WebProNews

Tag: Search

  • Google Drive Gets New Compact Mode And Search Box

    Google announced a couple of new features for Google documents today. One allows you to click a button to free up some more visual space, and the other lets you take quick actions from a search box.

    “Ever wanted more room to get stuff done in Google documents?” writes Google software Amav Shah on the Google Drive blog. “Click the new button in the upper right corner of your screen to enter Compact Mode, and everything above the formatting menu will collapse and give you another inch or so to work with.”

    Here’s what that looks like:

    Compact mode

    Google will remember the view settings you’ve selected for documents, spreadsheets, presentations and drawings. The next time you open them, it should begin in the same view.

    “You can also now quickly take menu actions by typing in the new search box,” says Shah. “For example, if you type in ‘Picture,’ you’ll see different options for adding graphics to your document.”

    Docs Search box

    From the search box, you can format text (bold/italics/strikethrough), change the font or font size, insert images, links or comments, make a bulleted or numbered list, open the sharing settings, look up the word count, and do almost anything else from the document menus.

    The box does not support language settings, inserting tables, changing text/background color, the paint format tool, or copy/paste using the web clipboard.

  • Foursquare to Launch New Search-Oriented Homepage

    We say it a lot whenever we’re talking about Foursquare – but the company that started as a simple gamified check-in app has been consistently “moving beyond the check-in” as of late. They recently launched a massive redesign of their mobile app on both Android and iOS that puts an emphasis on “exploring,” and finding locations based on friend activity and previous activity of users themselves.

    And it’s really all about the data. The company has had years now to compile millions of individual pieces of data on locations around the world. Now, it looks like they’re making another move to use that data in a way that helps them grow into a true competitor in the local search game.

    According to Search Engine Land, Foursquare will be unveiling a brand new homepage for logged-out users this afternoon. The new page’s purpose is singular: to display Foursquare’s search bar prominently, so that people will think of Foursquare as the first place to go when looking for info on local establishments.

    Here’s the current Foursquare homepage for logged-out users:

    Foursquare old homepage

    And here’s how the new page will look with the front-and-center search box:

    Search results on Foursquare already include user reviews, composite scores, locations, and more. They also allow for searcher to filter those results (a functionality that is much more useful when you’re logged in).

    Foursquare wants people to know that their not just about check-ins and mayorships anymore. With all of the data, Foursquare is poised to compete with other services like Yelp and even Urbanspoon (when it comes to food). This small homepage redesign shows that they are serious about staking their place in the crowded world of local search.

    The new homepage is not live yet, and we’ll have more on this later.

  • Winsor McCay Comic Little Nemo Celebrated with a Google Doodle

    Today, Google is treating us to a fantastic Doodle celebrating the 107th anniversary of famous American cartoonist Winsor McCay and his strip Little Nemo in Slumberland.

    McCay was born in 1869 (although this date is debated) in Spring Lake, Michigan. His career as a cartoonist and animator produced work that’s been said to have influenced other high-profile minds in the field like Walt Disney. He’s probably best known for 1914’s Gertie the Dinosaur cartoon and the aforementioned Little Nemo strip.

    Today, that’s what Google’s celebrating; the official launch day of the Little Nemo in Slumberland comic – October 15th, 1905. Nemo ran in two separate newspapers, the New York Herald and New York American until 1914. There was a short-lived return to print for Nemo in 1924. The official end date for the strip was 1927.

    This time, we find Little Nemo in Google-land. The expansive doodle shows Nemo as he plunges through areas filled with the Google letters. The Doodle requires some user participation, as they are asked to click a tab in order to see Nemo continue his journey.

    Head on over to the Google homepage to check out the Doodle or you can watch it play out below:

  • Facebook Tests New Search Box Placement

    Facebook Tests New Search Box Placement

    Although it may just be a simple test (Facebook does hundreds of them every year) without the motivation that I’m about to assign it, Facebook is trying out a new top navigation bar setup for some users. The new format pushes the friend request icons, message icon, and notifications icon all the way over the the right hand side and cozies the search box right up next to the Facebook logo.

    Here’s what the test looks like, courtesy of Inside Facebook:

    And here’s the current navigation bar, for reference:

    So what, right? Facebook’s just trying out something new. Well, maybe. But anything Facebook does anything involving search (or their search box, for that matter) reminds us that Facebook has been talking about getting into the search game for quite some time now. And the conversation has intensified.

    For instance, Mark Zuckerberg recently said that “we’re basically doing 1 billion queries a day and we’re not even trying. Facebook is pretty uniquely positioned to answer the questions people have. At some point we’ll do it. We have a team working on it…Search engines are really evolving to give you a set of answers, ‘I have a specific question, answer this question for me.”

    Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg was also talking about search recently, saying that nobody has been able to fulfill the “promise” of social search…yet.

    “As Mark said, I think people are surprised how much search is done on Facebook, you know, every day there’s enormous percentage of search. There’s also a promise in the market that search could become more social that we don’t think this has been met. When you’re looking for information, the question is who do you want it from, the wisdom of crowds or the wisdom of friends? Our answer is the information that’s most relevant for users is really about friends. That if I’m looking for a restaurant to go to in New York this week, I’d rather get a recommendation from a friend. That’s really what we’re working on,” she said.

    Then there’s the fact that recent data has pointed that people are increasingly turning to social over search for their everyday queries. That has to be music to Facebook’s ears.

    Some projections have estimated that Facebook could grab 22% of the total search market – right out of the gate.

    I’m not going to suggest that this reorganizational test means that Facebook is gearing up for true search. But you have to think, that if they are developing their own product, they’d have to make it much more prominent than the current in-house Facebook search.

  • Here’s What Yahoo’s Homepage Is About To Look Like [Report]

    Yahoo is reportedly rolling out a new redesign to its homepage. It’s not dramatically different, but it’s different.

    Business Insider has gotten ahold of a couple of screen shots. Here’s the one showing what it looks like above the fold:

    Yahoo Homepage

    For comparison, here’s what the old/current version looks like:

    Old Yahoo Design

    The most noticeable element is the disappearance of the Yahoo Trends box from the upper right-hand corner. This will no longer be in users’ faces as much, and will be displayed in a list format int he left-hand column. Meanwhile, the list of Yahoo sites that appear there is shrunk to accomodate the trends list. Any missing sites are presumably still accessible via the “more” link. They also made a little room by getting rid of the words “Yahoo! Sites” at the top of that list. This was certainly not needed.

    Additionally, Yahoo has simplified the header, adding a gray bar, which encompasses the logo (which has turned from purple to white), the search box, the sign in link and the mail link. There is a drop-down menu for search options on one side of the search box, and “search” has been removed from the search button in favor of a search icon (which is purple, as opposed to the old yellow box).

    The news section has become a bit more visual, with an additional main picture added, though this pushes the list of stories down further. Those stories, however, now come with snippets, and don’t appear to be categorized like they are on the old version. It’s hard to tell too much from these images though.

    There is an interesting amount of prominence given to the Astrology section on the right-hand side in the new design, but it’s quite possible that this is simply a dynamic and/or personalized section. Business Insider does indicate that sources have said more personalization is coming to the page.

    Above that, there is a local weather section.

    So far, we have not seen the new homepage in the wild, but Business Insider says it’s been confirmed by a a source close to Yahoo, so I guess we’ll see it soon enough. According to the report, it’s a slow roll out.

    Whether or not you’re a Yahoo user, it’s hard to ignore just how big the Yahoo homepage truly is. Have you ever taken a look at Yahoo’s realtime pageview counter for it? You can access it here. As of the time of this writing (3:04 PM), it is closing in on 109 million pageviews for the day. As far as I can tell, it’s getting about two to three thousand a second.

    Image credit: Business Insider

  • Yahoo Bing Network CTRs, CPCs Consistently Higher Than Google [Report]

    Kenshoo has released a new report looking at global search advertising trends. While paid search budgets have been significantly higher year-over-year for all three of the year’s first quarters, the firm says there was not a lot of fluctuation in ad spend quarter-over-quarter (which is pretty much how it went in 2011).

    “Last year, there was a large ramp-up in Q3 but this year, advertisers increased their budgets early and consistently throughout the year,” Kenshoo says.

    Quarterly search ad spend

    According to the report, global paid search average CPCs rose in both Q2 and Q3, following four consecutive quarters of falling rates. They’ve risen to $0.46 after bottoming out at $0.40 in Q1. They were at $0.47 during Q3 of 2011.

    Total search ad impression volume fell for its second consecutive quarter in Q3 2012, Kenshoo says. It’s down 23% overall since Q1.

    In the U.S., the Yahoo Bing Network average CTR and CPC is consistently higher than Google, according to the report. Kenshoo says:

    Over the past 6 quarters, the Yahoo! Bing Network (YBN) has delivered sequential increases in search ad CTR in every quarter except Q1 2012, in which CTR was flat QoQ. Meanwhile, Google AdWords CTR has oscillated, hovering near 1% with a significant uptick to 1.25% in Q3 2012. 6 quarters ago, the gap between YBN and Google CTR was miniscule. Today YBN CTR is 29% higher than Google. Similarly, the 2 engines were very close in CPC back in Q2 of 2011 but now there is a considerable gap with YBN CPC 46% higher than Google. During that time, YBN CPC increased significantly from Q2 to Q3 2011 and then remained relatively flat, while Google CPC has come down from an 18-month high of $0.61 to $0.45 in Q3 2012.

    Yahoo Bing Network performance

    According to the firm, paid search budgets are growing faster for Yahoo/Bing than for Google. In Q3, Yahoo Bing Network ad spend was up 10% quarter-over-quarter and 35% year-over-year. Google was up 75% quarter-over-quarter and 28% year-over-year. As far as clicks, Yahoo Bing Network grew faster quarter-over-quarter but Google grew faster year-over-year.

    The full report is available here.

  • September U.S. Search Market: Google Up, Microsoft Flat, Yahoo Down

    comScore has released its latest numbers for the U.S. search market. They show Google sites up 0.3% in September at 66.7%, followed by Microsoft sites at 15.9% and Yahoo sites at 12.2%. Ask came in at 3.5%, and AOL came in at 1.8%. Microsoft remained flat from month to month, while Yahoo dropped by .6%.

    “More than 16.3 billion explicit core searches were conducted in September, with Google Sites ranking first with 10.9 billion,” reports comScore. “Microsoft Sites ranked second with 2.6 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2 billion, Ask Network with 565 million (up 3 percent) and AOL, Inc. with 287 million.”

    “In September, 69.4 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google (up 0.6 percentage points), while 25.1 percent of searches were powered by Bing,” the firm notes.

    Here are the usual charts:

    comScore search market in U.S.

    comScore search market

    In August, Bing had gained market share and Google had lost a bit.

  • Google’s 7-Result SERPs Having A Bigger Effect On Sites Than Panda?

    Google has been making it harder to get first-page rankings. That’s not just because all of the algorithm updates the search giant keeps launching, an increased emphasis on “answers” results, which require users to click over to other sites less often, and the addition of Google’s Knowledge Graph to search results. Sure, these things all come into play, but for more and more queries, Google has also been showing less traditional results altogether.

    Google results pages have commonly and historically showed ten main organic results, but for a growing number of queries, that number has been reduced to seven. Specifically, this is happening on results pages in which the top result displays additional “sitelinks”. Here’s what Google has had to say about it (via Danny Sullivan):

    “We’re continuing to work out the best ways to show multiple results from a single site when it’s clear users are interested in that site. Separately, we’re also experimenting with varying the number of results per page, as we do periodically. Overall our goal is to provide the most relevant results for a given query as quickly as possible, whether it’s a wide variety of sources or navigation deep into a particular source. There’s always room for improvement, so we’re going to keep working on getting the mix right.”

    Dr. Peter J. Meyers, President of User Effect, recently shared some interesting research at SEOmoz about this phenomenon, which seems to have begun in early to mid August.

    Now, BrightEdge has put out some new research on the topic based on analysis of queries for 26,000 keywords. According to CEO Jim Yu, the effects from this are even greater than those of the Panda update.

    In a piece sharing the firm’s analysis at Search Engine Land, he writes, “The percentage of keywords impacted is currently 8% across the industries we examined. This is significant, considering that a critical update like Panda affected 5% of searches.”

    “We have found that the impact varies by industry,” he adds. “The Technology – B2B sector has 9.4% of its keywords affected, while Technology – B2C industry sees 12.1% keywords impacted. Financial Services industry has about 2.7% of keywords affected, and about 3.5% of keywords in Retail are impacted by this change.”

    Even if a site’s rankings did not technically drop, a move from the first page to the second page in search can bring a significant barrier to visibility.

    It’s interesting that Google has not brought infinite scroll to web search as it has to image search. You can get through ten pages of image results in no time with this feature. A simple click to another page may not seem like a huge step for a user, but it’s still an additional step. It seems like introducing this feature to web search would also go along with Google’s emphasis on increasing speed in search. It’s certainly faster to scroll down further than it is to click to another page. Yet, Google seems to be going in the opposite direction, and actually reducing the number of results on the page.

    To be fair, Google usually does its job in returning the information needed on the first page (at least in my experience), and if you have to go past page one, perhaps Google is not doing its job. If you have to go deeper than seven results, even, it’s not doing that great a job. There is, however, a discoverability element that is eliminated, or at least impeded, by showing less results. Perhaps you found what you were looking for in the top results, but missed something that could have been equally helpful or interesting had you had a chance to see it.

    Image: gigglecam (YouTube)

  • Google Adds Familiar Navigation to Mobile Homepage

    Google is making efforts to make its mobile experience more unified, much like it has been doing with the desktop experience over the past year or so. Google has updated its mobile homepage to include a new navigation panel, which basically mirrors the one found in the Google+ app. It’s pretty much the mobile version of the top black navigation bar you see across Google products on the desktop, except it is accessible by a button in the corner, which brings it out from the left side.

    Google announced the update in a Google+ post:

    Google

    Google13 hours ago

    Today we’re rolling out a new look for the mobile Google homepage. Now, when you tap the new menu button in the upper left you’ll see a sidebar with other popular Google products, helping you get to them quickly and easily. If you’ve upgraded to Google+, you’ll also see your Google+ notifications and the share button. Visit www.google.com on your Android phone or iPhone to give it a try, and let us know what you think in the comments!

    1318    180 Powered by socialditto

    Google has also made the desktop ratings system for Google+ Local more like the mobile version it launched last month.

    These are just the latest moves Google has made to make its products feel less like separate products and more like big one (which is the same reason Google consolidated its privacy policies earlier this year).

    Do you like the more unified direction Google is going in?

  • Google Maps Hot-Button Political Search Terms Across the U.S.

    If you weren’t aware, Google has info on our searches just sitting around. Since we, as a nation, make millions and millions of searches every week, you’d expect that Google has quite a bit of that information.

    Today, they’ve put it to good use by taking some specific search terms and cross referencing them by region to come up with this fun little map of the United States based on popular campaign issues.

    “The United States is a nation composed of unique regions, values, and identities. During presidential election years the media narrative tends to focus on a handful of key swing states. Here on the +Google Politics & Elections team, we wanted to take a step back and examine the nation as a whole. We took seven hot-button political issues and mapped how their +Google search interest varied by state,” says Google Politics in a Google+ post.

    Compiling roughly a year’s worth of searches, Google looked at terms related to gun control, abortion, social security, gay marriage, national debt, tax cuts, and marijuana legalization.

    Where search terms regarding “abortion” were the most searched probably won’t surprise you. The bulk came from southern states like Mississippi, Texas, and Georgia. New York and D.C. also logged high search quantity for the term. States in the west dominated the “national debt” searches, including Idaho, Montana, Utah, and North & South Dakota. My home state of Kentucky led searches on marijuana legalization.

    No comment.

    Check out Google’s map below:

  • Uganda Independence Celebrated With Google Doodle

    Today officially marks 50 years of independence in Uganda, and Google is celebrating the occasion with a doodle in the country, visible at Google.co.ug.

    The country’s early independence from British rule began in 1962, though this gave way to rule under various dictators, beginning with Idi Amin, who would become the third President of Uganda.

    Uganda has received more media attention here in the U.S. over the past year, than any other time I can remember, thanks to the huge viral success of the Kony2012 campaign (which has been back in the news thanks to its creator doing interviews about a breakdown he experienced following that success and the controversy it invited).

    The Huffington Post is running an interesting article from Twesigye Jackson Kaguri, founder of the Nyaka AIDS Orphans Project, which works on behalf of HIV/AIDS orphans in rural Uganda to “end systemic deprivation, poverty and hunger”. He writes:

    As Uganda celebrates its 50th year as an independent nation, have things improved? Although we are a democracy, we have voted for the same president, Yoweri Museveni, a military leader, since 1986. It doesn’t take a genius to know one man should not lead a country over twenty years.

    We have a degraded road system in rural areas, worse than in Rwanda, a country that is led by a man educated and trained in Uganda, Paul Kagame. We have little or no healthcare facilities in many parts of the country, and too many people struggle with HIV/AIDs and malaria. Our educational system is inadequate and many children don’t even receive basic reading and math.

    Despite the KONY 2012 story focusing on Uganda’s past child fighter problems, , the Ugandan people remain hopeful for a better future. There were positive stories in the news too.

    For more on the independence of Uganda, Wikipedia has a series of articles looking at different periods in the country’s history, including the period beginning in 1962.

  • Google Launches A New Google Search Appliance

    Google Search Appliance has been around for about a decade, and today, the box has received a new update with version 7.0. This version adds universal search, refined relevance signals and some other bells and whistles.

    “The GSA 7.0 helps you find information stored anywhere in your organization, whether you’re using a desktop, smartphone or tablet,” says Matthew Eichner, General Manager, Enterprise Search at Google. “Administrators can easily add content sources from secure storage, cloud services or the public web and social networking sites. GSA 7.0 also provides Google-quality search for SharePoint 2010, making for a more simple and intuitive, all-in-one search experience.”

    “Users are happy when they get relevant results returned quickly,” says Eichner. “At Google, speed and relevance are the core components of a great search experience. With GSA 7.0, we’ve refined our relevance signals so that the most useful information for each particular user is always easy to find. Assisted navigation makes it easy to refine search results, and requires no manual configuration from administrators. Entity Recognition automatically identifies and suggests content you might be looking for, and GSA 7.0 also harnesses the ‘wisdom of crowds,’ allowing employees to add their own search results.”

    The new GSA also comes with document preview, Google Translate, updated language capabilities, a new interface and improved scale. You can view thumbnails and flip through full-screen document previews alongside search results. Search results can be displayed in over 60 languages. According to Google, a single rack of GSAs could now fit the equivalent of the entire Google.com index in 2000 (a billion pages).

  • Google Reportedly Facing Privacy Policy Issues In Europe

    This year, Google changed its privacy policies, consolidating policies for various products into a more unified policy encompassing most Google products. This was announced back in January, and was implemented in March.

    Google faced a fair amount of criticism over the move at the time, but for the most part, the concern had evaporated from the headlines. Now, however, it’s back, as The Guardian reports, citing unnamed sources, that the change is expected to “come under fire from European data protection commissioners within days.”

    The group of 30 data protection commissioners from across the European Union, The Guardian reports, “are believed to have determined that Google has breached EU privacy laws.”

    Essentially, what Google’s privacy policy does is allow the company to use data from its various products in its other products, which it maintains will only improve the user experience. For example, it could make recommendations on YouTube videos based on things you’ve searched for on Google. It can better target advertisers, and it can personalize search results.

    Since Google launched Google+, it has, for all intents and purposes, tried to unify its various products into one central Google product. Those various products are basically features of the bigger product. This is further highlighted by the top navigation bar that appears across Google products. The privacy policy changes simply enable Google to treat user data as such.

    Consider Facebook for comparison. Google+ is like Facebook’s news feed. Picasa Web Albums (or perhaps Google+ photos) are like Facebook’s photos. Google.com is like Facebook’s search feature. Google Docs is like Facebook’s Notes feature. And so forth. Such a comparison could only become more substantiated as Facebook launches its recently discussed search offering.

    This is the way the competitive landscape is progressing for Google (at least one of the paths), and the company has made these changes accordingly.

    It will be interesting to see if any action is taken against Google by the EU, and what competitive ramifications that might have for Google in Europe (and how that might affect how Google’s policies are viewed in other regions, for that matter). Interestingly enough, Google also faces competition-related scrutiny in Europe as well.

  • Bing Talks More About Its New Authors Feature

    As previously reported, Bing has launched a new feature that surfaces authors of news articles articles in its social sidebar. Bing did not talk about how to be included in this in its announcement.

    With Google, you have a specific process to follow to be included in its authorship program, which gets your picture in the search results and helps Google associate you with content you contribute to various sites. There was nothing like this mentioned in Bing’s blog post, so we reached out to find out a little more about how this works.

    A spokesperson for Bing tells WebPronews, “People Who Know are experts and enthusiasts from leading sites and social networks like Twitter, foursquare, Quora, LinkedIn, Google+ and Blogger. Bing identifies ‘People Who Know’ based on what they’ve written or tweeted about. Author pages surface information from our experts/enthusiasts Twitter profiles, and recent and relevant articles they have written.”

    “Some experts and enthusiasts may be influential in a number of areas including Twitter, Quora and foursquare,” the spokesperson adds. “When an expert qualifies in more than one category, in most cases we will surface their results from Twitter and Quora in sidebar. As when we introduce any new feature, we’ll continue to look closely at the right way to surface experts related to the query, and may make adjustments as we learn more about the feature.”

    “We’re just beginning to surface news experts and their author pages in sidebar, so while we won’t have author pages for everyone, we’re hard at work to grow our coverage,” the spokesperson says.

    It’s interesting that Bing is including Google properties like Blogger, and even Google+ (which is connected to Google’s own authorship feature) in its “people who know” mix. It’s also interesting that Facebook wasn’t mentioned in that group, considering the Bing sidebar already makes a great deal of use of Facebook.

    Either way, it will be intriguing to see how the feature (and the sidebar itself, for that matter) evolves.

  • Google EMD Update: It Will Be Back Repeatedly

    Not that this will come as much of a surprise, but Google’s EMD update, which Matt Cutts announced a week ago, will be an ongoing, periodic update, much like our other algorithmic friends Panda and Penguin.

    Danny Sullivan confirmed as much with Google. He writes, “Google confirmed for me this week that EMD is a periodic filter. It isn’t constantly running and looking for bad EMD domains to filter. It’s designed to be used from time-to-time to ensure that what was filtered out before should continue to be filtered. It also works to catch new things that may have been missed before.”

    Like I noted here, Sullivan says the advice for EMD recovery is pretty much like that for Panda recovery. “After you’ve removed the poor quality content, it’s waiting time. You’ll only see a change the next time the EMD filter is run,” he says. “When will that be? Google’s not saying, but based on the history of Panda, it’s likely to be within the next three months, and eventually it might move to a monthly basis.”

    Google, if you haven’t heard, actually did launch a new Panda update to roll out alongside the EMD update, so webmasters have had to deal with both updates at the same time, trying to figure out which one they’re actually being affected by. Luckily, the cure is probably the same for both. Quality.

    By the way, Google has been making other changes to its algorithm related to the quality of pages. More on that here. There was also another recent domain-related algorithm tweak (in addition to the domain diversity update).

  • Google Results Are Getting More Local

    Google Results Are Getting More Local

    Google released a big list of 65 changes it has made to its algorithms over the course of August and September, and some of those changes are specifically geared towards making Google better for finding local information.

    Google has been working on improving its local experience for years (though businesses aren’t always happy with the directions the search engine decides to take), and that continues to be the case.

    With recent changes, Google says it has improved the precision and coverage of its system, which helps users find more relevant local web results. “Now we’re better able to identify web results that are local to the user, and rank them appropriately,” Google says.

    Google has also improved its ability so show relevant “universal” results for local, among other categories.

    Here are the local-related changes Google listed:

    • #83659. [project “Answers”] We made improvements to display of the local time search feature.
    • nearby. [project “User Context”] We improved the precision and coverage of our system to help you find more relevant local web results. Now we’re better able to identify web results that are local to the user, and rank them appropriately.
    • #83377. [project “User Context”] We made improvements to show more relevant local results.
    • #83406. [project “Query Understanding”] We improved our ability to show relevant Universal Search results by better understanding when a search has strong image intent, local intent, video intent, etc.
    • #81360. [project “Translation and Internationalization”] With this launch, we began showing local URLs to users instead of general homepages where applicable (e.g. blogspot.ch instead of blogspot.com for users in Switzerland). That’s relevant, for example, for global companies where the product pages are the same, but the links for finding the nearest store are country-dependent.

    It looks like they still have some work to do in the natural language meets local department:

    Where can I get a taco?

    This would be especially helpful in voice search scenarios. The results for the above query were no better via voice search from Android.

    Google has been working on improving its natural language understanding capabilities, but clearly this is no easy feat to master.

  • Google Has Been Messing Around With The Way It Displays Snippets In Search Results

    Google has been busy as usual making numerous changes to its search algorithms, and on Thursday, the company posted a big list of 65 changes it made during the months of August and September. 7 of these changes were related to the snippets Google shows on search results pages.

    Google has refreshed the data is uses to generate sitelinks in snippets, and a few of them are related to titles specifically. Here’s the list of snippets-related changes:

    • #83105. [project “Snippets”] We refreshed data used to generate sitelinks.
    • #83442. [project “Snippets”] This change improved a signal we use to determine how relevant a possible result title actually is for the page.
    • #82407. [project “Other Search Features”] For pages that we do not crawl because of robots.txt, we are usually unable to generate a snippet for users to preview what’s on the page. This change added a replacement snippet that explains that there’s no description available because of robots.txt.
    • #83670. [project “Snippets”] We made improvements to surface fewer generic phrases like “comments on” and “logo” in search result titles.
    • #84652. [project “Snippets”] We currently generate titles for PDFs (and other non-html docs) when converting the documents to HTML. These auto-generated titles are usually good, but this change made them better by looking at other signals.
    • #84211. [project “Snippets”] This launch led to better snippet titles.
    • #84460. [project “Snippets”] This change helped to better identify important phrases on a given webpage.

    Speaking of snippets, Google updated its Webmaster Guidelines this week, and has some new stuff about rich snippets. You can read more about that here.

  • Google Makes Changes To Improve SafeSearch

    On Thursday, Google released a list of 65 changes it made during the months of August and September. 5 of the changes are related to SafeSearch, Google’s filter feature that allows you to search without having to see adult content.

    Those changes are listed as follows:

    • Maru. [project “SafeSearch”] We updated SafeSearch to improve the handling of adult video content in videos mode for queries that are not looking for adult content.
    • Palace. [project “SafeSearch”] This change decreased the amount of adult content that will show up in Image Search mode when SafeSearch is set to strict.
    • #82872. [project “SafeSearch”] In “strict” SafeSearch mode we remove results if they are not very relevant. This change previously launched in English, and this change expanded it internationally.
    • Sea. [project “SafeSearch”] This change helped prevent adult content from appearing when SafeSearch is in “strict” mode.
    • Cobra. [project “SafeSearch”] We updated SafeSearch algorithms to better detect adult content.

    You would think Google would have this down by now, and with these changes, you would also think Google has gotten even better at SafeSearch. It’s hard to say whether or not it really has, but before these changes were announced, Search Engine Roundtable shared a story of an instance where Google was failing at SafeSearch, and even failed to make the necessary changes once notified (though it’s possible that they will still be made).

    Have you noticed whether or not SafeSearch has improved in recent months?

  • Google Makes More Changes To How It Displays “Answers”

    Google released its big list of 65 changes it made during the months of August and September, and once again, quite a few of them had to do with “answers”. These are the the results Google delivers that don’t take you to another site.

    Last time Google released a big list, we looked at how Google is getting better at not having to send users to other sites. This would all be an extension of that. Here are the answers-related changes from the new list:

    • #83818. [project “Answers”] This change improved display of the movie showtimes feature.
    • #83819. [project “Answers”] We improved display of the MLB search feature.
    • #83820. [project “Answers”] This change improved display of the finance search feature.
    • #83459. [project “Alternative Search Methods”] We added support for answers about new stock exchanges for voice queries.
    • #83659. [project “Answers”] We made improvements to display of the local time search feature.
    • #84063. [project “Answers”] We added better understanding of natural language searches for the calculator feature, focused on currencies and arithmetic.
    • #83821. [project “Answers”] We introduced better natural language parsing for display of the conversions search feature.
    • #84083. [project “Answers”] This change improved the display of the movie showtimes search feature.
    • gresshoppe. [project “Answers”] We updated the display of the flight search feature for searches without a specified destination.
    • #84068. [project “Answers”] We improved the display of the currency conversion search feature.
    • #83391. [project “Answers”] This change internationalized and improved the precision of the symptoms search feature.

    It’s probably worth noting that 10 out of 11 of those changes took place in August, so perhaps Google’s focus has shifted away from this area a little for the time being.

  • Square Launches A Search Engine For Merchants

    Square announced the launch of the Square Directory, which it is calling “the first web-based search engine that enables customers to discover their favorite places by location or specific items; as well as find loyalty deals and specials.”

    As the company notes, people can also use it to simply find new businesses where they can pay with Square Wallet.

    “Square directory gives people the power to instantly find whatever they are craving, from a BLT to a bicycle,” said Square’s Director of Directory, Ajit Varma. “Everyday the directory grows with diverse businesses and allows them to display item-level information to new customers.”

    Square Directory

    Square is processing over $8 billion in payments a year, and has signed up over 2 million people and businesses. The directory should be quite helpful to consumers if they’re intent on using Square Wallet as a payment option more.

    Earlier this week, the company announced that it acquired design firm 80/20. Last month, Square closed a new round of funding from Citi Ventures, Rizvi Traverse Management, and Starbucks Coffee Company.

  • Bing: We Aren’t Keeping Track Of The Results From The Bing It On Tool

    Bing is not keeping track of the results from the Bing It On tool, which lets users decide whether they like Google’s or Bing’s results better for any given query. Despite all of the numbers Bing threw around in a blog post on Tuesday, Bing didn’t actually say what percentage of people chose Bing over Google when using the tool. When asked about this, we received the following statement from Bing General Manager Adam Sohn:

    “We aren’t keeping track of the results from the Bing It On tool, because it’s non-scientific and was intended to be a fun way for customers to experiment with both search engines, seeing web search results side-by-side from both Bing and Google, hopefully noticing the progress Bing has made over the past few years.”

    Interesting. I thought the point was to show that “people choose bing web search results over Google nearly 2 to 1 in blind comparison tests.” That’s actually just from the Microsoft-commissioned study Bing pushes on the Bing It On homepage. I guess the actual results of the challenge are irrelevant.

    If they’re not keeping track, and it’s just “a fun way for customers to experiment with both search engines,” why bother to put out stats (like those in this week’s blog post), such as:

  • Since launching the Bing it On Challenge, we have had over five million visits to it, far exceeding our own projections. And the number of visits continues to rise steadily.
  • 33% of Google Primary Users Say They Would Use Bing More After Taking the Challenge
  • 64% of people were surprised by the quality of Bing’s web search results.
  • Over half of the people surveyed (only 4,700 people of the 5 million) indicated their impression of Bing improved after seeing Bing’s web search results next to Google’s.
  • 17% who found Bing more favorable after taking the side-by-side comparison said it revealed flaws in Google’s results

    • The whole thing is really about marketing. In fact, the company was very up front about this in the beginning, as it launched an ad campaign around it, spanning online and television, which debuted during the MTV Video Music Awards. It’s about marketing. Not stats. If it were about stats, Bing would be “keeping track”. It just seems like if you’re going to use stats for your marketing, you might want to keep track of the results of the campaign.