In the past two weeks I've had the opportunity to talk to both Marissa Mayer and Matt Cutts about the impact of personalization at Google. While the initial storm following Google's announcement seems to be dying down somewhat, the ripple effects can still be felt throughout the SEM industry. In future columns I'll probably be coming back to the personalization angle on a semi-regular basis because I really believe it's fundamentally important to the next evolution of search. But in the next little while I'll probably move on to other topics. Before I do move on, however, I did want to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Search & Usability | Search Engines: Personalized Search Engines | Search Features: Query Refinement | Stats: Search Behavior

Quintura recently relaunched with a new interface, which has been receiving a fair amount of comment. I originally wrote about the search engine back in November, and I was fairly lukewarm in my praise of it; while it was a nice idea, the interface held it back. Well, the relaunched version is now much better, with the tag cloud appearing on the left hand side of the screen, with results appearing in the right hand side. This reduces scrolling and makes the whole process of checking out results much easier. For those who haven't looked at Quintura, I should explain that when a search is run a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search Engines: Other Search Engines | Search Features: Query Refinement

Philipp Lenssen reports that when you begin typing a search in at Google China, Google begins offering you suggestions. At Google.com, the default is not to give you suggestions, you have to go directly to Google Suggest to get that feature. It appears that Google China, by default, has Google Suggest turned on. Interesting. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Outside US | Google: User Interface | Search Features: Query Refinement

Google Auto-correcting Queries from Google Operating System notes that Google seems to have moved beyond suggesting spelling corrections and now automatically does them for you. Actually, I think this is the stemming feature kicking in. However, it highlights that it's useful for search engines to tell you exactly what they've modified, if they do so. Years ago, Google would automatically change your spelling if it found no matches for what you looked for. That annoyed me, to the point I pushed for it to change in 2002. It annoyed several others in the search and research fields. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search Features: Query Refinement | Search Features: Spelling Correction

Last month, we reported how Google was testing related searches at the bottom of search results pages, which Google's Matt Cutts confirmed in comments on our post. In the past few days, I've seen a flood of further posts about related searches as more and more people spot these. Yes, they do seem to be more noticeable and frequently appearing. I've been getting them myself over the past two days. You get a series of eight suggested searches as links, under the heading of "Searches related to:" followed by the original word you searched for. They come up for things like cars: an [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Search Features: Query Refinement

News came out earlier this week that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales had a new project in mind, to build a community-driven "Google-killer" search engine. I've just finished talking with Jimmy about his plans. Here's a rundown on his vision and what may come as his Search Wikia project grows over the course of the next year or two. Note that in the Q&A, I've had to recreate my questions as best I remember asking them. I was focused more on getting down Jimmy's responses. Q. Since the news emerged, there's been some confusion about Amazon and Wikipedia in relation to Search Wiki [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Q&A Land | Search Engines: Search Wikia | Search Features: Query Refinement

I reported at Search Engine Roundtable that Google is now showing related searches at the bottom of the search results page. An example query working now is for michael jordan, scroll down to the bottom of the page and you might see the "Searches related to: michael jordan" area. If not, I have a screen shot in the link above. I believe this is new. If it is not, then Google may be showing them more often since yesterday. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: User Interface | Search Features: Query Refinement

Decipho officially launched on December 14th after having been available since October. It's an interesting search engine because it takes the concept of social search another stage further, while at the same time offering very useful personalisation. There are lots of things that you can do with it, but I would recommend registering and then uploading a list of your bookmarks to start you off. Unfortunately these have to be from your browser, rather than any other bookmarking services at the moment. Once you've done that, take a look at the search interface itself. Very straightforward, fol [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Engines: Personalized Search Engines | Search Engines: Social Search Engines | Search Features: Query Refinement | Search Features: Search History & Personalization