Topic: Search engine technology

MindMeld Launches Voice Assistant 2.0, Says Voice Search Growing Dramatically

San Francisco-based Expect Labs, which previously positioned itself as a kind of “Google Now in a Box” or “Siri in a Box” for third-party developers, has changed its name to MindMeld. The company is also launching a second generation of its technology, which it now describes as a “platform for creating large-scale language-understanding and question-answering […]

Microsoft’s SMX Advanced Keynote: Cortana Makes People More Likely To Search

We’re ready to get started on day two of SMX Advanced, and today’s opening keynote promises to talk about the future of search. Microsoft’s Marcus Ash (Group Program Manager for Windows Phone) and Rob Chambers (Group Program Manager, Applications and Services Group) will be here to talk about Cortana, the company’s recently launched virtual assistant […]

For Robocop, Bing Imagines The Future Of Search In 2028

What will search look like in 2028? That’s a question that the folks at Bing were tasked with answering for the new movie, Robocop. (Well, “new” as in a remake of the 1987 original that just hit theaters this week.) In a blog post this week, the Bing search folks shared a few screenshots showing […]

Google Loses Again In AdWords Patent Infringement Case

A judge has determined patent-holding company Vringo is entitled to additional royalties from Google in a patent infringement case involving Google AdWords. The order stems from a case brought by Vringo subsidiary I/P Engine in 2011 that claimed filtering technology used in Google AdWords violated two of its patents. A jury found in favor of […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 23, 2013

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Yahoo-Microsoft Search Tensions On Public Display In Court Ruling Microsoft has essentially had to sue Yahoo to get the company to fully comply with the terms of their 2010 “Search Alliance” […]

Facebook’s Graph Search Then & Now: What’s Changed

Facebook has started rolling out Graph Search to all US English users, a move that comes about seven months after the product first launched to a small number of users in mid-January. Graph Search has gone through some changes since then, perhaps none more obvious than when Facebook changed the search box white to make […]

Google Knowledge Graph Gets More Stats and 4 New Languages

At Google I/O today, Amit Singhal, Google VP of Search, announced that statistics and four new languages are being added to the Google Knowledge Graph. Knowledge Graph is already supported English and eight other languages: French, Italian, Spanish, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Korean. Now, Polish, Turkish, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese are the latest […]

Even If Yahoo Wants To Leave Microsoft, Here’s Why It Can’t

Despite effectively renewing its search deal with Microsoft recently, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Yahoo wants a way to break that deal. Why didn’t Yahoo take the opportunity it just had? I suspect that technically and financially, it couldn’t. Yahoo’s “Get Out Of Microsoft Free” Card The WSJ story says that Yahoo has […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 6, 2013

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Twitter Improves Mobile Search: Top Tweets, Autocomplete & Web Browser Twitter announced search upgrades to the Twitter mobile app. The upgrades include an improved relevancy engine for top tweets, improved auto-completion […]

Reddit AMA Reveals Graph Search Has Been In The Works Since Early 2011 & Specs On How It Works

Last Friday, Lars Rasmussen, Facebook’s Director of Engineering, did an AMA (ask me anything) on Reddit to discuss the ins-and-outs of Graph Search. Lars answered 20 questions from fellow Redditors shedding some light on the history, importance and technology behind Graph Search. According to Lars, the initial Graph Search was internally launched in Summer of […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 16, 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: Google Showing Fewer Than 10 Results For Some Searches? It appears Google is testing showing fewer than the typical 10 web search results, in what might either be a test or […]

SEO

Foursquare Hires Sr. Google Engineer For Search-Related Efforts

Foursquare has hired Andrew Hogue to beef up the company’s search and search-related initiatives and capabilities. Hogue was a senior engineer with Google from 2004 through November of this year. The company recently announced it had passed 15 million users globally, 50 percent of which are outside the US. We spoke to Hogue about a […]

Twitter Buys Julpan To Boost Content Discovery

Twitter has acquired Julpan, a small start-up search service in New York that had focused on analyzing social activity in order to improve search results. Twitter says the acquisition will be used to boost its ability to help users discover interesting content. “We’re looking at how to best surface content to users based on their […]

Google Maps — Now With Voice Search

Voice search all began for Google several years ago with the now-shuttered, free directory assistance service GOOG-411. After the underlying infrastructure had matured Google introduced it on Android devices and in its iPhone apps. More recently, in July, the company put the same voice search capability on Google.com on the Chrome browser for the PC. […]

Here’s What Twitter Should Do To Make Photo Galleries More Useful

I like the new user photo galleries that Twitter started rolling out yesterday. They’ll make photo search and discovery much easier, especially for those of us who’ve scattered our photo uploads across TwitPic, yFrog, Mobypicture and other photo services. But I’m also hoping that the product Twitter launched yesterday is a shell of what it’ll […]

Up Close With Google’s Search By Image: Hits, Misses & More

Earlier this week at its Inside Search event, Google announced a new way to search the web called Search By Image. Rather than enter a text query, Search By Image lets you begin your search with an image and Google will (try to) tell you what it is and show visually similar images. Search By […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 19, 2011

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 Knol Still Alive & Fixed, But Questions Linger About Its Future Google has fixed a bug that temporarily made Knol look like a ghost town this week. And, without exactly […]

Yahoo Offers Handwritten Searching In Taiwan, Hong Kong

If you thought instant search suggestions and results was fun, get a load of this: At Yahoo Taiwan and Yahoo Hong Kong, searchers can handwrite their search queries and Yahoo will try to match the handwriting to letters, and then show suggested searches. It’s all described in this Yahoo blog post, complete with screenshots showing […]