WebProNews

Tag: Autosuggest

  • Google Proves To Be Inconsistent By Adding Grooveshark To Their Autosuggest Blacklist

    As Google’s march towards becoming the big brother who knows what’s best for their users, even if their users disagree, continues unabated, are we witnessing the company undo all the goodwill it built up over the years? Findings seem to suggest that trend, and when the company responds to why they did things like get rid of Google Reader, despite the outcry against the move, the words from Google’s representatives have a sense of aloofness, as if the will of their users doesn’t matter, and things will be just fine if we just follow their lead and use Google+.

    With that in mind, Google has done something else that comes across as odd, and perhaps unwarranted, by adding the streaming music site Grooveshark to its search engine autosuggest blacklist, the same fate reserved for such sites like The Pirate Bay and Torrent Reactor.

    Grooveshark

    The question is why? It certainly wasn’t because of DMCA takedown requests, something we already know is a hit-and-miss game to begin with. TorrentFreak’s report indicates as much:

    The addition of Grooveshark is noteworthy because Google has received relatively few DMCA takedown requests for the Grooveshark domain. Google explained earlier that these requests are one of the factors used to determine whether a search phrase should be filtered or not.

    Does that mean Grooveshark has been the victim of a massive takedown request push? Not at all. As the article points out, Grooveshark is, in fact, low on the list of DMCA complaints in relation to Google’s search results:

    Total Requests: 263
    Median Requests per Week: 5
    URLs Requested to be Removed: 2,447
    % Indexed URLs < 0.1% Median URLs per Week: 11 Most Recent Request: Jul 22, 2013 First Available Request: Feb 28, 2012

    If Grooveshark is low by the standards set by other sites, why were they removed from the autosuggest feature? For comparison’s sake, Torrent Freak points out that torrent tracker site, BTloft, gets a lot more takedown requests than Grooveshark–190 median requests per week, as opposed to 5–and yet, it is still part of Google’s search suggestion:

    BTloft

    Granted, there are some grey areas surrounding Grooveshark’s business model. They have been successful getting streaming rights from independent artists, but not so much with the mainstream labels. This, of course, stands to reason when you consider how the music industry does business with the Internet, but it is clear the owners behind the site have at least tried to get permission. That, apparently, isn’t good enough for Google, and so, Grooveshark is no longer included in the autosuggest feature when you start typing similarly spelled words, and it appears as if Google won’t be giving us a legitimate reason why, either.

  • Bing Adds Brands, Movies, Albums, Places, Software, Sports Teams & Animals To Autosuggest

    Bing announced today that it is now including more types of entities in its autosuggest feature, including brands, movies, albums, places, software, sports teams, and animal species.

    A couple months ago, Bing launched new info about people in autosuggest, so you can type the names of celebrities, politicians, athletes, or even just people with LinkedIn profiles, and Bing will show you information about them right from the search box, like so:

    Bing Autosuggest - People

    Now, Bing will display information for the aforementioned categories in similar fashion.

    “For example, consider the word ‘pitbull,’” says Bing principal development manager Antonio Gulli. “This is an interesting search because you may want results for the artist (a person) or the dog (a breed). Because only you can tell us which one you’re interested in finding, we serve up thumbnails with both the person and the dog. These are very different things that just happen to have the same name. But, Bing understands the difference and gives you the opportunity to select the right one.”

    Pitbull

    Harry Potter autosuggest

    Empire State Building autosuggest

    “In order to make these distinctions, Bing utilizes an underlying technology we call Satori that understands the relationships between millions of people, places and things providing you with a more useful model of the digital and physical world,” says Gulli. “All of this computational power allows you to select the most appropriate choice in a matter of milliseconds.”

    This is one area where Bing has a clearly better user experience than Google, if you’re looking to get actionable results from the actual search box. While Google will put a Pitbull Google+ profile in its autosuggest feature, it does little with suggestions for any of the examples Bing provides.

    That’s not to say Google’s Knowledge Graph results don’t provide ways for users to distinguish what they’re looking for, but you have to get through the search query before you can tell Google what you’re actually looking for (like the Harry Potter books vs. movies, for example). Of course, you could always specify in your actual query.

  • Bing Autosuggest Adds More People Info

    Bing Autosuggest Adds More People Info

    Bing announced the addition of some more information about people in its autosuggest feature. Now, when you search for celebrities, politicians, athletes, or people with LinkedIn profiles, Bing will provide info about that person in the drop-down with the search suggestions.

    In cases where there are multiple people with the same name, it will ask which one you meant:

    Bing Autosuggest

    The feature is part of Bing’s “snapshot” pane, which Bing launched last year.

    “The goal of Bing’s Snapshot feature – our center column on the main results page – is to help people find information they need to understand their world,” a Bing spokesperson tells WebProNews. “With the people category as the second largest searched on Bing, we’re giving you another way to find people faster and directly from the search box.”

    According to Dan Marantz, Lead Program Manager for Bing Query Formulation UX, people searches are the second most searched for category, after navigational queries, and account for roughly 10% of queries on Bing.

    “In the milliseconds between keystrokes, Bing lets you narrow down your search by clicking on the correct person,” he says. “If Bing has information on a person, we let you know by displaying it below the search box. In some instances, multiple people share the same name. When this happens, we’ll provide information for the most relevant people with that name, and help you narrow down your search.”

    The new autosuggest feature was co-developed By the Search Technological Center in London.

    The feature appears to be in the process or rolling out.

  • Bing Adds Some ‘Ghosting’ To Autosuggest

    Bing Adds Some ‘Ghosting’ To Autosuggest

    Bing announced that it has made a change to its Autosuggest feature, which it says makes the search experience faster by completing your query when they’re “confident” they “really know” what you’re looking for.

    Bing refers to its latest development as “Autosuggest Ghosting”.

    “Autosuggest algorithms are able to determine just how likely it is that you want the #1 suggestion with various degrees of confidence,” explains Dan Marantz, Senior Program Manager Lead, Bing Experiences and Query Formulation Team. “This confidence is highest in the two major patterns: Navigation and Search History. Ghosting is a way to pre-populate the query most likely to be used in the search box (blue selected-text style below) in an effort to speed up the time it takes to express your intent and get to your destination. This has seen to help users speed up by over 16%.”

    “The design challenge was to focus on simplicity and intuitiveness. The interaction should feel natural and instinctive when you need it, and easy to work around when you don’t want it,” he says. “The simplest solution is to grey-in (or “ghost”) the high-confidence suggestive text and hope you notice. The problem then becomes – how do you accept the suggestion vs ignore it?”

    Naturally, he takes a dig at Google.

    “Google’s model complicates this by not being clear about what happens when you hit <enter> to submit the query,” he says. “Will the search be for ‘bed’ or ‘bed bath and beyond’? Turns out the query is only ‘bed’ and you need to press <tab> or <down> to select the full query.”

    The Bing philosophy, he says, is not grounded in applying already-learned interaction models.

    Users can press Enter to accept a suggestion, continue to type through it with something else, or press Delete/Backspace to remove the suggested text.

  • Google Pays Fine Over AutoComplete Suggestion In France

    Google Pays Fine Over AutoComplete Suggestion In France

    A Paris court found in favor of a local insurance company against Google last month regarding a dispute offer the search engine’s AutoComplete search results.

    Apparently, when users typed in the name of the firm, “Lyonnaise de Garantie”, into Google, AutoComplete offered the term “escroc” associated with the term. “Escroc” means “swindler” or “crook”.

    Google explained to the court that it did not influence the results of its AutoComplete technology, but rather the suggestions were the result of other users’ searches. That is to say, other people were searching for results about that insurance company being crooked. Google makes no representation as to whether the statement implied is true, accurate, etc. It simply is there because other people put it there.

    As reported on Fierce Government IT:

    “The French court in its ruling said Google can, or should, exercise “human control over the functionality” adding that absent a delegation of powers, every company head “is personally responsible for the information content that the company, according to his purpose, issues to the public.” The fine amounts to approximately $65,000.”

    The notion of a party trying to hold Google responsible for simply impersonally reflecting the state of things on the Internet is not unfamiliar to Americans. Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, now a Republican Candidate for President, has tried to do that himself, with no success.

    As Josh Wolford reported last week, Rick Santorum has had a “Google problem“. And, as is the nature of things online, when he tried to fight it directly, it only got worse. Finally he approached Google as a corporation and demanded that the offensive search results be removed. Google refused.

  • Bing Suggests Queries Based on Search History

    Microsoft announced today that Bing is just now supporting query history in its Autosuggest feature. In other words, if you have your search history enabled, Bing will incorporate past queries you’ve made into the suggestions.

    "You are in full control of your query history," the Bing Team stresses.  "We know your privacy is very important to you.  You can turn History on or off at any time or selectively remove any portion of your search history using the Manage History option.  You will see both of these choices every time you use Autosuggest."

    Bing suggests queries based on history

    "Many search tasks span multiple search sessions even days or weeks," Bing says. "In fact, 44% of non-navigational search sessions last longer than 1 week!  Perhaps you need to research the purchase of a new automobile.  You might use Bing to find a retail location and to further research online – over many days – to make the best decisions on your big ticket purchase.  With history support in Autosuggest, you can restart a previous search session by typing a few characters to see your previous queries and start researching right where you left off.  We know from our testing that this makes you more effective at your longer search tasks."

    The suggestions that are based on your search history are listed in purple, to stand out from the other blue suggestions.

  • Bing Improves Its Autosuggest Feature

    Bing Improves Its Autosuggest Feature

    Microsoft has improved its autosuggest feature on Bing to provide more timely results.

    On the Bing Search Blog the company says that its research found 45 percent of search queries result either in a user conducting an immediate re-query, or quitting the page altogether.

    As an example Bing cites the Golden Globe Awards and says its autosuggest now provides the latest news and information about recent winners.

    Bing-autosuggest

    The Bing Blog offers more details. "We at Bing are continually improving the performance of autosuggest to reduce these problems. In fact, we recently incorporated breaking news and hot trending queries within autosuggest. Updated every 15 minutes, trending queries balance timeliness and relevance to connect you with the most prominent or topical events happening now."
     

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