Bigmouthmedia search engine news: multilingual-seo

Google hints at new ad formats at SES New York

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:00:00 GMT

During a heated Orion Panel at Search Engine Strategies New York Google hinted that the search engine is developing advertising options suited to Universal Search.

Google's Universal Search blends traditional text search results with videos, news, maps and other data. John Battelle noted that Universal Search seemed to break Google's traditional revenue model of driving traffic to websites and monetising the click. In some cases Universal Search result pages offered by Google are the only page a searcher looks at as the searcher has no need to look any further.

In response to direct questioning from Federated Media's Battelle, Google conceded that the search engine had explored advertising options suited to Universal Search. The comments came from Jack Menzel, Google's Product Manager from Universal Search.

Menzel later admitted that he was surprised by statistical analysis provided by comScore. James Lamberti, Senior Vice President of Search and Media at comScore, took the Search Engine Strategies' audience through analysis of over 1.2 billion search queries at Google. ComScore's figures showed that 17% of Google results ended in some aspect of Universal Search being shown. Of the original set of 1.2 billion searches over 220 million search results included one or more video, news, map, weather, stock or image results.

ComScore's data mining revealed that the number of clicks on Google's AdWords reduced whenever an Universal Search element was present on the results page. The panel, moderated by Search Engine Watch's Kevin Ryan, discussed whether this reduction of clicks represented a threat to Google's earnings.

Lyndsay Menzies, from the digital marketing agency bigmouthmedia, explained how Universal Search increased both branding considerations and tracking challenges in search marketing. Menzies noted that a shift in thinking was required from brands previously used to ROI and ROAS only analytic models from their search campaigns. Universal Search is both an opportunity and a threat to brands.

Mike Grehan, co-moderator of the panel, and bigmouthmedia's Menzies noted that the expectations of searchers are changing. Searchers are increasingly familiar with rich interfaces offered by web 2.0 sites and the vanilla "ten blue links" format traditionally offered by Google would begin to disappoint. Universal Search represented Google's efforts in offering the most relevant search results to this generation of searchers.

Taking the audience through a typical e-commerce scenario, Menzies described how a search for a laptop may begin with the user examining pictures of different laptops on Google Universal, then researching via organic results before completing a purchase through an AdWords link.

The debate concluded with comScore revealing that although paid search clicks reduced on Universal Search, conversation rates increased. Google also reminded the audience that the search engine intends to continue to experiment with search results formats.

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Yahoo! opposes anti-censorship policy, while Flickr is blocked in China

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Yahoo! shareholders have voted to reject a policy that focuses on opposing internet censorship around the world. They have also defeated a motion to create a human rights committee for reviewing policies from around the world.

The voting took place at Yahoo!'s annual general meeting where the proposal to adopt the censorship opposition policy garnered just 15 per cent support. The creation of a human rights committee fared even worse, generating support from just four per cent of shareholders.

Human Rights Watch accused the world's three major search engines - Google, Yahoo! and MSN - of "carrying out censorship for the Chinese Government" last year. Google and Yahoo! practice the act of delisting sites from search results in China and, when looking for new information, the search engines disregard these websites.

The search engines take the view that providing some information is better than providing no information at all to the 140 million internet users in China.

While shareholders voted to reject censorship opposition, Beijing reportedly has blocked the Yahoo!-owned photo sharing site Flickr. Yahoo!'s Hong Kong unit said that the website had not shown photos to users in mainland China since last week.

Speaking to Reuters, a representative from Yahoo! Hong Kong confirmed the issue:

"It is our understanding that Flickr users in China are not able to see images on Flickr, and we have confirmed that this is not a technical issue on our end. It appears that the Chinese government is restricting access to Flickr, although we have not received confirmation from them."

It is thought that the Chinese government started restricting access to the site as the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre loomed and images of the event were being uploaded. The ruling Communist party banned all references to the massacre in all state media, literature and the internet.

On the other hand Flickr has just gone multilingual, adding support for a variety of languages - including Chinese.

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Flickr going multilingual

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Yahoo!'s popular photo-sharing website Flickr is set to go multilingual to allow people across the world to explore, manage and share photos more easily.

The leading global online photo community had added support for French, German, Korean, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and traditional Chinese languages.

Over half of Flickr's users are based outside the USA and the new development is set to widen the community for even more people around the world.

Yahoo! said that Flickr "fosters connections and interactions" on the web, allowing people to share and explore the experiences of one another's daily lives.

Members are able to upload photos from anywhere at anytime and communicate with friends and family.

The internet giant suggested that with multiple language support, members can "traverse language barriers" and discover over 525 million Flickr photos taken around the world.

Stewart Butterfield, co-founder and general manager of Flickr at Yahoo!, said: "Flickr has established itself as the eyes of the world, with millions of people all over the planet sharing photos of every imaginable aspect of life.

"Today, we're expanding our language support to make that dialogue easier and to connect those who may not speak the same language, but who share the same passions."

In celebration of the launch, Flickr is hosting a series of events in cities across the world, including Berlin, Paris, London and Montreal.

It will also unveil its 24 Hours of Flickr commemorative book, illustrating life as it happened around the world in the space of a day.

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Multilingual search with Google Translate

Thu, 24 May 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Popular search engine Google has taken another step forward in its mission to make the world's information universally accessible by adding a useful new feature to its translation tool - Google Translate. This feature enables you to search for a keyword or search phrase in languages you don't speak yourself and get a quick overview of websites in other languages with the help of machine translation.

The search results from the Google Translate search results come in two columns. The left column shows you machine translated search while the right column contains the original language text.

Language barriers still pose a big obstacle to accessing information on the web. One of the disadvantages of machine translations is that the quality of translations is often far from perfect. Franz Och, Maureen Heymans and Jeff Chin, the team behind the Google Translate Search Results feature, freely admit this on the search engine's official blog.

When you look for results on search engine optimisation in German, for example, you might come across the odd translation - for instance, "Who would like to make successful Suchmsachinen optimization, search machine optimization for Google must make" - but in the majority of cases you will get a translation that will easily enable users to obtain an idea of what a particular website is about.

Native English speakers will probably only occasionally use Google Translate, as they will be able to find a sufficient number of search results in English on the web for most searches. The world wide web remains dominated by websites in English, which is mainly due to high internet usage in English speaking countries like the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the UK.

While languages like German and Japanese used to come in second place in the percentage of internet languages a few years ago, the number of users from China has grown drastically within the last few years, making Chinese the second biggest internet language. Currently Google does not have a strong position in the search engine market in China. This focus on further developing translation features could be seen as part of the search engine's drive to gain precious search engine territory in emerging markets like China.

Speakers of foreign languages will be able to benefit significantly from Google Translate's search results tool, which features eleven different languages - among them Chinese (both traditional and modern), Arabic and Russian.

The Google Translate search result tool has been released in beta status, which means that although it is already publicly available, the tool is still being tested and will continue to be improved over time.

After the launch of Google's "universal search" last week, in which we saw the integration of results across different media into search results, Google's latest development ultimately invites an intriguing question: will the integration of websites across different languages be the next big step for Google?

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Trulia, the real estate search engine, goes Web 2.0

Mon, 14 May 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Trulia, the real estate search engine, has recently announced the launch of new features - including 'Trulia Voices' and 'Trulia Alerts' - in a push to drive their site towards the Web 2.0 arena.

Trulia Voices can effectively be regarded as a clone of Yahoo! Answers for the real estate market, where the 1.5 million web users and real estate professionals that visit the Trulia site can post questions and answers about any kind of issue, from schools to market conditions, shopping or finance.

With Trulia Alerts, users are able to set up the characteristics of their desired property, enabling them to receive automatic e-mail alerts when their dream home hits the market. With over 60 million homes for sale in the USA, features like this can make a huge difference for prospective buyers.

Trulia is visually more attractive and user friendly than many other of its competitors, due partially to the use of Google Maps mashups as a means to easily find the properties by location. As well as a list of homes for sale, the site also provides useful real estate guides with statistics and graphs on average house prices, household income and crime statistics to name just a few.

In Europe, Properazzi is the only pan-European vertical search engine that can be compared to the services offered by Trulia in the USA. Properazzi offers information on more than 1.8 million listings within 45 European countries on both properties for sale and rentals alike. Properazzi also integrates Google Maps as an aid to find listings by location, although it doesn't offer its user any form of Web 2.0 interaction.

Properazzi has made a clear effort to offer multilingual services since its inception, and this vertical search engine is now available in more than 28 languages and 92 currencies.

The only way to compete with search engine giants like Google or Yahoo! is to specialised in a certain area and enterprises such as Trulia not only focus on a niche market but are also aware of the growing importance of the social web and user generated content. In the near future, it's likely that we can expect many more websites to mimic the features of offered by sites like Properazzi and Trulia.

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Microsoft To Merge with Yahoo? What might it mean for the search industry?

Fri, 04 May 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Nothing ever remains staid for long in the realm of internet search. Only this afternoon, a little-known firm called Microsoft, became interested in building its online advertising empire with the acquisition, merger or at least partnership(depending on which report you read) of another little company you may have heard of, called Yahoo!

This isn't the first time that rumours of a possible deal has surrounded the two firms in recent years - reports last year claimed that the duo held informal merger talks.

But what might this mean and who would benefit?

Todays NASDAQ's figures suggest the news pleased the market. Yahoo's share price jumped 19% from $5.19 at opening to $33.37 within minutes of the news being released. A quick glance at Bloomberg also shows that this is the greatest jump Yahoo! has seen in 4 and a half years.

Interestingly, the news didn't do much for Microsoft's share price which were down slightly by 1.7% to $30.47. A little unexpected, perhaps?

Well ... perhaps not. Despite recent efforts to break into online advertising, Microsoft have struggled to make headway against the current search engine of choice, Google. Software remains Microsoft's biggest profit driver, and spending a huge $50billion to acquire a company in the area you're least experienced - not to mention least profitable - makes the city nervous.

Chris Cathcart, finance vertical strategist for bigmouthmedia said of the proposed deal:

"Recent years have not been kind to Yahoo!, and their growth has been slowing down. Last quarter, their revenue growth was 7% - the first time its been below 10% in five years. This deal will be good for both them and Microsoft as the deal will take Microsoft's online market share (in the US) from 12% to 38.5% in comparison to rival Google's' 48% market share."

Other commentators have expressed more caution over the deal because of the huge difference in the two companies cultures.

However, it's early days and it's yet to be seen if any deal is actually going to transpire - both Yahoo! and Microsoft so far have chosen not to comment.

Personally, we'd love to see it happen. Its been a long time that anything this exciting has happened in the search engine industry. Or almost any industry!

And its good to see Microsoft getting back to their tried, tested and above all infamous "If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em!" attitude.

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Google working on translation programme

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Google is currently developing a translation programme which will translate a document into any of the world's main languages.

The development of the programme centres on statistical machine translation as opposed to expert human translators.

Previous programmes have used human language experts to program grammatical rules and dictionaries into computers. However, the machine logic approach feeds documents people have already translated into two languages; computers then discern patterns for future translations, working on a basis of statistical analysis.

Franz Och, head of Google's translation, admits that the process is not perfect, but that it is an improvement on previous machine translation concepts.

The programme may not be suited to accurate-critical document translations. However, where 'mostly correct translation' is acceptable, this new technology may signify a breakthrough.

The program is being developed to increase accuracy. Test translations have been carried out on certain documents from Arabic to English, and the results have not been perfect but are comprehendible. However, when translations have been tried from English to Russian, the translated documents have been said to be understandable but awkward.

The idea behind the machine logic is that, the more you feed into the system, the better it will be as it will have more data patterns on which to base its translation. Och has been feeding texts in Arabic and English, for example, using United Nations and European Union documents. The languages that are less frequently used, such as Africaans, will be more difficult to find and feed into the system. This means the overall system will be better at translating into some languages over others.

So far, the Google statistical machine translation system is offering translations in Arabic, Chinese and Russian to English. As yet, the tool is free; but if Google develop to a high accuracy standard they are likely to charge for its use in the future.

Limitations of the system have already been highlighted. Some argue that no matter how sophisticated statistical machine systems like this become, they will never overtake the accuracy of human translation. The system is certainly a valuable aid in the further understanding of documents in a foreign language, but not necessarily for producing accurate translations.

Eric Schmidt, Chariman of Google, believes that Google's translation system will be a breakthrough for societies in which language is a major barrier to communication.

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The internet's future is discussed in Athens

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 12:00:00 GMT

The future of the internet is something that has stumped and astounded web-using communities the world over. 2006, in particular, has seen a range of what some may call 'radical measures' being brought into play within the domain of internet governance - for example, Google's censored Chinese search engine, and the US's recent outlaw of internet gambling. This week, however, Athens sees the first global Internet Governance Forum (IGF) - an organisation that may provide the internet industry with exactly what it needs to ensure successful co-operation between cultures online.

Born out of a proposal made at the 2005 UN World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, the (IGF) will be held from October 30 to November 2, 2006. It aims to give companies, governments and individuals space for debate about the future of the internet, but it is not a decision-making body as such. Nitin Desai, chair of the IGF's organising body, warned that a "potential culture clash" was the biggest threat to the success of the IGF. Mr Desai said:

"The forum will give voice to the citizens of the global net and help identify emerging issues which need to be tackled in the formal processes."

More than 1500 delegates will be attending the conference this week, and the four key items on the IGF's agenda are: security, diversity, openness and access.

Emily Taylor, legal director of Nominet - the UK body in charge of the .uk domain name - stressed the importance of IGF in tackling issues that were of paramount importance to internet users. She said:

"Issues around spam, cybersecurity, openness, the blocks to freedom of speech - they speak to all internet users directly." Ms Taylor also highlighted the increase of spam on the internet, as well as the rising number of phishing victims - a phenomenon highlighted by a recent Bigmouthmedia article.

So far, the most controversial debate at the IGF has surrounded the implementation of international domain names (IDN); it's a move which has been overseen by Icaan, a body appointed by the US Department of Commerce to oversee domain names like .com and .org. The aim is to allow users who do not understand or use the Latin alphabet to navigate the web in their own script, and has come under increasing scrutiny - not least from Icaan's own chief, Mr Vint Cerf. Mr Cerf, one of the founders of the net, told the IGF yesterday that, while the ability for everyone and every device to connect to the internet easily was crucial to its original foundations, making changes to the way the web works in order to accommodate a multilingual internet raised concerns about possible fragmenting.

The issue dominated the topics of debate on the first day of the IGF, and many have asserted in response to Mr Cerf's comments that the current absence of a truly multilingual internet is a major setback to its development. Vivianne Reding, the EC's Information Society Commissioner, said that the IDN was often wrongly seen as a technical issue. She claimed:

"Bridging the digital divide is not just a matter of screens and cables. It is equally important to recognise the extent and value of cultural diversity within the global village of the internet. That is why multilingualism is important."

However, Mr Cerf stressed that IDN is predominantly a technical issue, and that the introduction of other scripts into the domain name system needs rigorous testing to ensure that users will be able to reach the same online destination no matter what script they use.

"Domain names are not general natural language expressions. They are simply identifiers. They must be unique. Names registered today must be able to work into their distant future no matter what characters are added. A miss-step could easily and permanently break the internet into non-interoperable components."

This exciting first day of debates seems proof that the IGF has provided the cross-cultural discussion forum for which Mr Desai planned. This surely delivers high expectations of the IGF as a legitimate body through which web users can deliberate over the internet's future. It will not only be interesting to see what the rest of the week in Athens delivers, but which values the IGF will stand for in the future.

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North Korea: the future of SEO?

Wed, 11 Oct 2006 12:00:00 GMT

When it comes to hearts and minds, the internet is a more powerful tool than the nuclear bomb. As the North Korean state - an anachronistic relic of the Cold War - appears to gear up for its next nuclear test, the Western media has begun its periodic revival of news stories exposing the meagreness of its counterpart in Kim Jong-Il's totalitarian state. Most people are aware of the strict, state-controlled media operating in North Korea: there are only three television stations, all state owned, and only 55 out of every 1000 people own a TV set. In 2004, mobile phones were banned in North Korea, and radios were branded "enemies of the regime".

Yet the most dire implications for the future of the North Korean media is its pitifully obscure presence in the internet world. At present, internet access in North Korea is restricted to an elite group of 200 or so foreigners living in Pyongyang, and there are only 30 North Korean websites - which are, predictably, all backed by the state. Most of these sites are largely devoted to singing the praises of Kim Jong-Il; but some, such as Naenara show a slightly different slant on North Korean affairs.

Naenara, meaning "my country," is the official North Korean web-portal, and is available in a multitude of languages: English, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, French, German and Arabic, as well as Korean. Naenara features sections on North Korean politics, tourism, arts and foreign trade, and encourages the unification of the two Koreas. By making Naenara available in so many different languages, North Korea has certainly increased its global web presence dramatically. If you were to type "North Korean Foreign Trade" into search engine Google, the site would emerge as the 7th result - suggestive of a reasonably accessible, well linked-to, and possibly actively optimised site. But, true to form, Naenara is restrictive: one Japanese blogger pointed out that it was effectively impossible to get news from the Naenara site in North Korea, even for registered users.

Yet North Korean isolation in the internet world may not be a complete product of its own doing. For example, the state has persistently asked ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, to authorise the domain ".kp" for the country - but to no avail. Furthermore, the only country in which Naenara is banned is South Korea, where the state fears that its material will "brainwash" South Korean citizens.

Despite backing only 30 websites, the North Korean state is clearly aware of the global power of the internet in its own country as well as outside it. In 2005 alone, it was estimated that the state trained nearly 600 computer hackers; bizarrely, this is a figure greater than the number of registered internet users in North Korea. But as the use of the internet in North Korea gradually expands, it seems unlikely that the state will go the way of its larger neighbour - and now more increasingly distant ally - China. China's ability to use its status as the world's largest nation as a manipulative tool when launching the state-censored Google China earlier this year is a feat unlikely to be repeated by Kim Jong-Il's regime. A regime under which, despite lucrative trade with China, people still live in abject poverty.

While the North Korean internet base is certainly too miniscule for us to expect the launch of Google North Korea anytime soon, it is certainly an interesting possibility to consider for the perhaps distant future - particularly if North Korea's newfound nuclear status continues to generate such massive interest in the country. Indeed, the opportunities provided by the internet are endless, meaning therefore, that anything can happen.

Who knows, perhaps one day we'll witness the opening of search engine optimisation offices in Pyongyang. After all, it might be a simple case of brand protection but even a communist state needs search exposure.

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Google clings to the number one slot

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 12:00:00 GMT

Remember when Google was not the number one search engine? You don't need to go too far back - it was July of this year.

The number one slot in question is not market share. Right now investors, media and search engine optimisers will debate whether Google's number one position in market share is assailable or not until the cows come home. Or should that be; until the spiders come home?

Google has not always held the number one position in Google for the search 'search engine'. The screen grab below comes from the news article 'Even Google struggles in the search playground' dated July 2006.

Here we can see that industry stalwarts AltaVista and Dogpile force Google down into third position. The green ticks beside the URLs were produced by Site Advisor, recently bought by McAfee, which tell us that the site is free of virus infection.

Let's compare that old set of search results with one taken in September of 2006. Here we can see a possible new GUI for Google and that Google claims positions one and two. MSN pulls in at position three and AltaVista and Dogpile have been pushed down to four and five respectively.

Look how well Google.co.uk does. Therein lies a snag - this particular examination of Google's search results was conducted from an UK based IP address. To perform a more thorough investigation we should try the same search again but with an US based IP address.

We can see a similar set of results but this time Google.co.uk drops down to position four. Now MSN Search enjoys the lofty heights of position two and AltaVista pulls away from the meta search Dogpile. It looks as if Google.co.uk is Google's second most relevant offering for the search 'search engine'.

Is Google.co.uk the second most relevant Google for the search 'Google'? For most searchers in the United Kingdom - the answer is yes. The screen grab below shows the .com site ranking one, Google.co.uk coming in at two and Google.ca there in position three. The first vertical search interface to rank for 'Google' from this UK based IP address is Google Maps - and that's Google Maps global/US and not Google Maps UK.

The same search from an US based IP address has very different search results. The country versions of Google vanish, Google Maps still does well but it is Google Talk which leaps up from nowhere and claims position two. As the search engine has found the directory 'talk' and not the sub-domain 'talk' Google's results nest Google Talk under the main URL. To qualify for that nesting effect the Google Talk URL simply has to rank within the top 10. If it makes the first page then Google will lift it up in order to nest it immediately below the first www.google.com result. If you choose to ignore nested results then Google Maps does hold the two slot in this search.

Users who search Google for 'Google' and request 100 results rather than the default 10 on the first page will see more nested results.

Readers who re-create these searches may well see different patterns in Google's results and this may also be due to the geographical association Google has for your IP address (where your IP address is a bit like your internet postcode). Personalised search information also allows Google to show different people different results. Google's tendency to show different results to searchers in different parts of the world is one of the challenges the few international search engine optimisation agencies face.

Google's number one in Google, they must be happy with that and we wonder whether they will check their own search engine's results after the next algorithm update or index refresh with the same enthusiasm which we do.

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