Incremental Blogger

Ask has done a nice job updating their search pages.

Despite the improvements they’ve made, I’m not ready to switch. Why? I’ve become completely hooked on Google’s BlogSearch and News Search feature that enables me to quickly restrict searches to the last hour, last day, previous week, or previous month. I use this feature all the time now. It’s one of my favorite ways now to watch what’s going on right now and how big a particular topic is at a given time.

So far Google combines the most features I find useful when searching. Do I want more? Absolutely. Search is not done. But, for how I search, Google is still in the lead.

Dare Obasanjo talks about how search engines are in some ways encouraging companies to squat on domain names.

In the short term, it appears that Google (and the others that provide web advertising channels) have as much incentive as the website publishers themselves to encourage more ads–no matter where they appear. Of course, if the ads don’t perform over time, the advertisers will pull back their advertising in the long run. The ad platform providers don’t necessarily want this.

I wonder if there is research, though, on whether the ads on “incorrect” websites produce better search results than those where the user was directed to the correct site. (If so, the advertisers won’t necessarily mind where the ads were actually hosted.) It seems like for a certain class of search queries and ads this might actually be the case. For instance, if a person is searching for information on product X, but mistypes a URL or query, and winds up on a spam site with an ad for product X, it might be likely that a user will click on a product X ad on the page. Why not? The ad is right there. It’s the quickest way to get to what the user wants.

If enough users select ads this way, then it’s not only the “incrorrect” website publishers and Google that are benefitting, but it’s also the advertiser, and at least some significant portion of users. Where would the incentive be to change this–except maybe from the “correct” publishers that are losing traffic. The challenge here is that the publishers don’t provide the money–the advertisers do, so I’m not sure they have enough sway to address the problem.

There is another area where the spam problem is getting out of control–with the search engines focused around blogs. Google’s BlogSearch, for instance, has quite a few “spam” content providers that place simple links to other blog content or optionally copy in whole or in part other blog content and fill the pages with ads. It doesn’t seem right. I’m guessing this trend will end once–if ever–the advertisers come to the opinion that these spam blogs are less efficient for them. One could make the case, for instance, that these mis-directed searchers are clicking on ad links because the searches themselves have failed. A better search engine would improve the search experience so more users could get to the desired results withouth clicking on an ad. If so, the advertisers will save money. Of course, this might mean that the ad platform providers will earn less–but I don’t think so in the long run.

Fortunately, for at least blog search, the spam sites degrade the search experience so much that given enough spam blogs getting through, the more likely it will be that users pick another search engine, which will lead to an obvious drop in revenue for the search engine. That’s incentive enough to address the problem.

Robert Scoble: “Microsoft and Yahoo still could beat Google if they got more “live” and more video sources.”

Google’s launch of their Universal Search feature has brought forth quite a variety of commentary on
TechMeme.

Don Doge isn’t too sure if Google’s “new” Universal Search feature will survive. As he points out, he’s seen it before. Ten years back when he worked at Alta Vista. Their effort to merge media types into their search results ultimately was dropped. Will Google meet the same fate?

Of course, this was ten years ago. Don’s correct: Times have changed. But it’s not only that–rarely are two implementations the same. The expression of the idea can make a huge difference and is almost always unique. Not only this, but the DNAs of the different companies doing the engineering are different. By way of example, Microsoft likes blue. Google likes sparseness. Microsoft is database focused. Google is index minded. Try as they might to build the “same thing” I doubt they could. That’s what makes the industry so interesting. As companies build their products, they learn from themselves, their users, and their competitors and refine in a never-ending cycle.

His comment that Google’s Universal Search isn’t “all that” because it’s been done before is on par with those that argue that an idea isn’t worthwhile because it’s time is not yet. (I particularly love it when a single idea or product gets challenged from both of these directions at the same time. These are classic arguments. The goal of an innovator though is to stay focused on the current balanace of practicalities and where the trends are going.)

Pundits aside, the real test will be in how the search results get used. Will people stick to the text links in their search results? My guess is that many will, but a growing number won’t. Why? Because more and more people are becoming comfortable with viewing videos online. Part of the changeover is due to better broadband connections. Part of the changeover is due to browser hosted video players that just work. Part of the changeover is because it’s getting easier for people to create video content–whether from a cell phone or digital video camera.

This week Google started integrating thumbnails of YouTube videos in their regular search results. The effort is part of their broader “Universal Search.” For instance, when searching for “Tablet PC videos” on Google, the second page of results includes the following link to a YouTube video:

You can click on the little expansion button in the video’s link description to force the display of an integrated YouTube player, which plays the video:

Overall the implementation isn’t that bad.

As I’ve blogged before, another great place to integrate video links is in the news page (news.google.com). When I’m checking for breaking news, I’d like to see links to live coverage of the news item, if any exist, or possibly a link to a video archive of the story–or even a hotlink to bring up a live show in Media Center or Sling Player. To do this in the general case is probably tricky, however, if Google builds relationships with broadcasters and stream providers, this could be interesting.

If I were Google, I’d also ramp up video support in its BlogSearch. Not only are there a growing number of bloggers that provide video snippets or complete shows (such as Robert Scoble), but there are now also a handful of live broadcasters, such as Chris Pirillo at http://chris.pirillo.com/live. Figuring out how to integrate in video bloggers such as these would be a way to leapfrog Google’s blog search over the text-minded competition.

Arstechnica: “…web metrics firm comScore reported that for the month of March, Microsoft’s search engines saw their first market share increase in nearly a year. Microsoft’s search market share jumped 0.4 percentage points from February to March, giving it 10.9 percent of the total market.”

Ask.com has launched their new local search, called AskCity. So far from what I’ve seen, it’s quite nice. Given a location it does a pretty good job of finding local pizza shops and the like. The movie search is slick too. Now only if it hooked into the movie availability at my local Blockbuster :-). (Nah, I’d rather have real movie downloads.)

Financial Times is reporting that tomorrow Google will announce a new search option: Customized search indexes.

Here’s the link to the latest beta product from Google: Custom Search Engine.

Who’s going to be the first to create a Google search index of all the Tablet PC sites and blogs? Anyone?

Microsoft’s Live Search is now live. So far from what I’ve seen the latest changes to the UI and the search results are nicely done.

In terms of the search results, it appears to be better than earlier beta versions. Take “Tablet PC”, for instance. The results seem quite relevant. I am a bit bumbed, however, that TabletPCPost didn’t make even the first page for “Tablet PC Software.” The results are defintely better than a few months back, but seeing that TabletPCPost has the largest collection of Tablet PC software you’d think it might have at least made the first page. Fortunately there’s a page two :-). If I read the tea leaves correctly here, it appears that links from some key sites has increased in relevance.

The Images search has nicely framed images, devoid of any text until you hover over them or click. It’s the pop-up on hover that got me thinking–how would this do on a UMPC with such a small display. Actually, I was very surprised. Extremely so. In fact, I’ll go so far to say that the Live team appears to have done a terrific job in designing for a small display like that on an UMPC.

Here’s why. First, the hover effect is marginalized on the UMPC. First, if you’re using a stylus, hover or “visit with the cursor” doesn’t mean much. A click will be registered. (Actually you can still click and drag the stylus over images too.) You’ll still see a slight scaling up of the image as you visit an image though when using the case buttons to move the cursor. Because there isn’t much space the pop up with text isn’t rendered. That’s OK, although I bet that a horizontal framing of the text probably would work. The better part is that you can use a slider on the page to reduce the size of the thumbnails. This works very well on the UMPC.

There’s a Scratchpad area on the images page which you can drag and drop images into. No ink annotations though. Hint. Hint. Yes, Microsoft, there needs to be ink support in the browser–all browsers. This would be one more excellent place to have ink. Not only that, imagine if this scratchpad space could synch with OneNote in some fashion. That would be a winner.

The Live Video results page is OK. Although I’m not so sure the relevance is what I look for. For many videos I want to see new content first–similar to the way a news site or blog search would be. A reference of all popular videos is fine, however, I haven’t ever found the reason to search for one myself. There is an exception here. I have been using Google, for instance, to find videos on YouTube. Why? Because I have a horrible time with the YouTube search. Google does a much better job. In fact, I use the web search on Google to find videos because I’m better able to match on text that I know is on the page with the video. There’s more thinking to do in the whole Video search space I think.

Lastly, in terms of the News category on Live Search. Hmmm. The results are intentionally left sparse, which will be nice on a SmartPhone I imagine, however, to tell you the truth I’ve gotten used to the more newspaper-like appearance of Google. I miss it. I miss its grouping of (often duplicate) stories.

Overall, the Live Search team looks like it’s making good progress. The relevance appears to be getting better–although we’ll have to see how it holds up over time. Will TabletPCPost, for instance, make it to the first page for the query “Tablet PC Software”? Will spam pages perculate up?

Oh, and on a similar note, how relevant will the sponsored ads be on the Live pages. In the past the relevance has been way too low. (Even now if I search for “Tablet PC”, for instance, I get generic ads for splise.com, business.com, nextag.com, couponmountain, and dealtime. And the top ad is for Dell, which doesn’t even have it’s own Tablet (although they resell the excellent Tablet from Motion Computing). All these generic ads do is help to bid up the cost of a quality ad to appear. I expect this to improve over time. But in the meantime it means advertisers are paying a spam tax to advertise on Live.

Microsoft’s Windows Live Search group launched their Video search last night (Note the beta address in the URL: beta.search.live.com) Nathan Weinberg, Don Dodge, and Michael Arrington appear to give the new service the nod from a UI and Ajax perspective. I though am more interested on the “content” side.

A quick search of videos for “Tablet PC” and sure enough there are about 10 pages of videos (10 videos listed per page). The first hit is a 2004 Channel 9 video of Peter LeForte (from the Tablet team) showcasing the SP2 new Tablet features. I guess that makes sense. Turns out that, though, that most of the video links are to other Channel9 videos. And that’s where the “search” has lost me.

Where are all of the great GottaBeMobile InkShows? Come on.

Yes, this is a “beta,” but from my admittedly quick test (by the way a search for UMPC does no better), this appears to be more of a UI preview than a focus on video search itself.

Here’s what concerns me: The TechMeme set appears to be praising the Video search beta for its simple, clean UI–I guess in the tradition of Google. However, let’s step back to the early Google and recall what its simplicity was an indication of–that Google had spent more time and focus on its indexing. The Live team appears to be going the other way. Yes, I’ll qualify this again, that Live Video search is in beta–although again, I’d call this a UI preview.

Anyway, here are a couple more suggestions I have for the Live Video search team:

* Is Video search really that similar to text-slash-image search? I don’t think so. I expect more temporal results when searching for generic information. Maybe that’s just me. (I did find more timely information via a “Lebanon” search I noticed. It even lists a video from August 25th as its top hit. That’s more like it.) A prominent option that lets me Sort by Date would be very welcome.

* A related point–at least for me–is that I think Video “search” should be more tightly integrated with the News service. With broadband being so prevalent, I want to see links to videos with the itemized news stories. If there’s a newsflash that a plane is attempting an emergency landing, I want an accompanying link to a video that shows that story. Better yet, I want a link to a live stream that’s talking about the story right then (if one exists). During the Vista launch, I want to be able to go to a news site that says “Vista Officially Launched” and see right next to it a link to the live streaming of the presentation if it’s taking place right then. (Anyone else have as much problems as I do finding links to these kinds of live webcasts!?)

* And this brings me to a third point–I’d like to see Cable/TV broadcast videos integrated more. Google tried this early on, but their implementation was lacking. There’s a great opportunity to lead in the convergence here. There’s tons of potential on the indexing as well as the query side.

* And then there’s community…A great Video search engine is going to figure out a way to leverage and expose videos that people want to share. YouTube is one implementation and is particularly good at archiving and streaming videos that you can pop into web pages or share in other ways. However, if you take away the blogs and their links, most of the things I’d never find. This also points out, once again, the need for better blogging search within Live itself.

* Finally, along the lines of “news aggregators,” I’d like to see a “video aggregators.” Whether they are based on archived content listings or concatenated channel-like content, I think there’s an opportunity here to do something different that I’d really like. Google’s News service taught me something about search. For a long time, I’d realized how important time was to information that I searched–so much so that I wanted a temporal based Internet search. I realized that many times I wanted to search for things going on right now. However, news.google.com demonstrated that sometimes the best “search” is an aggregator. I imagine the same principle applies with other media content.

* Oh, here’s another “finally”….actually more of a dream on par with Google’s dream of indexing the world of print. I want to be able to find anything, easily, in any video or movie, broadcast or achived anywhere. I want snippets. I want archives of classroom presentations. I want to know what’s going on right now, live. I want to make it ten times easier to find that part of a movie which had some actor that I can’t recall the name of but I’d really like to include a picture of in my blog. If it was broadcast, Tivo’d, webcast, archived in a library, I’d like to be able to get to it. Ten times faster. Ten times easier. Ten times cheaper.

It’s great to see Microsoft work on video searching–especially since video is becoming more and more a part of the Internet experience. I’ve been noticing that I’m watching more and more “videos” online and sharing video links with others a lot too. Services that make this easier are very timely.

Why can’t I go to news.google.com and search for “nasa shuttle launch video”? I simply want to see a video of the launch. Why can’t video be integrated into Google’s News search better?

As more and more video hits the web, I’d like to see links to videos become mainstream in a few places. Take news.google.com. Yesterday, I was tracking the news on Warren Buffett’s donation to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. To do this I kept returning to news.google.com, which linked to lots of online articles. However, it wasn’t until the end of the day when I watched the nightly news on TV that I even heard that there was a webcast of the announcement and that Warren Buffett was interviewed on Charlie Rose, both of which I missed.

It makes sense that I learned about these two video offerings on TV and not the Internet. Why? Because they were visually oriented and not text based and the visual world is owned by TV. It shouldn’t be exclusive–especially when it comes to breaking news.

A few bloggers are sorting through their blog stats trying to infer which search engines employees are using at GYM (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft).

Philipp Lenssen and Andrew Hitchcock share their stats.

Searches originating from the Google domain appear to use the Google search engine the most; those from Yahoo use Yahoo the most although Google for at least some, and those from Microsoft use Google and a few use MSN.

It’s not surprising that Google gets so much use. I find it the most productive search engine of the three for general searches. However, what these bloggers have tripped across is how well Yahoo treats many bloggers in its search engine. To illustrate this, search for the first name of some popular bloggers using each of the search engines and look what you get on the first page–and particularly the top hits on that page:

Google Robert–His old blog is Hit #2 and his new blog is hit #3.
Yahoo Robert–His old blog is Hit #1 and his new blog is hit #2.
MSN Search Robert–No blog entry. Hit #1 does go to Robert Scoble’s Wikipedia entry though.

Google Dave–His blog, Scripting News, is hit #3.
Yahoo Dave–Scripting News is hit #1.
MSN Search Dave–Dave’s Scripting News blog is #4.

Google Philipp–His blog is hit #1.
Yahoo Philipp–His blog, Google Blogoscoped, is hit #1.
MSN Search Philipp–Did not list his blog.

In each of the above searches Yahoo appears to be most biased towards returning a blog for a given name, which seems smart to me given the current state of the market.

OK, Let me search for myself:

Google Loren–This blog is hit #10.
Yahoo Loren–This blog is hit #1.
MSN Search Loren–No hits for me.

And what about my sister Lora? She has a common name and two blogs:

Google Lora – not bad. First hit is her MSN Spaces blog and hit number 8 is her WhatIsNew blog.

Yahoo Lora–Hit #2 is her MSN Spaces blog and Hit #3 is WhatIsNew.

MSN Search Lora–First hit is WhatIsNew. MSN Spaces blog is not in top entries. Not too bad.

Now I’m not suggesting that people would typically search for a blog using only the blogger’s first name, however, I think these searches illustrate how differently the search engines are ranking blogs within their search results. In particular, in this test I’d give the edge to Yahoo, with Google second and MSN Search after that.

I’ve been using Bloglines citations feature to track who’s linking to blogs. Generally it has provided the cleanest view of linking sites to a blog.

Last night it changed a bit. Now, Bloglines provides a search feature that scans according to TechCruch 7000+ blogs.

I look forward to seeing how it works out.

In the online world, who has the biggest voice? The Linux community? Windows XP community? Or the OS X community? Searching on Google Trends gives some interesting results:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=windows+vista%2C+os+x&ctab=0&date=all&geo=all

From the Google Trends graph it sure looks like Linux has a disproportiante search volume on the Internet.

Here’s another interesting test: Who has the bigger online voice, Internet Explorer or Firefox?

http://www.google.com/trends?q=Internet+Explorer%2C+firefox&ctab=0&date=all&geo=all

According to Google Trends, Firefox does.

There are some trend searches that are a bit odd. Compare “Bill Gates, Steve Jobs”. Click on the Cities tab. It makes sense that the top three cities for searching for Bill Gates are Seattle, Delhi India, and Washington DC. However, click on the Regions tab. The Phillipines is the number one region in the world for following Bill Gates? That just seems odd. Hmmm. Interesting.