 |
Main Search Engines rss | atom | save | subscribe
Description: Blogs from all the top 4 search engines.
Tags: search, search engine, searchengine, yahoo, ask.com, ask, msn, google
| Ask.com is Grillin' and Chillin' for the 4th of July For some the 4th of July is all about fireworks and going to the beach. Grilling fans know better. It’s all about grillin' and chillin'. So, Ask.com decided to get to the “meat” of the matter and find out who... Reference: Ask.com Blog - 2008/7/02
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| This Summer: Get Going with the New Upcoming Upcoming has a new look and is ready to help you get out there and explore more. The team has launched a revamped version of the site, which showcases a sleek new interface and an increased range of event types. The new interface makes it easier for new users to find things to do, but still lets existing users tap into the Upcoming community you're used to. So you can continue to connect with friends and find out what's going on nearby. We're also increasing the number and types of hyper-local events available so you can find smaller-scale, more local events even closer to home. We've added events like farmers' markets, craft fairs and street festivals to the tens of thousands already available. Our events cover more than 8,000 cities worldwide and they're still integrated into other Yahoo! sites like Local, My Yahoo!, Travel Guides, and Music. So if you're still looking to make plans for the Fourth of July, give it a try on Upcoming by typing in 'fireworks' and 'San Francisco Bay Area' on the site. You'll be one step closer to eating good local barbeque and wearing outlandish America-flag-printed apparel on Friday. Or, for a Yahoo! Search shortcut to other events over the long weekend, try 'Chicago festivals.'
Reference: Yahoo! Search Blog - 2008/7/01
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Powerset joins Live Search We're excited to announce that we've reached an agreement to acquire Powerset, a San Francisco-based search and natural language company. Powerset will join our core Search Relevance team, remaining intact in San Francisco. Powerset brings with it natural language technology that nicely complements other natural language processing technologies we have in Microsoft Research. More importantly, Powerset brings to Live Search a set of talented engineers and computational linguists in downtown San Francisco. This is a great team with a wide range of experience from other search engines and research organizations like PARC (formerly Xerox PARC). We're buying Powerset first and foremost because we're impressed with the people there. Powerset CTO and cofounder Barney Pell is a visionary and incredible evangelist. When he introduced our senior engineers to some of the most senior people at Powerset — Search engineers and computational linguists like Tim Converse, Chad Walters, Scott Prevost, Lorenzo Thione, and Ron Kaplan — we came away impressed by their smarts, their experience, their passion for search, and a shared vision. That shared vision is to take Search to the next level by adding understanding of the intent and meaning behind the words in searches and webpages. We know today that roughly a third of searches don't get answered on the first search and first click. Usually searchers find the information they want eventually, but that often requires multiple searches or clicks on multiple search results. Two specific problems are the most common reasons for this:
These problems exist because search engines today primarily match words in a search to words on a webpage. We can solve these problems by working to understand the intent behind each search and the concepts and meaning embedded in a webpage. Doing so, we can innovate in the quality of the search results, in the flexibility with which searchers can phrase their queries, and in the search user experience. We will use knowledge extracted from webpages to improve the result descriptions and provide new tools to help customers search better. Working with our existing Search team and other Microsoft teams that focus on natural language, Powerset will help us address all of those problems and opportunities. We're looking to add even more talented engineers to the San Francisco team to accelerate our shared progress. If you're interested in joining the team, drop us a line. We'll have more to say about the things we're doing in understanding searches and webpages through natural language technology in the coming months. In the meantime, please join me in welcoming Powerset to Microsoft! Satya Nadella, Senior Vice President, Search, Portal, and Advertising See also: Microsoft to acquire Powerset Reference: livesearch - 2008/7/01
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Weather Report: Yahoo! Search Index Update We'll be rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the next few days, but expect the update will be completed soon. As you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index. To share your thoughts or check in with other Yahoo! Search users, please visit the Site Explorer Suggestion Board.
Reference: Yahoo! Search Blog - 2008/6/30
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Yahoo! Chats with Semantic Web Expert, Ben Adida Yahoo!'s plans to "open up" really started circulating at the beginning of this year. Not long after, Yahoo! Search announced its plans to support semantic mark-ups, specifically our crawler support for markups like RDFa and eRDF, as well as provided a glimpse into our open approach to search. As Yahoo! prepares to support standards, like RDFa for example, we've continued to work closely with the best and brightest in the semantic markup community. We were thrilled to have Ben Adida visit the Sunnyvale campus a few weeks ago. Ben is a member of the Faculty at Harvard Medical School and at the Children's Hospital Informatics Program, as well as a research fellow with the Center for Research on Computation and Society with the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He is also the Creative Commons representative to the W3C and chair of the RDF-in-HTML task force, focusing on bridging the semantic and clickable webs. Ben was kind enough to submit himself to a barrage of questions on RDFa, its development and the opportunities it provides. Take a look and feel free to drop questions you have in the comments. We'll do our best to cycle them through to Ben.
We have all of that now. So yes, RDFa is ready. It has just been approved by the W3C as a Candidate Recommendation, with the specific text of the specification and a brand new Primer published on June 20th. Y!: What can I do with RDFa?
With RDFa, you can reuse existing concepts, e.g. the title and price of an item, no matter what that item is. If there's a field you need that doesn't exist, you can create it. This level of granularity encourages you to mark up your content as fully as possible, while letting applications consume only as much of the data as it needs. Y!: Who is supporting RDFa? Y!: What advantages does RDFa provide compared to microformats, eRDF and AB Meta? Microformats work well for well-defined items, such as contact information (hCard) and calendar items (hCal). They tend to become more complicated when the data gets more varied. Fields can't easily be shared across microformats, and all microformats must go through a centralized approval process to make sure no conflicts arise. RDFa doesn't have vocabulary conflicts: data fields, e.g. "title" can be reused by anyone, and there's never any confusion as to what a given field means, since fields are, in fact, URLs. Entirely different types of data can share fields, which is exactly what applications need for extensibility. Multiple data items can be published on a single web page and, in contrast with microformats, relationships between the data items can be easily expressed. eRDF has a similar vocabulary approach to RDFa, but it cannot express nearly as much data as RDFa. In particular, expressing relations between multiple items on a page is more complicated, and describing inline PDFs or images is not always possible. Also, eRDF is not quite as modular: vocabularies can only be imported in the HEAD of a document, so a widget-ized page would have an easier time using RDFa over eRDF. AB Meta, which is new to me, appears to be a small subset of the intersection between RDFa and eRDF. Because it is a limited subset, it suffers a bit from the limitations of microformats: who gets to extend AB Meta? I would recommend sticking to the collaborative efforts such as RDFa and eRDF. If you need more complete expressivity and the modularity required in a widget-ized web world, then you need RDFa. Y!: What would you say to the critics who say that RDFa is too difficult to author? In my opinion, RDFa and eRDF have similar levels of complexity as far as authors are concerned. I prefer writing RDFa, and I'm sure Ian Davis prefers writing eRDF. But I don't think either one of us would seriously argue that one is much easier than the other. It's a little bit more complicated to write RDFa than it is to write microformats, but that's not surprising given that microformats are more limited in scope, and there are notable extensibility costs to using microformats. In general, we expect that web publishers will write RDFa in HTML templates, rather than every time they have an item to publish. Most microformat deployments work this way, too, few people write them by hand each time. So the increased complexity is negligible in the bigger picture. Y!: Unlike microformats, RDFa depends on the availability of shared vocabularies (ontologies). Is that a problem? In my opinion, this is a huge win for RDFa. You really want vocabularies developed by experts in the appropriate field. Bio-informaticians develop vocabularies for biomedical research, musicians develop vocabularies for music, and lawyers develop vocabularies for copyright licensing. Y!: What's next for RDFa? Y!: Where can I learn more about RDFa? And you should join our brand new users' mailing list: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdfa/ Reference: Yahoo! Search Blog - 2008/6/24
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Party like a SearchMonkey in Paris and London We're inviting our developer friends overseas to hang with the SearchMonkey team - meet the experts, enjoy some drinks and food and share in ideas for using SearchMonkey. The events are occuring in parallel on June 25th at 6 p.m.:
Sign up and party SearchMonkey style in Europe!
Reference: Yahoo! Search Blog - 2008/6/20
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| del.icio.us Bookmarks for IE: Delivered The del.icio.us team has been busy with its recent GA release of bookmarks for Firefox 3, and today, they're making their extension for Internet Explorer generally available as well. Last month, we gave you an idea of the features associated with the early beta release. Head over to the del.icio.us blog for more background on the enhancements. Reference: Yahoo! Search Blog - 2008/6/19
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ask.com Makes More Moves on Privacy Several weeks ago, a group of privacy advocates contacted a major company in the search marketplace, requesting some key changes to its website to make weblinks to its privacy policy more accessible and conspicuous. This included placing a “Privacy” link... Reference: Ask.com Blog - 2008/6/18
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Making Room for our New Addition We're expanding the Yahoo! Search Blog today to include news and developments from Yahoo! Local. Since we already share the latest in local search news, we thought it made sense to make things official. So, the Yahoo! Local Blog is shutting down and joining up with us to provide you with all the latest developments in local search. Reference: Yahoo! Search Blog - 2008/6/16
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Live Search cashback now live on eBay Now all of eBay's "Buy it Now" offers will be eligible for cashback rewards. With eBay's expansive catalog of products, from jewelry to electronics, you'll start to see more cashback ads appearing in our search results. That means more ways for you to save. You'll see three primary differences between this user experience and other cashback user experiences:
We want to learn from two experiences in the cashback program. Depending on customer and advertiser feedback, we'll make the necessary changes to deliver the best user experience over time. Destination site experience This is the experience that went live last month. Consumers research a product category on Live Search and then click a Live Search cashback ad to head over to cashback for the best deal. We've had a lot of feedback that we should do a better job integrating our product research capabilities with our cashback experience. So we'll work hard to do that over the next few releases. Direct-to-merchant experience The other experience we envisioned for cashback would integrate directly with advertisers from the search results page. In this experience, advertiser's ads will appear with a cashback gleam. When shoppers click the gleam in the ad, they head directly to the advertiser's site. Obviously, this streamlines a bit of the purchasing process but requires some custom development on the partner website to enable it. We took this approach with eBay and are exploring it with other advertisers as well. We're excited to offer consumers more money-saving cashback rewards with eBay and look forward to hearing from you on how best to implement new features and functionality to the cashback experience. Paul Dillon, Director, Commercial Search Reference: livesearch - 2008/6/12
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| del.icio.us Bookmarks for Firefox 3 Officially Here At the end of April, the del.icio.us team announced a new beta add-on for Firefox 3 and after gathering some great feedback from those who had downloaded the extension, they're announcing its general availability. There are a number of performance and stability enhancements with this release of del.icio.us bookmarks for Firefox 3, so check out the del.icio.us blog for a list of some of the generally available features.
Reference: Yahoo! Search Blog - 2008/6/10
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Reminder: Submit your SearchMonkey Apps to the Challenge The June 14 deadline for the SearchMonkey Developer Challenge is fast approaching -- it's this Saturday! -- so we thought we'd share a friendly reminder to submit your applications this week for a chance to win in one of four categories:
Each category has a $2,500 prize and all entries are eligible for the $10,000 grand prize. We've received a bunch of really interesting entries, including a number of apps that have already been added to the Yahoo! Search Gallery (check out this Wikipedia Infobar and this IMDb Enhanced Result). If you've never built a SearchMonkey app, click here to learn about the process and get started with the Developer Tool. Good luck and happy continued developing.
Reference: Yahoo! Search Blog - 2008/6/09
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Wanted: Search Game Changers Yahoo! Search is changing the search game and we're looking for the brightest technical minds in the business to help us build the next generation of search. SearchMonkey is the first manifestation of our open strategy to increase the quality and relevance of the Yahoo! Search experience. And the Monkey is just one of our next-gen search initiatives. It's an exciting time for the team and not only can you expect to see more in the year ahead from us, you can help create it. If you're interested in changing the search game with us, check out our current job openings. And check out the new featured search job opportunities module we just added to the right rail of this blog.
Reference: Yahoo! Search Blog - 2008/6/06
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Yahoo! Search Gallery is Open for Business SearchMonkey is taking another step in its evolution with the public launch of the Yahoo! Search Gallery. Starting today, users and developers can visit the Search Gallery by clicking the "Customize" dropdown from the search results page. Today also marks the first day that developers and site owners can begin sharing applications, regardless of whether they've been approved for the gallery, by adding links to their app's page on their sites.
One third party developer, Marco Vitanza, designed this Infobar, which annotates blogspot.com search results with links to the 10 most recent posts from the corresponding blog.
In the meantime, let us know what you think of the Gallery in the comments below. And, don't forget about the SearchMonkey Developer Challenge. Developers have until June 14th to submit applications in one of four categories for a chance to win cash (and bragging rights).
Reference: Yahoo! Search Blog - 2008/6/04
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Helping you Search AND Give One of the most exciting developments we've had in the last year was the success of our inaugural Search and Give program where your queries helped to raise more than $250,000 for local schools and non-profits. Over the course of the year the program generated cash donations for more than 20,000 organizations ranging from schools to non-profits such as Doctors Without Borders and ASPCA (The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). Today we've launched the latest version of the program that includes a new, easy-to-use design with enhanced features and more flexible donation capabilities. Here's how it works By signing up at http://www.searchandgive.com/, consumers can start donating one cent per search to more than 100,000 schools and 900,000 non-profit organizations worldwide every time they use the Live Search to find whatever interests them. People can also convert tickets they've earned playing games on Microsoft's Live Search Club, at http://www.club.live.com/, into donations for those same schools or charities. What's new
We need your help This program is powered by people through word-of-mouth or viral distribution. We're asking for your help to make this program an even greater success by sharing this information with your friends and family and recruiting them to start searching at http://www.searchandgive.com. If one person can earn $60 per year for their favorite charity just by searching the Web with Search and Give, imagine the power of 10 people = $600 per year; imagine the power of 25 people = $1,500 per year; imagine the power of 100 people = $6000 per year. Together, we can make every search count. In the end, we hope this program will grow exponentially so we can redistribute more of the dollars coming into search to the local schools and charities that YOU are passionate about supporting. We hope you enjoy the new features and stay tuned as we start showcasing some of the best "Search and Give" campaigns you all have created!
Christine Andrews, Product Manager, Search and Give Reference: livesearch - 2008/6/04
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| One Standard Fits All: Robots Exclusion Protocol for Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft Over the last couple of years, we've been collaborating with Google and Microsoft to make webmasters' efforts more effective across the major search engines. By bringing standards such as Sitemaps and improvements like auto-discovery and cross-host submission, webmasters can simplify their account management across the different search engines. The Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) lets content publishers specify which parts of their site they want public and which parts they want to keep private from robots, whether it's controlling the visibility of their content across their site (via robots.txt) or at the level of individual pages (via META tags). REP was introduced in the early 1990's and is the de facto standard. Its strengths lie in its flexibility to evolve in parallel with the web, its universal implementation across major search engines and all major robots and in the way it works for any publisher, no matter how large or small. We've heard that there is some confusion around the specific implementation of REP supported by each engine. Since we've never detailed the specifics of implementing the protocol, today we're releasing detailed documentation on how REP directives will be handled by the three major search providers. Common REP Directives
2. HTML META Directives These directives can either be placed in the HTML of a page or in the HTTP header for non-HTML content like PDF, video, etc. using an X-Robots-Tag. The X-Robots-Tag mechanism allows these directives to be available for all types of documents -- HTML or otherwise. If both forms of the tag, HTML META and X-Robots-Tag in the header are present, the most restrictive one applies.
Other REP Directives
Apart from these tools in the REP, Yahoo! Site Explorer also provides further ways to tell Yahoo! to Delete URLs, or Rewrite Dynamic URLs to remove spurious parameters. You can learn more about our crawler at the Slurp Help page. We plan to continue coordinating with the leading search engines to ensure simplicity for webmasters, so stay tuned for more developments in the future. You can also find information on the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog or the Microsoft Live Search Webmaster Center Blog. And, feel free to share your thoughts with the webmaster community on the Site Explorer Suggestion Board.
Reference: Yahoo! Search Blog - 2008/6/03
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Managing search engine access to your content We at Live Search are pleased to announce another collaboration with Yahoo and Google aimed at making webmasters' lives easier. Webmasters have long used the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) to control how search engines access and display their content. The REP offers an easy and efficient way to communicate with search engines, and is currently used by millions of publishers worldwide. Over the past few years, we have been working with Yahoo and Google to agree on common ways for webmasters to communicate with search engines. Our previous efforts include support for the Sitemaps protocol (see autodiscovery directive and cross-host sitemap submissions for more info). While most search engines already comply with the REP, this is the first time the three major search engines have come together to detail how we actually implement the protocol. This effort makes it easier for webmasters to know how REP directives will be handled by search providers. You can view the details of how we implement the REP at Documentation for the Robots Exclusion Protocol. If you are a publisher with feedback or suggestions for future enhancements to the REP, feel free to contact me at nbuggia@microsoft.com. We value your feedback as we continue to evolve Live Search. Nathan Buggia, Live Search Webmaster team Reference: livesearch - 2008/6/03
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Finding the "page not found" Has this ever happened to you? You search online for information and click a promising link only to get an error page staring back at you:
These generic 404 error pages leave you stranded, with no option but to click the back button and start over, or just give up altogether — not very helpful. We thought about this problem and realized that we had all the pieces to offer something much more useful. We could help website owners create error pages that actually suggest help even if the exact page you're looking for isn't available. The Web Page Error Toolkit is a customizable Web application that extracts keywords from your search and gives you relevant search results in a custom error page.
So while you may not get the page you were originally looking for, maybe you'll find something even better. You can find more details, including information on how to download the Toolkit, at Customize your 404 error pages with the Web Page Error Toolkit. Go find the page not found! Alessandro Catorcini, Lead PM for the Live Search API, and Amy Michaels, Group Product Manager for Live Search Reference: livesearch - 2008/6/03
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Live Search…coming to a toolbar near you With today’s HP announcement and the recent MSN toolbar release, I want to discuss our recent moves in the toolbar space. Overall, these distribution deals come down to three things: 1. Live Search is ready for primetime These types of deals require a search engine that can stand on its own, as we all know how easy it is to switch to another search engine. Sure, Live Search has room to improve, but we’re confident that when consumers now try Live Search they’ll get relevant results, differentiated experiences, and a unique value proposition (see cashback). 2. Distribution can help with awareness and preference We’re building a stronger consumer connection that starts with awareness and ends with preference. To be successful, we not only need to care about traditional consumer marketing campaigns to drive awareness. We also need to care about how other channels can help spread the word. We recognize that awareness for Live Search is low and that to crack into the consumer’s consciousness we need to be in front of them in more ways than one. Case in point: check out our new Search Share Facebook app. 3. Enabling partners is good for everyone We need to provide publishers and our partners, like HP, with great tools and platforms to help them distribute content and reach their customers in new ways. The toolbar platform we have created exemplifies how we’re looking to extend customer service, brands, and content through great new experiences. With this platform we will be able to quickly build a branded feature and content-rich toolbar for HP’s entire line of US-based consumer PCs with just a few easy customizations. When the toolbar is released, HP will offer easy access to their online services like Snapfish and customer support, and bring their brand to life through Silverlight. Now imagine that type of customization for anyone and everyone on the Internet. The HP toolbar highlights our excitement about the new developments we’re working on. Let us know what you think of the new toolbars.
Mikko Ollila, Product Manager, Live Search Partner Ecosystem Reference: livesearch - 2008/6/02
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Search in Seattle SMX Advanced is right around the corner and the Yahoo! Search team is in on the Seattle action. If you're heading to the Bell Harbor International Conference Center as well, be sure to check out our panels. Time: 1:30 - 2:45 p.m. Time: 9 -10 a.m. Time: 12 - 1:30 p.m. Time: 1:45 - 3 p.m.
Reference: Yahoo! Search Blog - 2008/5/30
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Wikipedia gets big Check it out:
We realize that often you just need to get a sense of what your query is about. Wikipedia is great for that — you can learn enough from the first paragraph of a Wikipedia article to start you out on the right path. For Wikipedia results, we now show a good portion of the first paragraph and a few links from the table of contents. You can see more about the topic right there and see what else the article offers. We hope you learn more, faster with our expanded Wikipedia descriptions. Let us know what you think. Kemp Peterson, Program Manager, Live Search Reference: livesearch - 2008/5/30
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Weather Report: Yahoo! Search Index Update We'll be rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the next few days, but expect the update will be completed soon. As you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index. To share your thoughts or check in with other Yahoo! Search users, please visit the Site Explorer Suggestion Board.
Reference: Yahoo! Search Blog - 2008/5/27
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Book search winding down Today we informed our partners that we are ending the Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects and that both sites will be taken down next week. Books and scholarly publications will continue to be integrated into our Search results, but not through separate indexes. This also means that we are winding down our digitization initiatives, including our library scanning and our in-copyright book programs. We recognize that this decision comes as disappointing news to our partners, the publishing and academic communities, and Live Search users. Given the evolution of the Web and our strategy, we believe the next generation of search is about the development of an underlying, sustainable business model for the search engine, consumer, and content partner. For example, this past Wednesday we announced our strategy to focus on verticals with high commercial intent, such as travel, and offer users cash back on their purchases from our advertisers. With Live Search Books and Live Search Academic, we digitized 750,000 books and indexed 80 million journal articles. Based on our experience, we foresee that the best way for a search engine to make book content available will be by crawling content repositories created by book publishers and libraries. With our investments, the technology to create these repositories is now available at lower costs for those with the commercial interest or public mandate to digitize book content. We will continue to track the evolution of the industry and evaluate future opportunities. As we wind down Live Search Books, we are reaching out to participating publishers and libraries. We are encouraging libraries to build on the platform we developed with Kirtas, the Internet Archive, CCS, and others to create digital archives available to library users and search engines. In partnership with Ingram Digital Group, we are also reaching out to participating publishers with information about new marketing and sales opportunities designed to help them derive ongoing benefits from their participation in the Live Search Books Publisher Program. We have learned a tremendous amount from our experience and believe this decision, while a hard one, can serve as a catalyst for more sustainable strategies. To that end, we intend to provide publishers with digital copies of their scanned books. We are also removing our contractual restrictions placed on the digitized library content and making the scanning equipment available to our digitization partners and libraries to continue digitization programs. We hope that our investments will help increase the discoverability of all the valuable content that resides in the world of books and scholarly publications. Satya Nadella Reference: livesearch - 2008/5/23
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Party May Be Over, But the Monkeying Has Just Begun The SearchMonkey Developer Launch Party was last night and we all had a blast. Thanks to the 300 or so people who joined us! We enjoyed demoing the SearchMonkey Developer Tool, answering questions and getting to know an enthusiastic group of developers. The party is over but the monkeying around is just beginning. To get started building SearchMonkey apps, check out the SearchMonkey overview and then dive into the Developer Tool. And don't forget about our Developer Challenge for a chance to win up to $10,000 for your innovation and creativity on the SearchMonkey platform.
Reference: Yahoo! Search Blog - 2008/5/16
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Monkey is Out and the Challenge is On It's been three weeks since we began the limited preview of Yahoo! Search's new open developer platform, SearchMonkey. Today, we're officially opening up the doors to all developers -- professionals and hobbyists -- to begin building applications that enhance the usefulness and relevance of search results. There are three components to this open ecosystem:
So, what's in it for third party developers? With SearchMonkey, developers have a hand in shaping the next generation of search by building customized search results and mash-ups that users can add to their Yahoo! Search experience. By leveraging structured data from sites like CitySearch, StumbleUpon, eBay, or Epicurious.com, developers can add navigational links, reviews, contact information, and even locations to provide enhanced search listings. Developers can build two types of applications using SearchMonkey: Enhanced Results and Infobars. Enhanced Results replace the current standard results with a richer display. All the links in the Enhanced Results must point to the site to which the result refers. Infobars are appended below search results and can include metadata about the result, related links or content, or links for user actions (such as adding a movie to a Netflix queue).
2) Trigger URLs -- Decide the URL patterns that will trigger your app. For example, for the Enhanced Result above, the pattern would be "acmemovies.com/*" 3) Data Services -- Data Services are the structured data on which SearchMonkey apps are based. They can be created using data available in the Yahoo! Search index (via data feeds or page markup such as microformats or RDF) or by using APIs or page extraction. 4) Appearance -- Use PHP to configure how structured data should appear in the application.
To foster innovation and creativity on the SearchMonkey platform, we're hosting a good old-fashioned competition. The SearchMonkey Developer Challenge will recognize innovative applications within four categories: Best Enhanced Result, Best Infobar, Most Innovative Use of Structured Data, Best Data Service, and Grand Prize (best over all categories). You have until June 14th to submit your applications for a chance to win up to $10,000. And don't forget to come kick things off with us this evening at the SearchMonkey Developer Launch Party. Catch live demos, meet the product team and enjoy free food, beer and, of course, schwag at Yahoo!'s Headquarters in Sunnyvale. Whether you can join us for the party or not, keep in touch -- visit our suggestion forum or drop us a comment below. We want to know how the tool is working out for you. We look forward to evolving web search with you.
Reference: Yahoo! Search Blog - 2008/5/15
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| You talk. We listen. In our last release of Live Search for Windows Mobile we snuck in a little feature that allows users to send feedback directly to the engineering team. Since then, we've received tons of messages from users, many of which have been requests for new functionality. So what's the moral of the story? Ask, and you shall receive. Here's the list of some of the cool stuff we've built in response to user feedback. Weather By far the most often-requested feature: get current weather conditions and a four-day forecast by clicking the Weather icon.
Web search Search the Web, news, images, and more just by clicking the Web icon. Increased traffic coverage Piggy-backing on great work done by Live Search Maps, view up-to-the-minute traffic info for more cities, like Dallas, Indianapolis, and Baltimore.
Bluetooth headset support Now you can use the speech recognition feature with your Bluetooth headset (available on select devices). Map a contact Open up a contact, press Menu, and then press Show On Map to view the contact on a map. Delete a recent location Simple, yet effective. Click the label showing your current location to display the list of recent locations, scroll to the item you want to delete, press Menu, and then press Delete.These were the most common asks, but there were also a lot of requests for custom, personalized content. And since the customer is always right, we’ve built a way for you to access the content you care about when you’re on the go. Collections Looking for pubs that offer WiFi in Seattle? Want to find a dog park in San Francisco? We can help! Search community-generated content such as Virtual Earth Collections and Google KML and find what you're looking for. 
And we’re still listening. Send us more feedback at lsmobile@microsoft.com. Gary Voronel, Program Manager, Live Search for mobile Reference: livesearch - 2008/5/15
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| More than a pretty face Along with the release of our new search experience, we'd like to give some background into the design team and process that went into all the changes you see. You might not immediately think of design as being a critical part of a search product, but we think it is, and we have a growing team of designers, researchers, and developers who believe it, too. We have a growing, pro-design community here at Microsoft as well (only fitting to plug Microsoft Design). Simple and powerful. Human. Fast. These were our guiding principles for this latest version of Live Search. Here's the nickel tour:
We wove these principles into our work on Live Search in a process that started with user research, customer feedback, and a myriad of other sources for data and learning. All disciplines got involved in sketching as a shared way to develop our ideas. With informed iteration, sketches turned into the interactions, layouts, and visual designs that fed directly into user testing, giving us a unique opportunity as designers and researchers to make truly "user-centered" decisions. Here are some of the biggest changes you'll notice that resulted from our product design process:
Search box near results The new Live Search header and search box is slimmed down from a heavy piece of UI into sleeker, simpler elements. Bringing the search box into alignment with the results and into the body moves it closer to where users are looking and flattens out the visual bumps between it and the results. Room to breathe on the page Something else you'll see on a large screen (lucky you!) is our centered, fixed-width page, allowing for a more thoughtful, predictable experience as richer search content and wider screens become the norm. Crisp, clean type We've also made changes to our color and typography. Our decision to use Arial and the new color palette was based not only on our desire to improve readability and consistency, but also on rounds of testing to find the right combination. Intuitive video search For our new video search experience, the team focused on activities and behaviors that make video search different. We focused on simplicity — cutting irrelevant pixels and text — and power — investing in enhanced preview for video — both of which contribute to the overall simple, yet powerful experience. Health results integrated from many sources You'll see in health search that we've created a way for users to pull together health information from many different sources, digestible all in one place. Ultimately, we think we've taken a step forward with this new product that we think will improve the overall Live Search experience. As with any design, it will evolve along with our design team, and we'll tell you more as we go. We welcome hearing your thoughts, too. Evan Malahy, Designer, Live Search Reference: livesearch - 2008/5/06
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Answering your questions on QnA We've introduced our "Renaissance" release of Live Search QnA Beta. Our re-birth signifies the beginning of a new set of features that we'll continue to grow. We had three goals for this release:
Find out more about what we've done at the QnA team blog. And remember to submit your own questions and answers to our Live Search QnA beta. Heather Friedland, Lead Program Manager, Live Search QnA Reference: livesearch - 2008/5/01
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| xRank™ Musician — better than top 40 night at the disco Just when you thought we'd stop at Celebrities, we now bring you (drum roll, please) Musicians! xRankTM provides much more than just a way to track search trends — it's much more than that — it's a social commentary. With xRankTM Musicians we bring you the "mob's view" on what's shaking up the music industry. Sure, you've got Top 40s, billboard charts, and album sales, but what's more socially relevant than what you and your peers are searching for? Ever heard of Jay-Z, the rapper? If you have, then on the scale ranging from "I live in a bubble" to "I'm in the know" you're in good shape. If you haven't, you may want to brush up on your pop culture prowess. No worries — xRankTM is here to help. Our boy Jay-Z got married to Beyoncé recently. His search popularity soared and xRankTM caught it — can't say the same for your local station's top 40 list. Here are some other events that illustrate the "xRankTM effect":
The list goes on. By now, you're probably bookmarking xRankTM and making it a part of your daily coffee routine. But for those of you who are unaffected by celebs and musicians and pop culture in general, we'll have some more people xRankTM features that I am really excited about. Stay tuned! Andy Lam, Program Manager, Live Search Reference: livesearch - 2008/5/01
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| New Product Search gives you more options With the recent update of the Product Search experience (http://search.live.com/products/), users can both research and find deals on products within Live Search. We've incorporated feedback from our users during the beta cycle and revamped the user experience, so now users can search and refine products by user opinions, brand, category, and price ranges. In addition, users can sort results by best user, expert rating, and price. Try it out, and send us your feedback! Here are highlights of our product search experience:
In the example below, you can view both positive and negative feedback on the Garmin Nuvi 360 GPS receiver. You can click Ease of Use above the green bar to read actual user comments specifically about Ease of Use. This makes it really easy to parse long user reviews to find exactly what you're looking for. Learn more about summarizing user reviews in our previous post here.
Instant answers In addition to the Product Search update, we've improved Product instant answers in web search for broader product queries like GPS, digital cameras, plasma tv, where your intent is research. The instant answer provides guides (we now have a larger selection) and user and expert reviews.
Try different product searches in web search and give us your feedback by clicking Is this Useful? Note This is a U.S. release only. We haven't yet released these features internationally. More to come We're excited to bring you these new Product search features, and we have a lot more planned in the coming months. In the meantime, try out a few searches like gps systems, mp3 players, and cell phones, and let us know what you think by using the Feedback link! The Live Product Search team Reference: livesearch - 2008/4/30
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Shop and search on the go We've just released the latest updates to our browser-based mobile search at m.live.com. One of our major efforts was to bring the power of product search to the convenience of a mobile phone. Think about how much time people spend shopping in brick-and-mortar stores — without the ability to do the product research they're accustomed to from their PCs. We took the great product search features from Live Search and made them easy to use on your mobile phone. You'll see a list of popular products, user ratings, and price comparisons from online stores.
You can also research products by reading a detailed overview or consumer reviews.
We even include feature ratings that are created by extracting the key elements of user reviews from across the Web.
Now the next time a consumer electronics device catches your eye in a store, you'll be able to get the detailed rundown on its performance, read the consensus wisdom of the Web, compare it with similar products, and even make sure it's being offered for a good price — all before you make that impulse buy. Now you can spend wisely, wherever you are.
Another of our favorite features this release was developed specifically for our friends abroad — those in the United Kingdom and Japan. Searching for nearby businesses is one of the most popular and most valued types of mobile search today. But most existing browser-based search services require the user to first type in their location — easy if you're always in the same place, but a chore when you're out and about, and a real challenge if you don't know exactly where you are. With this new feature, users can simply click Find my Location, and their location will be set based on their proximity to cellular towers. Then they can get the most relevant nearby results for all their searches.
Let us know what you think! You can send feedback to lsmbfeed@microsoft.com. The Live Search Mobile team Reference: livesearch - 2008/4/28
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| News Search – now with RSS You wanted it, and now you have it. We've incorporated RSS feeds into the browse and search results experience. Subscribe and stay up to date with stories from all categories or for specific searches that you perform. We appreciate all the feedback that you've given us. We take it all seriously and do our best to respond. Try us out (http://news.live.com/), and keep the feedback coming! The News Search team Reference: livesearch - 2008/4/24
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Better Binoculars Ever been caught in a loop of back-and-forth clicking between the search result list and the linked result pages looking for that perfect site? That's where our Binoculars come in handy; they give you a peek at those sites before... Reference: Ask.com Blog - 2008/2/21
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ask.com to Host Opening Event of the Israel Web Tour in Silicon Valley Having grown up in Israel, I've always been connected to the country's tech community. That's one of the reasons I started writing about Israeli start ups since 2005 on my blog, VC Café. Now, I am pleased to announce that... Reference: Ask.com Blog - 2008/2/01
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Give Me Some Skin: Ask Gets More Personal So. You're reading the Ask.com blog, which means you've been to Ask.com, which probably means you've seen our Skins feature. Introduced when we launched Ask3D last year, Skins allows you to change the design of the Ask.com homepage. It was... Reference: Ask.com Blog - 2008/1/23
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ask.com Mobile: Voice-Activated Directions Show You the Way We talk a lot around here about the Mobile Web and making mobile search faster, better. Admittedly, it's easy to get excited about the different features and capabilities of all the new pimped out devices, but at the core every... Reference: Ask.com Blog - 2008/1/03
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 5 Questions with Ask Italy's Antonio Gulli "Pisa?" I've had friends react, "Why do you guys have an office in Pisa?" As easy as it would be to joke about frequent "business" trips to Tuscany, I was curious myself. So I corralled the head of the Pisa... Reference: Ask.com Blog - 2007/12/27
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Year in Ask: 2007 A roller coaster of a year, all told, what with introducing a company-changing product (or two), some industry initiatives, and of course, some sort of Google thing. Plenty of great stuff to look back on. What sort of stuff, you... Reference: Ask.com Blog - 2007/12/20
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ask Launches AskEraser Privacy. It's a topic we discuss quite a bit here at Ask.com. But we we do more than talk about it. We listen to user feedback, industry debate, the CDT and many other sources. And we've responded by launching AskEraser... Reference: Ask.com Blog - 2007/12/11
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Latest Ask.com Radio Ads You didn't think we only did TV commercials, did you? Currently burning up the airwaves (did I just mix metaphors?) is the latest Ask.com radio campaign. As our Marketing department puts it, they "compliment the TV effort," and if you... Reference: Ask.com Blog - 2007/12/05
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| More tools for citizen participation Political participation isn't just about casting your vote; everyone should be able to become an informed participant instantly. When Americans want to learn about candidates and issues using Google, we find that they want more than one source, and immediate results. Instead of sitting through entire television broadcasts, voters are going online to get their daily dose of politics - as they did during the primaries, when searches for political queries spiked. We created a page on 2008 US election trends that highlights search queries on candidates by location to show how, during this election season, voters across the nation are getting politically engaged online. Use the Candidate Search Queries map to see which cities are searching more for Obama or McCain, and the News by Candidate tool on the trends page to see the latest headlines on each of the presidential contenders. Our political outreach efforts are aimed at providing citizens with useful knowledge on where candidates, office holders and advocacy groups stand. As more Americans go online and take simple steps to participate in politics, we aspire to promote democracy and informed participation in the process by equipping voters with useful information through search.  
 Reference: The Official Google Blog - 1900/1/
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| What comes next in this series? 13, 33, 53, 61, 37, 28... Late one night in the summer of 2000, I found myself answering user support emails in response to two new features we had just released, Advanced Search and Preferences (at the time catchily called "Language, Display, and Filtering Options" :)). Busy crafting answers about how to set Safesearch or change the number of results offered by default, I worked my way through the email queue. And then I saw it: The next email had just a number ("37") in the subject - and no message text. What a weird form of spam, I thought. Why would anyone be motivated to just send a number? I searched for the user's email address to see what else had been sent. Interesting. Lots of numbers: 33, 53, and then a clue: "61, getting a bit heavy, aren't we?" Furthermore, the date on each of the messages seemed very familiar. Then I realized that's because the dates were all days that I had launched various changes on the homepage. "Getting a bit heavy?" - that one did correspond to one of the wordiest homepage releases we had ever done. Could the sender be counting words? Sure enough, I looked back, counted the words myself, and he was - a manual, human version of a scale for the Google homepage. He was weighing our homepage and letting us know when it was getting too heavy. One of his earliest mails had a note in the body: "What happened to the days of 13?" - referring to the word count on the initial 1999 homepage. This mystery and its revelation was really interesting because I thought about the homepage, and how to keep it simple, all the time. Yet I hadn't thought to look at it through this very simple lens: just count the words. The fewer, the better. Ever since that night, this has been our discipline, and everyone who works on the homepage and its design knows the current number: 28. (That's the word count for the basic page if you are signed out, there's no promotional line running beneath the search box, you've set Google as your homepage and thus don't get the "Make Google Your Homepage!" link, and you count "©2008 Google" as two words.) So, today we're making a homepage change by adding a link to our privacy overview and policies. Google values our users' privacy first and foremost. Trust is the basis of everything we do, so we want you to be familiar and comfortable with the integrity and care we give your personal data. We added this link both to our homepage and to our results page to make it easier for you to find information about our privacy principles. The new "Privacy" link goes to our Privacy Center, which was revamped earlier this year to be more straightforward and approachable, with videos and a non-legalese overview to make sure you understand in basic terms what Google does, does not, will, and won't, do in regard to your personal information. How does privacy relate to homepage word count? Larry and Sergey told me we could only add this to the homepage if we took a word away - keeping the "weight" of the homepage unchanged at 28. Given that the new Privacy link fit best with legal disclaimers on the page, I looked to the copyright line. There, we dropped the word "Google" (realizing it was implied, obviously) and added the new privacy link alongside it.  We think the easy access to our privacy information without any added homepage heft is a clear win for our users and an enhancement to your experience. You can check out the new Privacy Center here.  
 Reference: The Official Google Blog - 1900/1/
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Wrapup: Google Developer Days and Google I/O May and June were exciting months for our developer team. Not only is it the start of summer in the Bay Area, but also the start of Google I/O and Google Developer Days around the world. Many of the team dispersed to various parts of the globe to meet with developers. Here's a quick recap of where we've been, and where we're heading. San Francisco, May 28-29 We started the summer with Google I/O. This two-day conference was our biggest developer gathering to date. While we'd love for every single software developer to come to these events, we realize that isn't possible. So we've recorded as many of the sessions as we could and made them available online. We've posted videos and presentations more than 70 sessions for you to view. Yokohama, June 10 Shortly after Google I/O, we kicked off our 2008 Google Developer Days. The first stop was Yokohama, Japan. Andy Rubin and Takuya Oikawa started the day before 1100 developers, highlighting the Android user interface, the Earth API's 3D graphics, and announcing Japan's new Google Developer API Expert program. Videos and sessions are now available. Beijing, June 12 Two days later, Marissa Mayer and Kai-Fu Lee opened Developer Day in Beijing for more than 2,000 developers, highlighting the effort between Google and local developer communities to collectively make the web better as a platform. Notably, we welcomed several new Chinese networks to the OpenSocial community, including 51.com, 51wan.com, Douban.com, Hainei.com, Tianji.com, Xiaonei.com, and YiQi.com. These networks join a few others that have already launched in China, including MySpace.cn and Tianya.cn, as well as CityIN.com, which has shipped a sandbox for developers. Beijing videos and sessions are here. Taipei, June 14 Next on the schedule was Taipei's first Google Developer Day, with 900 developers. In the developer showcase, we invited three developers to demonstrate web applications they'd built using Google APIs: Wei-chih Chiang, a student of Yi Shou University and his Photo Note site, Jun-Chieh Huang, founder of ischool, a website that integrates Google services for elementary and high schools in Taiwan, and FunP, a social website integrating OpenSocial features. Here are the Taipei videos and sessions. Sydney, June 18 Rounding out the Asia-Pacific Developer Days was an intimate group of 450 developers in Sydney right by scenic Darling Harbor. In addition to folks from Google, we were excited to have Daniel Reyes, Head of Engineering from MySpace AU, stop by to share his team's work with Gears. Also of note were six local developers who showcased their app at our speedgeeking contest: contest winners Casey and Dan Russell of CleanCruising, Nick Lothian of Scootle, Ken Hoetmer of Quikmaps, Tom Horn of the Patrick O'Brien Mapping Project, Tak Tran with the Collaborative Autobiography site, and Tim Savage with the SEQ Brisbane Water Levels gadget. Mexico City, June 23 John Farrell and Alfonso Luna opened our first Developer Day in Mexico City. 500 enthusiastic developers joined us from all over Central and South America, with a crowd of them gathering as early as 6am, well ahead of the 9am start time. Check out sessions. Sao Paulo, June 27 Alexandre Hohagen and Paulo Golgher welcomed 750 developers to Developer Day in Sao Paulo, the largest event in Google Brazil's history. The crowd was especially excited to hear Eduardo Thuler's announcement of orkut's upcoming support of OpenSocial in Brazil. Our Developer Days don't stop there, though. After a summer break, look for the team to hit the road again, including a new date in Bangalore.
 
 Reference: The Official Google Blog - 1900/1/
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Google Apps continues to build in Europe With Google Apps nearing the venerable age of 17 months, we have already seen more than 500,000 organizations adopt Apps as part of their business, with another 3,000 signing up every day. Many of those customers are small- and medium-sized businesses, but more and more large enterprises are also opting for the cost savings and greater flexibility that cloud computing offers. A good example is Taylor Woodrow, a UK-based construction, facilities management and engineering company that has just moved all its employees onto Google Apps Premier Edition. Their 1,800 users can now collaborate from offices, construction sites, and client premises across the UK and Benelux. Not only has it brought greater mobility and flexibility to everyone, but Taylor Woodrow's director of IT estimates he's saved £1 million in the process. Read more on the Google Enterprise Blog.  
 Reference: The Official Google Blog - 1900/1/
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Google learns to crawl Flash Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. Recently, we've improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe's Flash Player technology. In the past, web designers faced challenges if they chose to develop a site in Flash because the content they included was not indexable by search engines. They needed to make extra effort to ensure that their content was also presented in another way that search engines could find. Now that we've launched our Flash indexing algorithm, web designers can expect improved visibility of their published Flash content, and you can expect to see better search results and snippets. There's more info on the Webmaster Central blog  
 Reference: The Official Google Blog - 1900/1/
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Making it better Over the summer solstice weekend, Seattle/Kirkland Googlers posed this question to people attending the Fremont Fair: "How would you make our world, or our city, better?" The goal of the Fremont Fair "Make it Better" Project was to engage the Seattle community in an active discussion around improving our world. This is the second year we've partnered with Solid Ground to participate in the fair, a free event organized by The Workshop to benefit local efforts to address homelessness, hunger and racism. Check out the video responses to our question that were just posted on the Solid Ground YouTube channel. Whether it's about ending poverty, improving equal access to education or any of the myriad of other challenges our world faces, we want to use our technology to stimulate creative discussion about the ideas that are important to Seattle-area citizens and to local Googlers.  
 Reference: The Official Google Blog - 1900/1/
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| I got married... with Google We love hearing stories about how our products help people, and let's face it -- weddings are one time when help is needed. For many couples, planning a wedding can be an organizational nightmare. But for David and Bergin Boyle, the planning turned into a fun experiment on the web. The Boyles used Google Calendar to pick a wedding date that fit both of their schedules. They created to-do and RSVP lists with Google Docs and shared them with their relatives and friends. And they created a site containing the wedding details for their guests, complete with a personalized Google Map featuring the local Stonington, Conn., sights as well as places of note in the surrounding metropolitan areas. As a result, David reports he was undaunted by the planning process. And with the help of Blogger's "future-dated posts" feature, the couple was able to post their wedding story on the groom's blog at the same time that they strolled down the aisle. Here's the full story in their own words. Our best wishes to the Boyles!  
 Reference: The Official Google Blog - 1900/1/
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Using data to fight webspam This post is the latest in an ongoing series about how we harness the data we collect to improve our products and services for our users. - Ed. As the head of the webspam team at Google, I'm in charge of making sure your search results are as relevant and informative as possible. Webspam, in case you've never heard of it, is the junk you see in search results when websites successfully cheat their way into higher positions in search results or otherwise violate search engine quality guidelines. If you've never seen webspam, here's a good example of what you might see if you click on a link in the search results that's spam (click on the image to see it larger).  You can see how unhelpful such a page would be. This example is filled with almost no original content, irrelevant links, and information that is of little use to a user. We work hard to ensure you rarely see search results like this. Imagine how annoyed you would be if you clicked on a link from a Google search result and ended up on a page like this. Searchers don't often see blatant, outright spam like this in search results today. But webspam was much more of an issue before Google became popular and before we were able to build effective anti-spam methods. In general, webspam can be a real annoyance, such as when a search on your own name returns links to porn pages as results. But for many searches, where getting relevant information is more critical, spam is a serious problem. For example, a search for prostate cancer that's full of spam instead of relevant links greatly diminishes the value of a search engine as a helpful tool. Data from search logs is one tool we use to fight webspam and return cleaner and more relevant results. Logs data such as IP address and cookie information make it possible to create and use metrics that measure the different aspects of our search quality (such as index size and coverage, results "freshness," and spam). Whenever we create a new metric, it's essential to be able to go over our logs data and compute new spam metrics using previous quer | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
