Posts About ‘search engines’

Global Search Engine Headlines 2012

Web globe seach bar concept

I know, I know – over the last week there has been a steady flow of 2012 reviews and 2013 predictions , but as I’ve already spoken about in an earlier post, looking at the behaviour, developments and decisions made by the global search engines can give us useful insights into what they are focusing on, and therefore where we can (and should) focus our own international search efforts. After all, search engines significantly more data on global user behaviour than the rest of us.

So that I’m not writing this until 2014, I’ve only picked a couple of areas and I’m specifically looking at Google, Baidu and Yandex (*other search engines are available). (more…)

What Were the Burning Questions of May 2012?

what-does-my-name-mean

This month’s blog is all about questions. The Internet has revolutionised the way we find information but crucially it has also dramatically altered the way we ask questions. Nobody enjoys feeling ignorant – but the beauty of the search bar is that it will never judge you for the gaps in your knowledge! This means people are perfectly comfortable asking Google a question which they wouldn’t dare ask even their closest friends or family.

What this does is create a fascinating insight into what the population is really thinking. There were over 2.5 million unique questions of Who, What, Why, Where, When and How typed into search engines in the UK in May 2012, below are the ten most searched for. (more…)

Google Acquires The Remains Of Cuil

cuil-patent

Once they were the hope of many to become the “Google killer” they had been waiting for. Two years after their flying start in 2008 the site however already was taken down.

Now according to Bill Slawski Google has made a move on the remains of Cuil. He found that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) assignment database shows Google bought the pending patent applications. (more…)

E-Bay Combines Search, Social, Personal and Mobile in One App: Visual Search

eBay-Motors-intro

Imagine this: You are looking for a second hand car and you spot a type of car you like on the streets. What do you do? You might write down the type of the car, go home and look it up. You then might be able to find it on E-Bay.

Or… you take a picture of that car and hit search and find it on E-Bay. Pretty smart, right? Great search engine who did that! But it is not Google or Bing taking the next step in visual search, it is the auction site itself who thought of this idea. Their newest version of the Motors iPhone app does just that. (more…)

Greplin: Search your Social Timeline

Greplin-logo

There’s search and there is social search. Usually “social search” stands for search through social media or searching with social elements embedded within the search, think the “x-many people +1 this” in the search results. Since a few weeks ‘social search’ stands for everything which is shared via Google+. At least, if you are logged into Google.com

In the shadow of Google there are a lot of small search engines who each try to beat Google at the social search game. Or at least they try to take a piece of the search pie. Can they be successful however?

“Personal search engine” Greplin is one of the social search engines which tries to grab a part of social search. It looks through your social accounts to find that one message or topic you lost or couldn’t remember who said it. I decided to take a good look at this search engine. To see if it is useful and if it is capable of being a Google competitor. (more…)

All we want for Christmas

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Since Christmas is literally around the corner now I thought I would pose that age old question to all State of Search bloggers. What do you want for Christmas? They get to ask for one real life present and one from the search engines. Some were whacky and some were very sensible so if you are an engineer from one of the engines pretty please can we have a few! (more…)

Search in Europe: it’s a one company show, focus on the verticals

Europe_Map-320

I’ve always been optimistic about the intentions of search companies and the possibilities for more competition in the European search market. At the beginning of this year I wrote a post on State of Search named What Bing needs to bring to the table in 2011 Sadly at the end of this year I have to conclude search in Europe has even more become a one company show. Nor Bing, nor any of the other competitors like Yandex, Yahoo!, Blekko or Wolfram Alpha has taken even the smallest slice from Google of the search pie. (more…)

Is MC Hammer Going To Change Search?

MC-Hammer-Web-20-summit-2011

In the eighties he was a very successful musician. In the nineties he discovered the Internet and in the first decade of the new century he got successful in “Web 2.0″, the predecessor of Social Media. And now MC Hammer is going after search. Yes. Really.

At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco he introduced “WIREDoo”. A search engine which looks at search in a different way (where have we heard that before?).

With his search engine he says he is not looking for a ‘recreation’ of search, but he feels it can be improved. “You can always make things better”. (more…)

The State of The Search Engines: Google vs Bing vs Yahoo

searchengines-infographic-intro

There were days in which we could actually talk about a “War on Search Engines”. Google was fighting the likes of Yahoo, Altavista, MSN and even Ask for the trust of the users. We can now easily say Google has won that war. They are the biggest one out there.

At least, they are for now. Google knows they shouldn’t sit still and wait and see what will happen. They have to keep developing and make things better, otherwise others will happily take their position. Even though the ‘war is over’ it is nice to take a bit of a closer look at these market share differences, where they lie and where to come from. (more…)

An Imminent Revolution in Search

Revolution

This is going to be a slightly incoherent rant about the changing world of search, as I’m currently quite jetlagged and doped up to my eyeballs with drugs to fight a chest infection. I’m not complaining though as all this is the result of a rather magnificent three-week honeymoon in New Zealand (yes we did plan it around the Rugby World Cup) (no it was her idea) (why do you think I married her?!), it’s just an explanation for my somewhat unhinged output.

I think everyone who works in search understands on some level that we’re living in truly interesting times. There’s a sense of anticipation, a mood of imminent revolutionary change. (more…)

Search engine wars – Is the empire striking back

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I have done a couple of these search engine market share analysis pieces on my blog over the years, and for much of that time Google has ruled the roost. The likes of Yahoo and Wolfram Alpha (who????) have all offered much and delivered little and in recent times Bing has made some serious noises but struggled to gain much traction at Google’s expense – although recent news suggested Bing had made significant inroads in terms of the US marketplace

When I ran a similar piece of analysis around 9 months back, Google had around 90% market share, a figure it has had for the best part of three of four years now – and a trend commonplace pretty much around Western Europe – and North America to be honest. Whilst Yahoo used to be the deputy for much of that time, Bing has made some significant strides and over recent years has become a significant threat to the Yahoo market share and now accounts for a higher proportion of searches than Yahoo according to a number of recent Hitwise reports. (more…)

Can Enterprise Search Engines Become Successful in Online Search?

enterprise-search-vendors

And now for something completely different. It is not something we talk about often here on State of Search, enterprise search. It after all is a whole different ball game compared to the search engines we discuss here, right? Even though both Google and Microsoft have enterprise search engines you can buy and implement on your own organization, it is not the area you usually connect them with.

And yet it is a big business which is closely related to our business, after all, it is all search ;) . This week I received a copy of a new ebook on enterprise search solutions, published by Pandia. That book takes a look at different enterprise search solutions and compares them. Very useful and it got me thinking. (more…)

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