Search Features: General

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 [...]

Filed in: Features: General, Google: Critics, Search Features: General, Top News

Google Now Searching For Synonyms

Aug 26, 2008 at 4:54pm ET by Danny Sullivan

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

Jul 30, 2008 at 4:33pm ET by Danny Sullivan

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

May 15, 2008 at 10:09am ET by Barry Schwartz

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: Bing, Microsoft: Outside US, Search Engines: Outside USA, Search Features: General, Yahoo: Outside US, Yahoo: Search

Flight Tracking, Airport Conditions, Real-Time Traffic, & Other Thanksgiving Search Tips

Nov 21, 2007 at 12:38pm ET by Danny Sullivan

With the US about to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday tomorrow, how are the major search engines gearing up to support an onslaught of Thanksgiving queries? Let's take a look at how you can use them, ranging from flight tracking tools to special "shortcut" or "smart answer" boxes leading to related information. Many people travel by air on Thanksgiving. Want to know if friends or family are going to make it on time? Several of the major search engines prominently list flight tracking information, as well as airport conditions and related information. Do the right se [...]

Filed in: Search Features: General

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