This day in search marketing history: January 3
Why Google penalized Google Chrome, plus: DuckDuckGo launches Donttrack.us, Google challengers, Google newspaper ads and more.
Topic: Power set
It Will Take “Act Of God” For Relcy To Win In Mobile Search
Last week TechCrunch profiled a “stealth” startup called Relcy, which is seeking to build a “native” search engine for mobile. The post mentions the company has raised $9 million in funding so far. In an interview with the site, founder Rohit Satapathy says his company is developing a “PageRank” style approach to mobile search but […]
Yahoo Buys Mobile Startup With Big Search Chops
Earlier today Yahoo and Jybe announced that the latter was being acquired by the former. Jybe, which I had not heard of previously, is described by Yahoo as “a personalized recommendation company founded with the vision to help people find the things they love to do based on what’s trending in their social circles.” It sounds […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 5, 2012
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: AdSense Text Ads Get Biggest Makeover In Recent Memory In a nod to consistency across platforms and the growth in mobile usage, Google has overhauled its AdSense text ads to be […]
KickVox Takes Aim At “10 Blue Links” With New Visual Mobile Search App
A few years ago VCs and entrepreneurs believed that there was an opportunity to disrupt online search, to offer a more compelling or next-generation experience. Companies like Powerset, which was sold to Microsoft, were among a class of search insurgents that spoke broadly about the opportunity to go beyond what Google was doing. That battle for the […]
Google Launches Knowledge Graph To Provide Answers, Not Just Links
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 […]
WSJ Says Big Google Search Changes Coming? Reality Check Time!
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 […]
Blekko Slashes More Spam With “Zorro” Update
Blekko has found its mantra: the war on spam. The search startup, now six months old, is trying to challenge Bing and Google with a strategy that puts human curation and editorial judgment at the center of search and banishes spam altogether. CEO Rich Skrenta has been relentless in asserting that Google is filled with […]
Could Google Play Jeopardy Like IBM’s Watson?
Like many people, I was amazed to watch IBM’s Watson supercomputer playing Jeopardy this week against past human champions. But could Google have done the same thing? Let’s go behind the scenes of these two search masters to understand what they can — and can’t — do.
Live Blogging Bing’s Future Of Search Event
Bing and Big Think are hosting”Farsight 2011: Beyond the Search Box,” a four hour event today in San Francisco looking at the future of search. We’ve got various luminaries lined-up. Google will be on a panel. There’s that whole Google says Bing is copying them thing that just happened. Plus, Blekko’s here — and it […]
Google, Content Farms & Why This May Be Blekko’s Moment
At the beginning of Google’s “Searchology” event in early 2007 original Google employee Craig Silverstein opined, “If Google had started a year or two earlier, it wouldn’t have worked.” That’s because prior to that time (1998) the internet wasn’t yet large enough to require Google or enable people to see the value of its approach. […]
Ignite SMX: Give Them 5 Minutes, They’ll Give You DateRank, Circus Life & More!
Earlier this year at our SMX search engine marketing conference, we hosted a special “all-search” version of Ignite. Got 5 minutes? Then watch as speakers cover how PageRank compares to “DateRank,” how well Google itself does SEO, why never to give money to search start-ups trying to beat Google in a garage and much more. […]
Factery Labs’ New Fact Engine: Just What Real-Time Search Needs
Not a month goes by without someone launching a new real-time search engine; but after trying out most of them, there are few I use on a regular basis. Factery Labs is about to change that with today’s launch of its real-time fact engine at 1:00 pm ET. Where other real-time search engines focus on […]
Live Blogging: Sergey Brin & Eric Schmidt Talking Google With The Press
Google cofounder Sergey Brin and Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke today to a small gathering of reporters at Google’s New York office. Below, a live blog of the briefing. Note that I’ve tidied this up a bit since the briefing happened at 11am Eastern time. You’ll still find plenty of typos. I may try to […]
NetBase Debuts “Semantic Search Showcase” With HealthBase
Netbase is an enterprise-facing software and search company that appears to have one of the most advanced search platforms in the market. Earlier this week during a briefing Netbase marketing and product VP Jens Tellefsen asserted that no other search provider in the consumer or enterprise segment was as advanced — an audacious claim. Tellefsen […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 2, 2009
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Blog Search Sees Twitter Trends & Raises With Blog Search ‘Hot Queries’ A lot of the innovation in search these days is all about What’s happening right now? Twitter is […]
The Next Decade: Can Google Stay On Top?
There’s a feeling in the air of change — from one era to another and, more precisely, from one type of media culture to another. The hearings on Capitol Hill yesterday on the “future of journalism” reflect this transition in which traditional media are under intense pressure and fighting for their lives in some cases. […]
How To Overhype Your Search Engine
After covering search for 13 years, I’m more than a little jaded. I’ve seen any number of search start-ups promise to revolutionize how we search. None of them have in the huge way they’ve promised, other than Google — and it’s a special case. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been watching Wolfram Alpha walk […]
Google Implements ‘Orion’ Technology, Improves Search Refinements & Adds Longer Snippets
Google is announcing two changes to search results this morning. The first involves the use of longer “snippets” (text extracts containing the keywords) when users input queries of three words or more. The objective is to provide more context to help the user determine if the site is worth visiting. Many search engines have attempted […]
Microsoft Live Search Tests: Best Match And Categorized Listings
The latest SEO talk this week has been all about Google’s algorithm changes that presumably favor big brands, but Microsoft Live Search has been experimenting with changes of its own that seemingly would help big brands the most (although ironically, big brands may not like it all that much). Today, I came across some interesting […]
The Big List Of Search Engines & Their Employees On Twitter
Yesterday, Google joined Twitter with a company account. We twittered a few search engine-related addresses as part of our post about that, but we wanted to do one that was a little more organized. So welcome to our big search engine Twitter list! The list isn’t complete, nor will it ever be. But that’s how […]
Will the “Deep Web” Slay Google?
There are arguably two parallel tracks in the “what will succeed Google?” meme. An emerging one is “will the feds intervene to block Google?” The second is much older and involves the hypothetical “semantic web” or sometimes “deep web.” Essentially this asks, “who will do search better than Google?” (A third line of argument might […]
Powerset Teams Up With Live Search
Powerset, the semantic search engine that Microsoft purchased in July, has been collaborating with Microsoft’s Live Search team on several projects designed to be released within 30 days. Microsoft is currently testing them on a small, randomly selected audience. The projects include:
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 5, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
July 2008: Search Engine Land’s Most Popular Stories
Below are Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular stories from July 2008:
Cuil Launches — Can This Search Start-Up Really Best Google?
Can any start-up search engine “be the next Google?” Many have wondered this, and today’s launch of Cuil (pronounced “cool”) may provide the best test case since Google itself overtook more established search engines. Cuil provides what appears to be a comprehensive index of the web, offers a unique display presentation, and emerges at a […]
SEO For Semantic Search Engines
A new generation of search engines is starting to become publicly available, so it’s time to start thinking about how it will affect SEO efforts. The new search engines I’m talking about are the semantic search engines, meaning they are search engines that can be queried using natural language (not keywords like when using Google). […]
Yahoo! Lets You “Build Your Own Search Service”
Yahoo! has just unveiled the next phase in their plan to spur search innovation by providing search-related resources to developers. The Yahoo! Build Your Own Search Service (BOSS) enables developers to access Yahoo! search results, combine them with other sources, rerank them, and define their appearance. Yahoo! says they are making BOSS available in an […]
Microsoft Preparing “Another Run” At Yahoo As Justice Dept. Begins Formal Investigation Of Google-Yahoo Search Deal
Yesterday, after Microsoft announced it was buying semantic (or “natural language”) search engine Powerset, reporters asked the question: was this deal motivated by Redmond’s failed run at Yahoo? The two deals are and aren’t related. If the Yahoo acquisition had happened Powerset might not have, but Microsoft didn’t buy Powerset because it failed to buy […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 1, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 27, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Search Biz: Yahoo Reorgs Again, Google Not Slowing Down At 10, Microsoft Buying Powerset?
There are two views of the just-announced Yahoo reorganization. An upbeat assessment sees it as an instrumental step toward realizing Yahoo’s broad platform ambitions; a more skeptical perspective sees it as yet another run at streamlining the organization in the wake of the upheavals of the failed Microsoft acquisition bid and the departures of key […]
May 2008: Search Engine Land’s Most Popular Stories
Below are Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular stories from May 2008:
Google & Other Search Engines Dominate Traffic Drivers To Wikipedia
When writing about Powerset this week, I covered how its hopes to gain Wikipedia users was complicated by the fact that Wikipedia itself gets so many people from search, rather than direct navigation. New stats (PDF) from Nielsen Online reaffirm this — four of the five top referring sites to Wikipedia are search engines, with […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 12, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web
Powerset Launches “Understanding Engine” For Wikipedia Content
After nearly two years in the making — and plenty of hype — Powerset has finally rolled out a "natural language" search engine. It’s not a Google killer. It’s barely a business model right now. But at least it’s something the world can finally play with, and under the hood, there’s lots of potential. By […]
Live Twittering The UK’s Microsoft Live Search Executive Symposium
I’m in London today for Live Search’s Executive Symposium, designed to educate key thought leaders, company executives, and others about what Microsoft is doing in search and what’s happing in search generally. I’ve twittered the morning sessions, which were interesting and full of stats. Below, the raw twitters. If time allows, I might clean this […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 15, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 14, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 27, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.