blekko--A New Option In Search

A new kind of Search Engine?

Here are a few interesting additions to the search community:

blekko's mission: provide a differentiated editorial voice in search.

Search is the starting point for accessing information. A search engine is an editorial product. The algorithms that determine search results are created by humans and contain an editorial bias. Users deserve a choice in the editorial voice of their search engine.

blekko's Editorial Voice

Quality vs Quantity: blekko biases towards quality sites. We do not attempt to gather all of the world's information. We purposefully bias our index away from sites with low quality content.

Source based, not link based: blekko does NOT rely solely on link based authority.Too many people engage in efforts to game search by linking for purposes other than navigation. blekko relies on human beings and their judgement of the authority of sources to dictate search results.

Spam Free: blekko includes results from sites whose primary purpose is information, not monetization. Sites created solely to game search engines are not included in our results.

Human Curation: blekko believes that human beings should be involved in determining search results. Our community of users tag pages and sites for us every day to help insure the highest quality of search results.

Open and Transparent: blekko makes freely available to its users all of the data that provide the underpinning of our search results. This includes web data, ranking information and the curation efforts of our users.

There are more than 10 relevant results for every day queries such as "las vegas hotels" or "turducken recipes." We believe our results for these queries are better, but we leave that up to the user. The important point is that users have a choice.

Searching with blekko

blekko search results provide information and tools you can use to make decisions and improve your own search experience.

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Content Box

Some searches will have a content box that appears above the search results. This box gives a quick snippet of information depending on the slashtag used.

 Examples:

san jose, ca /weather | green lantern /movies | berkeley /map | verisimilitude /define

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Top Search Area

The Top bar includes the search box and the slashtag bar. The top bar is fixed in place by default but you can change this in prefs.

Search box – enter your query and slashtags and hit “search” to search blekko, e.g., alpha dog /movies.

# of results – the number of results are shown. If a slashtag was used, there will be a link to that slashtag.

Sort options – /relevance is the usual default option, but you can change the sort order to /date or /likes. /date will order the results by date while /likes will only show results from you and your friends’ Facebook likes.

Slashtags – suggested based on your query. You can also access your own slashtags by clicking on the arrow next to your username.

Share – click the drop down to share the search result page on either Facebook or Twitter.

What is a slashtag?

A slashtag is an easy-to-create custom search engine. It is a tool used to filter search results and helps you to search only high quality sites, without spam or content farms.

 

Example: /health

Search keyword /health and trusted sites like will come up and more appear high in your results with content farms and spam sites banished entirely.

There are 3 types of slashtags:

topical – Created by blekko and curated by experts, topical slashtags are built to search only top sites for specific topics like health, tech, recipes, etc.

user – User slashtags are created by you or other members of the blekko community. You can personalize your own slashtags with sites you trust.

built-in – Built-in slashtags are programmed in the back-end by blekko and perform specific search functions, such as /date or /blogs.

Yahoo Makes Executive Changes

Story first appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

Yahoo Inc. hired top eBay Inc. executive as its new chief executive in an effort to continue as an independent entity, but the move did little to stem questions about the struggling Internet company's future.  Scott Thompson was hired by Yahoo Inc.

Mr. Thompson, the 54-year-old president of eBay's PayPal electronic payments unit, is tasked with turning around Yahoo's core online-advertising business, the company said. His hiring follows more than four months of strategic limbo when the Sunnyvale, Calif., company operated without a permanent leader following the September firing of the previous CEO.

But even with a new CEO, Yahoo faces a long list of strategic questions with many options still on the table, said people familiar with the matter.

In particular, Yahoo's discussions about whether to shed some of its valuable stakes in several Asian Internet companies and whether to sell a minority stake in itself to private-equity investors remain unresolved, these people said.

While the sale of a minority stake to private-equity firms now appears less likely, Yahoo's ongoing discussions about a tax-free exchange of its stakes in its Asian assets, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Yahoo Japan, which are valued at around $17 billion, are likelier to move ahead, said other people familiar with the matter. Yahoo directors also haven't ruled out an outright sale of the company, said one of the people familiar with the matter, though some board members believe it's unlikely a bidder will emerge.

Mr. Thompson will play a big role in the ongoing strategic review that Yahoo's board is conducting, said one of the people familiar with the matter.

The new CEO will have a big role in Yahoo's final decision on its Asian Internet-company stakes and its discussions with private-equity investors, this person said.

In a conference call announcing Mr. Thompson's appointment, a Yahoo Chairman acknowledged that the strategic review of Yahoo isn't over.

But the Yahoo executives emphasized that their first priority would be to turn around Yahoo's core online-ad business, which rivals such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. have chipped away at over the years. In the conference call, it was discussed that Yahoo would almost certainly remain publicly traded.

Mr. Thompson, who will assume the CEO post, said in an interview that he wanted Yahoo's business to return to being "one of those great iconic brands" on the Web. "We'll be back to innovation and disruptive concepts," he said.

As CEO, Mr. Thompson said he expects to hire executives and to use Yahoo's "arsenal" of resources, including its balance sheet, to make acquisitions "if it is appropriate." He said Yahoo would build new Web services, and "if we don't have it, we will find it in the market...and we'll do it fast."

Mr. Thompson's appointment is the latest in a long-running game of musical chairs atop Yahoo. Mr. Thompson will be the company's fourth permanent CEO in five years.

Many of his predecessors were bedeviled by Yahoo's strategic challenges, as the one-time Internet leader fell behind Google Inc. and Facebook.

While Yahoo still has some of the Web's most popular destinations, including its Yahoo.com home page and sports, news and entertainment-content sites, it has struggled to keep pace with Facebook and such other content sites as ESPN.com.

Yahoo's share of the $12.3 billion spent in 2011 on graphical and video ads in the U.S. was 13.1%. That was down 14.4% from the previous year, according to research firm eMarketer. Yahoo's overall revenue has been about $6 billion annually for the past few years.

In making the leap to Yahoo from PayPal, Mr. Thompson is moving from a stable and fast-growing business to a bigger company grappling with its dimmed status. PayPal's annual revenue of about $3.4 billion in 2010 was about half that of Yahoo's, and while PayPal is growing at about 25% a year, Yahoo's revenue has been flat. PayPal has 11,000 employees, and Yahoo has 14,000.

Mr. Thompson, who joined PayPal in 2005 as chief technology officer and senior vice president and rose to president in 2008, has little online advertising experience.

Known for his cordial personality and thick Boston accent, he is expected to be a sharp contrast to his predecessor.

Investors appeared to be skeptical about Mr. Thompson's appointment. In 4 p.m. trading, Yahoo's stock closed at $15.78, down 3.10%.

Directors initially sought a CEO with experience in online advertising and content. But Mr. Thompson's candidacy was helped by his record running fast-growing PayPal, an acquaintance recalled. In addition, Mr. Thompson "was always interested" in the company's top job and expressed the interest during the early days of the search, the acquaintance said.

Mr. Thompson said in an interview that the talks with Yahoo began in November and then started to move at an "accelerated" pace. Yahoo directors approved his selection at a board meeting that some members attended by phone, according to one person familiar with the situation.

The appointment of Mr. Thompson is unlikely to interfere with Yahoo's discussions about the tax-free exchange of its stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan for cash and other assets, some of the people familiar with the matter said. A deal could be struck within six to eight weeks, one person said.

Alibaba prefers a friendly deal with Yahoo, but it could still revisit an alternative plan to bid for the whole company in conjunction with buyout firms if the cash-rich split-off proposal falls through, people familiar with the matter said.

Alibaba's spokesman, said that "Scott Thompson is known to us as a strong leader, and we look forward to working with him to deliver value to Yahoo's shareholders."

Separately, private-equity firm Silver Lake hasn't taken its offer off the table and would be open to interacting with Mr. Thompson to understand his vision for Yahoo and assess ways to work together, a person familiar with the matter said.

Lucid Imagination: Building Your Own Search with a Set of APIs

ReadWriteWeb

Lucid Imagination launched LucidWorks Enterprise today, a search technology with an API as part of its core.

The move is testament to the new world of the enterprise, where platforms are an attractive option for building applications that leverage the Web and multiple forms of structured and and unstructured data. It's a world where a search app has to be simple to build and flexible enough to connect people to the right information, be it internal documents or social data from the distributed Web.

At its core, LucidWork Enterprise is built on the Apache Solr/Lucene platform. Layered into the thinking it is a realization that content is changing in multiple dimensions. In terms of volume, content is coming in at a new pace. Twitter is testament to the speed in which data is now flowing.

And with this volume, the semantics are changing, too. The challenge becomes how semantics are refined in a search environment.

Video search, for instance, has a different context than plaint text. How that data is transformed into a search environment becomes a matter of how the service is built in the first place. The issue becomes a question of definition about the content and its meaning.

But in the end, the user gets information in different ways. They may type a query and gets a result or they may have an automated search to get the information they need.

It has to be straightforward. That means the search has to be easy for the customer to integrate. LucidWorks Enterprise works on the premise that Solr/Lucene can be leveraged with APIs. Customers can build their applications based upon a common admin console where data can be added and search features tuned depending on the needs of their users.

APs provide benefits such as the arms length configuration of Solr. Developers do not have to edit a Solr config file. Setting up the system, supplying data and schedules can be done through the API.

A click scoring feature provides the capability to leverage how the user interact. Results can be prioritized based upon what the user has already selected. Alerts have also been added for when new information has been added to the index. The system provides real-time feedback for developers on data coming through the connectors.

Enterprise search is a different animal than its consumer counterparts. it needs customization and refinement to be useful. There are multiple options. Google Search Appliance, Microsoft FAST, Autonomy and Endeca all compete with Lucid.

Building search technology into applications makes sense in this changing world of big data. Search has to be easy to scale. Building applications on open-source and APIs may not be for everyone but it does allow for providing the end user with an environment that can be fine tuned depending on the content being searched and its overall context.

Twitter Revamps Search Engine

PC World

 

 

Twitter has overhauled the back-end infrastructure of its search engine, boosting its speed and capacity to index posts, process queries and deliver results, while making the system more stable and better suited for the addition of new features.

Twitter transferred its search engine to the new platform in recent weeks, after working on the new back-end system for about six months, according to the company.

Twitter's search engine ran on a system based on MySQL from Summize, a company Twitter acquired in mid-2008, but scaling up the system had become difficult.

The engineering team in charge of the project decided to do an extreme makeover of the search engine using a different technology: the open-source, text search engine Lucene, which is written in Java.

Twitter modified some aspects of Lucene, including its garbage collection, query termination, posting lists, and data structures and algorithms, and was left with an inverted, index-based search engine that scales much more and has better performance.

Twitter fields 12,000 search queries per second -- or more than 1 billion per day -- and "tweets" become part of its search index less than 10 seconds after they are posted.

"We estimate that we're only using about 5 percent of the available backend resources, which means we have a lot of headroom. Our new indexer could also index roughly 50 times more Tweets per second than we currently get," Twitter official Michael Busch wrote in a blog post.

Twitter will contribute back to the Lucene project the modifications and improvements it made to the code.

Although Twitter makes available its index of "tweets" to external search engines like Google and Microsoft's Bing, its internal search engine is a key component of its microblogging service.

In addition to being the preferred vehicle among private citizens, public figures and companies for broadcasting short status updates, Twitter has become an increasingly valued repository of real-time data, tapped for following news, trends and collective musings.

To maximize the value of this "tweet" repository, the company must have Twitter search engine marketing that is fast, comprehensive and scalable, and its massive revamping of its search technology shows the company recognizes the importance of its internal search capabilities.

Yahoo Enhances Search For Entertainment, Sports, News

Information Week

 

Yahoo has introduced search enhancements that offer a broader selection of results when queries are related to entertainment, news or sports.

The latest improvements, introduced Thursday, are in line with the web portal's focus on movies, celebrities and professionally created content. Yahoo's leanings toward entertainment are how it hopes to differentiate itself from other search engines, particularly market leader Google.

Yahoo's direction with the enhancements is evident in the addition of "intelligent shortcuts" for movies, musical artists, celebrities and news topics. The feature, located at the top of results, gives users the option of viewing results of specific categories, such as images, articles, videos, tweets, event listings and ratings. Yahoo also puts the purchase option front and center by providing links to purchase movie and concert tickets while searching.

Other new features include the introduction of what Yahoo says is the first of a series of "quick apps" for search. The new app lets Netflix subscribers add DVDs to their queue on the video subscription service without leaving Yahoo search. Netflix members also can watch movies and TV shows from Netflix's streaming video service.

Yahoo also is tying search results closer to social networks. User can find and view public photo albums and individual pictures from friends on Facebook and photo-sharing site Flickr.

Finally, Yahoo has released new versions of its search apps for the Apple iPhone and smartphones running Google's Android operating system. Yahoo says the apps deliver results faster and are better equipped to take advantage of the smartphone's multimedia capabilities in displaying rich content on entertainment, finance and local topics.

The new features are available in the U.S. Yahoo plans to start rolling them out worldwide next year.

While Yahoo search engine optimization focuses on the interface layer, under the covers is Microsoft's search engine. Microsoft is under contract to power search for Yahoo for 10 years, starting in August. The companies announced the pact in July 2009.

The deal has given Microsoft a major boost in the market. In August, the company's Bing search engine surpassed Yahoo to become the nation's second largest behind Google, according to market watcher Nielsen. Yahoo went live with Microsoft search Aug. 24.

Review: New Search Partners Not Identical Twins

Associated Press

 

Just because Yahoo Inc.'s U.S. website and Microsoft Corp.'s Bing are using the same technological ingredients for searching the Internet doesn't mean they're slicing and dicing the results the same way, too.

Understanding the differences can be helpful, particularly for people looking for the best alternative to Google Inc.'s dominant search engine.

The 10-year search partnership between Yahoo and Microsoft still allows them to cook up different recipes for displaying the results. Both wanted that flexibility because even though Microsoft and Yahoo are now teaming up to fight Google, they're still competing for traffic with each other. The reason: search requests yield more opportunities to sell the ads that appear alongside the results. If a person clicks on one of those ads while searching on Yahoo, it gets to keep $88 of every $100 in revenue, with the other $12 going to Microsoft. If a person clicks on an ad while searching on Bing, Microsoft gets to keep all the money.

Yahoo switched its U.S. and Canada sites over to Bing's search technology in late August to lower its costs and free up more time and money to focus on building other services. As things evolve, Yahoo has indicated it will do more things to make its search results more helpful than Bing's, but so far, the distinctions have been subtle.

A review by The Associated Press found the differences between the search results on Yahoo and Bing mostly have to do with the ways that the two services compile and display snapshots of key information at or near the top of the first page.

These additional features supplement the boring blue links to other sites that have been standard fare on most search services for the past decade. When it came to those links, along with most of the photo and video snippets, the results were virtually identical at Yahoo and Bing. For the test, the AP entered more than 30 different search requests in at the two sites on topics including sports teams, holidays, travel requests, business subjects, celebrities and high-tech gadgetry.

The AP only looked at results that came from typing queries into the main search boxes on Bing and Yahoo, because that's the most common way people find things online. Bing, in particular, has been heavily promoting its specialty services for travel and shopping as better ways to search for good deals, but often, people have to click another link or tab to use them.

Even without digging deeper into its search toolbox, Bing usually produced the more visually appealing results page. For instance, Bing offers more photo thumbnails on its first results page, as well as more video previews that can be played on the site by hovering over them with the computer's cursor.

Yahoo consistently showed fewer photo thumbnails and video capsules on the first page. What's more, the video capsules within Yahoo's search results usually required clicking through to the site where the clip was being hosted. Yahoo also didn't post any explanations about where the video clips came from or what they were about, something that Bing did.

Another Bing advantage: its site tends to offer more suggestions for other searches likely to be related to the initial request. Bing also provides a pane just to the right of the results that, as a reader scrolls down, provides a glimpse of key information from each site in the list. Even when Yahoo's results featured all the same links, there was no way to get more information without clicking on the link.

Bing also seemed to bring more pizzazz to its results, such as when the AP searched for "Halloween." The recommendations were separated into different categories - "Halloween Decorations," "Halloween DVD," and "News: Halloween" - that were highlighted in orange. That's a nice holiday-themed touch that Yahoo lacked.

Yahoo excels when the requests are about entertainers, star athletes or sports teams. In these instances, Yahoo led off the results with a box containing a picture of the person or team logo, along with biographical information. For entertainers, the box also featured songs and video. In an apparent bias that might bother some people, Yahoo pulls some of this data from its own services, such as rivals.com for requests about some sports subjects.

Bing provided similar summaries on the same search requests, although they didn't seem to be as comprehensive as Yahoo's. An exception came when looking up Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz. Bing produced a handy biography about each executive, including their birthdates. Yahoo didn't do that, not even for Bartz.

Expect to see Yahoo to attempt to cram even more information about prominent people in its summary boxes. The company plans to unveil a new design for the boxes later this fall.

Some of the attempts to stand out proved to be more embarrassing than engaging. For instance, when the AP asked for a list of the best search engines, Yahoo's results led off with a row of five images that included pictures of vintage locomotives, a steam engine and two images of cold medicine.

That kind of incongruous result is the sort of thing that will send more people to Bing search engine marketing or, even more likely, Google.

Yahoo to Upgrade E-Mail, Search Results this Fall

Associated Press

 

Yahoo Inc. wants to prove it has regained its technological stride after years of meandering that have caused the Internet company to lose ground to its rivals.

The proof of Yahoo's renewed vigor will come this fall when the company plans to unveil facelifts to its free e-mail service and search results, a top executive told reporters Thursday.

Those upgrades will be major steps toward "bringing cool back to Yahoo," said Blake Irving, who was hired as the company's chief products officer in April.

Over the next three years, Yahoo will be quickly rolling out more innovations that will give people more reasons to stay on Yahoo's website for longer periods and reel in more revenue from advertisers clamoring to reach a more engaged audience.

Although Irving is relatively new to the company, his goals echo those of other Yahoo executives, including some from prior regimes that crumbled after failing to fulfill their promises. Former Yahoo CEO, Terry Semel, even played a Frank Sinatra song, "The Best Is Yet To Come," at a 2004 investment conference to underscore his resolve to recapture the buzz that helped make Yahoo the most successful Internet company during the 1990s.

Instead, Yahoo fell even further behind Google Inc. and now it's trying to reverse a recent shift that is driving more people and advertisers to Facebook's popular online hangout.

The troubles have battered Yahoo's stock, which has lost more than half its value since another CEO, co-founder Jerry Yang, turned down an opportunity to sell the entire company to Microsoft Corp. for $47.5 billion, or $33 per share, in May 2008.

Yahoo shares dipped 8 cents Thursday to close at $14.19.

Irving, a former Microsoft Corp. executive, believes Yahoo's strengths have been overlooked both by investors and the media. Among other things, Yahoo still has about 600 million worldwide users and a pool of engineers that Irving believes is among the brightest in the world.

"I expected to find some good, some bad and a lot of ugly here," Irving said. "There is a lot more good than I expected."

That's a theme Irving's boss, Carol Bartz, has been emphasizing since she was brought in as CEO 20 months ago to orchestrate a turnaround. Although analysts have praised Bartz for sharpening Yahoo's focus and shedding unprofitable services, Yahoo's stock price and financial performance have remained lackluster since her arrival. Bartz has repeatedly said it could take several years before Yahoo begins hitting on all cylinders again.

Rather than fight Facebook, Yahoo has been trying to piggyback on the social network by enabling its e-mail users to interact with their Facebook circle of friends from their inboxes. The company will build upon that effort this fall when e-mail users will be able to start sending the short messages known as tweets to their Twitter accounts. Yahoo's e-mail also is supposed to run twice as fast with the upcoming upgrade.

The company, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., declined to provide a precise timetable for its latest e-mail overhaul. It has been working on the e-mail revisions for more than a year already.

To lower its expenses, Yahoo is relying on Microsoft for most of the search results on its website.

But Yahoo is still trying to distinguish its search results by packaging some of its recommendations differently than Microsoft's Bing does.

The latest changes to Yahoo's search results will debut sometime this fall when the company will start bundling more key information in a capsule that will be highlighted above links from other sites. For instance, a search for Lady Gaga will contain different strips within the capsule that show pictures of her, popular songs and video clips.

Baidu Anticipates Life After Google

Washington Post

BEIJING -- In 2000, a 31-year-old software engineer named Li Yanhong, a.k.a. Robin Li, left his job in Silicon Valley and returned home to China to start an Internet search engine. He raised $26.2 million in venture capital, including a modest investment by Google.

Ten years later, Li's company, Baidu, has become the dominant search engine in China, a goliath with 7,000 employees and a market value of $16.2 billion on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Google, which sold its stake in 2006 when it launched its own Chinese site, has lagged far behind, capturing less than half of the market share Baidu has here.

In a country obsessed with economic advancement, Li, a graduate of Beijing University and SUNY at Buffalo, has attained what Chinese newspapers have called pop-star status, with fans thronging Baidu conferences. And to many here, his company's success has become a point of national pride, even though its initial investors were virtually all American.

Now investors are betting that Baidu will reap the benefits if Google ends up exiting China over its dispute with the government about alleged cyberattacks on Google e-mail and source code. Since Tuesday, when Google announced that it would stop censoring its search engine even if that meant losing its Chinese business license, Baidu's stock on the Nasdaq has surged 21 percent to a new high, adding $2.8 billion to the company's market value in just three days.

Although investors are happy, China watchers are worried about the political consequences of Chinese Internet users depending too heavily on Baidu for news and information.

The company has been accused of altering search results for advertisers, by either deleting content or pushing firms' sites higher up on the search result lists in return for payments. The charge has prompted the company to launch an overhaul of its listings.

Moreover, as a Chinese company, Baidu has little choice but to comply with government demands for censorship. An industry source familiar with the firm said officials from the Ministry of Industries and Information Technology are stationed at its offices.

The company does not pretend to have a mission, as Google does: "Don't be evil."

"Baidu does face the same censorship issues, but without the corporate culture that resents censorship," said Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of a blog called Danwei.org and an online media expert in Beijing.

In an item he posted last week on his blog, Baidu's chief product designer, Sun Yunfeng, said that in China, "every enterprise or every individual must dance with shackles."

"This is the reality," Sun wrote. "Do as much as you can is the real attitude to have as a business or a person." The posting was later taken down from his blog, but reprinted on other sites.

"Whether it's Baidu or Chinese versions of YouTube or Sina or Sohu, Chinese Internet sites are getting daily directives from the government telling them what kinds of content they cannot allow on their site and what they need to delete," said Rebecca MacKinnon, an Open Society fellow and co-founder of GlobalVoicesOnline.org, a network of bloggers and online activists.

MacKinnon said she has compared search results on Google's China search engine and Baidu over the past four years and that "consistently, Baidu has censored politically sensitive search results much more thoroughly than Google.cn." She added, "There are a number of very sensitive terms that get no results from Baidu. On google.cn, you get sanitized results but at least you get results."

Meeting Chinese needs

Baidu owes much of its success to the vision and drive of its founder. Li, who declined to be interviewed for this article, tailored Baidu to what he believed were the needs and tastes of the Chinese. He made the search engine box longer and wider for Chinese characters. He introduced a feature that people with interests in, say, basketball could use to find other people with similar interests and exchange views.

More important, Baidu also linked to sites where people could download free music MP3s, largely pirated. That accounted for much of Baidu's traffic in its early years and about 20 percent of it as late as 2005, according to an industry source familiar with the company. Today, Baidu has captured two-thirds of the Chinese market.

Although the company said it couldn't possibly monitor the multitude of sites run by third parties, critics say it turned a blind eye to the legal issues. The People's High Court of Beijing has twice ruled in Baidu's favor in copyright infringement suits brought by record companies. Today, music downloads account for well under 10 percent of Baidu's traffic, the industry source said.

More recently, Baidu has introduced a Wiki-style service called "Baidu Zhidao" or Baidu Knows, where people can plug in questions and get replies. It has also courted beginners on the Web, a large category given that the number of Chinese Internet users -- 338 million at last count in the middle of last year -- is growing about 30 to 40 percent a year.

Success despite setbacks

In a business dominated by U.S. giants such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, Baidu has played to national pride. The name Baidu (by-DOO) means "100 degrees" but was inspired by a Song Dynasty love poem in which it means 100 times. A man is searching for his true love during the traditional Lantern Day Festival. "A hundred times I search for her in the crowd and turn around just to discover she is there where the lantern lights are dim," the man writes.

The firm has "managed to convince a lot of people that, as a Chinese company, they have a grip on the subtleties of the Chinese language," said Kaiser Kuo, an Internet consultant and musician. In one ad, Baidu featured a bumbling, inarticulate foreigner in Chinese garb meeting a clever Chinese character who talks circles around the befuddled foreigner.

Baidu has its critics. Many of them think that the company's ardor for money prompted it to accept payments in return for deleting negative reports. When the Sanlu Group was found to have sold dairy products containing kidney-damaging melamine, critics alleged that Baidu had agreed to filter out relevant pages from its search results, citing a document purporting to describe an agreement between Sanlu and Baidu. Baidu denied the accusations, but the incident damaged the company's reputation and for a time drove traffic to other sites, according to one competitor.

There have been other controversies as well. In November 2008, China Central Television said Baidu's paid search service, which let Web sites pay to be listed higher among search results, highlighted links to unlicensed companies that offered medical products or services. CCTV said the sites sold treatments -- many of them fake, useless or unlicensed -- for cancer, sexually transmitted diseases and other ailments. CCTV also said that consumers were more likely to purchase such products because it wasn't clear that the product placement had been purchased.

Despite such setbacks, Baidu continues to make gains. It earned $72.2 million in the third quarter last year. Big advertisers include Nike, Intel and other Fortune 500 companies.

It's a reminder that Baidu's mission isn't political or philanthropic: It's a business.

"For ordinary people, the critical information is not keyhole reports of Zhongnanhai," said Baidu's chief product designer Sun, in his blog post last week, referring to the compound where China's top leaders live, "but the most routine information in economy, culture and technology fields."

As with the rest of his posting, this observation was also deleted from his blog, but it was reprinted elsewhere.

Microsoft Updates Bing with 'Visual Search' Feature

By PC World

Microsoft's Bing search engine is stepping up its assault on Google with the introduction of a unique beta search and shopping tool called Visual Search. The Visual Search feature offers an alternative to lists of blue links that are often delivered by search engines when researching cars, cameras, or other topics. Visual Search was announced Monday by Yusuf Mehdi, a senior vice president at Microsoft, at Tech Crunch 50, a tech conference being held in San Francisco.

Instead of displaying traditional lists of Web site search results Bing's Visual Search displays rows images of items that can be scrolled through via a slick interface. For example a search on Bing for handbags, Yoga poses, or movie showtimes will deliver traditional results. Now look to the left-hand side of your search resulst and you'll see a "Visualize" the search option. Clicking on this link takes you to the Visual Search page that allows you to scour images - not text links - to help you explore or winnow your search down fast. The tool also offers refinement options to narrow the number of images by criteria such as price, movie theater, or team (when searching for sports).

To preview Visual Search topics visit this Bing page which should be live by the time you read this.

Microsoft says Visual Search will be rolled into Bing over the next few weeks with some customers seeing it before others. By the end of September, it says, the feature will be live to all. The move comes as Microsoft has seen moderate success with Bing. Since its launch in May Microsoft`s Bing search market share in the U.S. grew slightly in July to 9 percent, according ComScore, a market research firm. Google owns 65 percent of the search market compared to Yahoo with 19 percent (Bing and Yahoo's combined market share is 27 percent).

Visual Search: Hands On

With the example of visually searching for cars I started out with 25 images appearing on my Web browser. Using a scroll bar on the right I was able to quickly scroll through hundreds of images of cars. When I hovered my mouse over a picture of a specific car a balloon popped up containing additional vehicle information. Click on the image and you are taken to Bing search results for the make and model of the car you were looking at.

Thanks to a slick user interface kicking virtual tires of cars is loads of fun, but what makes this technology really handy is its ability to winnow down you search. On the left-hand side are tools for narrowing the number of cars by 25 most popular, SUVs, or make and base price. Each time you select a preference the number images is reduced.

Unfortunately Visual Search significantly limited to 50 topics Microsoft has created Visual Search libraries for. That's right, there is no Bing engine that can create a Visual Search result on-the-fly for just any topic. Microsoft creates them specifically for what it says is popular search results. Search dinosaurs, Olympic sports, or laptops and no such Visual Search is offered.

I found this an addictive way to explore topics not limited to cars, but also politicians in office, MLB players, and dog breeds.

The number of topics Microsoft says it will expand to depends on how popular the feature is with Bing users.

Future of Search Engines - Eric Schmidt, Prognosticator
Google CEO Eric Schmidt's T.V. Doesn't Know Enough About Him
Story from CNN

Google Improving SERP Presentation
As Posted to InformationWeek

The search market-share leader's latest improvements come in the form of better search-term association and longer search results snippets.

Sounding like a restaurateur defending Michelin stars against the whisperings of fickle critics, Google on Tuesday offered assurance that its search is of the highest quality and introduced two new improvements to the way it presents search results.

To most Internet users, if Google (NSDQ: GOOG)'s dominant search market share can be said to represent a yardstick of satisfaction, Google's search service works just fine. But Google nonetheless feels the heat from startups and competitors that claim to have built a better mousetrap. It can't afford to rest on its laurels.

So Google constantly strives to make its crown jewels -- its search algorithms -- shine more brightly. As Udi Manber, VP of engineering at Google in charge of search quality, explained in a blog post last year, Google maintains search teams that focus separately on core ranking, user experience improvements, new features and interfaces, fighting Web spam, and special projects.

In 2007, according to Manber, Google introduced more than 450 search improvements, an average of nine per week. A company spokesperson said Google hasn't released a comparable figure for 2008. Nonetheless, search research never sleeps at Google.

"We're improving Google all the time and most of the time you don't even hear about it," said Ori Allon, technical lead on Google's search quality team.

The latest improvements come in the form of better search-term association and longer search results snippets.

The search-term association improvement helps Google understand when search terms are related to other concepts that don't necessarily contain the same words. Google makes use of this knowledge by providing searches related to the keywords entered at the bottom of its search results page.

Allon said that Google's better understanding of how search terms relate isn't so much semantic technology -- systems for understanding meaning -- as it is a matter of data mining.

As an example of how this search improvement might work, someone searching for "principles of physics" would see related search query suggestions that use the words "physics special relativity," "physics angular momentum," and "quantum mechanics physics," among others.

While IAC's Ask, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s Live Search, and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Search offer related search suggestions for the search "principles of physics," their suggestions cover less conceptual ground and, arguably, are less useful. Live, for example, offers as related search suggestions "laws of physics," "principles of science," "fundamentals of physics," "definition of physics," and "principles of chemistry," among others.

The lengthening of search results snippets for searches with lots of keywords represents an attempt by Google to provide searchers with more context. The goal is to help searchers understand what the pages at the end of search results links are about. Reducing visits to pages that don't really address a query means more satisfied users.

Allon said he couldn't discuss specific metrics that quantify how much these two search improvements affect user happiness, but he said they had indeed helped more Google users find what they're looking for. "We witnessed a significant increase in people who get to a page and stay on the page," he said.

Google was recently criticized by a departing designer, Douglas Bowman, who lamented the company's reliance on data to evaluate design decisions. While Google's dependence on data as a driver of product features may not lead to the most inspired aesthetics, data clearly plays an indispensable role in making Google's search responsive, effective, and innovative.

And Google is likely to keep relying on data as it continues to refine its search technology and other products. "We're doing a pretty good job [with search], but there's a really long way to go," said Allon.

Google Accounts For 71% Of Internet Searches In February
Originally Posted at The Wall Street Journal

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

Google Inc. (GOOG) accounted for 72% of all Internet searches in the U.S. last month, according to data provider Hitwise.

Far behind was Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) at 17%, Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) MSN at 6% and IAC/InteractiveCorp.'s (IACI) Ask.com with 4%.

Hitwise, which sampled 10 million U.S. Internet users, has shown Google at the same level for the past few months. A year earlier, Google accounted for 66% of all U.S. searches. Meanwhile, the portion of searches on Yahoo, MSN and Ask fell 17%, 20% and 10%, respectively.

While Google apparently is maintaining its lead as a search engine, the company's advertising business appears to be under increasing pressure as fewer shoppers search for products online and advertisers spend less. Earlier this month, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said the economic situation is "pretty dire" and his company is "not immune" to current conditions.

Google's shares recently traded up 6%, amid a general market rally. The stock price has lost almost half its value since May.

The Hitwise figures also show search engines continue to be the main way Internet users navigate to industry categories, and that organic search engine optimization is still the best way to push your site rankings. Comparing February numbers with a year earlier, business and finance, sports, online video and social-networking categories showed double-digit increases in the share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

In addition, the Hitwise survey shows the length of search queries has increased in the past year to more than eight words from an average of five.

Google Accounts for 72% of February Searches
As Originally Posted at CNN Money

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

Google Inc. (GOOG) accounted for 72% of all Internet searches in the U.S. last month, according to data provider Hitwise.

Far behind was Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) at 17%, Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) MSN at 6% and IAC/InteractiveCorp.'s (IACI) Ask.com with 4%.

Hitwise, which sampled 10 million U.S. Internet users, has shown Google at the same level for the past few months. A year earlier, Google accounted for 66% of all U.S. searches. Meanwhile, the portion of searches on Yahoo, MSN and Ask fell 17%, 20% and 10%, respectively.

While Google apparently is maintaining its lead as a search engine, the company's advertising business appears to be under increasing pressure as fewer shoppers search for products online and advertisers spend less. Earlier this month, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said the economic situation is "pretty dire" and his company is "not immune" to current conditions.

Google's shares recently traded at $308.24, up 6%, amid a general market rally. The stock price has lost almost half its value since May.

The Hitwise figures also show search engines continue to be the main way Internet users navigate to industry categories. Comparing February numbers with a year earlier, business and finance, sports, online video and social-networking categories showed double-digit increases in the share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

In addition, the Hitwise survey shows the length of search queries has increased in the past year to more than eight words from an average of five.

Search Engines Killing Newspapers

Microsoft: Not all information can be free

Edited From Ina Fried Post - CNET.com

A top Microsoft lawyer made the case on Thursday that sites like Google News are making money while the folks creating that digital content aren't able to make a living.

Google News, said Thomas C. Rubin, makes $100 million a year, while the newspapers that power its content are having to cut staff in record numbers.

"Clearly this can't be the future for publishing," Rubin said, according to his prepared remarks delivered to the UK Association of Online Publishers. Rubin is Microsoft's chief counsel for intellectual property strategy.

It's somewhat curious though, since Microsoft essentially uses the same model with its MSNBC Newsbot . It just wasn't anywhere near as successful.

I'm all for a model that better compensates journalists and their employers for their work. I actually thought Microsoft was working on just such a model some time ago. But the longer I wait, the more journalism jobs get lost (not to mention the pain for other content creators, including musicians).

If Microsoft plans to save the publishing industry with a better business model online, it had better hurry.

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Another thing that is killing newspapers is Amazon's Kindle.

New Keyword Search Market Share Numbers Released

Yahoo Holds Steady as New Teams Settle in at Headquarters.

Microsoft's Search Gains Fall in August 2007.

Google's Share Now Officially Tops 70%
Here's a Review of the Latest Keyword Search Market Share Numbers.

MSN / Microsoft seemed to some sources, maybe for a day or so, to be making a decade overdue positive advancement in the keyword search space. However the most recent search numbers indicate that MSN has fallen even further in its long race to compete with Google for the coveted keyword search audience. MSN has fallen once again and this time quite hard. After moderate gains in share in 2nd quarter of 2007, MSN and the new MSN Live search engine lost market share in the most recent surveys.

Google, the ever dominant search engine, accounted for just over 70% of all keyword search traffic, its highest level ever .

Google continued to make even more significant gains in market share and overall search volume. The gains are leading to even more control of the search advertising marketplace much to the chagrin of Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, senior executives and the formerly all-knowing internet power tribes in Redmond.

Meanwhile back down in Sunnyvale Yahoo slowed the flow of key resignations and also held steady in keyword search share garnering just over 18%.

Ask remained flat despite a huge national advertising campaign and held just above a flatline according to the most recent keyword search data.

Here are the takeaways from the latest keyword search market share report:

Google market share rose to ts highest level to date, with significant year-over-year gains in keyword search queries.

Yahoo search market share was flat as the Yahooligans continue preparations for a new IIS corporate structure.

MSN search market share retreated back to the pre-live search levels.

Ask has yet to find any users despite (14) months of heavy advertising.

Google, MSN, and Yahoo Asked to Modify Retention of Personal Search Data.

Developments occurred in China this week regarding keyword search and retenion of personal search data by search engines.

The Taiyuan University of Technology is testing software agents that crawl through any search engine looking for searched keyword results as well as any personal data that's been collected about the searcher. Recap of InformationWeek story.

As regulators in the European Union press the major search engines like: Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo to modify their policies for retaining personal data, scientists at China's Taiyuan University of Technology are researching new ways to collect and correlate data about Web surfers to provide more precise keyword search results.

The Taiyuan University of Technology research is testing software agents that crawl through any search engine looking not only for searched keyword results but also for any personal data that's been collected about the searcher.

The goal is to use information about the surfer's background or interests, blended with search history information and filter search results accordingly.

While this research may still be in the workshop in China, it's not likely to sit well with European regulators. The E.U.'s Article 29 Working Group, a collection of national officials from European countries that advises the European Union on privacy policy, is already investigating the privacy policies of Google, Yahoo, and MSN and evaluating their data protection issues.

Google is the first major search engine provider to offer some visibility into its data retention policies, but the Article 29 Working Group wants the search engine to go further. Google in May provided the group with information about how long it stores server-log information.

The company's policy is to "anonymize" server logs that are older than 18-24 months, a practice that the group said, in a letter to Google Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer. Google will not specify the purposes for which server logs are kept.

The group does like Google's plans to use more anonymous data, but notes that even "anonymized" data can still contain the user's network prefix. There are also concerns that Google can reverse the process used to make users anonymous when it wants more info about a surfer. The group has pointed out that, even though Google is based in the United States, it is legally obligated to comply with European privacy laws.

The same applies to Google's competitors in the search market, including Microsoft and Yahoo, neither of which has specified any time limits on the data that they hold on users.

More than 60% of all keyword searches are conducted using the robot powered Google search engine, while Yahoo is used about 21% of the time, and Microsoft MSN/Windows Live Search is tapped about 8%, according to the Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search report.

Search data privacy concerns are likely to be perceived differently depending upon many variables, in general baby boomers have a greater expectation of that a Web site or search engine will keep their information confidential, unless the user explicitly gives permission to share that information. Indeed, user demographics are likely to play an important role in the future of privacy on the Web when permissive data sharing is involved.

The E.U. is more concerned with the subtle aggregation, requirements management software and sales of search data, and it's going to continue to press the major search engines until they come clean.

Microsoft to Buy Yahoo

Microsoft and Yahoo Talk Merger.
Many recent talks have taken place between Microsoft and Yahoo on joining forces to better compete in the future versus Google. Microsoft is becoming frustrated with wall street's perception of MSN's lackluster performance in the booming online advertising market.

Microsoft and Yahoo discussed a possible merger that would pair their respective strengths and allow both companies to instantly promote a 30% stake of the online ad market. Many sources report the merger talks have ended, yet key insiders report that both companies are desperately trying to work together to change market perceptions.

Whatever the outcome, Microsoft's online division could be heading for a huge shake-up. Microsoft is frustrated by their lackluster results in the fight against Google in Internet search, the hottest advertising marketplace. Microsoft is firing top executives and pressuring staffers to work harder and faster in a rush to catch up to Google. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are frustrated that Microsoft lost out to Google earlier this year in the purchase of online-advertising specialist DoubleClick. The DoubleClick defeat has Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer considering new direction in keyword search. Ballmer called the MSN search division's performance "palpable". Mr. Ballmer is weighing many options including bringing in new management to the MSN online advertising group.

Microsoft is torn between shuffling their management deck from within or moving outside to form a partnership with Yahoo. The two companies have worked together before; Yahoo previously provided Microsoft with search technology and advertising. Microsoft broke off that relationship last year, as it phased in its own online-ad system within the MSN Live.com search project, which has yet to attract a critical mass of advertisers. The two companies also explored the idea of combining to form a greater competitor to Google a year ago, though those talks led nowhere.

For now, Yahoo does not seem interested in a major deal with Microsoft, say people familiar with the situation. The Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet company's course may largely depend on a new advertising-system upgrade, called "Project Panama," whose delay last year prompted criticisms from investors and others that were directed toward the company's management. Panama is now running, and Yahoo said recently that it expects the system to contribute to its revenue, starting this quarter. Also the Yahoo management team knows that if Microsoft takes over their days are numbered.

The merger could be a winner for both Microsoft and Yahoo. Microsoft has technical expertise that might benefit Yahoo, especially considering all of the defections from key Inktomi engineers. Under one possible scenario, Microsoft could manage the technical platform and infrastructure of the companies' combined Internet activities, while Yahoo's current staff could oversee the consumer parts of the businesses, such as Yahoo News, Finance and email. Yahoo is one of the world's most popular Web sites, attracting millions of consumers a day to services, which in turn attract advertisers. However Yahoo gave away their search leadership torch to Google in 2002.

While Yahoo is facing increased competition to sell advertisers the graphical-display ads, such as banners, that have been its bread and butter, the company recently has shown signs of momentum. Yahoo has signed partner sites to carry ads that it brokers, including 12 newspaper-publishing companies representing more than 264 newspapers, and the Web portal of Comcast Corp. Yahoo recently reported a $680 million deal to buy the 80% of online-ad exchange operator Right Media Inc. that it didn't already own.

If merger talks are revived, whether Microsoft and Yahoo could reach an agreement remains as much of a question as it did a year ago, when similar talks ended inconclusively. Microsoft has always steered clear of large acquisitions. Microsoft's market value is $42 billion.

Short of a wholesale merger, Microsoft could spin its online group into a separately run Yahoo in return for a Yahoo stake. Yet top Yahoo executives appear to be a big obstacle to any deal. Yahoo management feels they have found the right strategy and are wary of any combination with Microsoft, for whom Internet activities remain only a small part of its business, says one person familiar with the matter. Top Yahoo staffers could run for the hills if Microsoft acquires the company.

Any integration of the two companies' operations would also be a daunting prospect. Yahoo has in recent years faced criticism, including from within, that it has been slow and hasn't held executives responsible for poor performance. It revamped its corporate structure and shuffled executives in an apparent response and the Panama Project has been lackluster in performance to date.

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What a Microsoft-Yahoo Merger Means for Google.
If Microsoft and Yahoo merge Google may have to worry about its hold on the consumer search and online advertising markets. The potential Microsoft / Yahoo merger probably doesn't have rivals at Google shaking in their Gucci boots just yet, but if a merger comes to fruition Google may have to worry about its hold on the consumer search and online advertising markets.

Microsoft has started a new round of talks with Yahoo, though in the past Yahoo has consistently turned down any merger offers from Microsoft. The companies appear to be in new "early-stage discussions" over a merger or deal that would help both companies better compete for a larger share of the keyword search marketplace.

Microsoft officials are feeling somewhat threatened and frustrated by their lack of power and leverage in their battle with Google for dominance of the keyword searech medium. Microsoft is not the type of company that makes acquisitions right and left, and buying Yahoo would ease some of the pain of failing to take over DoubleClick and also give Microsoft 30% of the keyword search pie versus their current take of only 9%. Size in the advertising world does matter, though, and the combination of Microsoft Live Search and Yahoo! would encroach on Google territory in the search market. Will keyword searchers move over from Google to a new MSN/Yahoo joint search engine? Not unless and until Yahoo and MSN both make changes that:

1) Improve Search Quality.
2) Increase Results Page Delivery Speed.
3) Dramatically Improve Content Relevancy.
4) Expand The Size of the Databases.

Can a Microsoft-Yahoo joint venture truly compete against the precision, speed, accuracy and scale of the Google keyword search system?

No, not without a changing of the guard or a flex of the vista muscles in desktop search. To date Microsoft has not made up for arriving way too late to the search party and Yahoo got drunk early and handed the keys to the keyword search castle to the sober, focused, and most serious Google guys.

Yet even considering all of these search realities, both Microsoft and Yahoo still look much more prepared to truly compete together than all alone.

Google to introduce a New Personal Computer?

Google Could Launch Version 1 of The New G-Browser and a new line of low price Google desktop computers in exclusive deal with Wal Mart.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Google is in whispered negotiations with Wal-Mart to sell a new, low-price Google PC.

According to the Times, the Internet-connected device would run an OS created by Google (Meet the New Google G-Browser), not Microsoft's Windows, and would be priced as low as $200. The new Google Operating System is most likely a Google-flavored version of Linux mixed with love from Mozilla.

Industry sources are theorizing that Google Co-Founder and President of Products Larry Page will use his Consumer Electrnoics Show keynote address in Las Vegas in of 2006 to launch the new Google Computer and launch the G-Browser.

Google could use their new low-ball personal computer to prep services including their Sun Microsystems StarOffice productivity suite (SUNW looks like a buy).

Peak Positions SEO a Traverse City, Michigan firm would like to gently remind everyone of the Michigan connection between Google, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft and the driving forces of technology. As the war for technology leadership has its deepest roots in the state of Michigan.

Google co-founder Larry Page was born and raised in Ann Arbor and his father, still a University of Michigan professor in Ann Arbor, has known Scott McNeeley CEO of Sun Microsystems a Birmingham, Michigan native and his long competitve battle with Steve Ballmer, President and CEO of Microsoft also a Birmingham Michigan native since childhood.

It all started at a high school debate over the future of technology in Brimingham Michigan at Detroit Country Day School. Scott McNeeley, Steve Ballmer, and Mark Woodward President and CEO of Serena Software, all walking the halls with Mork & Mindy (comedians Robin Williams and Pam Dawber) at Birmingham Detroit County Day High School in the mid 70's, and all debating on conflicting views of the technological evolution that began with early research on packet switching and the ARPANET (and related BBS (Bulletin Board System) communication technologies that has since evolved into today's internet. Read more on the history of the internet here...

Birmingham Detroit Country Day High School is the college prep rival of Grosse Pointe Woods University Liggett School of which Peak Positions VP Jack Roberts is a graduate. As organic search engine optimization, spiders, and algorithms all have deep roots here in the state of Michigan.

If a Google branded personal computer does surface at Wal Mart, either the Google/Sun StarOffice or the open-source OpenOffice suite will launch with it.

Wal-Mart a most interesting choice of open source partners indeed!!!

Google the undisputed kings of New Media and the "open environment" who sometimes slammed Micorsoft and much of the corporate world for the last 7 years over user control issues, later turns to Wal Mart for their first dekstop distribution partnership?

Hello G-Browser ... how will Microsoft react?

This makes the recently rumored Microsoft and Yahoo partnership/merger even more intriguing.

Stay Tuned...let us reach some Google contacts and see if a link can be provided to Larry's keynote speech in Las Vegas this Friday.