach other Yahoo properties more quickly. For certain qu [...]

Does Marissa Mayer’s “Perfect Search Engine” Already Exist In Siri?

Nov 10, 2009 at 6:36pm ET by Greg Sterling

Recently IDG News Service asked Google's Marissa Mayer about the "perfect search engine." Here was the question posed: "What is the perfect search engine? If you had a magic wand and could create it, what would it look like? What would it do?" Mayer replied: "It would be a machine that could answer that question, really. It would be one that could understand speech, questions, phrases, what entities you're talking about, concepts. It would be able to search all of the world's information, [find] different ideas and concepts, and bring them back to you in a presentation that was really infor [...]

Google Adds Visited Pages, Past Hour & Fewer Shopping Sites Filtering

Oct 1, 2009 at 12:01pm ET by Danny Sullivan

You like it! You really like it! It being the Google Search Options feature that Google added to its search pages back in May, the company says. So as a reward, Google is adding options to filter out (or highlight) pages you've visited before, pages that Google's found in the past hour and a toggle to show more or fewer "commercial" listings in its results. My companion piece, Up Close With Google Search Options, does exactly as the headline says. It will take you through ALL the Search Options that Google's offers in great depth, including the new ones. But for those who just want [...]

Up Close With Google Search Options

Oct 1, 2009 at 12:00pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Now that Google Search Options has added new features, I thought it was a good time to revisit how everything works -- and in some cases, doesn't work. Let's get up close and personal with all the filtering options! NOTE: See Meet The New Google Look & Its Colorful, Useful "Search Options" Column for important updates on how Search Options described below now work. By the way, this is a long article. If you want a digest of what's new today, then see the much shorter companion piece, Google Adds Visited Pages, Past Hour & Fewer Shopping Sites Filtering. Using Search Options [...]

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