WebProNews

Tag: Search Suggestions

  • Chrome Omnibox Suggestions Get Recency Tweak, Browser Gets Reset Button

    Google announced a few updates to Chrome, including what the company is calling “smarter” omnibox suggestions.

    All Chrome users will start seeing omnibox suggestions that are based on the recency of sites they have visited. Google says this will resultin “more timely and contextually relevant” suggestions.

    The adjustments were made to the beta channel last month.

    Additionally, they’ve added a new way to reset your browser to how it was before you added a bunch of extensions to it.

    “And for those nostalgic for the new car smell — maybe you, too, got overzealous with fun extensions — we’ve added a new option to the Chrome settings page to let you restore it back to its original state,” says Google software engineer Mark Pearson. “And don’t worry, it won’t affect your themes, bookmarks or apps.”

    To do this, go to the hotdog icon, settings, and “Show advanced settings”. There, you will find the “reset browser settings” button.

    Finally, on Chrome for Android, Google has improved scrolling and startup performance. It also now has WebRTC support, which allows for video conversations.

  • Google Now Suggests Search Results For You To Link To While Creating Documents In Google Drive

    Google is now suggesting actual search results for people to link to while they’re creating documents and slides in Google Drive.

    Google has already had a feature that lets you find results to link to, but now it’s adding the power of suggestion.

    The company explains in a Google+ post:

    Google Drive

    Google Drive21 hours ago

    You can hyperlink text in Docs and Slides when you want to attach related information to a word or sentence — for example, when writing a paper on Athens, you can highlight “Acropolis” and link it to a Google search result, a specific website, a heading or bookmark in your document, or even another file in Drive. 

    Starting today, the link tool now offers you suggestions based on the text you are hyperlinking just in case you don’t have the URL you need offhand.  To try it out, select the text you want and click the “Insert link” icon from the menu bar (or use Ctrl K). 

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    The top results in this example do appear to be the top organic search results Google shows for a search for “acropolis”. Something tells me that WIkipedia is going to start getting a lot of links in documents.

  • Chrome Omnibox Suggestions Get Recency Adjustment

    Google announced some tweaks to Chrome’s beta channel today. The biggest change is to the omnibox, Google’s web address box, which doubles as a web search box.

    Google has made an adjustment to how recency plays into the search suggestions that appear when the user types into the omnibox. This applies to those using Chrome beta on Windows, Mac or Linux, and it starts today. Google says the changes mean you’ll get “more contextually relevant suggestions at the right time.”

    Google is also launching an update for Chrome beta on Android phones and tablets designed to improve web navigation and interaction.

    “You may notice pages loading faster, and the latest implementation of WebRTC technology allows you to chat face-to-face through your browser without installing any plugins,” says Google software engineer Mark Pearson. “Try it out by starting a conversation with a friend.”

    Also included in the main Chrome beta update are a number of of new apps/extension APIs and “lots” of under-the-hood changes for stability and performance. You can see the full list of changes here.

  • 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 Suggests You Search for ‘Sex Games for Kids’ and a Bunch of Other Questionable Queries

    Updated with comment from Microsoft below.

    Like Google, Yahoo, and most other search engines, Bing offers to autocomplete queries in their search box. While Google calls this feature “autocomplete,” Bing calls it “search suggestions.”

    Well, it looks like Bing is suggesting that you search for some pretty disturbing stuff.

    I was pointed in the right direction thanks to a reddit post. “Why don’t you have a seat over there, Bing,” it read, referencing Dateline NBC host Chris Hansen’s famous line on the show To Catch a Predator.

    Ok, I’ll bite. Here’s what Bing’s search suggestions suggest:

    Say what? It appears that Bing is suggesting that I search for “sex games for kids,” and “sex games for kids in bed” and “sex games online for children.” Hm, ok then.

    Digging a little deeper with the questionable queries produced similar results. For instance, here’s what Bing suggests when you search for “sex kids”:

    And here’s a Bing search for “sex child…”:

    Even worse, here are Bing’s suggestions for what I’m sure is one of their (and any search engine’s) most popular single-word queries, “sex”:

    Damnit, Bing.

    Also, changing your SafeSearch settings to strict does nothing to eliminate these results. When you think about it, it would probably look even worse for Bing if it did, because that would indicate that Bing felt that a search suggestion like “sex games for kids in bed” was an appropriate suggestion for a moderate level SafeSearch.

    “Still seeing inappropriate content? SafeSearch uses advanced technology to filter adult content, but it won’t catch everything. If SafeSearch is set to Strict or Moderate and you’re seeing adult content, tell us about it so we can filter it in the future,” says Bing.

    But this isn’t a SafeSearch problem, this is a search suggestions problem. You can turn search suggestions off in your settings, but by default they are on. That means that the average person that pulls up bing.com and searches for “sex g…” sees these questionable suggestions.

    Now, I guess the next big question is whether or not Bing has a responsibility to filter out these search suggestions.

    On one hand you could make the argument that Bing doesn’t have to manually edit which search suggestions it gives for particular queries. The suggestions are clearly based upon popular and recent searches from the Bing community – and if that’s what they’re searching for then hey – let it be.

    On the other hand, Google limits its autocomplete results. Here’s what you’ll see when you search “sex games” on Google:

    And here’s what you see when you search “sex kid”:

    As you know, Google also censors other questionable searches. They won’t give you suggestions for sexual terms like “boobs” or “pussy,” and they won’t even display curse words like “fuck” or “shit” in autocomplete results.

    They also censor any search that has to do with the illegal downloading of copyright protected content. For instance, “game of thrones torrent” won’t autocomplete.

    Over on Bing, it’s a totally different story:

    Bing doesn’t really filter any of the types of searches that Google does. Last year, we pointed out that Bing was suggesting painless ways to kill yourself while Google was displaying the suicide prevention hotline.So, if they’re going with a true hands-off approach to any sort of search suggestion censoring, what’s different about queries about sex games for kids?

    Well, it’s the “c’mon, dude” argument I guess. As in, Bing…c’mon dude. It doesn’t help that instead of “autocomplete,” Bing’s version of the technology is called “search suggestions.” So, when you think about it, Bing is suggesting that you search for “sex kids movies” and “sex games with kids in bed.”

    C’mon, dude.

    I’ve reached out to Bing for comment and will update when I hear back.

    UPDATE:

    As you know, Facebook partners with Bing for their search results. And you can find the same questionable suggestions inside Graph Search results:

    UPDATE 2: A Microsoft spokesperson has given me this:

    “We’re reviewing the guidelines for search suggestions related to this type of query.”

    Well have to see if anything changes.

  • Google Expands Knowledge Graph Throughout The World (And The SERP)

    Google made a few significant search announcements this week. We already told you about the addition of Gmail content to search results and the new voice search stuff for iOS.

    Google is also beefing up Knowledge Graph availability, making it available to all English-speaking countries int the world, starting today.

    In addition to that, Google is starting to use Knowledge Graph results as suggestions in the search box.

    “We’ll also use this intelligence to help you find the right result more quickly when your search may have different meanings,” says Google’s Amit Singhal in a blog post. “For example, if you search for [rio], you might be interested in the Brazilian city, the recent animated movie or the casino in Vegas. Thanks to the Knowledge Graph, we can now give you these different suggestions of real-world entities in the search box as you type.”

    Knowledge Graph in Search Box

    Perhaps this will cut down on the controversial search suggestions that always seem to find their way into the news (and court).

    Remember that test we looked at a couple weeks ago showing Google putting Knowledge Graph content across the top of the SERP? Well, that’s more than just a test now.

    “Finally, the best answer to your question is not always a single entity, but a list or group of connected things,” says Singhal. “It’s quite challenging to pull these lists automatically from the web. But we’re now beginning to do just that. So when you search for [california lighthouses], [hurricanes in 2008] or [famous female astronomers], we’ll show you a list of these things across the top of the page. And by combining our Knowledge Graph with the collective wisdom of the web, we can even provide more subjective lists like [best action movies of the 2000s] or [things to do in paris]. If you click on an item, you can then explore the result more deeply on the web.”

    Google says it can produce hundreds of thousands of lists involving millions of items, and this will keep growing.

    Google is really throwing the classic simple, uncluttered design out the window these days.