search engine news
Real-Time Twitter feed and Superior Entertainment Sharing in Bing News
Bing has been working consistently to offer best search results to its customers and recently they brought “social” feature also to their search results where people get information from social media such as from Facebook and Twitter. With an up-gradation to the same concept they have introduced two new ways to experience Twitter and Facebook on Bing. Bing integrated real time twitter updates into Bing News. Now as you search a news item you will receive Twitter updates as well along with latest headlines. This will help its users to access real time updates rather than completely relying on the traditional sources.
Bing has also expanded “Liked results’ where you get links that is publicly shared or liked via facebook by your friends. Now they have brought out an easier way to share movies, tv shows, artists directly to your Facebook profile from Bing. With Bing Entertainment pages, you could post “Whats on your mind” by clicking on the “Overview” tab. Bing leaves you the option to share anything viz video game, movies, artists with just one click. This new feature is available in US and will roll out in other places soon.
Yahoo optimizes its “search”
To sustain in the market, Yahoo is leveraging many attempts and also surrendered its search engine to Microsoft to woo more people towards their site.
Adding to this effort, yahoo introduces “Search Direct” which is quite similar to Google’s Instant search’, where they produce instant search results predictions without having to click on the search results. This feature known as “Search Direct” provides celebrity biographies, weather forecasts and news reports before users finish typing the question. To avoid being blamed as just a follower of Google’s Instant search, Yahoo’s Search Direct offers ‘advanced’ results producing edited information and images just under the search results instead of a page full of links.
You could avail ‘Search Direct’ on Yahoo’s search page, but not from its home page. Yahoo is testing the performance of this new feature before going full fledged.
More Interesting features for Bing MOBILE
Bing has launched some interesting features for better Mobile Experience which will certainly make its users at ease to get information instantly. This feature includes better and faster image search, real-time transit and directions, app search for the iPhone and many more with HTML 5 operation. These offers are offered on Smartphone browsers for the iPhone and Android.
Real time transit directions in Bing take in duration of the trip in terms of walking, transit, transit schedule and the traffic status. It also includes relevant information for shopping like comparison of shops, product information, user reviews and also weather reports with auto-suggest and instant prediction. Another interesting feature is in the arena of movies by providing the reviews, trailers, nearest theater & movie schedule etc.
A Collaborative ‘search’ concept “Qyo”
Qyo provides shared search queries. You will receive results from your friends, what they are searching in real time. Qyo makes it very easy to leverage the kind of information that was traditionally stored in the minds of people, and that could not be accessed by others unless the other person shared with them. Built on the theory that two (or more) heads are better than one, Qyo attempts to bring collaborative search to the masses and has become a buzz word among other search engines. Prior registration is required to begin search with Qyo. After registering, you will be invited to connect to your Facebook account to get friends and associates involved, too. In fact, without friends, Qyo is a fairly sparse experience.
Once you’ve associated with another person, all your searches via Qyo will be visible to them (and theirs to you), unless you specifically choose to search privately. Search queries appear as a message list on the right-hand side of the screen. You can comment on other peoples’ searches, help them but couldn’t refine their search, expand it, or anything. Qyo makes search social, where people can help each other. Whenever you arrive at the site to search you’ll see all your friends’ searches too. While the concept is unique, there has to be a lot of improvements to be done to sustain in such a competitive ‘search engine” market.
Bing unveils another feature “Attractions”
All the travel lovers could make use of Bing’s new Feature update “Attractions Page”, where you get all the details of the place with reviews, rating, events and photos. To provide the latest information, Bing will be teaming up with leading content providers such as Frommers, TripAdvisor, WCities and Zevents. This new page will be very helpful for all those who wanted to plan a trip and Bing stated on their blog that ‘Attractions Page’ is a one stop for all the information about a tourist place and also provides details about nearby restaurants, Directions, Parking etc.
ComScore Releases February 2011 US Search Engine Rankings
A Ray of Hope for Bing as it gains rise in market share while the rival (Google) remained with its 64. 4 %share. Even though Bings’ achievement is very less, they claim to be the achiever.
Google “search” becomes more personalized
Google is providing you many options as far as its “search results” are concerned. For the improvement of the same Google had introduced Searchwiki, Stars in search and Locations settings where you can prioritize and mark your search results. Now they have added one more efficient feature for its users to blocks sites which they don’t want to see again.
Many of you surely had a bad experience in getting the apt results in Google. You might have visited websites that carry irrelevant and low quality content and hence resent it and would be looking for an option to block particular domains from your search results for ever. Google now brings out this feature letting you block sites. When you click a result and then return to Google, you’ll find a new link next to “Cached” that shows “Block all ———.com results. If you proceed with the same by clicking the link “Block all ——.com results, you will receive a confirmation message as well as an option to undo your choice. You could view the link irrespective of whether you are signed in or not but the domains you block are connected with your Google Account so you will have to sign in to confirm a blocked site.
Blekko banned 1.1 Million Sites from Its Search Engine
It seems that every search engine is having a cleanup. Recently Google has updated their algorithm by giving a boost up for some websites and a downfall for someother as per the quality of the content. Now Blekko is a going a step further by banning 1.1 million websites from its searches. They had already removed around 20 websites including eHow, Answerbag (Demand media), but the main difference between Google and Blekko in updating the algorithm is that while the former had sorted the websites based on the content by demoting the sites, Blekko removed them completely, so that it will never ever appear in Blekko.
Blekko announced on their blog that they have brought out this change with the help of ‘Adspam algorithm” and claim that this algorithm is the first of its kind to find spam rather than rank results. The algorithm is designed to identify pages which are spam and abolish before they appear in search results. They have given an explanation about “Adspam” algorithm in their blog. It says that “is a machine-learning algorithm that examines pages for a specific spam signals — the presence of multiple display ad positions on a single page and thin to zero content. Unlike algorithms used by other search engines, AdSpam is being used in conjunction with human curation to detect to continue the War on Spam.
Bing launches “Deals”
Bing have partnered with The Dealmap, to launch Bing Deals. By launching this, Bing offers you an excellent way to navigate the web and get the best results instantly. The Dealmap is a leading source for people to find and share the best local deals, so Bing have just utilized this to provide outstanding results for its users.
You will see “deals” from m.bing.com (iPhone and Android)on the homepage and once you proceed you could access top deals (30%-40% off) featuring the very best offers from your own area/location.
It is not just daily top deals; you could even find the ‘nearby’ places such as restaurants, spas, theaters etc and their special offers and could browse by category to narrow down your search and get accurate results.
Once you find your relevant deal, you could access/ claim from the deal provider or share it with friends via email. You could also see for a business opportunity, Bing will highlight any available bargains below the business listing.
You can also get deals at home on your desktop by searching the name of the business on Bing. If there is a deal, they will display it with a green deal icon. You can avail more information like reviews, images, maps by proceeding with the detail page.
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