Google Category Archive
Google Search Focus
Sometimes I find the Google blog posts to be long winded, high on hype, and low on information value. Yesterday's post about Google Search Quality started out in a similar vein, but it quickly improved and contains a number of interesting points about how Google handles searches and ranking. And for all those who like to say, "Just make it more like Google" and expect that to be a simple fix, please note the way Google describes their hard work on search quality is that "more than one thousand programmer/scientist years have gone directly into their development." Several extracts that...
Major Expansion at Google Translate
Earlier this month Google expanded the number of languages available in Google Translate. While the press release and most other coverage talked about ten new languages, the number of language pairs (from language X to language Y) increased far more substantially. Previously, Yahoo! Babel Fish had the most with 38 pairs. Google not only upped the number of possible languages, but every language listed can translate to the other. So depending on how you count, Google Translate now has over 500 language pairs available! That's a major increase. As Google Operating System notes, the counting varies depending on how you...
Related Searches Moving Up?
So maybe I missed this earlier, but today is the first time I noticed Google showing related search suggestions at the top of Google results. In this case, I just happened to run on search for talking heads, trying to get an example of integrated content. While it worked for that, it also gave this one line of "Related searches:" at the very top. This is the first time that I can recall seeing this at the top. Whether this is just one of Google's many user interface tests that may just run a short time or may continue and...
Google Stop Word Message Gone?
At SearchEngineLand, Barry noticed that Google is no longer alerting searchers that stop words are not searched. Previously, stop words in a query that was not in phrase marks would usually find Google prompting searchers that the stop word in the query is "a very common word and was not included in your search." Does this mean that Google no longer has any stop words? Based on a few of my tests with a small retrieval set, comparing a search with a stop word and another search with a + in front of the stop word, it does seem that...
Scholar Down, Books Up
Dean posted a scathing review of Google Scholar's performance over that past year based on a 32% decline in unique visitors according to ComScore data. More data on the changes at various Google properties between Nov. 2006 and Nov. 2007 are available in a TechCrunch posting. While I am sure that this data does not fully reflect actual Google traffic (and at least one comment on Battelle's Searchblog post says "a staff member from Google . . . tells me that ComScore has some of their numbers wrong"), I still find it fascinating. To no one's surprise, Web search is...
Google Experimental: Ranking
A new Google experimental search option for moving or deleting search results has been spotted at SearchEngineLand and elsewhere. It is not available for everyone, and is not listed on either the Google Labs page or on the list of Experimental Search options page. The help page notes that "To see your changes next time, you must be signed in to your Google account," but I still do not have the option even when logged in. Phil notes that other services like Eurekster have done this for awhile. Even Google has tried this before. In the first version of their...
Flash SearchMash
A new Flash version of SearchMash was found by Google Operating System. I haven't seen many major changes in Google's experimental site, especially since the Google Universal Search launch back in May. The Flash version is a significant change. It includes includes options for tracking a search history (see the left side hidden panel for this and other options), results screen shots from Snap, and access to all the databases available from regular SearchMash. One additional database added to this Flash version is Maps....
Google CSE Interview and Complaints
There's an interview today with the product leader for the Google Custom Search Engine (CSE). I always find numbers interesting: We have more than 100K registered Custom Search Engines, and that's growing pretty rapidly. (Although it will be far more interesting to see how many of these are getting any traffic several months from now.) Since I just put up my Customize Your Own Search Engine page and built a State Libraries: Custom Search page, I might as well mention a few of my complaints with Google's CSE....
Customizing Search Engines and Searching State Libraries
For one of my upcoming columns in Online, I compared the various custom search engines and other tools for building a topical search engine from a subset of a major search engine's database. Tools like Gigablast Custom Topic Search, Google Custom Search Engine, Live Search Macros, Swickis, Rollyo, and Yahoo! Search Builder. I compared a number of features (including the maximum number of sites, whether they support subdirectories, and if they have usage statistics). This information can now be seen on my new Customize Your Own Search Engine page....
Google's filetype: Fixed
Back in January I mentioned that Google was expected to fix its filetype: search so that it would give results even when not combined with another search term. I checked today, and sure enough, filetype:qpw now works without needing any additional terms. So why would anyone really want to do this? Most of the benefit of restricting the search results to a specific file type is when it is combined with other search terms. A search like filetype:pdf might be useful to get a count for how many PDF documents Google has indexed, but Google's estimated number is so wildly...
Bowker, Live, and Geo Books
Last week, Bowker announced an agreement with Microsoft that its Global Books In Print database will be used for "basic and value-added data that will enhance descriptions of books incorporated in the new Live Search Books." Considering that Live Books are primarily out-of-print, out-of-copyright books and that Global Books In Print covers, surprise, in-print books, it would be interesting to know how many matches between the two are found. I have yet to see any examples. Today, Google announces the addition of geographic data to its books. Books are analyzed for place names and a Google Map with a list...
Google to Fix filetype: Search?
At Search Engine Land, Danny has a long report about Google indexing and ranking issues. While other sections of the post talk about an update to the visible PageRank, issues with supplemental results, and duplicate content, I found the short section on the filetype: command most interesting. Like some of Google's other field search prefix commands, filetype: results in zero records unless it is combined with another search term. So filetype:xls finds nothing, but this is supposed to change sometime in the future and will finally let us run a filetype:search without requiring an additional term. Does this mean that...
More Copyright Controversy with Google Books
I'm somewhat surprised that I've not heard more librarians complaining about this. I had not really considered all the ramifications about it. Philipp Lenson on Google Blogoscoped posts about Freeing Google Books. Basically, he notes that Google scans public domain books available from libraries and then appears to add further restrictions for those books including restricting commercial republication and the removal of the "digitized by Google" mark. Since that bothered him, he has pulled 100 titles from Google Books and "set them free" on his own Authorama Public Domain Books site (with the "digitized by Google" mark removed)....
Tips Tipped Over
Apparently, there was enough outcry over Google's self-promotional "tips" that they have removed them. When even Google's own Matt Cutts complains about them, I am not at all surprised to see the tips removed. They were actually removed last week, and I'm finally getting around to posting about it. Whether or not the tips were over the top and too intrusive or not, Google responded well. They received a fair amount of criticism for these tips, even while others like Danny felt that the complaints went too far. In this case, Google seems to have decided that it would be...
Google Self-Promotion Over the Top?
I've been reading some criticism of Google's promotion of its own services on top of other search results. Blake Ross posts Trust is Hard to Gain, Easy to Lose and Phil Bradley says Google Admits It's Failing. Both criticize the "tips" that Google has introduced recently hawking Blogger, Picasa, and Calendar above regular results (but after the top ads, if there are any). One example that Blake uses seems especially egregious. A search for blogs.ca brings up that Canadian free blogging site, but right above it is Google's self-promoting "tip" to try Blogger....
Google Sitelinks Patent
On some top search results, Google adds additional links below the extract that point to subsections of the top ranked Web site. The official name from Google for these subsite links is Sitelinks. See below for a screen shot of Sitelinks for ALA....
Google's More has More
Earlier this month, Yahoo! changed their "more" menu. Recently Google has been expanding theirs. A week or two ago I noticed that on my campus, Scholar had suddenly appeared in the more >> menu. I've checked that frequently, and it was never their or above the search box previously. Other campuses (and even certain other organizations) have reported that a Scholar link was above the search box, but it had not been available to me. It is still not showing up above the search box, but at least it is under more >>....
Google Launches Patents Database
Using scanning technology from Google Books, yesterday Google has launched a new searchable database of U.S. patents at google.com/patents. The blog post has been updated to note some problems with printing and saving, but this is an impressive collection of 7 million patents from the 1790s through to the middle of 2006, with plans to add more recent patents. While there have been many other free patent databases for well over a decade, Google's popularity may help push their version. It has few of the features that a professional patent search might want, but it can help the rest of...
Addresses and Maps for Local Businesses
It looks like Google has rolled out a new feature within their general Web results. When a result is connected with a local business with a known address, a "plus box" will appear next to an address in blue after the snippet extract. Click the plus box to see the map, the address and phone, and a link to a larger map and directions. See Matt Cutts' example and screen shot in his explanatory blog post. It only covers the United States at this point....
Shutting Down Google Answers
Remember when the pay for answers Google Answers service launched how some in the information business thought it could spell the end of reference librarians? Today, Google announced that they are stopping accepting questions and will eventually close down any more answers by the end of 2006. Google will keep the database, which is a good thing since there are some very useful answers within it. But it is ironic to see the demise of this fee-based service, which seemed to make the answers something less than minimum wage and cost the questioners a relatively minor fee. At the same...
Thoughts on Google Side UI
Last week I finally experienced the experimental Google user interface (UI) that has the links to other databases displayed on the left side instead of along the top of the search box. Take a look at the first screenshot that shows the top of a regular results page. It includes links to Images, Maps, News, Groups, and more (which just links straight to the More Google Products page instead of being an Ajax pop-up). Note that Groups is still listed instead of the new default of Video. Also, there is no "Web" link, which since we are already in the...
New Google Book Viewer
Google has launched a new version of its book viewer in Google Book Search. See their take on the chances in the Inside Google Book Search blog post. You will only notice this once you click on a result, and in particular on a Full View or Limited Preview result. The Snippet view has changed a bit with the addition of 'Key words and phrases' at the top and a 'Contents' section and some other additional information depending on the book record. But take a look at a Full View or Limited Preview record to see significantly more differences. The...
SearchMash Update
SearchMash, Google's experimental search engine, has been updated. The Ajax re-arranging of results (which was fun but seemed otherwise useless) is gone. Now results from different databases are displayed in their own part of the page. A screenshot and discussion are available from Google Operating System. Note the boxes for Web, images, and Wikipedia along with the top box for suggested alternative searches....
O'Leary on Google Book Search
Mick O'Leary has an excellent overview "Google Book Search Has Far to Go" for his Nov. column in Information Today. In particular, he compares Google Books Search to Amazon's Search Inside the Book and notes that . . . Amazonâs feature has several critical advantages over Book Search. The most important is that Amazon has the latest books; Book Search does not. Perhaps because of differing licenses with the publishers, Book Search is often several years behind; Amazon has the latest releases and also lists forthcoming titles. For example, Amazonâs feature has the latest books by Pat Buchanan, James Lee...
Subset Searching at Google
Used Google Co-op much? No? Other than developers and experimenters, I have heard little use of Google Co-op, especially for searching. That has all changed with today's launch of Google Custom Search Engine, an application of Google Co-op. The Custom Search Engine was announced yesterday.Like other search engines that search a subset of a larger database, Google's Custom Search Engine lets users specify specific sites to included or excluded, and some can be prioritized over others. Creators can also specify that certain words should be added to the query. Other subset (or vertical or custom) search engines include Yahoo! Search...
Weekend Search Changes
This past weekend, I've been giving several workshops in Monterey at the Internet Librarian conference. It is always fun to give a workshop on Web searching on the weekend when the search engines tend to roll out new features or give otherwise unusual results. I had two such situations this weekend, both of which are back to normal today. First, I tried to demonstrate searching the Yahoo! directory from the main Yahoo! page by just clicking on the "Directory" tab above the search box. On both Saturday and Sunday, when searching "monterey" that way, Yahoo! said there were zero directory...
Searching Computer Code
A new specialized search capability from Google Labs is the Google Code Search, in beta. Unlike regular Web searching, the Code Search allows truncation with the asterisk (*) and regular expression searching, but it is only searching across identified programming code source like JavaScript and Perl. According to the announcement, it is designed to give "programmers a single place to search publicly accessible source code." It has some specialized field searches including file:, package:, language:, and license:....
New Google Groups
The old Usenet groups and DejaNews search engine became Google Groups. Now Google is announcing the launch of yet another version of Groups. The beta has a new interface and several new features. New capabilities include the ability for group owners to create a welcome message, upload a group logo, and customize fonts and colors. The new Pages feature lets users create web pages inside a group as well. Overall, it seems to be moving Google Groups further away from its Usenet origins and more towards what Yahoo! Groups offers....
SearchMash, the New Google?
Google usually runs all kinds of experimental user interfaces, changes to ranking algorithms, and tests of every type on their own site, just letting a very small percentage of their users see the changes and then evaluating the response. Now, Google has actually launched its own experimental search engine a a completely different URL with no Google logo. SearchMash is the new site. SearchMash presents Web results with Image matches off to the right side. Results are numbered (something I always prefer) and can be sorted. Just click and drag one to change the order of the results (although I...
Databases at the Side
Another Google User Interface (UI) experiment screen shot and a method to reproduce it can be seen at Google Blogoscoped. I could not get the Javascript trick to work for me, nor have I ever seen the experiment first hand. But I have seen plenty of other similar screenshots. Another one has thumbnail screenshots of each of the results entries....
Searching with Diacritics and Accents on Google
From the Official Google Webmaster Central blog come this post on How search results may differ based on accented characters and interface languages. This highlights a change in the way Google handles diacritics and gives a good overview of how it still varies depending on the search interface language chosen....
More Library Links in Google Book Search
The Google Blog, in a post entitled "Find the wealth in your library" talks about the expansion of links to national library union catalogs at Google Books. More than 15 union catalogs are includes, not just Open WorldCat. It is not always easy to connect to each of these union catalogs, and I still find plenty of records without a "Find this book in a library" link, even when the books are listed in WorldCat. Gary makes some pointed comments as well....
URL Search: Major Change at Google
What is a search engine to do when a searcher puts a URL in the search box? After years of giving a single match with links to other options, Google has done an about face. Now, enter a URL and Google gives results for pages that match the URL as a text phrase. To get to the old display, just use the info: prefix before the URL. See Matt Cutts' more detailed explanation for why they made the change. It looks like this changed earlier this month, since it was notice on Sept. 1 at Digital Point forums and Search...
Google Subsite Results: Sitelinks
The sharp-eyed folks in the WebMasterWorld forums noticed that Google has posted information about their subsite results, which they call Sitelinks, and how and why they appear in the results below certain site listings. See the image below for an example of these subsite links....
Google News Archive
Google News announces the launch of a News archive search which is linked on the main Google News page (upper right). Instead of being an archive of what Google News has crawled in the past, beyond the 30 day limit of regular Google News, this new archive search is a combination of fee and free content. The fee based content comes from Newsbank, AccessMyLibrary.com, ThomsonGale, Factiva, HighBeam, LexisNexis and others. No list of news sources or vendors is available. Some sources are subscription-only while others offer pay per article options....
Download Google Books and U Mich Access
An Information Today news break discusses last week's announcement from Google Books that for copyright-free books, users can now download a full PDF of the book. Even more interesting is the report of the availability of some of these scanned books from with the University of Michigan's online catalog, MIRLYN. Some of the government publications which Google only shows in snippet view are available in full text via Michigan. The problem is to find these. Try going to MIRLYN, click on the Advanced Search link near the top, change the Format limit to "electronic resources," and then you might find...
The New Google Homepage Layout
In another incremental change, Google has changed the layout on the Google home page. The links above the search box connect to some of Googleâs other databases. Their version of the Open Directory used to be there before it was demoted. Today, Groups and Froogle have been demoted and no longer are visible links on the home page. Video (with a NEW! tag) has replaced them. In a sense, Groups and Froogle are still available on the home page, but only via a click. The more >> link at the right now gives a pop-up menu of other choices for...
Google Censors Badware
In conjunction with StopBadware.org, Google now sometimes censors results. See the PC World news report for more details. Basically, Google gives a warning page when a searcher clicks on certain results. The warning page has a link to the StopBadware site along with a "Or you can continue to . . . " with a link to the potential malware site. I can get it to work for the asta-killer site with a search like asta-killer. On mousing over the title, Google shows the link URL of http://www.google.com/interstitial?url=http://asta-killer.com/ in the status bar. However, the sub-site links under the URL do...
Date Default at Google Reader
Google Reader has changed its default sort to date (in reverse chronological order) according to the Official Google Reader Blog in its Your Wish is Our Command. Google always seems to drag its feet with date sorts. With Web results, date sorting is quite problematic since most Web pages do not have a reliable date. So date sorting of Web results rarely is useful. But with news and other published sources, date sorting is easy and helpful. While Google gives the option for a date sort in Google News, it is not the default. Meanwhile, neither Google Books nor Google...
Dump ODP Description in Google
Google's sitemaps blog, Inside Google Sitemaps, reports a change in its More Control Over Page Snippets posting. Previously, some sites that appeared in the Open Directory would have their Open Directory description show up after the page title in Google results listings instead of the more common keyword-in-context extract (or as Google calls it, a "snippet"). This could become a problem for sites and searchers when the Open Directory description no long accurately reflected the content of the page. Now, site owners can determine whether or not the Open Directory description is used by inserting a meta tag. This is...
Strange Midpage See Also Results at Google
For some time now, Google has been inserting suggested results part way down the page. (Danny reported on April 6, 2006 that Google confirmed that it was no longer experimental but an official part of Google.) It only happens occasionally, but when it does, they have a faint line above and below and start with "See results for" followed by the other suggested search term. Then three results from the alternate search are displayed within the faint lines. For example, a search on office has suggested results for 'office shoes' part way down the page. That is not the alternate...
Google Traffic Breakdown
Bill Tancer from HitWise has several fascinating posts derived from their analysis of Internet traffic patterns. He has one on The top 20 most visited Google sites along with their relative percentage of traffic to each. Due to the interest from that post, he followed up with a similar one for MSN and Yahoo! and then compared each of those three within specific categories. At Google, their Web database got about 80% of the traffic among those top 20 Google properties for the week in quesiton while image search had about 10%. That left only 10% for the remaining properties....
In-Depth Explanation of Google Indexing Timeline
Matt goes on at some length (about 2,000 words) to explain recent changes to Google crawling and indexing process and the Bigdaddy roll-out earlier this year in his Indexing timeline post in his blog. The comments get even longer, but it is an interesting read which explains in part at least why so very old supplementary records have hung around in the Google database for so long....
More UI Experiments and Potential New Operators at Google
Tara reports on her experimenting with Two New Google Operators and Limited Google Clustering based on a report from India about using a type: prefix that would result in response about the category it falls in along with a source citation. The examples are interesting, but as of a week later, it does not work for me. Presumably, another short-lived user interface (UI) experiment. In the same post, Tara mentions two other posts about another UI test. This one has some "refine results" suggestions at the top of the results page, a feature other search engines have had for years....
Google's Four-Pack of New Stuff
With a "Yes, we are still all about search" title Google announces four new products that are supposed to "enhance and improve the search experience for our users." Try them out to see if you agree. Google Co-op is another foray into social networking and collaborative searching. Google Desktop 4 is yet another update to their desktop search with an emphasis on many new "Google Gadgets." Google Notebook (which is not even in beta yet -- it is due out next week) sounds like another bookmarking and clipping application similar to many others out there. Google Trends is initially the...
Study of Google Scholar
The Depth and Breadth of Google Scholar: An Empirical Study from the April 2006 issue of Portal should be available to anyone on a campus with a Muse subscription....
Google Hacking Database
For advanced search geeks, if you've not looked at the Google Hacking Database from "I'm j0hnny. I hack stuff," you are missing a fascinating collection of advanced search tricks. Bear in mind that many of these tricks are designed to find passwords and cracks, but the techniques are well worth perusing anyway....
Alexa & A9 Switch from Google to MSN
It looks like both Alexa and A9 have switched from using an abbreviated Google Web database to using MSN's (although it is labeled Live.com which is more of a different front end to the older MSN Search database rather than a different underlying database). At the moment, there is no longer any image search at A9 (previous one was from Google). Nor do I see Google text ads on Amazon anymore. At this point, there is no official word about the change on A9's press release page nor at Alexa nor Amazon. (Nor does Google mention it in their blog....
Google Scholar on Google Home Page (For Some)
Someone at Saint Louis University has reported that Google Scholar appears as an option on the Google home page from on campus. This has been going on at least for some since June 2005. I have never seen it at Montana State University, so it must only be some campuses but not all....
Sublinks in Google Results
When do Google results contain the sublinks underneath the extract? Michael Nguyne explores this in a post Traffic Determines Google UI Snippet Links. See also Barry Schwartz' post at SearchEngineWatch. I am certainly seeing more examples of these sublinks in Google results. Even if these guesses are not correct as to the why of their appearance, at least we now have a name for them: sublinks. See the image below:...
New Relevancy Study
Danny has a summary of a French relevancy study which compares Google, MSN, Yahoo!, Exalead, Voila, and Dir.com. By one measure (best relevance of top five results), Google and Yahoo! tie for top relevancy scores. Using a different measure (at least one good result in top five), Yahoo! beats Google by a bit with MSN and Exalead not very far behind....
Google Book Search to Link to OpenWorldCat
Like Google Scholar has done for some time now, Google has announced that Book Search will have more "Find it in a library" links to connect to OpenWorldCat records. While I'm glad to see that a librarian at Google makes the announcement, I was disappointed in that few of the records I found had the link. For the many I looked at, it was less than 10%. However, it sounds as if they are planning on expanding that number significantly, and I hope it does increase soon. On a related issue, I am still disappointed that books scanned via the...
Google Scholar Expands International Library Links
Google Scholar has announced the expansion of their library links options (available under scholar preferences) to include library union lists in Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland....
Google Desktop 3
With the latest version of Google Desktop, several new features and new concerns arise. Desktop 3, announced on their blog today, gives users the ability to drag panels from the sidebar to place them elsewhere on the desktop. Sidebar content can be sent via email or chat to other users. Desktop 3 now indexes zipped files, added an advanced search form, and allows more advanced search commands. The controversial new feature is the use of Google servers to enable searching across multiple computers (say your home and office desktops). This is not enabled by default, but if it is, data...
Google's Define Adds Related Phrases
Gary reports on the addition of related phrases at the top of the results when using Google's define: prefix....
Google News Finally Out of Beta
A mere two and a half years after its initial launch, Google says that "We're taking Google News out of beta!" Not all 22 regional of Google News are out of beta, but at least many of the English-language ones are. With the move out of beta comes a feature that suggests stories for users of the personalized news page and keeping search history and personalization enabled. The stories will show up under a "Recommended for. . . " heading....
Remove Google Results
For users of Google's Personalized Search and their search history, a new experiment allows for the removal of pages and entire sites from the results. Matt posts about the new remove result option....
Google Ads Grow
It looks like Google has increased the font size for the headings on the ads that appear on the right-hand side of search results. Google Blogoscoped has screenshots comparing the before and after. Based on my comparisons with before and after, the ad text itself and the URLs are the same size but the header which is the only part of the side ad which is a link is now larger. Previously (in 2003), the side ads had colored backgrounds and the entire colored box. In those days, the ad text was also smaller and lighter colored. Now, the side...
Google Counting Strangeness
Google (and other search engines) have long had a peculiar inability to count their results. It is always an estimate of "about" some rounded number. Repeating a search term can change those numbers, and Danny speculates on some of the reasons why. Just remember, we wouldn't want consistency from Google, would we?...
Remove Google Results
For users of Google's Personalized Search and their search history, a new experiment allows for the removal of pages and entire sites from the results. Matt posts about the new remove result option. Unlike Yahoo!'s block site feature which this mimics, there is no listing of the sites and pages that have been blocked....
Finally, a Google Toolbar for Firefox
For those Google toolbar users who also use the Mozilla Firefox browser, there is now a Google Toolbar available for Firefox along with some other Google Extensions for Firefox. With the Firefox built-in search box in the upper right corner, many users may not feel a need to install it....
Adaptive Searching at Google
Want to see different results at the top than others do? Try Google's new Personalized Search (in beta of course). "Personalized Search orders your search results based on what you've searched for in the past." This new project from Google Labs was announced on the Google Blog. You may have to stay logged in for awhile and build up a history pattern before you see any change in the results order....
Google Print Search Finally
At last Google Print now has its own search form, and you can get more than three book results at a time. Go to print.google.com for the search form....
Google Goes Portal
After many years of promoting its "laser like focus on search" and success as an anti-portal, Google is making another step towards being a portal. With the new "Personalize Your Homepage" available from Google Labs, you can customize all kinds of additional information on your personalized version of the Google home page. See the Google Blog post for more....
More OpenURL at Google Scholar
Google Scholar has opened up the ability to add OpenURL link resolvers to Scholar and have them automatically turned on based on campus IP address ranges. According to their blog post, over 100 academic libraries are already included, and the Support for Libraries help page at Scholar has more details. Most libraries should also check with their link resolver company who may be able to create the appropriate files to enable the links....
Google to Acquire Web Site Analytics Firm
According to Urchin, Google Agrees To Acquire Urchin, an analytics tool used understand users' experiences, optimize content, and track marketing performance. According to the press release: "We want to provide web site owners and marketers with the information they need to optimize their users' experience and generate a higher return-on-investment from their advertising spending," said Jonathan Rosenberg, vice president of product management, Google. "This technology will be a valuable addition to Google's suite of advertising and publishing products."...
Google News Source List
While Google still does not release a list of its sources for Google News (apparently secrecy is "not evil"), an interesting hack is available from PrivateRadio.org that runs a PHP script every 15 minutes and records the sources on the Google News home page. Started March 24, 2005, by today it lists over 1,000 sources which can be sorted alphabetically or by frequency of inclusion on the Google News home page....
Mac-Flavored Interface at Google
Google announced the launch of Google X, an interface that looks like Mac OS X by putting icons above the search box that when moused-over grow larger and name the service. This does make it easy to have more links above the search box. Unfortunately, after launching this, Google has subsequently removed it. No official word, but many presume it was removed due to copyright concerns or complaints from Apple. Anyway, for awhile at least, there is an unofficial mirror in France for the curious....
Open Source Code at Google
Google has opened up a new site, Code.google.com, on which they are providing access to developer-oriented programming libraries and tools. This is intended as a site for "external developers interested in Google-related development." They plan to publish free source code and a listing of our their API services. This will be of interest primarily to programmers or those who might play with API. The initial projects include a Core Dumper, a Sparse Hashtable, and Perftools....
Google News Now Customizable
In its continuing move towards a portal, Google now lets users customize some aspects of the Google News front page. Users can re-arrange sections and even add customized sections with up to 9 stories based on a particular query. More information is available in the Google News: Customized News FAQ. This is available in the 9 languages and 22 local editions of Google News. While these changes certainly make Google News more useful as a starting point for news, it could use an option to reduce the size of each listing. There is a "show headlines only option" which removes...
Updated Version of Google Desktop Search
Not only is there now an updated version of the Google Desktop Search client, but it is no longer in beta. It only runs on Windows XP or Windows 2000 SP 3 or above. But the new version indexes more content (but still not everything). New content types include Netscape Mail, Thunderbird Mail, Netscape/Firefox/Mozilla Web browsing, PDFs, and any meta tags associated with music, image, and video files....
Getting Around Google Print
A recent article "Google's Cookie and Hacking Google Print" describes techniques used to write a script that can create PDFs of entire copyrighted books from Google Print. [More comments on it at Kuro5hin.] The full code is not available and the author let Google know about the issue, but the point is that despite some clever programming on Google's part, there can be numerous ways of getting around the copyright restrictions once a book is in a publicly-accessible electronic format. Not a problem for the out of copyright books, but for those still under copyright . . ....
Problems with Google's Wildcard Word in a Phrase Operator
There are problems reported with Google's Wildcard Word in a Phrase. The problem is that the asterisk seems to represent either zero or one word. It used to represent exactly one word. For example, "a little * * * mischief" used to find only "a little neglect may breed mischief" or a similar phrase of six words. Now it also finds pages with just "a little mischief." The cache copy on those pages says that the search terms only appear in pages pointing to the resulting page, but that does not seem accurate. I think that what now happens is...
Google Weather
Continuing with its trend to add more portal features, Google now has quick access to current weather conditions and a four day forecast for U.S. cities and ZIP codes. Strangely enough, the weather information does not link to a source for more detailed weather information for the locality, even though the Weather Underground (from which Google gets its weather information) does have more detailed conditions and forecasts. This is also available via SMS by sending a text message to the U.S. five digit shortcode 46645 (GOOGL on most mobile phones) followed by the weather query. As Gary notes, Google is...
Google Dictionary Lacks Plurals
Awhile back, Google changed its default dictionary links (from the 'definition' link in the upper right corner that sometimes appears after a single term query or from the linked search terms that appear in the same spot for a multiple term query). Those used to go to Dictionary.com. Now they go to Answers.com, powered by Gurunet. Now, as Gary Stock reports, the links to definitions no longer appear if the word is a plural. Compare the search for test to the search for tests....
Google Movies Shortcut
Google has just launched a search shortcut to help users access local movie showtimes in the U.S. along with film information and reviews. The service is available from any Google search box and via SMS to 46645 or GOOGL on many phones. To find information and reviews, use movies: followed by a word or words from the movie's title. To find local movie listings use the shortcut movies or showtimes followed by a ZIP code or U.S. city name....
Google Scholar Preferences
Google Scholar has added a Scholar Preferences page which lists a few dozen academic institutions. Up to three can be selected, and those institutions OpenURL links will be shown on individual records. They say "Institutional access is currently a small pilot project" which means that if you are not on the list, you probably will not be able to get on it any time soon....
Newly Updated Google Toolbar 3.0
Google has a beta of the 3.0 version of its toolbar. This is still only available for Internet Explorer 5.5+ running on Windows 98 or higher. There is still no Mozilla Firefox version. New features include spelling correction, a word translator, and auto links. If enabled the auto links will provide additional links from the page when an address (link to Google Maps) or certain numbers appear on a Web page. The numbers include ISBNs (links to Amazon) and package tracking and vehicle identification numbers (link to Google's search by numbers searches)....
Google Maps
In its continuing drive towards providing more portal style information, Google has now launched its own Maps project. This beta version uses data from NAVTEQ like many other Web mapping tools. It allows for zooming and dragging the map. It only covers the U.S. and Canada at this point. It can be searched by ZIP code and can map directions between two points. Gary has a more detailed analysis....
Front and Center for Google Local
The local search from Google is now on the main page, as one of the "tabs" above the search box that can lead to other Google databases. This move is good for the U.S. and Canadian versions of Google where the local database is available....
Updated Help File at Google
Gary notes a few changes that have appeared on Google's Advanced Search help page (not on the Advanced Search page itself). It has added more instructions and a section on search operators, changed the "~ search" heading to "Synonym Search," and renamed "Domain Restrict" to "Domain Search."...
Definition Switch at Google
The definition links offered by Google that used to point to Dictionary.com entries now go to Answers.com instead....
TV Searching at Google Video
Google has added a video search tool, Unlike the recently unveiled Yahoo! video search which looks for available video files on the Web, Google's video search is more of a television search since it searches TV closed captioning from CSPAN and San Francisco TV stations. It does not provide access to either the transcripts or the video of the shows "at this time" but only includes some screen shots and KWIC text. Still, this could be useful for finding text occurrences within broadcast TV shows....
More Query Words at Google
Google has finally upped its 10 word query limit to 32. As Tara reports, Google News retains the 10 word limit....
Suggest from Google Labs
New from Google Labs is Google Suggest which performs a standard Google search, but as query terms are entered, a drop-down box presents a listing of up to 10 suggested searches that begin with the letters already typed. The suggestions often contain multiple word queries. In addition, a very rough (and very inaccurate) number of results for each search is displayed. Don't pay too much attention to the numbers since they are even more wildly inaccurate than Google's usual estimates. To use Google Suggest, Javascript and cookies must be enable, and it only works in newer browsers....
Google Print Books Changes
Google has changed its Google Print program for books. Formerly, extracts from books were included in regular search results. Today, Google has announce the expansion of its Google Print Program. While it sounds more similar to what Amazon has done for some time with its Search Within a Book capability, the results are now no longer within regular Google listings. Instead, the links are above the regular search results and only show up for certain queries. Try using books about or books about followed by some word or certain titles such as king lear (but not yet hamlet or macbeth)....
Cache Date Back in Google
Back in the depths of Google's history, their cached copy of Web pages included two dates: the date when Google crawled the page and the reported date stamp on the page at that time. Then, both dates disappeared as Google realized that they showed how old some parts of their database was. Now that they have greatly increased the freshness of their database and revisit more pages more frequently, they have finally added back some date information. The top line in the cache now gives the date Google last crawled the page. It is a welcome and useful addition....
New Option for Define in Google
To get a Google Glossary definition used to require using either the define: prefix or just adding a define in front of a query term. Now it will also appear when "What is" precedes a term....
Google Adds Text Cache Version
Google has added a text only cache version. After displaying a regular cached page, look in the header for a "Click here for the cached text only" link to see the cached page with just the text and without any images. This is discussed in more detail in a Search Engine Watch forum posting....
Google Bug
Danny reports on a strange bug at Google which has allowed someone to remove the home page of several sites such as Microsoft and Adobe from the Google database. Danny received the following confirmation from Google: "We can confirm that less than 10 websites were inadvertently removed from Google's index for several hours [Thursday]. All of these sites have been restored and are accessible through a Google search. The removal occurred as the result of an outside attempt to abuse Google's automated web page removal tool -- a free service we provide webmasters who would like to remove web pages...
Google Starts Blogging Itself
Google has started up a weblog at www.google.com/googleblog, providing one more place to check for news....
Google Announces Email
Must be nice to be rich. Google figures it can afford to offer free email along with 1 GB of storage for each users with all of it financed by context sensitive text ads. Just what I want. I can read my spam and see ads for more. However, at this point, GMail is not open to everyone and is by invitation only....
Yahoo! Drops Google Image Database
Sometime recently, Yahoo! has dropped the Google image database and is using their own, which is basically the one that has been available at AltaVista and AlltheWeb for the past few months. Yahoo! UK is still showing pictures from Google's image database, but I'm guessing that the new Yahoo! image database will slowly be rolled out to all the other Yahoo!s soon....
Google Demotes Directory in New Look
After experimenting for several months, Google has launched its new look today. While the appearance is not too different, one significant change is the removal of the Directory tab and the addition of the Froogle shopping tab. Google's directory is still available, but it is much more difficult to get to. Froogle is still in beta, but now it is being emphasized much more. Other changes include the removal of the "tab" look (which makes the links to other Google databases a bit less obvious), the removal of the color background on the side ads, making less of the ads...
Number Searching at Google
With all the cosmetic changes and bad news this week, I am pleased to see some new and potentially very useful syntax from Google. The number range search lets you search for a range of numbers, say for any number between 5 and 11. It even searches for numbers with and without commas and includes decimals such as 7.23. The number range command consists of a smaller number, two periods, and larger number which can be used in conjunction with another search word, as in score 5..11. Adding a dollar sign invokes the price range search which actually searches for...
Google Print Adds Magazines
The beta Google Print project has added some magazine articles to the book extracts it has had previously. I am not sure when they first started adding these, but I have not seen them before today. It looks like it includes some short full text articles from several Reed Business Information publications such as Electronic News, Test & Measurement World, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly. The title of each of these is preceded by [MAGAZINE] instead of [BOOK]. Try a search such as site:print.google.com magazine to see some more. Compared to any of the major full-text databases from Gale, Ebsco,...
Google Pushes Local Search
Why is Google launching its Local Search out from Google Labs and integrating it with general search results? Ad revenue opportunities certainly must have played a part in the decision. While their press release focuses on how it helps users find more local information, the ad revenue possibilities have been pushing many local search efforts. With the launch, if a search includes a U.S. location term (like a ZIP code or the name of a town or city) in addition to some other search term. The Local results will display near the top (in a similar location to news headlines)...
New Search at Yahoo! (Drops Google)
As has long been expected, Yahoo! has announced the launch of its own search engine database and dropped Google. After using AltaVista, then Inktomi, and then Google to deliver search results after directory listings (and now that they own Inktomi, AltaVista, and AlltheWeb), Yahoo! now uses its own database. It appears to be primarily from Inktomi, but its results differ from MSN Search and HotBot which also use Inktomi. Several positive comments at first look: It still has cached copies of pages It is a large database, sometime finding more than Google Most advanced search features still work This launch...
Google Site Field Search on Own Now
As noted at ResearchBuzz, Google's site field search no longer needs to be combined with another word. Previous, to search Google for all pages at whatever.com required using a search like whatever site:whatever.com since the site:whatever.com search would give an error result. Now site:whatever.com will work....
Books and Libraries in Google
In keeping with a sudden frenzy of new initiatives, Google is now starting to include records and extracts from published books along with a few connections into library holdings information. These two initiatives are currently separate from each other, and since they are both experimental, they may change or stop appearing at any time. Neither one tends to show up in search results very often, but here are a few links to see what they look like. First, the Google Print inside the book content, which is not as useful as the Amazon Search Inside the Book since it only...
Froogle Featured More Prominently
Google is now featuring its shopping search engine more prominently, just in time for the end of the Christmas shopping season. It is not only advertising Froogle directly on the main Google page, but at the top of some search results (only for specific query words), Google will list "Product Search" results. They have been experimenting with this since earlier this month, but these results are now live. As with other recent Google initiatives, it is a bit of a guessing game when the Product results will show. A search on wooden spoons had no Product links while tea kettles...
Google Number Shortcuts and a Potential New Look
Google has added a few more shortcuts for specific number searches and for airport travel conditions. Basically, five databases will have shortcuts: U.S. Patents, UPS Tracking Numbers, FedEx Tracking Numbers, FCC Equipment IDs, and FAA Airplane Registration Numbers. Note that some require a prefix like patent, fedex, or fcc while others do not and the airport weather needs the suffix of airport. Not all of the examples given work, or they only work at some data centers, but since it is a new feature, those bugs should be worked out soon. Also, Google is trying out a new design and...
Google Starts Auto Stemming Searches
Since the most recent Google Dance started around Nov. 15, this update of the Google database nicknamed Florida has created quite a stir in the ecommerce Webmaster community. The major complaint has been the significant change in the ranking of results and many pages no longer show up in the top of the search engine results. For those with time, read the thousands of postings about it in the Update Florida discussions at WebmasterWorld. Certainly, the ranking changes will also have an impact on searchers, but even more significant to me is the experimentation that Google is now doing with...
Google Does a Deskbar
Expanding on its success with its toolbar, Google launched a new Google Labs experiment today: the Google Deskbar. Rather than a browser add-on, like the HotBot deskbar, it appears in the Windows taskbar and can function independent of the browser. It can be used for many Google functions, including the calculator, definitions, Web searches, news, groups, Froogle, and more. Unfortunately, it still only works for those with Windows 98 or higher and requires Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher. It displays the results in a mini-viewer instead of the full browser, and because of that can be faster than opening up...
Searching Books at Google?
With Amazon's launch of a searchable databases of the full-text of over 120,000 books, it comes as no surprise that Google is also in talks with publishers to do something similar. Publishers Weekly reports that Google has been in talks with publishers and that Google "has reached agreements that allow it to enter as many as 60,000 titles in its database and also presented extensive mock-ups to publishers of how book-relevant searches will look." On top of talking to publishers, Google is also working with OCLC to include a subset of OCLC's WorldCat database of library holdings in regular Google...
Google Ads to Show at About, Buys Sprinks
About.com's owner PRIMEDIA announces that it has entered into a four year agreement with Google to place Google AdWords ads on the About.com meta sites. In addition, part of the deal is that Google is buying About's Sprinks (the current pay per click ad network running ads on the About.com sites). The Google ads are not yet appearing on About, but if it cuts down on the pop-up ads and the very heavy advertising that currently appears on About.com sites, it will be a welcome relief for anyone that tries to view the quality text content on those sites. This...
New Google Command: Define
Google has moved one of its Google Labs projects into the mainstream. The Google Glossary function is now available directly from Google in two ways using "define." Enter a search that starts with "define" and the first Google glossary results shows at the top. For example, define environmental protection agency. To see all the definitions, use "define:" as in define:environmental protection agency. For phrases, it makes no difference whether quotations are used or not. This can work well for acronyms, too. Note that the definitions found come from an automatic pattern recognition program that tries to identify definitions on Web...
New Features at Google Alert
Google Alert announces new delivery options. "Results can now be delivered as email, HTML, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 or TrackBack feeds." It also now includes direct links to Google's cache....
AOL to Stick with Google
Google announces that AOL has agreed to continue using both the Google Web database and Google's ads. Called a "multi-year alliance," this renews the AOL deal that started in May 2002 when AOL announced a switch from Overture ads and an Inktomi Web database to Google for both. The Google Web database did not go live on AOL until July 31, 2002, so it has only been a bit over a year since AOL switched to Google. With the renewal comes several changes to AOL Search: Addition of the Google Images database (with "strict" filtering on) and as a separate...
Punctuation at Google and Minor Site Updates
Usually, search engines will replace all punctuation marks with a space when they index Web pages. And if you use a punctuation mark between words in a query, the search becomes a phrase search. In other words, a search on import-export is the same as "import export". However, Google has a couple exceptions to this rule for two characters: the ampersand & and the underscore _. Both can be searched by themselves or as part of a character string. In other words, a search on adv_search gets different results than "adv search" and &tc differs from tc. And for programmers,...
Personalization in Google's Future?
Today, Google announced its acquisition of Kaltix Corporation. Formed just this past summer in June, Kaltix has been working on developing search technologies related to personalization and context-sensitive searching. What Google will actually do with this technology remains to be seen and will likely take awhile before it is implemented for the public. And given Google's number of products, if the technology is used, it might be for their ads, news, or their shopping database rather than for their general Web search engine....
GeoSearch at Google
Google is new experimenting with a new Search by Location in Google Labs. They are finally catching up with a feature that the old Northern Light had years ago. Google has added a map of locations for the hits from MapQuest. It highlights matching addresses in the keyword in context (KWIC) display, but there is no cache link. At this point, it seems to be limited to U.S. addresses. Searches must include some address information. Full state names and ZIP codes appear to be normalized to a city, state abbreviation search. In other words, the address can be entered in...
Two More Google Experiments: Related Searches and Spectrum
The ever-experimenting Google has added two more experiments that a very small portion of their users may see. First, they are finally experimenting with giving suggestions for "related searches." This is one feature that they could have added long ago and that many other search engines have offered for years. But the few early experiment reports have not been very impressive and seem to have poorly related suggestions. Presumably this will be much improved before it is released, if they ever release it at all. Then there is Google's Spectrum, which is a Google search counter. Users can see how...
Google Tweaks Its Number to 3.3 Billion and Adds "Supplemental Results"
Well, it looks like it took AlltheWeb announcing a larger size than Google to get Google to finally update its claim to 3.3 billion. Since last November, the Google home page has claimed to be "Searching 3,083,324,652 Web pages," even though the size has gone up and down many times since then. After last week's announcement from AlltheWeb of a nearly 3.2 billion record database, I wondered how long it would take before Google would change the number on their home page. As of today, Google now says 3,307,998,701. With daily changes at each of these large search engines, do...
Google's intitle: and inurl: Working Again
Back in May, Google's intitle: and inurl: were not working properly, as I posted earlier. Well, they now seem to be working again. A search that combines a general query term with these field searches, like "market research" intitle:tourism, now work. I've updated my Google Inconsistencies page to note that problem has been fixed, but I added another report of a strange result for the simple query of 'cameras.'...
Google Toolbar & Calculator
Google today announced that the latest version of the popular Google Toolbar (now 2.0) is out of beta and available for download. Following in the footsteps of AlltheWeb, Google now has a built-in a calculator function. It lets you use numbers or the word for the number for mathematical equations, unit conversions, and physical constants. Only a bit of a description of all the functions are available on the calculator section of the help page. One "Easter Egg" in the calculator comes up when searching answer to life the universe and everything where it displays '42,' the answer from Douglas...
Google News Alerts
Google has added an alert service for its news databases. The Google News Alerts is in beta and is also listed on the Google Labs page. With the demise of other free alert services, especially Northern Light's current news alerts, this is a great addition for anyone who wants to keep up with the latest news. Just be careful not to choose search terms that will return too many hits. The default "once a day" option should help if you do, but be careful with the "as it happens" choice....
Synonym Operator at Google
Google has introduced a new operator, the tilde ~, for searching for synonyms. It should be placed immediately before a search term, with no space, for which you want Google to look for synonyms. For example, a search on query ~analysis finds matches with query statistics and query analyzer. A brief entry about ~ is available on their help page. Using some of the technology behind the Google Sets, the ~ seems to include plural and singular forms as well as synonyms. Use the - operator to get a sense of what synonyms have been searched, as in ~hiking -hiking....
Advanced News Search at Google
Google has finally added an advanced search page for its news database. It includes options for sorting by date, specifying the news source, a location limit, a date limit, and field searches for headline, body, and URL....
Google Field Search Problems
For more than a month now, the intitle: and inurl: field searches have been broken. I first heard of this on May 27, 2003. The advantage of intitle: and inurl: over the advanced search page Occurrences section or the allintitle: and allinurl: field searches was that they applied to only a single term and could be combined with other search terms that would look through the record. So now, searchers can not do a search that looks for one word in the title and another in the body. A search that tries like "market research" intitle:tourism retrieves many results that...
Indexing Robots.txt Files
It appears that Google's spider is not only checking robots.txt files, it is also indexing and even caching some of them. Try a search on allinurl:robots.txt to see some examples, or see the cached copy of the Salon.com file. It would be interesting to know why they are doing this. Other search engines, like AlltheWeb will index robots.txt files that do not follow the protocol as in the search for disallow user-agent url.all:robots.txt. (The results either have the robots.txt file not located in the root directory or the filename is not all lower case.) But with Google not only indexing...
And Now . . . Google Toolbar 2.0
Following up on Hotbot's announcement yesterday and Infospace's the day before, here comes Google with a beta of version 2.0 of the Google Toolbar. The new version has several new features including a pop-up blocker (which counts how many it has blocked, something I really do not want to know), the ability to automatically fill out forms, and a BlogThis! button to instantly comment in your blog on the page you are viewing. Of course BlogThis! only works if you have a blog on Google-owned Blogger. The toolbar only works with Internet Explorer and on Windows....
Google AdSense
Google the advertising company is now moving beyond search-related ads into content-based sites with an affiliate program called AdSense. The self-service program makes it easy for Web masters and Web publishers to put Google ads on their site and share the ad dollars. What ads get put on the participating sites? Google uses its link analysis techniques to try and match appropriate advertisers with the right publishers. How well that will work and how profitable it may turn out to be for both Google and the publishers remains to be seen....
FindWhat To Buy Espotting
FindWhat, another ad bidding engine like Overture and Google AdWords, is buying up Espotting, an ad bidding engine that has focused on Europe, for about 8.1 million shares of FindWhat.com stock and about $27 million in cash for a combined valuation of about $163 million according to their US press release. The combination of the two may help FindWhat become a more serious competitor for the search engine ad space to the two big companies: Overture and Google....
Google Redirecting Non-U.S. Users
Pandia reports that "Google has started using automatic redirect scripts directing non-US users to the relevant national versions of the Google site." Even U.S. users should bear this in mind when traveling outside the country. Fortunately, as Pandia notes, you can still get to the main U.S. version with an address such as http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en....
Google Wins SearchKing Suit
SearchKing had sued Google in Oct. 2002 due to a loss of PageRank and a subsequent drop in ranking for its site at Google. On May 27, 2003, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma granted Google's motion to dismiss. Although the court case had always seemed to many to be without merit, at least SearchKing deserves some credit for being willing to posted the decision on its own site....
Blog Searching at Google?
Reuters reported on May 5 that Google CEO Eric Schmidt says that "soon the company will also offer a service for searching Web logs." Andrew Orlowski then interpreted the comment to suggest that blogs may be separated into a distinct database. It is too early to call that anything more than a guess, but it will be interesting to see what Google ends up doing. In the meantime, Daypop, Feedster, and others listed on my Other Internet Search Engines page provide very useful searchable access of blogs....
Google Adds Ads from Oingo
OK, actually Google has purchased Applied Semantics (the company formerly known as Oingo). Their press release quotes Sergey Brin saying "This acquisition will enable Google to create new technologies that make online advertising more useful to users, publishers, and advertisers alike." So the purchase is helping Google the advertising agent and will likely be used for their content-targeted advertising. Will it impact search beyond the ads? We'll have to wait and see....
Google SafeSearch Too Heavy Handed
Benjamin Edelman from Harvard Law School offers up a well-research paper, Empirical Analysis of Google SafeSearch, that shows that "SafeSearch blocks at least tens of thousands of web pages without any sexually-explicit content, whether graphical or textual. Blocked results include sites operated by educational institutions, non-profits, news media, and national and local governments." Filtered sites included Apple Support, NET Bible, Thomas (Congressional legislative system), and many more....
Google Ad Success?
So how well are Google's new content targeted ads doing? According to a ContentBiz story, advertisers are not as pleased with the results of the new placement as Google may have hoped.....
Google News Loses Functionality
In Google News you used to be able to use advanced syntax like cache: followed by a URL to pull up a cached news story or site: to limit to a specific publication. Now these syntax no longer work and Google says "site:nytimes.com was dropped from your search because it is not supported for this type of search." For title searching, intitle: still works. Instead of site: try using source: which should be followed by either the single word for the source title that Google shows in green or for multiple word sources, use an underscore (_) character in between...
Go Goes Google
With all the other recent changes, this caught me totally by surprise. Remember Infoseek that became Go after Disney bought it? It dumped its own search engine back in March of 2001 and replaced it with straight Overture searches. Today it now says "Powered by Google" and gives both Google AdWords results and regular Google results. The Google steamroller moves on....
Google Censors Site
An interesting tale of censorship at Google is told and documented by Seth Finkelstein. Basically, Google removed a page from its index in Feb. 2003 after pressure from the UK. The page seems to now be gone from the Web itself, but according to various reports, it was a very sick, twisted joke page, and not the pedophile page it was claimed to be....
Google to Become Ad Network?
Apparently, Google is moving more aggressively into the advertising business. They are starting a new text ad program, Google Content-Targeted Advertising, which will display ads on non-search related pages. This ad program, like those ads that Google now shows on its site, are not graphics or banner ads, but text ads with a colored background. They are free until March 12, but where they will be displayed after then remains to be seen. See also Google's FAQ for Content-Targeted Advertising....
Google Buys Blogger
For reasons known only inside the company at this point, Google has bought Pyra Labs, maker of the free Weblog site and software company Blogger. Fittingly enough, instead of announcing it in a press release, the news first showed up in a blog. No immediate known changes as a result to either Google or Blogger, but it will be interesting to see what comes of this acquisition....
Two New Alerts for Web Searches
Googlert and SearchAlert.net are two new free services that offer email alerts when new search engine results are available. Googlert was launched in January, but I'm not sure when SearchAlert.net started. Googler works only on Google and does require registration for a free Google API key. SearchAlert.net says that it "continually monitors the big Web search engines" but does not specify which ones. Alerts page updated with both of these....
Hunting for Google's Cache
Finding Google's cached copy is not always trouble free. Take the recent example of an interesting story of journalistic confusion gets even more confused. Apparently, a Computerworld reporter was fooled into believing that terrorists claimed responsibility for the recent "Slammer" worm. The original story was posted online but now states "Computerworld removed this story due to questions about its authenticity. An update about this situation has been posted." So what does this have to do with Google's cache? Well, other reporters thought they might find the original story from Google's cache. Google Village, in their story Google Everflux Misses Slammer...
HotBot Searches Four
HotBot has relaunched and now can search Inktomi, Google, FAST, and Teoma. Terra-Lycos, the owner of HotBot, says that with the new HotBot, they want to give the users control. It certainly makes it easy to check four of the major Web search engines from one interface. The front page no longer has ads and flashing banners and pop-ups should be gone from other pages. And the advanced features are readily available and properly translated for each of the four search engines, if they are supported. If they are not supported, HotBot will say that "These filters are not yet...
Froogle: The Google Product Search Engine
And just in time for Christmas, today Google launches Froogle, named with pun firmly in cheek. Froogle contains just products. Sellers can get their products included for free, potentially using a data feed. See the About Froogle and Information for Merchants for more details. Unlike regular Google results, Froogle includes price, store name, and sometimes even a picture....
Scrolling Results & Site Commentary at Google Labs
Google Labs has added two new initiatives. The Google Viewer provides a fancy way to have search results scroll by with views of the pages as well. I find WiseNut's Sneak-a-Peek and the MSN Search Preview easier to view but prefer basic text results to all three. The second initiative, Google Webquotes, seems to have more information value. Enter a search, and for each of the top ten sites, several quotes from other pages that point to the top ten sites are listed. So a search on 'google' finds "Google sells paid listings. . . " and "If Google were...
Google Future Plans
Jeff Dean, Distinguished Engineer at Google, gave a keynote address yesterday at Online Information 2002 in London. He mentioned some of Google's future plans, which include More comprehensive and fresher database Improved usability (will that be a new user interface?) Conceptual understanding (perhaps that Google will try to guess synonyms) More personalization We'll have to wait and see how these actually are implemented. A couple other interesting numbers that he mentioned: only about 3% of searches use the advanced search form so they do not spend much development dollars on it and about 10% of queries have misspellings....
Google News Source Limit
Gary Price reports that "You're now able to limit your search to a specific site for stories available via Google News. In other words, the site: syntax now works." He includes several examples. Maybe they will eventually add an advanced search page as well....
Google Now Claims 4+ Billion Documents
The main Google page claim has jumped from 2,469,940,685 web pages to 3,083,324,652 web pages. To get their number over 4 billion, they add in the 330 million images in their image database and the "nearly 800 million Usenet newsgroup postings" in Google Groups. The image number has remained static since Dec. 2001, but the Usenet postings have grown from 700 million then to "nearly" 800 million. So what about their basic Web page growth? I am not sure what they are counting. On a few quick tests that I ran, Google did not seem to find that many more...
Google Too Dominant?
An interesting article on News.com "The Google Gods: Does Search Engine's Power Threaten Web's Independence?" quotes Gary Price of The Virtual Acquisition Shelf and News Desk fame....
New No-Ads Portal: MyWay.com
The Excite Networks (who run iWon and the portal portion of Excite) have launched a new portal. MyWay.com boasts that is has no banners or pop-ups. The portal content is similar to that at Excite and iWon, and the search engine and directory come from Google (and Google's implementation of the Open Directory). So how are they going to make money off of this one? They claim "My Way makes money through clearly identified sponsored listings and text links. . . . Does it work? Yes. In fact, we will be profitable in our first month of operation." Time will...
Google Censorship
Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman have posted their study "Localized Google Search Result Exclusions: Statement of Issues and Call for Data" that has found that at least 100 sites have been excluded "in whole or in part from the French google.fr and German google.de compared with google.com." The sites were removed by Google to avoid legal problems with laws in those countries....
Google Answers Sweat Shop?
For anyone following the Google Answers commercial service, there are several recent interesting writings about it. Jessamyn West has a enlightening read in her Searcher article "Information for Sale: My Experience With Google Answers" [10(9): 14- , Oct. 2002.] But her story did not end there as her follow-up posting "How I Tried to Resign from Google Answers but Found I Was Already Fired" shows. And then there is a similar story "Silicon Samurai: Questions About Google Answers" posted at Geek.com on July 17. I find the economics especially interesting. Maybe Google will make enough to continue Google Answers, but...
Yahoo! Renews & Mixes with Google
After several months of waiting, Yahoo! announced today (during their conference call announcing third quarter profits) that they have extended Google as their search engine partner even though the "Powered by Google" logo and text are gone. In addition, they have mixed up Yahoo! directory entries with Google records in their search results. Instead of having Yahoo! directory entries under the 'Web Sites' heading and Google records under 'Web Pages,' they now both come under 'Web Matches.' Then their is a follow-up search option to just search the directory under the "Search in . . . Directory" link in the...
Google Considers Fees
The telegraph.co.uk reports that Google is considering user fees for some sections of its site like the new News search. According to the article, Google's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Field Operations, Omid Kordestani, said: "We may experiment with ways of monetising after we have got the service right. Charging would be one approach. So far we have found it better to keep the service free and charge for targetted advertising." It sounds like they are just floating the idea with no definite plans to start charging yet, but it is one more reason to be comfortable with...
Google Dance Begun
The Google dance appears to have begun yesterday and there is much weeping and gnashing of teeth in the optimization community. The Webmaster World forum thread discussing the update already has over 430 posts since it started yesterday morning. What is the Google dance? It occurs when Google is launching a new database, first on www2.google.com or www3.google.com and then eventually on the main site. I can take several days until the whole new dance to finish. So right now on the main www.google.com, the bulk of their database appears to have come from an early August crawl. The database...
Google News Tabbed, Updated, & Expanded
The Google News has greatly expanded its number of news sources (to "approximately 4,000") and the depth of its archive. It also has a newly redesigned look and has finally added the News Tab on the main page and on search results pages. According to the About page "Google News continuously crawls more than 4,000 news sources from around the world. This number will continue to grow as we develop the service further" and it now "includes articles that appeared within the past 30 days." There is still no advanced search, although Tara points out that adding &num=100 to the...
Google News Changes
Gary Price points out that some changes are going on at the Google News search. Search engines like to experiment by giving one out of say a thousand queries the experimental interface or results and then gauging their reactions. That makes it hard for the rest of us to see the details of the experiment unless someone grabs a quick screen shot. Just earlier this week on Yahoo! I noticed that the "Web Pages" link was not highlighted unless you clicked on other of the other links first. And the Powered by Google had moved way down to the bottom....
AOL Announces New Search
Now completely moved from Inktomi and Overture to Google and Google AdWords, AOL introduces their "New AOL Search." AOL also notes that Google results are included on several AOL properties: "now available within the search areas of Netscape, AOL.COM and CompuServe, and for members in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Netherlands, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Japan, Australia and Canada." On all of these, the search results may include a few links to specific material from AOL sites as well as the Google results....
Double Databases: Ask Jeeves and Google?
In an initially surprising partnership, Google has announced that it will provide advertisements from its AdWords database to Ask Jeeves and Teoma users. Ask Jeeves will continue to use the Teoma database for its search engine results, but the ads will come from Google....
Silverstein Interview
Slashdot has an interview with Craig Silverstein, Google's Directory of Technology in which he answers 10 questions from the Slashdot Linux-loving community....
Google Answers Searchable
The much-discussed, if underwhelming, Google Answers has added a search capability and classified past questions and answers. I wondered how long it would take Google, a search company, to add this search feature. The broad categories and the search box are at the bottom of the main Google Answers page....
Netscape Goes Google
Netscape Search is now serving Google results without Open Directory hits first. It does start with some Sponsored Links which are ads from either Overture or Google AdWords. However, the Netscape search buttons still point to a page that rotates among several search engines. Like Yahoo!'s version of Google, the Netscape Search version does not all the advanced capabilities of Google....
Google Opens Their Lab
Opening a peak into Google's current experiments, the new Google Labs shows ideas under development. At this point, there are four: a Glossary that offers definitions of words, phrases, and acronyms; Google Sets which provides related terms, Voice Search for searching Google by telephone, and Keyboard Shortcuts for non-mouse navigation. Google also has a new version of the Google Toolbar. The old one must be uninstalled first to get the new experimental features to work, and they are hard to find under Toolbar Options. They include an ability to suppress some pop-up windows and some new navigation features....
AOL Goes Google
AOL announces a switch to Google for both an ad database and its Web results. Right now, the sponsored links (formerly from Overture) are coming from the Google AdWords database. The Web search results continue to come from Inktomi for now, but they should be from Google by this summer. This includes AOL, CompuServe, and Netscape search sites. See also the Google press release....
Alexa Does Google
Amazon-owned Alexa now offers Alexa Web Search, a strange amalgam of Alexa's information about Web pages combined with Google's Web search engine database. Gary Price offers a detailed analysis of the new tool....
Advanced Search with Google APIs
Two fascinating uses of the free Google API programming could certainly be of use to advanced searchers. The Google API Proximity Search and the Fagan Finder Google Advanced Search with the ability to choose specific dates....
Pay Google for Research?
Google has introduced a pay-for-research service in beta format called Google Answers. Take a look at the Answers FAQ and the Help & Tips section for details, but basically users pay $0.50 to post a question and agree to pay from $4-$50 dollars for the answer. Check out the site to gauge the quality of the answers....
Google Spell Check Automated
If a search term gets zero hits on Google, it will not automatically try to guess the correct spelling and search that. Try a search on brjother and Google says "Your original search: brjother was misspelled" and then automatically searches for what it thinks you meant....
Google APIs for Free
Google is providing access to its APIs for developers and programmers. There are limits on its use, capping the number of queries per day at 1,000 and requiring an account for use, but it is free. This may eventually offer more sophisticated uses of the Google database, especially if Google adopts the best of what outside developers can create. In the meantime, read Google's API FAQ and its Terms of Service....
Google News Date Sort
The new beta Google News Search can now sort by date. However, it still defaults to a relevance sort first....
News Database at Google
Google announces the launch of its news headlines database in beta version. It covers only about 100 English-language Web-based news sources. It also clusters related stories from different publications under one headlines....
New Stats & Google Analysis
Several new additions to the Search Engine Statistics section. I have updated my Relative Size Showdown and the Total Size Estimate analyses with data from March 4-6, 2002. Using 25 search terms, and verifying the actual number of hits available for the largest search engines, Google has maintained a solid first place, followed by WiseNut and then AllTheWeb . I also updated the Database Change Over Time page which compares the same searches run on the search engines at various times. In addition, I have posted two new pages on Google: the Google Database Components which compares the components of...
Google Does Microsoft
Google has introduced another specialty search page: a Microsoft related sites search. It is also linked on the bottom of their advanced search page....
Google Ad Bidding
Google has announced a new pricing structure for their AdWords program, the one that puts the ads in the right hand margin for certain searches. Formerly, the ads were bought based on the number of impressions they received. The new AdWords Select program will be more like Overture in that the keywords are bid on based on a cost per click model. While this will not change the ranking of the regular Google results, it will provide Google with an ad database with which to compete with Overture....
iLor Switches from Google
iLor announces that as of today, it will begin using Ask Jeeves databases rather than Google's for its search tools. Initially it will be using Ask Jeeves' Direct Hit database but it will be switching to Teoma later this year....
Google Site Search Appliance
Google announces its Search Appliance, a combination hardware and software product for site search on intranets and other Web sites. Pricing starts at $20,000....
'The' on Google
Google previously had one unsearchable stop word --'the.' It is now searchable within phrases, like other stop words, and well as with the + symbol. Also, Google now supports using the asterisk * within a phrase to represent any full word, something AltaVista has long supported. However, the asterisk does not work for truncation anywhere else at Google....
More News at Google
Google is busy once again. This time, they have introduced Google News Headlines, a page which has summaries top news stories. It is a rather lengthy page and lacks the easy to view organization of many other news sites and portals, but it provides several viewpoints on each news story from different publications. Unfortunately, the do not provide any archival access to the stories. In addition, it looks like Google is no longer using Moreover for the news headlines on a regular search page. Instead, it appears they are using their own crawled headlines....
Google Catalogs
Google releases a new database in beta: Google Catalog Search. There is a link to the new database at the bottom of the advanced search screen, and it is directly accessible at catalogs.google.com. This database consists of scanned pages from print mail-order catalogs. The database is text searchable, and it displays the full page images from the catalogs....
Major Google Increase
Google launches a newly refreshed database and trumpets a 3 billion record database. But it is not all Web pages. The major points: Google Groups is out of beta Google Groups now goes back 20 years 700 million Usenet posts in Groups Image database is now 330+ Web database has 1.5 billion fully indexed documents That includes 35 million non-HTML docs like PDF, PS, DOC The total count includes 1/2 billion unindexed URLs Selected news crawling replaces Moreover...
Diacritics in Google
An alert reader has noticed a change in the way the Google handles diacritics. In the past, words with no diacritics would match those with and vice versa, so either elephant or éléphant would find both elephant and éléphant. Now, elephant only matches the word without diacritics. To find the French version, éléphant must be used. Note that this differs from AltaVista where the plain elephant matches both but the diacritics version, éléphant, only matches éléphant. The lesson for the multilingual searcher is that in Google, use all diacritic variants if you want more than an exact match....
Google Stop Word Changes
Google now automatically searches for stop words when they are in phrases, without requiring the + sign in front of the stop words. Google has added and will be adding more stop words in non-English languages (Chinese now and German next week). This bears watching as articles in one language may have a different meaning in another, such as the German 'die.' This automatic stop word searching means that only the unsearchable stop word 'the' can be used for the full word wild card within phrases. Google also now has a "help us improve" link at the bottom of the...
Google Toolbar Voting
A new beta of the Google Toolbar lets users vote on whether or not they like specific Google search results. The beta toolbar is available from Google....
New Google Search Features
Google now has an advanced image search page. It gives options to limit searches by file type (gif or jpeg), color (black and white, grayscale or full color), or to a specific domain. In its Web database, Google has added more file types beyond PDFs. It now indexes the following file types and searches can be limited by using filetype: followed by a file type extension as in filetype:ps: PostScript (ps) Lotus 1-2-3 (wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, wk5, wki, wks, wku) Lotus WordPro (lwp) MacWrite (mw) Microsoft Excel (xls) Microsoft PowerPoint (ppt) Microsoft Word (doc) Microsoft Works (wks, wps, wdb)...
Google Goes to Tabs
Google has changed its design to incorporate a new tabbed interface. Its four databases (Web, images, Usenet news groups, and the Open Directory) are listed as separate tabs on the main search page and on subsequent pages as well. In addition, they have added a new Language Tools search option next to the advanced search link which gives choices on 66 interface language, 26 language limits, and links to regional versions of Google....
Google Buys Outride, Inc.
Google announces the purchase of Outride, Inc., a small relevance technology firm. According to its Product Technology page, "Outride's technology is based on pioneering research done by the company's founders at Xerox PARC in the fields of data mining, pattern recognition, natural language semantic analysis, artificial intelligence, and information search and retrieval. Ultimately, our Outride Relevance Builder technology and the products on which it is based deliver real-time personal relevance." How Google will incorporate this, if at all, remains to be seen....
Threads at Google Groups
The Google Groups have been improved with an enhanced thread view capability that is similar to the thread capability that DejaNews used to have. In addition, the full, original, detailed header information for each posting is available in the original format display option....
New Google CEO
Google announces that Eric Schmidt is their new CEO. In addition to Google's official press release, several news stories, such as a CNET story from Reuters, note that Schmidt states that "We are quite profitable."...
Google Adds Date Limit
Google has added a date limit to its Advanced Search page. However, it is only a very limited limit. The only choices for the limit available are Past 3 Months, Past 6 Months, or Past Year. And since Google neither displays the date in its results listing nor gives an option for displaying the date of pages, the Google date limit is not nearly as useful as AltaVista's or Northern Lights'....
Google Groups Link on Google Home Page
Google has finally made it a bit easier to find their Google Groups Usenet archive and search engine. It is now featured on the main Google page below the search box and to the right of the Google Directory (which uses the Open Directory) link....
Google Opens Canadian Version
Google announces its Google.ca, a Canadian version of the Google search engine. About the only difference on the front page is an option to limit to Canadian Web pages. Surprisingly, the limit is not a simple .ca top level domain filter. A search on vancouver restaurants found several .com hits, although it still missed the top hit on the worldwide Google of www.vancouver-bc.com/Dining/ which seems like it should have also been included. A French language version is available at www.google.ca/fr which adds an option for searching only French language pages to the top page....
Posting Available at Google Groups
Continuing its efforts to bring back the funcationality of DejaNews, Google has now added posting capabilities to its Google Groups Usenet archive and search engine....
Usenet Archives back to 1995
Google has come through on their promise to bring up the full Deja archive of Usenet news postings. The Google Groups site now offers the archive back to March 29, 1995. Google claims that is has more than 650 million individual messages. Also, the Google Groups advanced search page has been expanded with options to sort by date, and to restrict language, message ID, author, subject, date, or newsgroup. Google also states that they plan to offer posting ability, like Deja used to have, sometime during May....
Google Adds Translation
Google now has added an automated translation capability. The translate option currently only shows up next to results that are in Spanish, German, French, and Portuguese. See Google's help page for more details, and note that a new preference is available which will automatically translate title and KWIC extracts to English for some results....
New Google Chairman
Google announces that "Dr. Eric E. Schmidt, 45, currently chairman and CEO of Novell, Inc., has joined Google's board of directors as chairman. Schmidt succeeds Sergey Brin, 27, Google's founding chairman and current president....
Google Adds Phone Book
Google has added a new feature that links to U.S. phone directory information. Enter a person's name followed by a U.S. state abbreviation, area code, city name, or ZIP code to see how it works. For example, john smith ca. It also works when just entering a phone number with area code. Google also has a removal form if you prefer not to be included....
Google Field Searches
I have updated my Google review as well as the feature chart, and search engines by features pages to reflect Google's other new field searches. The intitle: and inurl: field searches are not available in the advanced search but can be used in the regular search box. These can also be combined with other search terms, unlike the allintitle: and allinurl: fields used by the advanced search....
Google Indexes PDF Files
In a major break with the tradition of other search engines, Google has begun indexing the full text of Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files. These are identified in Google search results with a [PDF] designation at the front. Instead of a cached copy of the full PDF file, Google offers a text version. Google does not offer a way to search only their indexed PDF files, but just adding PDF as an extra search term can often bring up some results. Try laser pdf to see an example of the documents that may now be found. According to Chris...
Google Adds Greek
Google announces the addition of Greek as a language limit. It is available in both the Advanced Search and via the preferences....
Google Adds Title and URL Field Searches
Google has expanded its field search offerings. On the revised Advanced Search page, there is the Occurrences option which allows a title or a URL field search. These are also available on the regular Google search by using allintitle: or allinurl: as the field labels. It is unfortunate that Google does not just use the title: or url: syntax of AltaVista and others, but they chose not to. In addition, these field searches can not yet be combined with other search terms. Thus, Google does not provide a way to search for one word in a title and another word...
Boolean Searching on Google Explanation
A new Boolean Searching on Google page has been added here which attempts to explain how to use Google's new OR operator to perform specific Boolean functions. This seems to be changeable, so please drop me an email if you discover that Google has changed how it processes any of these suggestions....
Google adds OR operator
It looks like Google has finally introduced support for the Boolean OR operator. It must be entered in all upper case as in x OR y. Google still does not support Nesting, AND, or NOT, so use of the OR operator involves some careful ordering of terms. Google has made some other changes to its layout and color schemes on the results page. Most useful to searchers is that onthe cached page copies, each search term is now highlighted with a different color and is so identified at the top of the page. Google review, search engine chart, and search...
Google Adds Advanced Search
Google has finally introduced an Advanced Search form. It has domain limits, language limits, and the ability to request up to 100 hits at a time....
Google Results Now Appearing on Yahoo!
Google results now appear on Yahoo! (although this may not yet be the final switch. A few observations: Results are clustered with only one page per site as opposed to the two per site available on Google. Even with the greater clustering, Yahoo! finds fewer than regular Google. The ranking of results is also slightly different. Clicking on the [More results from . . .] doesn't work right yet. It actually brings up all results from that site, whether or not they contain the keyword....
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