"We ran over 5,000 experiments last year. Probably 10 experiments for every successful launch. We launch on the order of 100 to 120 a quarter. We have dozens of people working just on the measurement part. We have statisticians who know how to analyze data, we have engineers to build the tools. We have at least five or 10 tools where I can go and see here are five bad things that happened." Udi Manber, Google’s vice-president of technology, explains the business of running a search department. "It takes a very, very good engineer about two years to really understand search." From a surprisingly candid series of articles detailing the business of Google, "Can Google Stay on Top of the Web?" [more inside]
posted by geoff. on Oct 10, 2009 - 21 comments

Top 100 search terms of the <18 crowd during summer. If you're Glenn Quagmire, don't read this. All others, continue! An article with at least superficial credibility (they admit kids search for porn, etc.) about what kids, tweens and teens search for online. Randomness includes Megan Fox, Walmart, Youtube and Naked Girls. (And Craigslist. What the hell do kids need on Craigslist?)
posted by ShadePlant on Aug 14, 2009 - 75 comments

Google has released an experimental search tool, Google Squared, that presents search results in the form of a table. Each column represents some attribute or dimension of the things returned - for example, searching for US presidents yields a column for date of birth, and rows for Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, etc. [more inside]
posted by Zarkonnen on Jun 5, 2009 - 70 comments

Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, goes beta. Cribbed from live.com, the layout for bing is... strangely familiar. Early reviews are mixed, with mixed results, mostly noting that the results less useful than google, especially when it comes to google.
posted by boo_radley on Jun 1, 2009 - 173 comments

Revealed: the environmental impact of Google searches - "Physicist Alex Wissner-Gross says that performing two Google searches uses up as much energy as boiling the kettle for a cup of tea."
posted by nthdegx on Jan 11, 2009 - 74 comments

StateStats: Explore the popularity of search queries in U.S. states [more inside]
posted by sambosambo on Dec 4, 2008 - 40 comments

Google Flu Trends brings us epidemiology through search analytics. The prevalence of certain search terms seems to be a good predictor of CDC flu reports a couple of weeks later. The New York Times has a story on this project.
posted by grouse on Nov 11, 2008 - 21 comments

To celebrate their 10th birthday Google have brought back their oldest available index dating back to 2001.
posted by HaloMan on Sep 30, 2008 - 110 comments

Things [blank] people like. New search engine RushmoreDrive is a first step into the waters of Identity Based searching. Specifically, it weighs your demographic heavily when ordering your search results.
posted by tkolar on Aug 19, 2008 - 33 comments

Google Search Engine Ranking Factors v2 "represents the collective wisdom of 37 leaders in the world of organic search engine optimization. Together, they have voted on the various factors that are estimated to comprise Google's ranking algorithm." The highest ranked factor is Keyword Use in Title Tag.
posted by Soup on Aug 18, 2008 - 56 comments

Cuil is a new search engine developed by former Google employees, and claims to index 3x more pages than Google. CNN Money story has the basics. My attempts were met with timeouts. [more inside]
posted by Ynoxas on Jul 28, 2008 - 189 comments

Future Reading. Anthony Grafton explores what we can learn about the future of the text from the history of libraries, publishers, and the sorting of books. [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan on Nov 1, 2007 - 8 comments

If Google was designed for Google.
posted by armoured-ant on Oct 16, 2007 - 36 comments

Google launches a site dedicated to the upcoming Australian Federal Election with Youtube channels from each party, electoral boundaries integrated into Google Maps, a search engine to allow you to view what each candidate has said on a range of issues, from immigration to interest rates, news from your electorate, and graphs of media activity on candidates and issues. Australians have been lacking a comprehensive political resource like the UK's The Work For You, and Google has brought it one step closer. Unfortunately, many of the resources are in the form of gadgets you add to your iGoogle homepage, rather than standalone applications.
posted by Jimbob on Sep 16, 2007 - 29 comments

Add keyboard shortcuts to Google results pages. One of several new experimental search styles provided by Google Labs.
posted by grouse on Jun 6, 2007 - 22 comments

"Web History helps deliver more personalized search results based on what you've searched for on Google and which sites you've visited." Google unveils Web History, a new feature to help you "view and manage your web activity." You can also get an idea of what sites you visit frequently, broken down by time of day, and search across the full text of pages you've visited. "If you remember seeing something online, you'll be able to find it faster and from any computer with Web History. " What could possibly go wrong?
posted by jbickers on Apr 25, 2007 - 26 comments

Google Patent Search can be a gold mine for a historical trivia. See the design for bucket seats patented by Steve McQueen, the secret communication system co-created by Hedy Lamarr that paved the way for the frequency hopping used by modern cell phones, the disposable infant garment made by Jamie Lee Curtis, the interactive music generation system made by Thomas Dolby of "She Blinded Me With Science" fame, and other unusual celebrity patents made by inventors that range from Abraham Lincoln to Zeppo Marx.
posted by jonp72 on Apr 7, 2007 - 15 comments

The Best Hiding Place is Right Out in the Open?
Yes, its a simple Google search. But it returns confidential pdf's and pages from all over the internet. Business plans, powerpoint presentations and other naughty bits exposed to, well, anyone who finds it.
Oops.
posted by fenriq on Sep 6, 2006 - 49 comments

A9 gets MS? Amazon's search tool / portal, formerly powered by Google, is now using Microsoft's Windows Live search service. I first noticed when my image results went missing (which sucks, but I still use it for the incentive program). Does this mean MS is shifting out of the half-assery phase of its search strategy? What happens when its adCenter keyword program opens up? [commentary]
posted by grobstein on May 14, 2006 - 10 comments

Google must know exactly what you're you're looking for, right? Unfortunately, they limit the results of your query to 1000. If you're doing research on crack whores, you'll get 2,800,000 results. If the page you want is at 14,673, you're out of luck. But there's still hope for finding what you need in this vast, uncharted web.
posted by sluglicker on Mar 24, 2006 - 20 comments

Is Google the new Netscape? With GOOG having taken a tumble Wednesday and falling more than $12 so far today, it's not unreasonable to ask... also why is Gmail still in beta when I've been using it for over a year now?
posted by clevershark on Feb 3, 2006 - 53 comments

Google Zeitgeist 2005
World Affairs Nature Movies Celebrities Phenomena
posted by Mwongozi on Dec 20, 2005 - 25 comments

It's long been known that if you type "failure" into Google and hit "I'm feeling lucky", you get this page. Haha. Funny. The phenomenon is explained here. Now, Microsoft's live.com went public recently. Guess what page it returns as the number 1 result for "failure"?
posted by jon_kill on Nov 2, 2005 - 34 comments

Even though I've been using Google as a start page for the past five years, this exhaustive list of Google search tips still had loads of stuff I didn't know about.
posted by mathowie on Sep 29, 2005 - 18 comments

Google Blog Search -- in beta, of course. Works by crawling blogs' RSS feeds. Should Technorati be nervous?
posted by mcwetboy on Sep 14, 2005 - 36 comments

Google Live Search
A Greasemonkey Script that enables you to watch your google results come in live, as you type the search terms. Mesmerizing, time-wasting, and possibly useful.
Greasemonkey and Firefox required.
posted by Edible Energy on Aug 22, 2005 - 32 comments

Google blacklists CNET reporters? An article about privacy issues that highlighted the potential for abuse if logs of search terms linked with IP addresses are combined by search companies with address and phone data, angered Google CEO Eric Schmidt enough to blacklist CNET reporters for a year, at least according to the bottom of this CNET story. The article begins with information about Schmidt found via Google searches, and goes on to "question Google's ability to adequately balance the heavy burden of safeguarding consumer privacy rights with the pull toward intermingling and mining data for ever more lucrative targeted advertising."
posted by mediareport on Aug 7, 2005 - 18 comments

Google demos their SMS capability . Personally, I have used Google via Wap/GPRS on my mobile for years. Now, quick definitions, telephone numbers, and calculations are available via SMS, too. Great for geeks on the move - but will Joe Q Bloggs catch on?
posted by SharQ on Jul 11, 2005 - 19 comments

Yahoo gets social. Yahoo's new search is designed around your contact list. Save a few bookmarks with some notes and the next time anyone within two degrees of you searches on that topic, they'll see your bookmarks above random search results. Oh, and it's got tags too. Will this kill search engine gaming? What's Google going to do to compete, buy delicious and incorporate that?
posted by mathowie on Jun 28, 2005 - 28 comments

Google is watching you.... "My Search History lets you easily view and manage your search history from any computer." Given the continuing concerns about Google's respect for privacy, is this a good thing?
posted by jefgodesky on Apr 21, 2005 - 43 comments

So Google is now accepting video submissions to their Google Video search. But according to this blogger, Google's terms of service (which you have to create an account to view) are excessive. And I think he might be right.
posted by JPowers on Apr 14, 2005 - 22 comments

It's not Yahoo, it's not Google... it's Yagoohoogle! Quickly prove or disprove your favorite search engine conspiracy theories!
posted by AlexReynolds on Apr 6, 2005 - 17 comments

Customized Google News , launched today, requires no registration, unlike Yahoo News or MSNBC News or even clean-format My Way News. A revolution in customization without commitment, based on Google's largely no-registration strategy. One giant leap in Google commoditization. I'd link you to the Google Blog entry, but although it reached my RSS reader it disappeared from the blog.
posted by NickDouglas on Mar 10, 2005 - 40 comments

Pupna is "the search engine puppy that retrieves EXACTLY what you are searching for (and absolutely nothing else!)" ;-)

This is a simple yet rather humorous search engine parody - are there any other good ones out there?
posted by Metauser on Feb 28, 2005 - 20 comments

whoa again. Amazon introduced "Search inside the book" a while ago, but now the searchmasters are doing it.
posted by louigi on Feb 14, 2005 - 28 comments

Google video search. Search transcripts of recent television shows. Catch up on your Judge Judy.
posted by eatitlive on Jan 24, 2005 - 44 comments

filetype:doc For those of you who don't know, Google allows you to limit your searches to files of a certain type. It reminds me of the world wide web of '93 in a lot of ways, before the web become so commercialized and vapid. Little bits of randomness.
posted by delmoi on Jan 19, 2005 - 13 comments

Find 753 unsecured webcams in 0.09 seconds. Forum posters use this Google search to find cameras, mostly security cams, unintentionally publically broadcasting. Hurry before the cam's as hard to control as "Just Letters."
posted by NickDouglas on Jan 4, 2005 - 152 comments

Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista, others under attack? Despite all the big IPO news about Google, the bigger news today is that it doesn't work. Slap on an age-discrimination suit while we're at it, and potential trouble for the IPO. Have Larry and Sergei finally pissed off the wrong people?
posted by mrgrimm on Jul 26, 2004 - 31 comments

Increase your Google-Fu. I've been a user of everyone's favorite search engine since it was in beta, but still failed on searches where others succeeded. It seems that the coolest search operators aren't documented on google.com at all. Now I can aspire to find scary and interesting stuff on the Web.
posted by Daddio on Jul 4, 2004 - 16 comments

Gmail is too Creepy "Dear Gmail user: Due to privacy considerations, we cannot respond unless you resend your email from a different account."
posted by o2b on Jun 10, 2004 - 53 comments

Mining the Deep Web. Google indexes 4 billion pages, but there are hundreds of billions of documents out there in the Deep Web that are effectively unreachable by search engines because they are locked in databases or are unsearchable media. It looks like Yahoo is going to start giving us a peek by providing unified access to a wide variety of sites that are ordinarily only searchable by their own custom search engines.
posted by badstone on Mar 2, 2004 - 12 comments

Googlearchy: How a few heavily-linked sites dominate politics on the Web. [pdf file] Political communities exhibit winner-take-all properties. Surprising?
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy on Jan 8, 2004 - 3 comments

Spears Reigns Again on Internet . Lycos, America Online and Yahoo! all have their top ten of '03 lists out. Google Zeitgeist wasn't mentioned in the Hollywood Reporter Article, but it's always worth a look.
posted by Blake on Dec 21, 2003 - 10 comments

Google as voyeur Interesting use of Google technology. Anyone find anything really interesting? Pretty addictive... [via MilkAndCookies]
posted by pizzasub on Aug 6, 2003 - 62 comments

Google: the God that failed? is the title of the article on MSN Slate. All of us know Microsoft is working on a new search engine technology. Till date everyone considers Google to be the Guru. MS obviously doesn't like that, so what it is doing? Well, the same thing it always does - to survive competition, eliminate it. The reasons being given by the article are pretty silly and more aimed at 'faming down' Google.
posted by jayantk on Jul 22, 2003 - 39 comments

Bananaslug is a serendipitous search engine. It uses the google API to mix your search term with a random seed and returns results that are probably orthogonal to what you were looking for. Minutes of fun.
posted by walrus on Jul 14, 2003 - 5 comments

Is Google God? "While you were sleeping after 9/11, not only has the process of technological integration continued, it has actually intensified — and this will have profound implications." "...Google, combined with Wi-Fi, is a little bit like God. God is wireless, God is everywhere and God sees and knows everything. Throughout history, people connected to God without wires. Now, for many questions in the world, you ask Google, and increasingly, you can do it without wires, too." [NYTimes]
posted by jacknose on Jun 30, 2003 - 23 comments

The Turbo10.com search engine beta is back online. Here's why it will make Google its bitch.
posted by Space Coyote on Jun 6, 2003 - 32 comments

Google, everyone's favourite search-engine, is planning a seperate category for Blogs, to help searchers "filter out blog noise," from primary search results.
posted by Blue Stone on May 9, 2003 - 45 comments