Archive for February, 2011
Bing follows Google’s path making search results more Social
After the partnership with Facebook, Bing introduced ‘Liked Results’ in their search results.
I could find some similarity to Google’s updated social search algorithm in which Google produces not only links but also ‘shared’ results of the friends in social circle, such as in Twitter (retweet), Blog, Flicker, YouTube etc (“Facebook Likes’ an exception). And here comes Bing with their new social search partnering with FB, they claim that, this is the first time in human history that people are leaving social traces that machines can read and learn from, and present enhanced online experiences based on the traces.” In other words, Bing produces search results considering the shared links in ones’ social circle too and especially “Facebook Likes”. If your friends had shared or liked something publicly, it will be shown in your search results (once you are logged in)
They have cited an example, It says that “If you are planning a trip to somewhere (For Eg, Washington and wants to find about the stay, a traditional search results shows a long list of weblinks and captions, which would take more time to see them individually to take a decision. But with Bings’ tie up with FB makes your search results more social, For Eg, If your friends who had been to that place and had “liked” that particular place or a hotel, then those results will top in your search which will make it easier for you to refine your search and decide on where you should stay. And Bing says that you may not find “Liked Results” on every query but then if you find then it would be a good experience. They even added on their blog that they continue to work with Facebook to make search more social and relevant.
Google’s ‘Recipe View’ helps you to find better search results for Recipes
Google here comes to help you search results for recipes. For those who search for recipes in Google will get a lot of results which may not be always recipes alone. In the past, once you type the text in the search box, you get results which may not meet the specifications, but with this new feature , you could find the right recipe with ratings, ingredients, and pictures displayed on the search results. You could even narrow down your search, customise, filter the way you want based on the ingredients,cooking time, and calorie count etc. After typing for a recipe or ingredient on Google, select ‘Recipes’ in the left hand panel on the search results page, you get relevant results… it is really amazing .. try it out
Googles’ updated algorithm in effect
To provide the most relevant content for the users, Google has revamped their algorithm recently. Google says that this upgrading is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites (sites which are low-value add or users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful) and claims that it have an impact over 11.8% of the queries. This update also provides better rankings for high quality sites (sites which possess original and good content, in-depth reports, research, analysis etc. Google also adds that these changes not only rely on the feedback, they have received from the “Personal Blocklist Chrome Extension“(which they launched last week) but also from the Blocklist data they have gathered with the sites by their algorithm too. Google consider this as a great step in their commitment towards better user experience and keep working for more updates for page quality. Google is launching this change in the US only, but will roll out around the world soon.
Google updates “Google Social Search”
Google updates “Google Social Search” which they had introduced in 2009 with some advanced features to offer its users with the most relevant information which is also personalized according to the users’ interest and relationship. ‘Google social search”, finds relevant public content from your friends and contacts and highlights it for you at the (bottom in the past but now at the top ) of your search results. With this new updating, Google facilitate you to get even more information from the people related to you, from their YouTube , Flickr, Blogs or website and shows at the top of search results.
But keep in mind that you will only get social search results, when you log in to your Google account
There are mainly three important features which Google highlights:-
First, Social search results will now be combined all through your results based on their relevance. You will start getting results on top from co-workers, friends which they have created or shared. Google has quoted an example for this, it says that; If you are thinking about climbing Mt Kilimanjaro and your colleague Matt has written a blog post about his own experience, then that post will come up with a note and a picture. In the past, results were shown at the bottom
Second, unlike in the past where Google shows results for content that was created by people in your social circle, now they shows results what they have shared also (for eg retweets, exception Facebook Likes) ,. If someone connected to you has shared a link publicly, Google will show those results. Google cites an example on their blog. It says, if you’re looking for a video of President Obama on “The Daily Show” and your friend Nundu tweeted the video, that result might show up higher in your results and you’ll see a note with a picture of Nundu:
And finally, Google provides enough control over how you connect accounts and also makes the same more easy and convenient.Users are provided with two options to connect accounts publicly on your Google profile or privately in your Google Account and your social connections won’t be shown to the public on your Google Profile, but those connections could influence your search results.Also, if Google’s algorithm finds a public account that seems to be yours due to similarity in usernames they invite you to connect your accounts right on search results page in your Google accounts.
These updates have been rolled out in Google.com in English only and by next week only searchers could see it.
Google brings in ‘New Chrome Extension’ which block sites from Google web search results
Google have been exploring various algorithms to detect ‘Content farms’ (low quality content sites). For the same they consider users’ feedback as one of the signals and introduces experimental Chrome extension as a privilege for the users to block sites from their web search results. If installed, the extension will send the blocked site information to Google and Google will conduct a study to consider that as a potential ranking signal for their search results. You could download the extension (‘Personal Blocklist extension’) and start blocking sites that carry low quality content.
When you block a site with the extension, you won’t see results from that domain again in your Google search results.
You can always revoke a blocked site at the bottom of the search results, so it’s easy to undo blocks:
You can also edit your list of blocked sites by clicking on the extension’s icon in the top right of the Chrome window.
Google’s new content based algorithm (Content Farm) create a wave???
Most of us were in the assumption about Google’s new content farm algorithm would be an up-gradation of the algorithm for quality search but it was actually to block low quality content scraper sites and not content farms. We will have to wait and see… how well Google performs in the coming days with the ‘New Content Farm” .
Google, Bing and Blekko on a single platform talking about the recent ‘copying’ issue
Matt Cutts from Google, Harry Shum from Bing and Rich Skrenta of Blekko on a search panel open out their views. The debate frenzied between Harry and Matt, despite Matt being a calm natured person. Matt was very certain at Bing Copying Google’s result and clearly pointed to that whereas Harry’s response and answers were quite ambiguous. It is clear that both Google and Bing are using users data to influence rankings. The conversation then diverted to on ‘how’ both are getting their data, of course from the respective toolbar. Here again Matts puts a valid statement blaming that Bing creeped the toolbar onto users PC’s via IE where Harry had a fragile answer as that no one is bothered T&C’s so it does not value. And the discussion concluded with a note of pacifying messages.
Here is the gist of the debate/talk show/conversation
Bing uses user data on Google as a ranking signal – but that these keywords were outliers and that Bing does not just copy results.
Bing uses data from Google in their algorithm, Google denies using Bing data.
-Both Google and Bing are using user data in their algorithm
-Google have developed a chrome add on that will allow user to veto sites from their search results
Who is the ‘cheater’ and the ‘fraud’
The debate on the ‘copying’ issue must be known to everyone. Google blames Microsoft for copying the search results of the former, and Microsoft firmly denied giving some justifications. The growth of Bing over the past 8-9 months was beyond expectation and Google has reached to a point where it realized that BING is a good competitor and is afraid of losing the first rank. After this realization they are constantly observing the growth of Bing and the reasons that led to the same. Some terms they have used in this fiery debate is notable. Google started off saying that Bing has done ‘a cheap imitation’ and as a response Bing accused Google of trying a “spy-novelesque stunt”.
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Mehdi, Microsoft’s Senior VP of Online Services, published a strongly-worded denial of Google’s claims on the Bing Search blog which again would keep heating up the debate; It says – Google engaged in a “honeypot” attack to trick Bing. In simple terms, Google’s “experiment” was rigged to manipulate Bing search results through a type of attack also known as “click fraud.”
We could definitely wait for an apt response from Google for this 🙂