gHacks technology news » Search Engines

Google Rolls Out New Search Interface

Martin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:39:16 +0000

A recent post over at Search Engine Land suggests that Google will be rolling out a new search interface – or more precisely search result page design – to selected users later today. The effort seems to have originated in the analysis of the current search results layout which is everything but coherent and has been a major point of criticism lately.

The new search results layout will use a cleaner design with an additional left sidebar. The left sidebar will always be visible and seems to have originated from the advanced search options which currently have to be expanded to make them visible. The sidebar will make use of colorful icons for permanent listings at the top and a dynamic lower part that display contents depending on the choices the user made. A selection of video for instance will display filters for playtime, date of publication or quality while the selection of images will display image related filters.

The default entry point for most searches is Everything which will display the standard mixed search engine results. The Google search engine will guess the most appropriate mode, a search for Mercedes videos will therefor display the video mode as the default entry point again with the option to switch to another mode.

It is likely that Google will roll out this new search interface to all users eventually. What’s your opinion on the matter? It will likely be another difficulty change for Google users who lately had to endure the new Google homepage design with the fading links.

Tags: Google, google search, google search results, search engine

Google Me

Martin — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:36:17 +0000

Have you ever “googled” yourself? Chance is you found at least a few websites and resources about yourself even more so if you have deliberately added information about yourself on websites across the Internet. Most users probably do so when they signup for social networking websites such as Facebook or MySpace but information are also provided on personal homepages, business homepages, universities or shopping websites. But not all information are provided deliberately by the user. It can happen that information leak on the Internet or are put up there by malicious users so that everyone who is searching for a person’s name can find that information as well.

What’s the best defense against that? Google thinks it is a good idea to place a profile page in the search results to provide first hand information when someone searches for a name in Google. The system is currently only enabled in the US search and only if someone with an US IP address performs the search in Google.com

Profile information are also only displayed if at least one profile with that name exists. Users who want to create a profile for their name can visit Google Profiles to do so. A Google Account is required to do so.

A Google profile is simply how you present yourself on Google products to other Google users. It allows you to control how you appear on Google and tell others a bit more about who you are. With a Google profile, you can easily share your web content on one central location. You can include, for example, links to your blog, online photos, and other profiles such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and more. You have control over what others see. Your profile won’t display any private information unless you’ve explicitly added it.

Which leads to the question of the day: Have you ever googled yourself? If so, what did you find out?

Tags: Google, google profiles, google search, to google

Lock Safe Search In Google

Martin — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:16:57 +0000

Safe Search is a filter in the Google search engine. By default moderate filtering is applied to all search results which can be changed by the search engine user to strict filtering or no filtering. Especially families with kids but also organizations and businesses use these filters to prevent that inappropriate search results appear in Google search. There was not a way until now however to lock the safe search level which meant that anyone with the know how could change the search filtering level without anyone knowing. The latter is of course only true if no explicit image or text appears on the user’s computer monitor which would be a dead giveaway for the manipulation.

Google now has implemented an option to lock Safe Search and it sounds good on paper. A Google account owner can lock Safe Search so that the filter cannot be modified by future users. Even better is the fact the Google will display colored balls on every search result page which are a visual indicator that Safe Search is still on and locked (good for parents for example to verify that in a glance without giving their children the impression they are snooping on them).

The feature itself is limited however. Google locks Safe Search by placing a cookie on the computer system. This means the lock is only valid for that one operating system and web browser. A user with access to another web browser could bypass the filtering. As could a user with the ability to delete cookies could also bypass the filtering although this would be noticed by the user who configured it in first place.

A simple switch to another web browser will also do the trick. It is a nice effort on the other hand and there is always a loophole to avoid filtering. And if everything fails kids can still visit their friend’s house where the parents might not be as strict.

Tags: Google, google safe search, google search, safe search

Bing Videos And Bing Search Get Updates As Well

Martin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:15:26 +0000

Microsoft this time seems to be dead serious to compete at all levels with the seemingly almighty guys at Google and especially their search engine. Several key services over at Bing were updated today including the already reviewed Bing Maps service. But Bing Maps was but one service that got updated. Microsoft has also updated Bing Search and Bing Videos to make the services more appealing and useful to web users.

Bing Videos for one got a new interface making use of a sidebar navigation for a better and faster browsing experience. Other improvements to the interface include the option to dim the surroundings when a video is played to be able to better focus on the video. New content providers have been and will be added to Bing Videos making the service a very comprehensive source for videos and tv shows from all over the web.

Most of the US tv shows can only by viewed by US users on the other hand which puts a dent to the service for users from outside the US. Read the announcement here for additional information.

Today was also the beginning of the next chapter of Bing Search with improvements to travel, weather and shopping options. One of the interesting options is a search for events in US cities. The search term city events will lead to a standard Bing search results page with the difference that the first result will list events in that city and link to a bigger event listing in case that short listing is not enough.

Other additions include “better results for health conditions, medications, and even hospitals”, search sharing with friends at Facebook and Twitter or better help to plan and book travel. Most of these additions seem to be targeted at US visitors at the moment with the likelihood that they will eventually become available for visitors from other countries as well.

Tags: bing, bing events, bing health, bing search, bing travel, bing videos, search engine

Bing Maps Gets An Update

Martin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:16:43 +0000

Bing Maps has been updated today with several new features and a new look and feel. Most notably in this regard are a new button bar with each button loading a specific feature of Bing Maps. Microsoft has also added some new colors to Bing Maps but those are only the obvious changes to the interface. Among the new features are the option to embed Bing maps into websites allowing website owners or those with posting rights (for example on forums) to post maps that can be customized by location, size and map style.

The performance of Bing Maps was improved in several ways. Microsoft is now serving maps from seven different locations in the world making it faster for the user to access the information requested. The default Bing Maps homepage has seen a size reduction as well from nearly 700 Kilobytes to less than 500 Kilobytes which should be noticeably by and beneficial to low bandwidth connections.

The full list of changes includes:

Draggable Routes – Yes! This is a great (and much requested) feature added to Bing Maps allowing you to generate a route, then in the case that you need to change the route, you can simply grab any part of it and drag it to where you want the route to actually go. To use draggable routes, click the directions link in the welcome pane or the car icon near the bottom of the welcome pane. Enter a start and end, generate a route, then grab anywhere on the route to move the route line. The route will regenerate for you.
Zoom Bar – No longer just a zoom in and zoom out button, the zoom bar allows you to jump to specific zoom levels within predefined settings.
Command Parsing – Want driving directions? Enter “Bellevue, WA to Space Needle” in the Bing Maps search box. Want traffic info? Enter “Seattle Traffic” in the Bing Maps search box.
Embed a Map – You can now take a map view right from Bing Maps and embed it into your site. To do this, you’ll want to click the Share button once your map is where you want it to be. You can copy the embed code from there; or, you can click the Customize View link which will take you to the embeddable map customizer (EMC). The EMC allows you to set a map to the map height and width (small, medium, large or custom); the map type (static or draggable); the map styles (road, aerial, aerial w/ labels); and, add links to Bing Maps for Viewing a Larger Map or Getting Directions. Once you’ve set everything the way you want it, click Generate Code and boom! there’s your code. You copy it, then paste it into your web page and you’ll have the map you wanted.
Dynamic Compute – We’ve moved the processing power closer to the user. Using Microsoft’s ECN, we now have Bing Maps running in data centers in 7 locations around the world. This means wherever you are around the world, you will access Bing Maps from the closest geographic node to where you are physically located.
New Navigation – We also added a subset of features to a button bar along the bottom of the welcome pane. Each button loads features on Bing Maps. Welcome loads the welcome pane; the car loads the route planner; the star loads My Places, formerly called Collections; the envelop loads the ability to share the map with someone via email, copying a URI or embedding the map into a web page (more on that below); the printer icon is for printing; and, stoplight will load a traffic overlay with flow and incident information.
World Wrap – no longer will your Bing Maps experience stop at the international date line. Keep going around, and around, and around…
Diet Bing Maps – The default Bing Maps home page dropped from 678kb to 484kb. It zips through the pipes much faster now.

Bing Maps is a service over at Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

Tags: bing, bing maps, maps, microsoft, search engine

Get Ready For Caffeinated Google Search

Martin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:41:27 +0000

Google set up a search sandbox a while ago showcasing and testing their new search algorithm. The public display served not only to show the world that Google was ready to take on the challenges by new search engines like Microsoft’s Bing but also as a testing ground for webmasters who were encouraged to compare results and let Google know about them.

Many search engine users liked the sandbox search as it was faster and with no noise in the form of advertisement and additional search results that Google likes to add to their normal search engine include results from Google News, Youtube, Google Images or Google Maps.

Users who wanted to load the sandboxed search engine today were greeted with the following text:

Thanks You! We appreciate all the feedback from people who searched on our Caffeine sandbox.

Based on the success we’ve seen, we believe Caffeine is ready for a larger audience. Soon we will activate Caffeine more widely, beginning with one data center. This sandbox is no longer necessary and has been retired, but we appreciate the testing and positive input that webmasters and publishers have given.

So one Google data center is already serving the search results based on the new search algorithm while the large majority is still serving the old. Many users who compared search results between the old and new search engine were not able to find any serious differences. Those that did believed that the search results were better targeted to the search phrase of the user. Google on the other hand seems to be convinced that the caffeinated search algorithm is the better one. Time will tell if that is true.

Tags: Google, google sandbox, google search, search algorithm, search engine

3 Faster Less Obtrusive Google Search Engines

Martin — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:14:52 +0000

There are two main reasons for switching to one of Google’s alternative search interfaces: Speed and Usability. The following three Google search engines utilize the same search index and parameters that the default Google search engine offers with the difference that all four of them are faster, more accessible and less obtrusive when displaying search results. One of the major points of criticism lately has been the additional elements that the standard Google search engine displays on the search results pages. This includes advertisement, sponsored listings, Google Maps, Google News or Youtube results thrown into the mix, something that many search engine users feel completely unnecessary.

Google Sandbox Search

This search engine comes close to the standard Google search engine. It makes use of a similar user interface with the main difference that the search result pages do not display advertisements or other elements that Google likes to add to those pages. [link]

Google XHTML

Google XHTML is a search interface for mobile devices. It can be accessed by desktop computers and normal web browsers. The benefit is a faster interface that displays the search results without additional noise. The search result listings are aligned to the left and contain titles and short descriptions of the contents. [link]

Google IE

Another interface for mobile devices. The IE suggests that it might be related to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in some way. This one the most barebone of them all which especially becomes apparent on the search results pages. The results only consist of the page titles with no description or other information thrown into the mix. This can be confusing if many of the websites listed in the results use the same or a similar title. [link]

Got anything to add? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: Google, google ie, google sandbox, google search, google search engine, google xhtml

Konqueror tips and tricks

Jack Wallen — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:32:11 +0000

If you are familar with KDE you know Konqueror. Konqueror used to be one of the finest file managers on the PC desktop – period. But now KDE has migrated toward a simpler, more user-friendly file manager (Dolphin) and pushed Konqueror to serve as a web-browser only. That does not mean Konqueror can not be used as a file manager. It can. In fact, Konqueror can do many things. From file management, to secure shell gui, to imap connections, and many more tricks. Konqueror is one of those Swiss Army Knife tools that many people over look. Well, we’re not going to overlook this outstanding tool.

In this article I am going to show you a few tips and tricks that you can apply to the Konqueror web browser to make your Konqueror (and KDE) experience even more flexible and powerful than it already is.

KIO Slaves

KDE Input/Output slaves allows Konqueror to take advantage of external applications making it far more usable. Depending on what kio_slave you want to use the input for Konqueror will be different. Let’s take a look at some of the more useful slaves.

fish://

If you start an address with fish:// you are telling Konqueror to make use of the ssh protocol. With this you can connect to a remote ssh server and even copy/paste to that server from within Konqueror. To do this you would enter an address like:

fish://USERNAME@ADDRESS

Where USERNAME is an actual username on the remote machine and ADDRESS is the actual address of the remote machine. You will be prompted for a password, unless you already have this connection set up for passwordless secure shell connections (see “Five handy secure shell tips and tricks“).

imaps://USER@PASSWORD@ADDRESS:PORT

Where:

USER is the actual user name.
PASSWORD is the users password.
ADDRESS is the address of the imap server.
PORT is the port used for the imap server.

Quick search

If you enter gg: linux in the Konqueror address bar you will get a page with the Google results of the string “linux”. Konqueror has a lot of pre-configured quick search shortcuts like this. For example:

gg – Google
fm – Freshmeat
froogle – Froogle
msdn – Microsoft Developer Network
odp – Open Dictionary
tr – Technorati
wp – Wikipedia

You can also create your own by issuing the command kcmshell4 ebrowsing in either the run dialog or a terminal window. In the new window click the New button and then fill out the following information:

Search Provider Name: Give your shortcut a name.
Search URI: The URI the site you are adding uses.
URI Shortcuts: Comma delineated list of shortcuts.

So let’s say I want to create a short cut for searching amazon.com. To do that I would enter the following information:

Name: Amazon
URI: http://www.amazon.com/s?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=\{@}
URI Shorcuts: az,amazon

So now if I want to do a search for the string “Linux” on amazon.com I would just enter:

az: Linux

In the address bar.

Split views

Figure 1

Not only can Konqueror do tabs, it can do split windows. Say you want to do some comparing of windows, or just want to be able to see more than one window at a time. With Konqueror you can split the view either horizontally or vertically by going to the Windows menu and selecting either Horizontal or Vertical and you can have two windows open at once for simple viewing. NOTE: Whichever window has the focus is the window that the address bar will effect. In other words, if you want to change the page on the right pane, click on the right pane and then enter the url in the address bar. If you want to close a pane R will close the active window.

Final thoughts

Konqueror is a very powerful, flexible tool that can be extended well beyond its intentions. Have you found a cool trick that applies to Konqueror as either a web browser or file manager? If so, share it with your fellow Ghacks readers.

Tags: file manager, KDE, kio_slaves, Konqueror, split view browser

Bing And Google Search To Integrate Twitter Results

Martin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:35:40 +0000

Real time search has become a buzzword this year. With Twitter increasing its popularity search engines like Bing or Google Search are aiming to make their search results real time or at least closer to that. We have seen some attempts already. Google for instance has included new time based filters for their search results that allow users to search for new content that has been published in the last hour. And with url hacks it is even possible to drop that figure below the one hour mark (see Google Real Time Search).

Twitter on the other hand adds another dimension to search. Not to every search but to specific search terms that are time related. Think for instance about news of plane crashes, earthquakes and other disasters and basically anything that benefits from real time observations.

Bing has already included Twitter in their search engine. The subpage of Bing displays popular topics on Twitter by default.

A search or a click on a popular tag will display the latest tweets and top links shared by Twitter users about the selected topic.

Google on the other hand has just announced that they will be adding Twitter results to their search engine as well in the coming months. According to the announcement only search terms that can benefit from real time observations.

The main question that neither Microsoft nor Google are addressing at the moment is how the quality of the content is evaluated. Since the content is displayed more or less in real time there is no time for a manual control of the content. How are they going to differentiate between good and bad – true or false – content.

What’s your take on the development?

Tags: bing, google search, real-time search, twitter

Bing Federated Search Connector For Windows 7

Martin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:46:00 +0000

Federated search is one of new features of Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system. The feature integrates the possibility to search external data sources from within Windows Explorer in the same way a local or remote search is performed. Federated search in Windows 7 is enabled through the Open Search standard with a good dozen connectors for popular services like Flickr, Youtube, Google or Yahoo already available for download. One of the latest additions is the Bing federated search connector which adds the option to perform Bing searches in Windows Explorer.

The Bing search connector can be downloaded at Bing’s community portal. It comes as a osdx file that needs to be executed after download. Windows 7 will automatically install the Bing search connector which becomes then available in Windows Explorer.

The search provider is usually listed under the Favorites menu in the left sidebar. A search is performed by typing in the search phrase into the Windows Explorer search form in the right header of the window.

Search results are then displayed in the Windows Explorer window from where they can be opened and accessed. Additional federated search connectors for various online services are available at Redmond Pie.

Tags: bing, bing search, federated search, open search, search connectors, windows 7, windows-explorer

Perform Plain Google Searches Without Video, Image And News Results

Martin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:23:27 +0000

If you perform a Google search nowadays you get mixed search results. Google not only displays the first ten pages that is has in its index for the entered keyword but also image, video and news results. Sometimes ads are also added to the search results and placed on top of everything else.

Some search engine users might want a cleaner search results list without the additional search results that are offered by Google. The Digital Inspiration blog found an interesting alternative url to perform clean Google searches without video, image and news results.

Users who want nothing but the plain top 10 search engine results for a specific keyword can point their web browsers to http://www.google.com/custom to perform a custom search without the additional search results and advertisements that are added to the default Google search.

Google default search:

Google custom search:

It is also possible to add the custom Google search engine to the list of search provides. How this is done depends on the web browser that is being used. A quick overview of how this can be done can be found in the article about Google’s Sandbox search engine here at Ghacks.

Tags: Google, google custom search, google search, search engine

Google Search New Custom Search Options Added

Martin — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:11:56 +0000

One of the latest trends in the search engine market seem to be custom search options, search filters and specialized search parameters. Google has introduced the search options in the main Google search engine a while ago. These were made up of advanced search parameters which have been accessible before (before starting search) and new filters. A click on the Show Options link on a search results page will open the available options in a sidebar.

Google has added new custom search options yesterday which are now accessible in Google Search. The following four options have been added to Google Search:

Past hour and Specific date range: With these tools you can choose to see only the most recent results in our index, or see results from a specific time period. This can be particularly helpful when you’re looking for the freshest information, or if you have some idea of when the information you’re looking for may have been published to the web.
More shopping sites and Fewer shopping sites: Now you can choose “More shopping sites” to show additional commercial pages and display prices from those pages right in the search results. If you’re doing product research and are not quite ready to make a purchase, you can choose to see “Fewer shopping sites” to filter out many of the commercial sites.
Visited pages and Not yet visited: Rediscover pages you’ve visited before by clicking “Visited pages,” or filter out the websites you’ve seen by clicking “Not yet visited.” This can be particularly helpful when you’re researching something you’ve already explored and you want to return right where you left off. To use this option you’ll need to be signed in to your Google Account and have Web History enabled.
Books, Blogs and News: Click on these filters to see results only from these sources. Putting these filters together, along with videos, forums, and reviews, allows you to quickly switch between different source types right on the search results page.

The past hour and specific date range parameter was accessible through url parameters before only. The inclusion in the search options makes it easier to use this parameter. Search engine users can now increase or decrease the amount of shopping sites that are displayed in the Google search results which can be very handy depending on the type of search performed.

Visited pages and not yet visited is only available for users who are logged into their Google account and have web history enabled. This can be interesting to continue a search at a later time without having to revisit pages that have been visited before. Books, blogs and news finally allows to refine search to only see results from these sources. They are similar to the previous source filters which allowed search engine users to only display results from sources that were videos, forums or reviews.

It would be interesting if Google would reveal statistics about these custom search options to see how many search engine users make use of them. Which leads to this question: Have you used the custom search options?

Tags: custom search, Google, google search, search engine, search options

Bing & Ping Preview

Martin — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:07:35 +0000

The Microsoft Bing development team is trying to distinguish their search engine from Google by adding new features to their search engine. The latest feature that the team is developing goes by the name Bing & Ping. It has been designed to offer Bing users better options to share search results. This feature resembles the “social” buttons that are displayed on blogs and other websites. Bing & Ping integrates Facebook, Twitter plus email and copy options in the Bing search engine.

Only specific results, called Bing’s Instant Answers, can be shared this way. This includes translations, sport results, weather conditions, financial information and more.

Microsoft is now offering signups for the Bing & Ping preview.

Thanks for your interest in the Bing & Ping preview. If you want to participate in the preview program, please submit your Windows Live ID. If you do not have a Windows Live ID, you can register for one by going to https://signup.live.com. You will receive a reply confirming your acceptance into Bing & Ping via e-mail to the Windows Live ID you provided. The e-mail will provide additional details on the features we’re testing out, including some examples of how to use them.

Users who are interested to test this new feature can sign up at the Bing & Ping Preview page. Users who signup for the preview will receive an email once the service has been activated for them. The email will contain instructions and examples on how to use the service.

Tags: bing, Bing & Ping, facebook, search engine, twitter

Don’t search, do – with GNOME Do

Jack Wallen — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:55:15 +0000

Recently I wrote an an article covering the Easystroke mouse gesture tool (”Start applications using mouse gestures with Easystroke“.) That article explained how easily you can set up a simple mouse gesture to start an application. In the comments one reader brought up the handy GNOME desktop tool GNOME Do. GNOME Do is one of those tools that, upon using it, you will slap your forehead and exclaim “Why didn’t somebody tell me about this before?” You will say that because your fingers will be left, happily, to their devices free from the shackles of the mouse. From the GNOME Do interface, you can do almost anything: From searching for files to launching applications. If it is on your machine it can be acted upon.

And the best thing is that GNOME Do is just as easy to use as it is to install. And in this tutorial you will learn just that: Installing and using GNOME Do.

Installation

Installing GNOME Do is simple:

Open up your Add/Remove Software application.
Search for “gnome do” (no quotes).
Mark the selection for installation.
Click Apply.

That’s it. After the installation is complete you will find GNOME Do in the Accessories sub-menu of the Applications menu.

Configuring GNOME Do

One of the first things you will want to do (outside of just randomly attempting things with GNOME Do) is to configure GNOME Do. When you start up GNOME Do you will be surprised to see nothing happened. Before you think something is wrong, take a look at your Notification Area. You should see the GNOME Do icon (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

The GNOME Do icon (in the example above) is the first icon to the left edge of the Notification area (Directly to the right of the vertical double dotted lines). You can open GNOME Do by either single clicking that icon or by clicking the default key combination for opening GNOME Do. The default combination is Space Bar. If you’re not sure what the “Super” key is – it’s the Windows key on most keyboards.

Figure 2

When you open up GNOME Do a simple window will appear in the center of your screen (see Figure 2). From that window you will want to click the small drop down in the upper right corner to open up the GNOME Do menu. From this menu select Preferences.

When the Preferences window opens there are three things you should take care of:

From the General tab select “Start GNOME Do at login”.
From the Keyboard tab configure the shortcut you want to use to call up the application.
From the Plugins tab add any plugins you might want included in your GNOME Do setup. You will definitely want to enable the Files and Folders plugin as well as the Locate plugin.

How to use GNOME Do

Using GNOME Do is simple, once you get the hang of it. Here’s how it works.

Enter the key combination to bring up the GNOME Do window.
Type the text for whatever it is you want to start or find.
When the item you are searching for is found, hit the Enter key.

Let’s examine how to find a document on your machine and then open it with OpenOffice. The document will be called ghacks.png. To find and open this file follow these steps:

Figure 3

Open up GNOME Do by hitting Space.
Type “locate” (no quotes).
Hit the Tab button.
Type “ghacks.png”.
Hit Enter.
When the new GNOME Do window opens, click the down arrow on your keyboard until you see the specific file name and click Enter (see Figure 3).

The file will open in the default application for that file type.

Final thoughts

Of course there is so much more you can do with GNOME Do. In upcoming article we will talk about using GNOME Do with Twitter, Web Browsers, Google, and more.

Tags: desktop search, GNOME, GNOME Do, search tools

Bing Visual Search

Martin — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:00:42 +0000

One of the new improvements that Microsoft introduces in their search engine Bing is a Silverlight driven visual search engine. Visual search meaning that pictures will be used to display and navigate the search results instead of text and text links. The benefit is a better search experiment with the limitation that it only works for specific topics and not every search. Microsoft has created roughly 30 different visual search niches in the categories entertainment, famous people, reference, shopping and sports. The shopping category contains the visual search topics cell phones, digital cameras, new cars, handbags and HDTVs.

A click on any topic will open the results in an image grid. The results are automatically sorted. The cell phone results page for instance sorts the different cell phones by brand. Hovering over a cell phone will display a search term in the Bing search box; A click will perform a normal search in Bing for the search term.

Various sorting options are provided in a drop down menu at the top. Cell phones can for example be sorted by Bing popularity or contract price while the movies in theater can be sorted by release date, title, metacritic rating or weekend box office earnings.

The search engine will automatically sort the results without reloading the page. Bing’s visual search can be a comfortable way of exploring specific information. It is handy for Internet users who want to research specific topics like movies that are currently playing in cinema, popular books, top iPhone apps and dog breeds. This is especially a good solution for users who do not know where to look for this information. Internet veterans usually know the websites that they have to open to find the information that they are looking for.

Bing Visual Search (link) is an interesting concept but it is currently limited to a few dozen popular topics, probably to ensure that the quality of the results remains high. It is probably not going to be introduced on a larger scale in the near future.

Update:

Bing Visual Search is only available to visitors who are using the United States version of the search engine (maybe some others but that has not been tested). If another country is shown in the top right corner then a page not found error is displayed. To access visual search users need to change the country to United States.

Tags: bing, bing search, bing visual search, microsoft bing, search engine

Google Real-Time Search

Martin — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:19:41 +0000

Google Search offers several options to limit the search results by a selected time frame. One is available in the advanced search parameters which allows users to search only in results that have been published or updated in the last year, month, week, day. The other becomes available in the newly added Search Options on the search results pages. Options there are similar with the addition of the recent time frame which seems to return results from the last 24 hours as well.

None of them can be considered real-time search results. Ran Geva posted an interesting article over at the Omgili blog which described a way to change the search parameters further to come close to real-time search results in Google. The default Google search result urls contain the qdr:x parameter if the results are filtered by time with x being replaced by d for days, we for weeks, m for months and y for years.

All he did was to replace the x value with n for minutes and s for seconds to get results that have been posted in the last 60 minutes or 60 seconds. It is furthermore possible to add a number behind the n or s value to customize the query further. The parameter qdr:n20 would search for results that have been indexed in the last 20 minutes.

The custom search parameter will be displayed as past minute or past second after performing the search and will persist even when conducing new Google searches. Seconds usually do not yield many results (if any at all) while minutes are usually well indexed already.

Steve Rubel acted quickly and created a bookmarklet to display the Google search results that have been indexed in the last ten minutes.

The bookmarklet can be changed easily to search a different time frame. All that needs to be done is to change the qdr=n10 part in the bookmarklet.

Tags: Google, google real-time search, google search, google search bookmarklet, real time, real-time search, search engine

Microsoft Will Upgrade Its Bing Search Engine This Fall

Martin — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:08:08 +0000

Microsoft’s introduction of its Bing search engine has revived search engine competition it seems. Bing did receive some praise since its introduction and Google has since then reacted by offering search engine users a preview of their upcoming search engine technologies in the form of the sandboxed search engine Caffeine and a limited test run of Ajax powered search which is delivering search results faster to the user.

Twitter has been full of messages about Microsoft’s coming upgrade of their Bing search engine. Most messages suggest a release this fall with some suspecting a release as early as the coming week. Relatively few information are provided about the changes that Microsoft is introducing in Bing 2.0. Some noteworthy ones are:

Silverlight powered Bing 2.0 on its way this month?: That’s the message coming out of yesterdays annual company

BING 2.0 terrific !! watch out guys ! bing + silverlight in maps = amazing !! goodbye google

It has to be noted that the tweets are coming out of Microsoft’s company meeting which suggest that most original information are provided by Microsoft employees. Microsoft on the other hand did not officially comment on the messages that have been posted.

It is also unknown if the search result quality has been improved as well or if only selected modules of the search engine have been optimized and improved. Guess we have to wait at least another week before we know for sure. What would you like to see in the new version of the search engine?

Tags: bing, bing 2.0, bing update, microsoft, microsoft bing, search engine

Did Google Just Increase The Font Size Of Google Search?

Martin — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:05:51 +0000

It is not often that Google changes something on the front-end of Google Search. The only element that the Google developers change regularly is the logo that adds a little bit of change to the search engine every other day or so. Changes to the rest of the front-end on the other hand are rare and it came as a surprise that the font size of the search form has been increased significantly. This has been tested with various web browsers like Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer which all confirmed the change. We first thought it was caused by a Firefox add-on or Greasemonkey script or related to the Firefox update yesterday but this is apparently not the case.

The font size of the Google search result pages on the other hand do not look like they have been changed as well. The new font size looks and feels alien on first glance which can be attributed to the fact that the font size has not changed in years.

Not everyone might experience the new font size. Reasons for this could be that Google is testing the font size in Google Search and showing it only to some of the search engine visitors. Another reason might be that Google is adjusting the font size based on the visitors screen resolution.

Let us know if you see the larger font size in Google Search as well and what you think of it.

Update: Users who prefer the old font size can install a Greasemonkey script to revert back to the old font size.

Tags: Google, google search, google search font, search engine

Why Google Search Results Can Be Different

Martin — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:40:58 +0000

The results that Google search is displaying to a search engine user can be different depending on several factors including the web browser, geographic location, web history or or data center that is serving the search results. Search results can be different for the same user on the same computer depending on several factors that will be discussed in the following paragraphs.

Data centers and location:

Google operates several data centers that serve Google search results. The main reasons for this are load balancing, access speed and better manageability of the infrastructure. Date centers are updated with new search algorithms and it can happen that some serve data based on the old algorithm while others already use the new algorithm to display data. The location of the data center in the world can also play a role in the search results that are displayed. It is also important to note that Google tries to serve country specific results to a user unless that user switches to another Google search engine (e.g. from co.uk to com).

Web History:

Users who are logged in while using the Google search engine will see different results than if they are logged out. This can be attributed to the fact that Google is monitoring search engine usage of logged in users. One purpose of this is to serve search results based on previous web searches by that user. This means that it is possible to see completely different search results if a user is logged in or not.

Recent searches:

Google may change the search results based on the searches conducted by a user in a period of 30 minutes. This feature is called recent searches. What it does is that searches are stored in a cookie for about 30 minutes giving Google access to recent searches. These recent searches may then be used to create custom search results pages based on these searches. These recent searches are displayed to both logged in and logged out users. Closing the web browser or clearing the cookies will remove the specific cookie so that Google will not have access to these recent searches if the user is not logged in.

We take into account whether a particular query followed on the heels of another query. Because recent search activity provides valuable context for understanding the meaning behind your searches, we use it to customize your results whenever possible, regardless of whether you’re signed in or signed out. In order to customize your results and show you the customization details, we keep recent searches in a cookie on your browser for approximately 30 minutes. After approximately 30 minutes, this cookie is removed from your browser. Completely closing your browser will remove this cookie immediately.

On rare occasions, recent searches may be kept on your browser for a different time duration as Google experiments with improving quality. In all cases, recent searches are not kept on your browser for more than 24 hours and the link to the search customization page will not be accessible after approximately 30 minutes from the time of the search.

Verdict: Google tries to provide custom search results to users of their search engine whenever possible. This raises a few concerns and some problems for users and webmasters. Users might not like the fact that Google is recording their search behavior. It is possible to reduce the amount of information that Google can record by searching without being logged in and clearing cookies regularly. Webmasters on the other hand have a harder time evaluating their website’s position in the search engine.

Tags: Google, google results, google search, google tips, google web history, googlerecent searches

ScreenTunes Finds Movie and TV Show Music

Martin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 05:48:21 +0000

What is the name of the song they are playing now in this movie? I guess everyone has asked that question at some point in time only to find out that it was very difficulty to get an answer unless a movie soundtrack was released with the song in question being on the record. Most of the time however it is no that easy which means it can lead to strenuous research on the Internet to discover the song title.

ScreenTunes is a new music search engine that tries to help the user who is looking for a name of a song that has been played in the movie or that was featured in a tv show. It’s a basic music search engine that can be used to search for songs, lyrics or music in movies and tv shows. The user has to switch to the movie search option that is located beneath the search form on the website before the search for a song or songs of a movie or tv show can be conducted.

The music search engine will display results immediately if a correct movie title has been entered in the search form. It will otherwise display movie suggestions (did you mean..) of which one has to be selected. Movie and tv show music are divided into two tabs. It is important to switch to the TV Shows tab to find music from tv shows.

Entering Bourne for example will not only display the three Jason Bourne movies as an option but also several others while a search for Dawson’s Creek will not display any results in the movie tab but the right tv show in the TV Shows tab.

Music from those movies and tv shows is then displayed in the search results including the music title, artist (if known) and three links. Many of the songs can be listened to right away by clicking on the Listen button. This will open a Grooveshark player on the website to play the song right there.

The two other options are to open the page of the song at Amazon or iTunes to purchase it. Results can vary a lot from none or only a few songs to dozens of songs. ScreenTunes (via Download Squad) offers an interesting option to users who want to identify a movie or tv show song.

Tags: identify song, movie music, movie soundtracks, screentunes, soundtrack, tv show music

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