MetaFilter posts tagged with Google and search

The Next Big Breakout

netbros — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 06:16:34 -0800

An Omnivorous Google Is Coming. "Imagine what it would be like if there was a tool built into the search engine which translated my search query into every language and then searched the entire world’s websites," she says. "And then invoked the translation software a second and third time – to not only then present the results in your native language, but then translated those sites in full when you clicked through.” Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president for search products and user experience, shares her unparalleled insights into the future of internet search engines. "She divides the focus areas for Google into three parts: modes, media and personalisation. Modes refers to the ways we can access search – the latest addition to which has been Google Goggles – an Android mobile tool which enables people to search using pictures instead of words. Users focus their phone's camera on an object, and Google compares elements of that picture against its database of images. When it finds a match, Google will tell you the name of what you're looking at, and provide a list of results linking through to the relevant web pages and news stories."

Google Swirl

boo_radley — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:27:22 -0800

Google Swirl is a new Google Labs experiment that lets a user search through images in a "visual and semantic" way, allowing users to search through radiating treeviews of conceptually related images. (requires flash)

How Google Plans to Stay Ahead in Search

geoff. — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 12:50:02 -0800

"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?" CEO Eric Schmidt on the economy, “If you go back to last year, we began to see slowdown in U.K. quite early. We initially thought it was an error in our system. We made adjustments, and it wasn’t until September and October, when it became clear that it was a global collapse. From our perspective, the low point was somewhere in the spring…somewhere in May or June.”

Top things the < 18 set looks for on internets

ShadePlant — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:49:34 -0800

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?)

Google x Google

Zarkonnen — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:13:05 -0800

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. Being experimental, Squared does well on some things but (perhaps amusingly) less well on others. (The precise results keep on changing due to curation and whatnot, so things may have changed by the time you read this.) The idea of returning structured search results is hardly new or unique to Google, of course.

Gang Bing

boo_radley — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 06:46:06 -0800

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.

Two Google searches use as much energy as boiling the kettle for a cup of tea

nthdegx — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:39:25 -0800

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."

Be careful drawing conclusions from this data

sambosambo — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 04:50:39 -0800

StateStats: Explore the popularity of search queries in U.S. states StateStats shows you how popular a particular Google search is in each state. It also shows correlation with other state rankings such as obesity, income, or unemployment. Here are some examples to get you started, and remember that correlation does not imply causation and all that. MetaFilter/Bacon Porn/Church Christmas/Hanukkah Tequila/Vodka/Rum/Whiskey/Wine Ghosts/UFOs/Bigfoot/Elvis

But will it work on the subset of searches sent via avian carriers?

grouse — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:03:26 -0800

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.

Search like it's 2001...

HaloMan — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:35:47 -0800

To celebrate their 10th birthday Google have brought back their oldest available index dating back to 2001.

Individual Google

tkolar — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:47:25 -0800

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.

Google Search Engine Ranking Factors v2

Soup — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:37:23 -0800

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.

cuil kids?

Ynoxas — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:24:24 -0800

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. Other reports (Slashdot) show that others are having trouble with access as well. Surely the people behind this have enough experience at Google to realize you have to have orders of magnitude of capacity above what you think you need to make sure all search is fast, accurate, and error free. I can't take this seriously if they can't even handle first day traffic. Techcrunch has a different take on breadth. And all black vs all white background. Really?

Sorting it all out

Toekneesan — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 07:46:09 -0800

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. See also, A Discussion With Anthony Grafton, The Nutty Professors, and Grafton's lecture on Faustus

Google for Google's Sake

armoured-ant — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:55:14 -0800

If Google was designed for Google.

Googling the Australian Federal Election

Jimbob — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 18:57:09 -0800

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.

I could search a plate of beans

grouse — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 06:40:02 -0800

Add keyboard shortcuts to Google results pages. One of several new experimental search styles provided by Google Labs.

Rewriting history

jbickers — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 18:03:52 -0800

"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?

My Patent Is More Famous Than Your Patent

jonp72 — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 07:04:06 -0800

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.

Security is for Suckers

fenriq — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 22:38:13 -0800

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.

A9 goes 'soft

grobstein — Sun, 14 May 2006 11:42:04 -0800

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]

Google result Limits

sluglicker — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 08:13:45 -0800

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.

It's deja vu all over again?

clevershark — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 11:55:51 -0800

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?

Google Zeitgeist 2005

Mwongozi — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 14:50:32 -0800

Google Zeitgeist 2005
World Affairs Nature Movies Celebrities Phenomena

Microsoft did what now?

jon_kill — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 11:09:41 -0800

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"?