Knowledge Leadership Associates » search engines

Google at thirteen

Peter G. Underwood — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 05:13:24 +0000

Did you notice what happened on Tuesday? Google celebrated its thirteenth birthday! In a thought-provoking piece, Danny Goodwin acknowledged this moment and reviewed the recent history of Google in order to remind us that the “terrible teens” can affect companies and organisations as well as people. His article, in Search Engine Watch of 27 September 2011, identifies twelve major developments that have occurred during the previous year and warns that these may be symptomatic of the behaviour of the search engine company in the future. In a summarising comment, Goodwin says, “Google faced several lows – luring Bing into public fights, revealing their Facebook envy, releasing baffling algorithmic improvements, facing public humiliation in the form of mainstream news stories calling out the quality of Google’s results, and relinquishing $500 million for accepting advertising from online Canadian pharmacies, but also had several highs – Google bought several shiny new companies (retail therapy?), Larry Page returned to his role as CEO and cleaned house, Google saw record revenues, Google introduced a suite of Instant products, and Android continued to grow”.

Google at thirteen is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

DuckDuckGo receives plaudits

Peter G. Underwood — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 06:08:31 +0000

DuckDuckgo, the search engine that offers searching without snooping, has been selected by Time Magazine as one of the fifty best websites of 2011. The search engine was launched in 2008 by Gabriel Weinberg and is remarkable in having only one full-time employee! It has built its reputation on offering excellent searching and allied this with the promise that searches will not be tracked and recorded — many search engines, including Google, keep records of searches and link them to Internet Protocol (IP) addresses so searches emanating from a particular computer can be tracked.

DuckDuckGo receives plaudits is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Computer, give me . . .

Peter G. Underwood — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 14:24:03 +0000

Here we are on the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise; “Computer, give me a list of the planets with more than 75% of surface covered with water”. Moments later, the reply comes back. Far-fetched? Perhaps, at the moment, but a computer scientist at the University of Washington, Oren Etzioni, has suggested that this is where strong investment in natural-language query processing systems would pay off handsomely. His article in the journal Nature (4 August, 476: 25-26) provides some powerful arguments in favour of experimentation and further research into ways in which searching of electronic and other sources can be radically improved. Perhaps it will be some years before the voice-controlled search is possible — but major improvements in the way in which searches are conducted would be a step towards improved information management.

Computer, give me . . . is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Secure searching with DuckDuckGo!

Peter G. Underwood — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 08:23:55 +0000

Many search engines, including Google, track and record searches, including search terms used and the location and IP address from which the search originates. Potentially, it would be possible to identify an individual from such information. The data is used, supposedly, to assist in monitoring search quality and, also, to provide a profile of recent searches so that targeted advertising information can be displayed on subsequent search pages. This approach, benign though it is claimed to be, is disturbing, to say the least, and could constitute a serious security risk to a company that is searching for strategically-important information.

So, if you are not happy to be monitored, try a new search engine, DuckDuckGo. The site provides a comprehensive list of special features and searches offered by the engine and also explains its privacy policy. Searches are quick and the results exclude “scraper” sites and those offering advertising of dubious relevance to the search being conducted. The usual range of search features are available, including phrase searching and the so-called !bang syntax, which allows one to force the engine to conduct a search on a particular site for a specific type of medium — !i “Knowledge Leadership Associates” will, for example, find images on the KLA website through an interface with the Google search engine.

Secure searching with DuckDuckGo! is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

A fresh round of cuts at Google!

Peter G. Underwood — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 08:09:56 +0000

Rob Young, in his blog entry of 2 August, “7 Google Projects shut down in the Page era (the Google friends newsletter is the latest)“, on Search engine watch lists seven Google Projects that have been shut down by Larry Page, who took over the running of Google in April 2011. Some of them, such as the “Google friends newsletter”, are unlikely to be missed but others, such as the withdrawal of the Firefox browser bar, are inexplicable decisions. Google Translate has gone, as has Google Labs, which often provided interesting small-scale applications for testing and experimentation. Is Google redefining its “core business”? If so, what else will vanish?

A fresh round of cuts at Google! is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Inside Google, by an insider

Peter G. Underwood — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:41:30 +0000

I’m feeling lucky: the confessions of Google Employee Number 59, by Douglas Edwards, promises to be a good read. It is available from Amazon at $15.28 (print and audio — but no Kindle edition!) and the first few pages can be read for free on the Amazon site. Greg Jarboe, in his blog of 31 July 2011 on Search engine watch provides an interesting summary, concentrating on the “Ah-Hah!” moments. He concludes, “Edwards captures the ‘Google Experience’, the roller-coaster ride of being part of a company creating itself in a whole new universe. And you’ll want to know how the ride began in order to understand where it is currently taking all of us in search and social marketing”.

Inside Google, by an insider is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Now you see it . . .

Peter G. Underwood — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:09:01 +0000

Karen Blakeman’s blog site is always worth exploring and this week is no exception. On the 18 July, her entry entitled “A good year for culling Google search options” recorded the withdrawal of many search features that Google had launched. Amongst them is the “Wonderwheel” (launched in 2009) which drew a simple mind map for searches — a very useful feature if searching for a topic using terms with which was unfamiliar — it may reappear as a result of site redesign but Google management were unable to commit themselves on this topic. Blakeman documents several other features that have also vanished without any explanation or announcement. One of the most irritating aspects of the Google management is its seeming inability to keep its users informed of such changes and the reasons for these decisions; even direct queries by e-mail go unanswered.

Now you see it . . . is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

What do you remember . . .

Peter G. Underwood — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 15:44:55 +0000

A report, Google effects on memory: cognitive consequences of having information at our fingertips, by Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu and Daniel Wegner of Columbia University in the United States of America presents an interesting account of how the way in which people remember information may be changing as a result of use of Internet technologies. Four studies conducted by the research team have indicated that many people now instinctively think of using a computer when faced with a problem to resolve. Whilst this may not be surprising, the consequences are: heavy users of the Internet show “much lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it”. Thus, the Google Generation is learning and remembering techniques for locating information, but not the information itself. What happens when the power goes off?

What do you remember . . . is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

The underside of Google?

Peter G. Underwood — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 07:06:11 +0000

David Segal, in a column in the New York Times (12 February 2011), draws attention to the results of some research conducted by Doug Pierce of Blue Fountain Media into some rather odd results which have arisen whilst using the Google search engine: searches for a variety of domestic items, clothing and furniture were consistently yielding one site as the, apparently leading, supplier. J. C. Penney, a very prestigious company running department stores in the United States, has denied any attempt at manipulating the search engine results. Pierce’s research indicates that the curious effect has been achieved by creating an intensive set of links to the J. C. Penney web site, which has the effect of forcing the Google Page-ranking algorithm to force the site up the rankings. Once alerted to the problem, Google investigated and confirmed that someone had deliberately tried to promote the web site by this means, and adjusted its algorithm accordingly. Such “black hat” (by analogy with “bad” cowboys, who wear black stetsons in films with a Western cowboy theme whereas the “heroes” wear white hats) attempts are quite prevalent and the article presents a fascinating account of some recent attempts at “web influencing” on behalf of large corporations.

The underside of Google? is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

The nuisance of “web spam”

Peter G. Underwood — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 11:42:23 +0000

“Web spam” constitutes a serious threat to the integrity of search results from some search engines; it is also known as “spamdexing”, “search spam” and “search engine spam”. By including many terms that are popular as keywords — but may not bear any relationship to the contents of a web site — and other techniques, search engine optimizers hope to promote their web site to a prime position in the rankings of search results. This obscures and contaminates the results with many irrelevant sites. The development in the 1990s of “link farms ” or “content farms” constitutes a further threat: these consist of little material but many links to each other in an attempt to fool search engine algorithms into rating such sites highly because of link density. Some search engine companies have recognised the dangers and implemented specific checks for “web spam” and the filtering-out of offending sites. A recently-developed search engine, Blekko (http://blekko.com/), which was launched on 1 November 2010, is adopting a strict policy of suppressing results from some twenty “link farms” to ensure that its search results are uncontaminated. Blekko also uses human intervention to locate reputable sites and improve the precision of a search. The idea of “slashtags” is a key development by Blekko: these are simple words such as “/science” or “/sports” that can be added to the end of a search query to offer improved results for that topic. The slashtags can be subject areas but may also represent matters of opinion; so, adding /reviews allows a particular slant on a search focussing on the arts. Blekko will also add slashtags automatically when it becomes evident that you wish to focus on an aspect of a particular topic. The company has also launched the “Spam Clock” (http://www.spamclock.com/) as an indication (non-scientific, they stress) of the volume of web spam that threatens good searching.

The nuisance of “web spam” is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates