May 16, 2012 at 1:00pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Hinted at for months, Google formally launched its "Knowledge Graph" today. The new technology is being used to provide popular facts about people, places and things alongside Google's traditional results. It also allows Google to move toward a new way of searching not for pages that match query terms but for "entities" or concepts that the words describe. Knowledge Graph? "Graph" is a technical term used to describe how a set of objects are connected. Google has used a "link graph" to model how pages link to each other, in order to help determine which are popular and relevant for part [...]

With Fix In Place, Wolfram Alpha Explains How Siri “Recommended” The Lumia By Mistake

May 16, 2012 at 11:15am ET by Danny Sullivan

It wasn't Siri that was recommending the Lumia as the best smartphone to some last week; it was Wolfram Alpha. That won't happen again, now that Wolfram Alpha has made changes to to fix problems it had dealing with customer reviews. Reviews Weren't Weighted To Account For Number When I looked into the Siri-Lumia issue last week, I speculated that Wolfram Alpha wasn't doing any type of weighting of its results: The bottom line is that Wolfram has ratings from Best Buy, and it’s not trying to weight those in any particular fashion such as number of reviews or number of purchases. The Lu [...]

Related Topics: Apple: Siri | Top News | Wolfram Alpha

Apple Siri’s Recommending Nokia? Then Nokia’s Recommending Android & iPhone, I Guess

May 11, 2012 at 7:23pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Apple's Siri search feature for the iPhone 4S thinks the Nokia Lumia 900 is the best phone ever? Actually, it's Wolfram Alpha that thinks this, based on all of four user reviews. While it's a chuckle that Siri seemed to be recommending the Nokia, it's a better reminder that Siri itself doesn't answer questions but provides answers from others. Indeed, that's why the Nokia Lumia itself arguably recommends the iPhone and Android. We've been here before, such last December, when Apple was accused of preventing Siri from finding abortion clinics. Actually, that was largely down to abortion clin [...]

Related Topics: Apple: Siri | Features: Analysis | Top News | Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha Gets Into Local Search — Very Badly

Apr 26, 2012 at 4:47pm ET by Greg Sterling

It's unlikely to impact Google or Yelp in any way but Wolfram Alpha is getting into local search. According to a blog post today users can now search online or on its mobile apps for nearby businesses in a range of categories (chains only right now): Wolfram|Alpha now knows the locations of some 2.4 million retail establishments for 1,300 major chains in 220 different categories—gas stations, restaurants, department stores, and much more. It also knows the typical business hours for roughly one third of those locations, which makes queries like that one possible. When I tried it online (PC [...]

WSJ Says Big Google Search Changes Coming? Reality Check Time!

Mar 15, 2012 at 4:26am ET by Danny Sullivan

The Wall Street Journal is out with a story saying that Google is about to make one of the biggest changes in its history of offering web search, providing more direct answers and gaining "semantic" smarts to understand more about what words mean. I'm scratching my head, since Google already does this. Methinks Google's PR has exploded in ways it didn't expect. Beyond Blue Links! From the story, we learn things such as: Over the next few months, Google's search engine will begin spitting out more than a list of blue Web links. It will also present more facts and direct answers to queries at [...]

Become a PRO member and see all articles in our Wolfram Alpha archives!

PRO Members get unrestricted access to all archives - and more!

Get Our News, Everywhere!

Follow @sengineland

Got a tip? Tell us here!

Most Likes
Most Tweets
Comments

Our Stories Being Liked on Facebook

Search Engine Land Sponsors

Advertise With Us

Free Daily Search News Recap!

SearchCap is a once-per-day newsletter update - sign up below and get the news delivered to you!

Click to watch SMX conference video

Join us at an upcoming SMX event:

North America

SMX Advanced - June 5-6, 2012
SMX East - Oct. 2-4, 2012
SMX Social Media Marketing - Dec. 5-6, 2012
SMX Toronto - April 2013

EMEA

SMX Paris - June 7-8 2012
SMX Stockholm - Oct. 15-16, 2012
SMX Munich - Apr. 9-10, 2013
SMX London - May 2013

APAC

SMX Melbourne - Sept. 5-6, 2012
SMX Sydney - May 2013

Search Engine Land produces SMX, the Search Marketing Expo conference series. SMX events deliver the most comprehensive educational and networking experiences - whether you're just starting in search marketing or you're a seasoned expert.