Google’s “Best Guess” About Sexual Orientations

Here’s an example of one of the answers that were being shown, in response to a search for is anna paquin gay:

You can see that Google provided a direct answer: “Best guess for Anna Paquin Sexual orientation is Bisexual.” This worked for Paquin and other some other celebrities up until a few hours ago, when Google disabled these types of answers.

Google & Direct Answers

Google has been providing direct answers to questions based on content it finds across the web since May 2010, and it shifted toward saying “Best Guess” as part of the format in March of this year. Our posts below, as well as Google’s own from May 2010, explain more:

• Google Squared Powers Answer Sources & Something Different Refinements
• Google Goes Beyond Answers, Starts Guessing Release Dates

The answers seem to have been most noticed in categories like movie and video game release dates, but they weren’t limited to that. One category of answers had been, for some time Google tells me, the sexual orientation of people.

Sexual Orientation Answers Became More Noticeable

Why has this suddenly stopped? I haven’t gotten a straight (no pun intended) answer to that. Google just gave me this general statement:

Since May 2010, our algorithms analyze the top ranked results for a search and extract best guesses for an answer to fact-seeking queries, such as the [height of the empire state building] or [catherine zeta-jones birth date]. Because we show best guesses for facts that are available throughout the web, there is a “Show sources” link that lists several different sites that help corroborate the answer.

We’re always experimenting with ways to algorithmically provide answers to different queries, and in cases where we’re not confident that the way the answer is presented to our users is helpful, we may change how those results are displayed. We’re constantly looking to improve the quality of our results and the way they’re presented, and we welcome users’ feedback.

However, Google did say it might be that more people had started discovering the sexual orientation responses recently due of a change in how they were triggered.

Before, you were more likely to only get them if you were to search for someone along with the words “sexual orientation.” But recently (exactly how recent, Google wouldn’t say), searching in a question format along with words like “gay” might trigger it.

In other words, relatively few people were searching for “anna paquin sexual orientation” and seeing the direct answer. But many more were searching for “is anna paquin gay” — indeed, so many that Google suggests it as a search term:

It seems that giving direct answers to more common ways to search for sexual orientation questions got them noticed. Indeed, that’s what set me into looking into this story.

Sean Carlos of Antezeta Web Marketing tipped us to an Advocate article from yesterday, which cited a Tulsa marketing blog spotting the answers.

Gawker picked that up, and Manhunt Daily captured a series of responses about actors ranging from Hugh Jackman (Straight) to Angelina Jolie (Bisexual) to Jodie Foster (Lesbian) to Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Gay).

Too Sensitive For Guesses?

Here’s another example, this time for Enrique Iglesias, a screenshot that Sean Carlos captured. It shows you how the answers looked inline with the search query:

As I said, a few hours ago when I started looking into this, I could get these to trigger. But now that no longer happens. As Google won’t say why, I’ll offer my own best guess. It was probably deemed too sensitive.

At a time when the search engine has already been taking heat over what it should or shouldn’t be listing in a search for Rick Santorum, Google probably decided it didn’t want to be the one accused of outing some celebrity, even if it gathered those answers from sources across the web.

Action buttons give you quick links to perform specific actions on specific web sites. IF you are searching for an airline, the Bing action buttons may include items like check flight status, book a flight or check in to a flight. If you are searching for a car rental company, Bing may offer you action links to rent a car, find locations or contact the company. If you are searching for a hotel, Bing may offer you action links to book a room, locations and their reward program.

Here are some pictures:

Deepak Vijaywargi, Program Manager at Bing said:

Based on how people search, our algorithms now determine top actions and corresponding links in the site for a given category with high precision. For instance, with airlines the top 3 tasks are: check-in to a flight, check the status of a flight or book a flight. For software sites, if you are searching for a specific product you likely want to download it. For car rental agencies, you’d like to rent a car, find out locations or contact them.

This news come shortly after Google launched Google Flights with a booking option that is unclear if it is paid or not.

Related Stories:

• Bing Gets More Personal With Adaptive Search
• Bing Maps The Mall
• Confirmed: Bing Tests Ads Within Organic Search Results
• Google Travel Search Takes Flight With First ITA Travel Product
• Microsoft Makes Mobile Bing More Social Too
• Schema.org: Google, Bing & Yahoo Unite To Make Search Listings Richer Through Structured Data

There are lots of different ways to speed up searching. Google, Bing and Yahoo all offer browser toolbars — no need to visit their home pages, just search wherever you are. Google and Yahoo both have their own versions of “instant search,” where search results appear as you type. Google’s Chrome web browser lets you search right from the browser address bar.

And they all fall short of my new favorite search tool: Slashtag.it. If you’re really looking to search faster, this is the way to do it.

Slashtag.it isn’t a search engine; it’s an interface that lets you access several dozen search engines more quickly. It does this via simple slashtag commands – one for each of a couple dozen different search sites. (You might think Blekko coined the term “slashtag,” but the term was actually first used in relation to Twitter in late 2009.)

If you wanted to search for U2, for example, across several different sites, there’s no need to visit them all and type “u2″ into their search boxes. You can do it all via Slashtag.it, like this:

Amazon.com

YouTube:

Bing Images:

Facebook:

There are currently about 60 slashtags supported (including Search Engine Land) and a form to suggest new ones that you’d like added. Slashtag.it supports pretty much all of the main search sites and a few cool ones like Netflix, Evernote and Dropbox. (If you’re logged in to your Dropbox account, typing “somekeyword /db” searches your stored files; too cool.)

Perhaps best of all, you don’t have to visit Slashtag.it to use the service. You can make it the default search tool on your Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer or Opera browser; it can also be added as an extra toolbar on Safari, though it won’t function as part of the main search box there.

And, Slashtag.it doesn’t have to replace your primary search engine; if you use it without typing a slashtag, it’ll send your search term to your preferred search engine. (So, if I just type “u2″ with nothing else, it does that search on Google.)

Example: Searching for Maui, Hawaii Information

I’ve been using Slashtag.it to research a trip later this year to Maui. The first thing I did was install Slashtag.it as my default search engine in Firefox.

The Old Way

Before using Slashtag.it, my process for comparing Google and Bing Maps would’ve been something like this:

1. Type “maui snorkeling” in the search box and click to search Google.
2. Click the “Maps” link in the menu above Google’s search results, or click the big map graphic in the right column to reach Google Maps.
3. Change my search option in Firefox to Bing and repeat the search. (as shown above)
4. Click the “Maps” link in the menu above Bing’s results.

The New Way

After adding Slashtag.it as a search option in Firefox, that process became:

1. Type “maui snorkeling /m” to search directly on Google Maps.
2. Change the “m” to “bmaps” and search directly on Bing Maps.

That’s half the steps, less time using the mouse, and much faster overall.

Final Thoughts

The hardest thing about using Slashtag.it is remembering all the tags that are available, but they’re all pretty self-explanatory and several times I’ve guessed right (/flickr and /itunes, for example).

It’s such a simple and useful tool, I can’t help but wonder why one of the big search engines didn’t think of it first. If you only ever use Google, for example, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to type “maui snorkeling /maps” and Google would know you want to skip Google.com and search Google Maps?

Still, that would only work for Google properties. If you want a faster way to search several dozen different sites, Slashtag.it is the way to go.

Postscript From Danny Sullivan: You can, of course, do these things with Blekko, which debuted the “slashtag” concept back in October (see Blekko: New Search Engine Lets You “Spin” The Web and Blekko, The “Slashtag” Search Engine, Goes Live). For example, you can add the commands below to match any of the same searches above that Slashtag.it does:

• Amazon = /amazon
• YouTube = /youtube
• Bing Images = /images (Blekko image search is Bing Images)

Blekko lacks a /facebook option that I can see, which is very nice in how Slashtag.it provides it. But Blekko provides a huge number of of other slashtags plus provides the ability for anyone to create their own.

If you like the concept at Slashtag.it, then you should love it over at Blekko. As for Blekko, it doesn’t love the idea that Slashtag.it is using the “slashtag” name that it has trademarked. I’d expect that will likely be forced to change.

As for the concept itself, of adding a few things to search words to get focused results — those are generically referred to as search commands. Google offers a number of these itself, some that generate direct answers and some that let you narrow to a particular site (interesting, Google no longer lists some commands that work such as link: and allintitle:).

Search commands have been around for ages, but the idea of “command line” searches got attention back in 2005, when YubNub launched. The service, which still operates, allows people to enter searches preceded by commands to get back particular results. For example:

• am + word = Amazon search for that word

Another service that also came to light in 2005 is Ambedo, which also still operates. As with YubNub, you enter the “tag” of a particular search you want to do (searching Amazon = amazon) followed by the search term.

Postscript from Matt: You can do something similar with Blekko, but there’s a key difference. When you use a slashtag on Blekko, you’re searching the pages from the other site that Blekko has indexed; you’re not searching the actual site.

For example, if I do a search on Blekko for “u2 /amazon,” I get 16 results from Blekko. But Amazon has hundreds of U2 products on sale. If I do the same slashtagged search result on Slashtag.it, I get the full set of matches and I’m on Amazon.com already where I can begin shopping right away — no extra clicks.

Although the concept is similar, Slashtag.it is really a different experience than Blekko — one that I’d argue is much better.

Google & The World Series

Batting first is Google, where I did a search for giants, as a Giants fan might to get the score:

Nice. Just what I wanted, the current score right at the top of the page, where the first arrow is pointing at.

You Got Footballolate In My Baseballbutter!

Notice the second arrow. Baseball’s San Francisco Giants, meet football’s New York Giants. Football fans are looking for standings, too, and there’s a direct answer being provided for them.

Sort of. It doesn’t appear that there was a football game tonight, so I’m not really sure what the 5-2 stands for. But I’m sure football fans know (and are slapping their heads and calling me an idiot, as they read this).

By the way, when I repeated that search on Google, I discovered that the baseball standings oddly moved down the page:

This happened even when I used a different browser, so it wasn’t related to Google perhaps seeing me search again and deciding to change things up. C’mon Google. When the baseball game is on, it should be at the top.

Ranger Danger

Life’s not so happy if you’re a Rangers fan of the baseball variety, who entered rangers to get the score:

Shown at the top is the score for the Atlanta Thrashers versus the New York Rangers, from their hockey game tonight. Scores for the World Series match are nowhere to be seen.

For Baseball & World Series, A Changeup

Both baseball and world series are other searches baseball fans might be doing tonight. What do they see? A new format, a nice one giving the overall World Series standings, plus the score of the current game and time of the next one:

At the end of Google’s inning, I’d call it 3 out of 4.

Bing & The World Series

Time to bring on Bing. Like Google, a search for giants brings up the current score:

I like Bing’s display much better than Google’s. It’s easier to read, plus you get the current pitcher, batter and last play shown.

Rangers Robbed Again

For rangers, Bing strikes out, just like Google. You get New York Rangers hockey standings, no baseball:

Series Standings

For baseball and world series, as with Google, there’s a different format that gives standings for the World Series overall, not the score from the current game:

In this case, I think I prefer Google’s format a bit more. I found it easier to read with all the information listed in one single column.

Bing’s score, like Google’s, is 3 for 4.

Yahoo & The World Series

How are things at Yahoo? For giants, there’s a nicely formatted score box:

I like how you can see which bases are loaded, though I miss the inning-by-inning rundown.

Rangers Finally Win

For rangers, success!

I Got The Accordion Blues

In a search for baseball, there’s one of the new accordion boxes that Yahoo hopes will draw people in. The information shown isn’t what I’d say most people searching right now would want, which is the current score for the Major League Baseball’s World Series:

Another accordion box appears for world series, and it’s similarly disappointing:

Too bad. I thought Yahoo would be 4 for 4. It’s more 2 for 4. But for Rangers fans, I think Yahoo deserves some extra credit.

Google, Bing — Spare Some Love For The Rangers

Rangers fans looking for scores on Google and Bing were pretty much out of luck, if they used their team’s own name. A Silicon Valley bias?

Google’s based in Mountain View, so the SF Giants are their hometown team. Bing’s based near Seattle, so you could argue their not going to favor either team. But they’ve got a Silicon Valley office, and being based on the West Coast, they might be thinking more about the Giants than the Rangers.

I doubt there’s any formal bias in action here, but they both should get it together before game two. And Yahoo, dump those accordion boxes.

Postscript: Checking back at Bing, I noticed there are scores for a search on Rangers that sometimes show, further down on the page:

At first, I thought I’d missed this. But after doing some repeat searches, it wouldn’t always show. Disturbingly, I also found that sometimes when searching for Giants, the display I liked above did NOT appear. But I also searched just after the game ended, so that might have been a factor (though it really shouldn’t, not just minutes after the game). Here’s hoping Bing can make these appear consistently.

Look & Feel

Let’s start with the overall new look and feel that Bing has announced. The biggest change is that search options — or, Quick Tabs in Bing-speak — have been moved from the left-side column to immediately under the search box at the top of the page. Bing calls this the Answer Bar.

Just like before, the tabs will change depending on the query; the U2 search above has tabs for Songs, Albums, and Videos that are obviously query-specific. In order to make the Quick Tabs more visible below the search box, Bing’s background “image of the day” has been cut down in size pretty substantially, and you can barely tell what it is now. (If you care, that is.)

The left-side column, meanwhile, still has Related Searches and links to your recent searches; these are now easier to access because the Quick Tabs don’t take up several hundred vertical pixels above them.

What’s unchanged is the inclusion of categorized results further down the search results page.

But beyond the new Answer Bar at the top of the search results page, Bing has made some pretty substantial additions and changes to the search results for certain verticals, like Autos, Finance, and Health.

Bing: Autos

Consider a search for honda accord specs. On the old Bing interface, you’d get a pretty standard page of search results with a little bit of information about the car in Bing’s standard Instant Answer.

In the new interface, auto-related searches that include the word “specs” (and perhaps other terms; I haven’t been able to trigger it, though) send you directly to a new Quick Tab with what appears to be a pretty complete look at the Honda Accord’s specs.

The data comes from MSN Autos, and each of the orange headings you see above (Pricing & Warranty, Fuel Economy, etc.) links to further information at MSN Autos.

Bing: Finance

Bing has been strong in finance-related searches, and already shows a wealth of company information on searches that involve company stock ticker symbols. Do a search for MSFT and then click the “Finance” Quick Tab on the left, and you would see a page like this:

But, as part of the new interface, Bing has added several new content pages underneath the Finance Quick Tab that give investors faster access to deeper company information. You can see links (below) for Balance sheet, Income statement, and Cash flow — each one is a page of data like this:

Bing: Health

Coming later this week will be a variety of upgrades to Bing’s search results and interface for health-related searches. One is the addition of authoritative Twitter updates to the existing Instant Answer for medical conditions. Here’s a look at what the Instant Answer for prostate cancer will look like:

The tweet above comes from the Prostate Cancer Foundation. Bing says the tweets will only come from authoritative sources and will appear when relevancy and recency standards are met; the tweet above mentions a new discovery related to prostate cancer, which is a piece of information that the Instant Answer might not otherwise have shared with searchers.

More important than that, though, is Bing’s integration of content directly in the search results via partnerships with a variety of well-known health industry sources.

Do a search for diabetes, for example, and the initial search results include Bing’s standard Instant Answer. But there’s a new Health Quick Tab at the top of the page, and under that tab is a detailed article from the Mayo Clinic.

There’s also a box for “related articles,” all of which link to additional articles hosted by Bing.

Bing has had health information from the Mayo Clinic (and others) in its Instant Answers since day one, but this is much more than Instant Answers. This is full content articles acting like a search results page (or tab, in this case). How detailed and lengthy is that Mayo Clinic article on Bing? It’s a collection of the 10 articles that appear on the Mayo Clinic’s diabetes page — mirroring the ten links on the left side of that page (Definition, Symptoms, Causes, etc.). I cut-and-pasted Bing’s version into Microsoft Word: It took up eight pages and shows a word count of 5,264.

Final Thoughts

With this latest round of changes, Bing continues to drive home the idea of being a “decision engine” — getting searchers the information they need to take action right from the search results, or with as few clicks as possible from the search results.

Bing says that the new Answer Bar increased user engagement during its internal testing, and also helped to decrease the number of manual re-queries. Bing says that’s a sign that searchers are getting the information they need.

What’s very important in all of this, I think, is the increase in real information sitting on/in Bing’s search engine — the type of stuff search engines typically just provide links to. Whether it’s full specs for a new car, a company’s complete and current balance sheet, or an 8,000+ word article about diabetes, this is new. Search results are now content.

Note: Some Bing users may not see all of the changes at this time while the updates are rolling out; the Health updates, in particular, aren’t due to go live for a couple days.

Google

Google seems to have been the last to rollout its World Cup information. Earlier today, I wasn’t seeing anything special for searches like world cup schedule, but Google is now showing a list of upcoming matches.

Still, Google is offering far less than Yahoo and Bing (see below) when it comes to World Cup information in search results. Searches such as us vs england and brazil soccer offer nothing new specific to this year’s tournament. Instead, on certain searches involving the term “world cup,” Google has changed the “Gooooooogle” image at the bottom of the search results to “Goooooooal.”

Google also announced earlier this week that there’s new Street View imagery around seven new football stadiums in South Africa, the host country.

Postscript, June 11: Google has announced several online/search features to help fans follow World Cup results.

Yahoo

Yahoo got out in front early on this, announcing a new set of World Cup shortcuts a full month ago. Those shortcuts are all now live. Searches like world cup schedule, us vs england, or germany soccer produce a variety of different shortcuts with World Cup information.

Since announcing these shortcuts last month, Yahoo says it’s already seen a 150% uptick in search volume around the World Cup — and a 25% increase in engagement with the shortcuts.

Bing

Bing wrote about its World Cup plans yesterday, which include a variety of Instant Answers and more. Searches like world cup schedule and germany soccer show similar information as in Yahoo’s shortcuts.

Unlike Yahoo, Bing shows no Instant Answer for individual match searches such as us vs england. But Bing has created separate visual search galleries for World Cup teams and players — but these are only available for users in the US, UK, and Canada. Here’s a look at the Australian team’s page:

Bing has also created an app for Bing Maps that offers live World Cup information, but I’m unable to find that in Bing Maps at the moment.

Twitter

While some are wondering if Twitter is going to be able to survive the global onslaught of World Cup-related tweets, Twitter is pretty much saying “bring it on.” Twitter has announced a special mini-site that features tweet activity around the World Cup in general, with specific pages devoted to individual matches.

Fans can also visit their Twitter settings: design page to get a World Cup-themed Twitter background, and if you tweet with the hashtag of participating countries, Twitter will automatically add a “hash flag” to your tweet, like this:

Twitter has also published a list of suggested accounts that World Cup fans might want to follow directly during the tournament, and created a Top Tweets World Cup account that algorithmically chooses and shares interesting World Cup tweets.

Search Activity

Experian Hitwise has shared some of its data related to World Cup search activity. The press release focuses on the most searched-for players, but I’m more interested in the fact that Yahoo’s World Cup 2010 site received the second-most traffic from World Cup search last week in the U.S. FIFA.com was first at 50%, with Yahoo second at 11% and Wikipedia third at 8%.

Hitwise also says U.S. searches for the term “world cup” have increased 216% in the last two weeks, and the number of terms with “world cup” increased 226% over the same period.

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 favorite team.

Google and Bing haven’t announced any similar World Cup search coverage yet, but I expect they will in the near future.

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 that.

There’s also a new celebrity shortcut that focuses on well-known actors and actresses. It’s fairly similar to Yahoo’s recently announced news shortcut in that it offers tabs to see news, photos, video, and Twitter updates about the celebrity.

If the celebrity has a Twitter account, that third tab will change from “Twitter” to “Official Tweets” and will display his/her Twitter stream.

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 calculator, these days.

Want to know 345,567 / 23? Enter that into Google, and you get back the answer: 15,024.6522:

You can do a wide range of functions using the Google Calculator. That “More about calculator” link in the screenshot above unfortunately takes you to this entirely unhelpful page. Instead, read this page buried in the Google help files to discover how the Google Calculator can do trigonometric functions, logarithms and factorials.

Fancy! But how about dealing with lowly fractions? Last night, I was dealing with problems like these:

56 2/3 * 3 1/2

I thought I was explaining how to do them right, as we worked through the homework exercises. But was there a quick way to double check? Well, I tried Google and got back:

For those who can’t see the screenshot above, that was:

(56 2/3) * (3 1/2) = 198.333333

That’s correct in decimal form, but the exercise required the product to be expressed as mixed fractions.  You know, a whole number followed by any fractional amount. C’mon, we all remember that.

I know that Bing also does math, so I tried things over there. I got back:

Again, for the screenshot-challenged, Bing processed my calculation like this:

56*2/3*3*1/2 = 56

Instead of doing fractions, Bing made some odd assumptions that I just wanted to multiple or divide the numbers that were next to each other. So, I tried it another way:

(56 2/3) * (3 1/2)

That just gave me a bigger mess:

And the text version:

(562/3)*(31/2) = 2,903.666667

This time, the space between the whole number and the start of the fraction was removed, completely changing what I entered.

NOTE: From a comment below, entering the calculation as (56 + (2/3)) * (3 + (1/2)) would have worked at Bing!

For those who want to read more about Bing’s calculator, see the Bing help page here. It can do a lot of functions even if it didn’t get mixed fractions multiplication right.

By the way, Bing does do fractions better than Google — that is, if you want a simple fraction expressed. Consider this:

300/35

On Google, that’s expressed as a decimal form only. But on Bing, you get both decimal and fractional forms:

As for the homework assignment, I gave search engines one more shot to help, this time using one that was built by a mathematician, Wolfram Alpha. How’d that go? For the example above, I got back this:

Awesome — multiple forms of the same answer. A decimal form. A fractional form. And what I wanted, the mixed faction answer:

198 1/3

I’m not sure if Stephen Wolfram’s grand ambition with Wolfram Alpha was for it to help me and my son figure out the multiplication of fractions. But it was sure useful!

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 that Google says this will be rolled out gradually, and that using the hCalendar microformat won’t guarantee that rich snippets will show for your site.

Answer Highlighting

Google has also announced plans to add more answers and information into its search results. Google says it’s using the research behind Google Squared to power this effort to extract facts from web pages. When Google identifies a search as factual in nature, and can find the answer on a web page, it may highlight the answer in the snippet.

Google says this feature is rolling out “during the next couple days” on Google.com.

Answer Highlighting may have a negative impact on search traffic to information-based web sites. Rather than referring traffic to sites and pages like these, Google is now explicitly pulling the facts from these pages and showing them in its own search results.