Bigmouthmedia Search Engine News: /algorithms/

Microsoft challenges Google to "Bing It On"

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 05:48:00 GMT

Microsoft is squaring up to Google with its new campaign entitled "Bing it On", a comparison challenge that allows users to pitch the two heavyweight search engines against each other in a side-by-side stand off.

The 'Bing it On Challenge' prompts users to enter neutral search terms, producing unbranded results pages from both Google and Bing. The user can then compare and choose which search engine produced the most favourable results, or call it a draw.

The overall winner is decided after a best-of-five face-off.

Microsoft, taking umbrage against many people's automatic habit of "googling", is hoping the direct comparison test might show Internet users that "Lets Bing it" might have a better ring to it after all.

Senior director of Bing, Stefan Weitz, told CNET news the goal of the campaign was "to get users to take a look again at Bing.

"We want them to see Google's magic secret search sauce isn't really so magic."

Microsoft claim that users prefer Bing search results 2 to 1 over Google's, after commissioning a recent study involving 1000 people. Bing bosses hope that the campaign will encourage people to re-think their search defaults.

The tech giant, currently holding 28 per cent of the U.S search share, is launching the Bing it On Challenge in a flurry of publicity, promoting the campaign on nationwide American television stations as well as across the internet in the form of online ads and the twitter hashtag 'bingiton'.

Competitions will also be held, with prizes such as an Xbox 360, a Microsoft Surface and a Windows Phone up potentially for grabs for twitter users who share a designated Bing It On tweet.

The challenge is risky for Bing, who will no doubt report a short term surge in its user numbers, but if Google is victorious in the transparent side-by-side challenge, then Microsoft may have just put its search head on a very public chopping block.

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Bing harnesses Encyclopaedia Britannica for search

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 09:25:00 GMT

Hot on the heels of Google's Knowledge Graph announcement, search rival Bing has revealed its own quest for information, announcing it will partner with Encyclopaedia Britannica to offer users extra information when they search.

While similar in concept, Bing's knowledge effort manifests itself in slightly different ways - Knowledge Graph gives users a box of useful information to the right of the search results, while tidbits from Encyclopaedia Britannica will be included directly underneath search results in a 'summary box'.

"A core focus for us here at Bing has been about delivering relevant information in a more organised way to help you find what you need more quickly and get stuff done," Principal Development Lead, Franco Salvetti, wrote on the Bing blog.

"Starting today, we're excited to announce a partnership with Encyclopaedia Britannica to include Britannica Online answers directly in the Bing results page."

The deal comes at a good time for the encyclopaedia - after 244 years of print editions, Encyclopaedia Britannica announced earlier this year it would move into the digital age to become an online and computer-only reference. Forging closer ties with Bing will encourage web users to see EB as a trusted source on the net.

The partnership is also an opportunity for Bing to keep up with rival Google - both Knowledge Graph and Bing's EB tie-in give users fast access to a quick overview of particular search queries.

"The answer provides a quick overview of the subject, a thumbnail image, and useful facts and figures making it easier than ever to get trusted content in search. We also pull direct links to other trusted sources," Salvetti said of the enhanced search results.

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Microsoft request 500,000 links removed from Google

Fri, 25 May 2012 05:37:00 GMT

Google revealed that Microsoft made requests for 500,000 links to be removed from their search index in the last month alone.

"Today we're expanding the Transparency Report with a new section on copyright. Specifically, we're disclosing the number of requests we get from copyright owners (and the organizations that represent them) to remove Google Search results because they allegedly link to infringing content," Fred von Lohmann, senior Copyright Counsel, wrote on the Google Blog.

Most of the links Microsoft requested be removed were direct links to websites selling pirated Microsoft software. Google reported websites offering pirated products such as software and music are the main reason for link removal requests.

"We're starting with search because we remove more results in response to copyright removal notices than for any other reason. So we're providing information about who sends us copyright removal notices, how often, on behalf of which copyright owners and for which websites.

"As policymakers and Internet users around the world consider the pros and cons of different proposals to address the problem of online copyright infringement, we hope this data will contribute to the discussion."

Microsoft's removal requests were the largest in quantity, with the British Phonographic Institute and NBC Universal being the second and third biggest requesters of link removal.

According to Google's transparency report, the number of requests to remove links has risen sharply in the last 12 months. The search giant was asked to remove 129,063 links every week in July 2011, but as of May 2012, the number of requests rose to 284,850 links a week.

Google claim it takes on average 11 hours to remove a link from its index.

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Google brings Knowledge Graph to Search

Thu, 17 May 2012 02:49:00 GMT

Google has set out to make search act 'more human' and taken its next step toward total search domination with the Knowledge Graph.

Previously, Google's algorithm matched keywords with user queries to produce results - the addition of Knowledge Graph will help the search engine better understand 'context'.

"The Knowledge Graph enables you to search for things, people or places that Google knows about - landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings, geographical features, movies, celestial objects, works of art and more - and instantly get information that's relevant to your query," Google SVP of Engineering Amit Singhal wrote on the company blog.

"This is a critical first step towards building the next generation of search, which taps into the collective intelligence of the web and understands the world a bit more like people do."

The Knowledge Graph compiles information from public sources - including Freebase, Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook - and contains information on more than 500 million objects and uses some 3.5 billion facts.

Search results will be arranged into categories in which the search term has been associated, giving users the ability to zero in on results most relevant to them.

Further, Google will now also provide users with a summary of relevant information on key searches - for example important people - and will also provide what it believes are relevant related searches.

"We've always believed that the perfect search engine should understand exactly what you mean and give you back exactly what you want," Singhal said.

"And we can now sometimes help answer your next question before you've asked it, because the facts we show are informed by what other people have searched for."

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Google plans search revamp

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 02:12:00 GMT

Google is shaking things up in search, as the company announces plans to give its web-search formula its most dramatic makeover to date.

According to the Wall Street Journal, in the coming months users will begin to see a lot more than web links when they query the popular search engine. Soon, users will also be presented with "more facts and direct answers" at the top of each results page.

For example, when a user searches "What are the 5 biggest cities in Britain?", rather than being directed to a website, Google instead might simply provide the answer.

The changes to the search engine are set to be among the biggest in Mountain View's history, and according to the WSJ, could significantly affect current page-ranking results. The changes won't see Google replace its keyword-search system, but rather will aim to provide "semantic search" technology to better understand what users are searching for.

According to Google exec Amit Singhal, a search database containing millions of "entities" - made possible with semantic search technology - will help associate and connect these entities with one another - for example, terms like "Google" might be matched with "Larry Page".

The new search, says Mr Singhal, will look "how humans understand the world."

He continued saying that for many searches today "we cross our fingers and hope there's a Web page out there with the answer."

Though plans for "semantic search" are already in the works - Google has been quietly collecting "entities" data for two years - there is no official word on when users might expect the changes to occur.

The process, according to Mr Singhal, is years in the making, and will usher in what he calls "the next generation of search."

The new system is also expected to help Google "better recognize the value of information" on websites, says the Wall Street Journal, and will examine a website looking for information about entities referenced on the page, rather than simply look for keywords.

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How often do 'friends' see Facebook posts?

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 07:49:00 GMT

As more and more people join the mighty Facebook, it may be easy to complain about the deluge of mundane information you get about your "friends" - but, apparently, users could be seeing a whole lot more.

At the first Facebook Marketing Conference held in New York City this week, the social network revealed just how often posts get seen.

According to the Huffington Post, Facebook has a handy little algorithm that sorts through the cascade of content produced by status updates, picture uploads, link sharing, likes, comments, et al - and a user's News Feed only gets posts that Facebook thinks they'll find amusing.

In real terms, this amounts to Facebook friends only seeing about 16 per cent of what a user posts. And, the same is true for a company's fans.

The percentage, however, varies according to different factors, such as how often someone visits Facebook and how many friends they have.

"That's the average across all posts from all profiles and all pages of all different audience sizes and all different networks," said Chris Cox, Facebook's vice president of product.

"For any given post or given profile owner, you might see a totally different number, but this [number] is to present an order of magnitude."

And, it's an important factor for brands who are seeking to reach customers online via social networking sites. As such, Facebook released the statistics as part of its pitch for a new advertising product - the Reach Generator.

The new tool will help marketers increase the number of Facebook fans who view their content by paying for better placement on the site's homepage, and in users' News Feeds and Facebook's log out screen.

Facebook claims this can help a company increase its footprint from 16 per cent to 75 per cent in a month.

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Social networks Focus on the User

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 04:48:00 GMT

Fed up with being ignored by Google, engineers from Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have joined forces to create a new tool that gleans search results from social networks other than Google+.

'Focus on the User' uses Google's algorithms to "determine what social content should appear in the areas where Google+ results are currently hardcoded."

By using the tool, users can see search results from Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, along with LinkedIn, Tumblr, Flickr, Foursquare, Crunchbase, FriendFeed and several other social networking sites across the web. Instead of automatically being met with Google+ results, users can see the most relevant social media results on any given search.

"When you search for 'cooking' today, Google decides that renowned chef Jamie Oliver is a relevant social result," the website said.

"That makes sense. But rather than linking to Jamie's Twitter profile, which is updated daily, Google links to his Google+ profile, which was updated nearly two months ago."

The bookmarklet - dubbed 'Don't be Evil', after Google's own motto - runs in Chrome, Firefox or Safari and automatically checks for any social profiles associated with a given search term, replacing Google+ profiles.

According to its creators, Focus on the User "looks at the three places where Google only shows Google+ results and then automatically googles Google to see if Google finds a result more relevant than Google+."

Google's Search plus Your World update has come under fire since its launch, with critics arguing the search giant is acting in its own interests on its quest to become more social.

Dissidents of Search plus Your World have also called foul on Google, arguing Mountain View is not doing what's best for the user and is abusing its power by edging out other social networks from search results.

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Google+ phases out incoming stream

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 01:01:00 GMT

Google is set to axe its 'incoming stream' from Google+, in an effort to keep things simple for users.

Engineering Manager Dave Besbris quietly announced the changes in a Google+ post, stating: "The 'incoming' stream was a part of Google+ from the very start and it served an important purpose at the time to help discover others on Google+.

"Since then however we've added a suggested user list, What's Hot, the ability to share circles and in-product search with saved searches."

Through the incoming stream, users could see posts and activity of others who followed them but whom they didn't follow themselves - however, critics argued the feature was too confusing.

The move away from its 'incoming stream' comes in direct response to user frustration, and tweaks to Google+ have incorporated some of the features of the incoming stream to other aspects of the social networking site.

"We've also greatly improved our friend suggestion algorhithms. these changes all serve the same purpose that incoming originally did: connecting people," Besbris said.

"Based on your feedback and our user research, we learned that the "incoming" stream was a very confusing part of Google+. Not surprisingly, this feedback was reflected in very low usage of the "Incoming" stream compared to the rest of Google+, so we decided to remove it and simplify things."

The young social network has been constantly refining its services to make them more user-friendly since its initial launch - tweaking existing features and introducing new ones. And, with Google's latest Search plus Your World updates, activity on Google+ is now even more visible in search results - a move that will likely encourage users to engage with the social network even more.

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Google brings Your World to your search results

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:24:00 GMT

Seeking to deliver on CEO Larry Page's promise of a more social Google, the search seraph announced earlier today another new initiative to infuse social signals in search.

Your World marks the third major revamp tooled toward social search in the approximately nine months since Page ascended the search throne atop Mountain View.

"We're transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships," Google Fellow Amit Singhal explained on the Official Google Blog. "We began this transformation with Social Search, and today we're taking another big step in this direction."

Google's three major plays with the revamp include finding results catered to individuals, and integrating the profiles of those with similar interest or who may be close to your social circle in results and autocomplete features. Your World also places Google+ pages related to search terms within easy reach for users to visit.

Mountain View has continually assessed social metrics and feature enhance search, and this latest update is set to make most searches even more unique to each user.

However, some may be less than thrilled to see personal information listed alongside popular results for something like "beach holidays".

"Until now we have not had the mixture of our personal information with our Web search results, and that makes even me a bit nervous," said Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Land, who affirmed Your World is one of Google's most significant overhauls.

The move also marks a hard strike against social media's biggest player, Facebook, as Palo Alto's metrics don't feed into the results. Instead, Google could be seen as favouring its own offerings (Google+, +1) in the place of market competitors.

While just how Your World plays out remains to be seen, the service will be automatically rolled out for most English-language users in coming days. Users must choose to opt out should they not want personal results displayed.

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Google demotes itself after paid-blog fuss

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 08:13:00 GMT

Google has fallen on the proverbial sword - demoting itself in search rankings after a Chrome ad campaign violated the company's own policies.

Google has found itself in hot water following the revelation that a Google Chrome ad campaign did exactly what the company has specifically banned in the past - paying bloggers for links to pad out search results.

To add insult to injury, the posts were of such low quality that they embodied the kind of "thin" content that Google has been working to eliminate from its search results.

So, to make amends it appears the search giant will be turning to a little self-flagellation of the corporate kind.

"We've investigated and are taking manual action to demote www.google.com / chrome and lower the site's PageRank for a period of at least 60 days," the company said in a statement from Mountain View.

"We strive to enforce Google's webmaster guidelines consistently in order to provide better search results for users... we can find no remaining violations of our webmaster guidelines, we believe Google should be held to a higher standard, so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site."

Google notoriously dislikes companies trying to game search results by paying other sites to link to them, and is partly blaming the advertising companies it partnered with for the fracas.

"Google never agreed to anything more than online ads," said the company. "We have consistently avoided paid sponsorships, including paying bloggers to promote our products, because these kind of promotions are not transparent or in the best interests of users. We are now looking into what changes we need to make to ensure this never happens again."

Searching for the keyword "browser" on Google will no longer bring up the Google Chrome home page anywhere in the top results, with it reportedly currently ranked in position 50.

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