Posts Tagged ‘search engines’

Google Launches New Search Features

Thursday, June 16th, 2011

At the “Inside Search” media event held in San Francisco on Tuesday, Google announced a few new innovations that are aimed at helping users save time when searching online.  The first was a complete revamp of its mobile search interface which will now give users easier access to restaurants, bars and coffee shops in their local area. The new mobile version of Google.com which has a new set of icons at the bottom of the mobile site will gives users instant access to local search results. Google Goggles also has a new translate feature which will allow users to point their phone at any foreign text and then receive instant translation to their native language.

 
Next was Google desktop which will have a few new features, this includes voice search similar to mobile voice search.  Users will be given a microphone icon next to the search bar which you can speak your query to find what you are looking for. Mike Cohen, the manager of speech technology at Google, said: “I want people to be able to speak [their query] to find what they want…We want to change users’ mental model, he also revealed that there is two years’ worth of mobile speech put into Google’s system every day and added that the voice team were working hard to improve the tool’s accuracy. You will also now be able to drag or upload images directly in to the search bar, Google will then take your image and break down the components and provide you with any relevant information that it has stored on that image. Both of these new features will be rolling out over the next few days

Finally, Google Instant Pages which is designed to prerender search results in the background which Google is confident that you will click. This will save users between two and five seconds on typical searches giving near instant page display.

Amit Singhal, who leads Google’s search and development, said

“Instant Pages is the next big leap for Google,” “It will break down big barriers in users’ quest for information. At the end of the day our job is to get the information and knowledge people need in a blink of an eye.”

The beta of Instant Pages will roll out the week; however will only be available to Google Chrome users for now.

Something that was missing from the event was the mention of the new social features that Google have introduced, maybe these will be announced at a later date when Google finally decides what its going to do in the social media space.

 

Matthew Marley – 360innovate

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Real Time Search, No Flux Capacitor Needed!

Friday, June 19th, 2009

Recently there has been a lot of talk about real time search. But what is real time search and what makes it different from the search we have come accustom to? Well its very simple, real time search is when search results are found from micro blogging, social media, and many other web posts  to supply you with the most up to date information literally seconds after it has been published. However, with real time search comes issues like relevance of results. Unlike search, where the results are mostly show in accordance to their relevance, with real time search there are no guarantees as to what shows up. But for most people, getting the most up to date buzz on a hot topic is very appealing even if the results are not quite what you were expecting.

Here are a few real time search engines that have gotten a fair bit of attention lately:

OneRiot scans Twitter and Digg to give real time search results. It shows you the trending topics as they develop keeping you in the loop of the goings on in these two popular social sites. Also, it shows you the most shared posts on Twitter, to let you know what everyone is talking about.

Tweetmeme searches Twitter for links that best suit your search. The results are ranked in tweet popularity and you can define your search by the hour, day and week, depending on how fresh you want your results.

FriendFeed searches though all of your friends posts from different sites. This is quite unique as it only gives results from people you are connected with. However, it may be more opinion driven results rather than factual.  But it gives you a good insight into your friends activities.

Scoopler mixes live tweets and popular content in the results. This real time search engine actually shows the tweets as they are being posted giving you a constant stream of new information. Also the sites content is laid out coherently making it user friendly and a pleasant interface to use.

Social Mention is great for keeping an eye on who is talking about your brand or company. It searches through social media to supply you with results that are up to date and shows you what sentiment the mentions are, such as positive or negative. It also tells you the top keywords your brand or company is being found for.

Collecta monitors the update streams of news sites, popular blogs and social media sites including Flickr to give you search results that are up to the minute.

If you are wanting to search the web and get the freshest buzz on what’s going on, what’s being said, and what’s hot this minute, real time search is definately for you. Try these site out to see what ones best suit your needs. If you know of any other effective real time search engines then let us know.

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Google launches free services to help local businesses.

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

Today Google has announced the launch of Google Local Business. As part of an initiative to empower local businesses Google are giving  a set of free tools and resources to help them to take advantage of the Google Business Listings.

What are the Google Business Listings?

“A potential customer does a search on Google.com or in Google Maps, comes across your listing, clicks on it to see your reviews and details, and then gets directions to your location.” Official Google Blog

Providing businesses with the necessary tools on the Local Business Centre dashboard to analyse impressions, user engagement, top search queries and which postal codes users are travelling from will allow companies to fully utilise the, often under appreciated, business listings.

The new tool will provide businesses with an even greater understanding of  users searching behaviour and how they are finding companies. Further to this, having the ability to see where people are travelling from gives businesses an insight into users offline behaviour and allows them the ability to merge offline marketing activity with online searching, is a national telly ad resulting in a influx of searches from a wider range of postal codes?

Google’s primary aim of the business centre is to get businesses online and engaging with their online customers. For this tool to really be succesful Google needs to ensure it is communicating with the small businesses they are targeting, they need to communicate with them and help them understand what the business listings are. It is all very well us folks in the online industry singing the praises of the Business Listings,  we understand the search engines and how they operate (well we like to think we do), a large number of small (offline) businesses do not, which is why they turn to internet marketing and search engine optimisation companies to handle their online presence. It is this barrier in understanding which may prevent Google Business Centre from being as successful as it actually could be.

If you are a business get to the Local Business Centre to register.

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The Cost of Searching

Monday, January 12th, 2009

It was revealed this week that two Google searches emits the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle; the primary cause being the energy used to power the users computer and the computers generating the search engines.

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