As you probably know, Facebook has launched the newest version of their Facebook Platform last week at their third F8 conference. This new platform “puts people at the center of the web” and boosts personalization while making websites more social. On the Facebook blog, you can even see an example of how they are leveraging […]
In my last column, I had the chance to chat with Bing Director Stefan Weitz about how Microsoft is approaching search as it sits today. But the question I asked that lead to the interview in the first place was “Where does search go from here?” Microsoft’s Bing team certainly has its own ideas of […]
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. […]
Live from the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, I’ll be liveblogging what Google has dubbed “an inside look at the evolution of Google search.” As it turns out, it’s the unveiling of Google’s new Real Time Search, shown above, as well as search by voice and search by picture improvements for mobile. Real time […]
Hey news publishers. Stop acting as if your content only appears printed on dead trees and tap into the dynamics that the web offers. That’s a blunt summary of advice from Josh Cohen of Google News, from a wide-ranging interview with him on Google’s experiments with new ways of delivering news. Cohen, business product manager […]
Tuesday at Search Marketing Now, Shari Thurow and Andrew Hally will present a webcast, “Making Online Marketing Relevant and Responsive: Tactics and a Tool for Success.” The webcast will be in two parts: Part I covers how to segment your target audience via keywords, user response, geolocation and more. Part II looks at a new […]
Google News has made it easier to customize its home page with the creation of a Custom Sections Directory that includes material created both by Google and by Google News users.
Billed as the first major redesign in a decade, Microsoft has introduced a dramatic new look and feel for the MSN portal. The redesign simplifies and cleans up most elements on the site. Among other things, it makes video more central, incorporates Facebook and Twitter, creates a dedicated new local area and emphasizes search. MSN, […]
Yesterday Google debuted a new, enhanced local search capability on mobile. One of the new features that was added was “starred places” — a favorites list that could be created online and then retrieved (if signed in) through a mobile browser. This useful feature is part of an emerging, larger strategy to more closely link […]
Along with a new search format, Yahoo has rolled out a new “It’s You” marketing push with clever slogans like “The Internet Is Under New Management, Yours.” The company is holding a press conference shortly, and I’m here liveblogging it. Let’s do this. We’re waiting. So are you. Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz up, welcoming people. […]
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the new consumer-facing Yahoo branding campaign is starting to appear in New York, with a personalization theme: It’s You!. According to the article: Yahoo is planning to reintroduce its battered brand to the public Tuesday with a massive global marketing campaign, according to people familiar with the effort. […]
Last week Yahoo launched its new homepage, which allows users to customize the site and improves overall usability. The centerpiece of the recently launched Yahoo homepage is My Favorites, the new customizable left column that allows users to add third party content and make it more of a personal “dashboard.” The Yahoo mobile browser homepage, […]
When I heard about the call with Yahoo yesterday, which was to feature “a significant announcement,” I thought: “Bing, here it is.” When it turned out the call was about a formal announcement of the new Yahoo homepage I was disappointed; it seemed anti-climactic. The existence of a forthcoming Yahoo homepage redesign has been known […]
It’s no secret that Google — and other search engines — uses a variety of factors to customize search results: your search history, your location, and so forth. If you misspell a word, search engines often guess what you intended to type and show auto-corrected results. But on Google’s search results pages, it’s becoming a […]
AOL’s MapQuest has been in mobile mapping longer than any of its rivals, but it’s playing catch up when it comes to the iPhone, which remains the most important smartphone platform for the time being. This morning, MapQuest launched the iPhone version of its MapQuest4Mobile app (launches iTunes). Prior to this app the company has […]
After months of requests from its users, Google has finally added a way to turn off its SearchWiki tool. But, while you can “check out” of using SearchWiki, your customized search results don’t leave. More on that in a moment. Users can turn SearchWiki off (and on) by clicking on the “Preferences” link next to […]
Yahoo continues to develop a new home page, and today has shared a sneak-peek at the latest design that’s being tested internally. The “My Favorites” column on the left side of the page seems to be where the big changes are happening. Yahoo currently lists more than a dozen of its own properties in this […]
As part of a wave of new features, MapQuest late last year introduced My MapQuest, a personalization tool for the PC side of the business. It subsequently renamed that offering “My Places” and has now launched it in mobile. My Places for MapQuest4Mobile offers a rich user experience and the ability to save maps and […]
Google Operating System discovered a new experiment Google is running named Preferred Sites. In short, users who are in this experiment will be able to add a list of sites in their search preferences page as their “preferred sites.” Google will then use that information to show those sites in a higher ranking order in […]
In some ways the “future of search” is a tired topic that has already seen hundreds (maybe thousands) of speculative articles. But it’s also a topic of critical importance for search leader Google, whose entire franchise is built upon doing it better than anyone else. Just as Microsoft didn’t anticipate the rise of search and […]
YouTube had added a couple new things over the weekend. The more exciting feature is that you can now link to a starting point within a YouTube video. The other feature is that you can now customize the YouTube home page, based on your preferences.
The future of search by Google’s Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience, discusses what she thinks the next ten years of search holds. I think she summed it up incredibly well in her last paragraph: So what’s our straightforward definition of the ideal search engine? Your best friend with instant access to all […]
The LiveSide Blog reports that Live Search is testing out a new feature that allows users to customize the skin or background of the Live.com home page. The LiveSide Blog has a screen capture of one of the skins, a couple in a lake. If you look at the right-bottom corner of the page, you […]
A recent report issued by Autobytel, based on findings from a poll of 1,001 US adults conducted by Kelton Research, examined “The State of Search” and how automobile shoppers interact with search engines in particular. Below I excerpt some of the general search findings from the report. The big takeaway is in the headline above: […]
Today, we welcome another guest author to Just Behave. This week, we’re pleased to welcome Sep Kamvar, the lead software engineer of personalization at Google. In the first of two parts, Sep looks at how the introduction of iGoogle and gadgets have created a new ecosystem of push content and how Google tackles the problem […]
Several weeks ago (seemingly years) Just Behave featured Part One of the summarized interviews with my personal dream team of search usability: Jakob Nielsen, the Web’s best-known usability guru Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of user experience and interface design Michael Ferguson, one of the architects of Ask’s unique user experience Larry Cornett, the VP of […]
I mentioned last week that Eric Enge was working an interview with me as part of a series he’s been doing with various search industry people. The interview is live now, a long one that covers how Search Engine Land has been evolving, the growth and development of our Search Marketing Expo shows, the launch […]
If I ever had to build a search engine, or more precisely, the interface of a search engine, this would be the team I would want to bring together. When I came up with the idea of looking forward three years and speculating on what the search results page may look like in 2010, these […]
Yahoo Travel has redesigned and added a range of features, including personalization and new mapping tools to the site. It’s also seeking to more deeply integrate travel properties FareChase (its fares and rates “meta search” engine) and Trip Planner (its user-generated content site) into Travel. Flickr is also well represented throughout the redesign. I’m not […]
Today is Google Personalization Day at Google, where reporters and bloggers have been invited to learn more about Google’s moves to personalize its services. Our own Greg Sterling is there and will be providing coverage out of the event later. However, some news is already flowing out now. For one, Google steps up personalized Web […]
Google is rolling out two features today that subtly but meaningfully enhance the level of personalization offered to anyone with a Google account. And while they’re tied to your search behavior, they don’t directly alter the standard search results you see, even if you’ve enabled personalization by searching while signed in to Google account. The […]
It’s hard to believe, but it’s already been more than a year since Microsoft Live Search launched. At the time, I remember being impressed with the functionality of the product, and thinking to myself, “this ought to heat up the game some—it’ll be interesting to see how the competition responds.” Well now that Live Search […]
Google is stepping up the push into personalized search results. A new change announced today should cause many more people to take up the service. In turn, the growth of personalized search should have a dramatic impact on search marketers as the days of “same results, all around” eventually come to an end. For searchers, […]
Wikio is a relatively new startup that blends articles from major news web sites and blogs with commentary and tags from Wikio users. It also offers powerful search and customization options that go beyond what you find at most other “media harvesting” sites on the web. Google News offers personalization, but doesn’t let you choose […]
PublicRoutes.com, a service that helps you find directions from any point in several U.S. cities by subway, walking, driving or taking the bus, has added a translation feature that offers directions in 14 languages, and a feature called MyPublicRoutes, a personalization feature that remembers specific locations entered by users. PublicRoutes.com is available for New York, […]
I never got into Greg Linden’s Findory service much. Now after three years, he’s announced the personalized information service is effectively being mothballed. What’s there should keep working, but he has no plans to expand or improve the service further. I may not have used Findory much, but I’ve continued to be impressed on Greg’s […]
Via Nathan Weinberg, Steve Rubel finds that you can now customize the news on your Google Mobile News page. A new link that reads “» Customize this page” takes you to a page where you can add keyword specific searches to your mobile news page, you can also add or remove news categories on that […]