Google

Google News Looks To Improve Quality Of Search Results
Google is busily hatching plans to dramatically improve the results of internet news searches by introducing a system that ranks articles by quality rather than just their date and relevance to search terms.
Currently, typing something like ‘Iraq’ into Google, will generate zillions of “hits”, ranked in order of relevance or by date, so that the most recent or most focused appear at the top of a monster list.
The problem with this approach is that news stories from more authoritative sources – say the CNN or the BBC – can be knocked off the first page of results because they are not as recent or as relevant to the keywords typed into the search box.
Google hopes to address this problem by building a smartypants database that will compare the track record and credibility of global news sources and adjust the ranking of any search results accordingly.
The database will do its thang by continually monitoring the number of stories from all news sources while making a note of average story length, number with bylines, the number of the news agencies cited, along with how long they have been in business.
And there’s more! Google’s database will also record the number of staff a news source employs, monitor the volume of internet traffic to its website and check its international appeal by counting the number of countries accessing the site.
A big box stuffed full of levers and blinking lights will then absorb all these parameters, weigh them according to a clever-clogs formulae it is constructing, and then distil them down to create a single value.
We like to think that this number – then used to rank the results of any news search – is noisily outputted on a long string of ticker tape, but we might be getting a bit carried away.
Google’s ambitious system was unveiled by patents filed in the US and around the world in 2003 which revealed that the same methodology could be employed to rank other search results, such as sales and services.
Campaigners and activists may not welcome this news though, as Google’s proposed system suggests that it will be harder for independent, non-mainstream news sites to appear in the top rankings.
One of the beauties of the web is that of you type in the name of the uber-corporates Nestle into Google, the Nestlé boycott campaign appears on the first page of results.
I wouldn’t like that to change.
Google
4 May, 2005
Google Video Search Adds 14 US TV Channels
Google continues to sink its teeth into the potentially lucrative TV search business, with the announcement that it has added 14 new channels to its Google Video service.
The search titans are yet to declare the full line-up, but Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Travel Channel, Discovery Health Channel, and CNN are among the new channels covered by the service.
Google Video archives television content by searching the closed captioning text of TV programs and returning a selection of still frames with matching dialogue excerpts.
Due to unsettled licensing terms, Google cannot provide full transcripts or video clips, although their website teasingly suggests that we “stay tuned” for news.
Although the service is in beta, Google have said that programming will be expanded internationally when work is completed in the U.S. television market.
Development of the TV indexing service is being developed at the same time as Google’s new ‘video blogging’ distribution platform.
This lets video makers upload their videos to Google’s servers and maintain control over distribution rights, ultimately letting users search, preview, purchase and play videos through Google.
Naturally, Google’s arch-nemesis Yahoo is also competing for a slice of the juicy TV and video search pie, offering a similar service that indexes the text surrounding video links, including metadata.
Google Video
3 May, 2005
Yahoo’s My Web Upgrades Personal Search Tools
The battle between Google and Yahoo continues to heat up, with Yahoo ramping up the feature set of its ‘My Web’ suite of personal search tools.
My Web is a personal search engine that lets users save, recall and share resources with others using a selection of Yahoo tools, such as email and IM (instant messaging).
“Yahoo Search is focused on providing innovative, useful technologies that enable people to find, use, share, and expand knowledge,” boomed Salim Mitha, director, Yahoo Search, UK & Ireland.
“My Web is the next step in our vision of integrating search, personal search and community by providing users an easy way to have their own personal web search experience that incorporates the best of the Web and what matters most to them.”
Yahoo claim that their service is “better than bookmarks”, with users able to save an exact copy of a page along with the link, so that saved content will always be there when users return to the page.
Users can store thousands of pages, with tools allowing users to organise and search the content and access it from any computer.
Shared pages can be published using RSS (Rich Site Summary) with users given the option of creating public links pages.
My Web users will soon be able to share data with the Yahoo 360 social network, which allows users to share pictures, music and other data.
Yahoo’s search history tool bears more than a passing similarity to the one released by Google last week and reflects the fierce competition between the two companies.
Yahoo are hoping that these new features will send people flocking to their portal services and thus generate lots and lots of lovely advertising revenue.
UPDATE: Thanks to Steve Rioux for getting in touch, telling us of a very similar service he started almost a year ago called “Smart Note”. You can find it at Klogger.com
Yahoo My Web
28 April, 2005
Google AdWords Move Up A Gear
In a quest to blast their already soaring profits further up into the stratosphere, Google will test a cost-per-impression bidding model for AdWords ads, letting advertisers specify groups of sites or specific sites in Google’s ad network.
Instead of the current cost-per-clickthrough method used for text listings on its search and content networks, advertisers would set a maximum cost-per-thousand impressions price.
Google said it would operate a single auction to determine which ad to show based on the effective cost per thousand (CPM).
Advertisers would have to bid a minimum of US$2 (£1.04/€1.54) to reach a thousand people, while competing against other promoters for the same inventory, potentially leading to lucrative price wars for popular keywords, Web sites or categories.
The site-targeted ads will include static banner ads as well as animated formats – a move sure to annoy hapless surfers already weary of wriggling, spinning and rotating gizmos.
Google has, however, promised limitations on the animated advertising fluff that can appear on their adverts, with blinking ads that continuously loop already declared verboten.
Advertisers will be able to manage ads from their Google AdWords account and create their own “ad networks” by entering the URLs or themes and topics of sites where they’d like to slap up their adverts.
Google will then produce a list of suggested sites (along with a maximum number of impressions for each site), letting advertisers select the sites to run their ads.
The advertising space will come in four formats – banners, skyscrapers, wide skyscrapers and leaderboards – with Google checking submitted ads for “appropriateness”.
The search engine heavyweights are hoping that the approach will appeal to advertisers who are fussy about where their brand appears or are aiming for a certain niche demographic.
“This is the first step toward meeting as many of our advertisers’ needs as possible,” said Tim Armstrong, Google’s vice president of advertising sales.
Google’s move comes as arch-rivals Yahoo prepare a significant expansion of its own service to place ads on other websites, also expected to include graphical ads.
Google
25 April, 2005
Google Profits Up Fivefold
Champagne corks were popping like manic machine gun fire at Google yesterday as the company reported a thumping fivefold increase in profits in the first quarter.
The Californian search giant purred loudly as it revealed that net income for the quarter ended 31 March, based on generally accepted accounting principles, was $369 million (£193/€282m) or $1.29 (£0.67/€0.98) a share, compared with a measly $64 million (£33.5m/€49m) or 24 cents a share, for the same period a year ago.
Naked execs excitedly rolled around in beds covered in dollar notes* as revenues for the quarter racked up to $1.26 billion (£0.65bn/€0.96bn), a massive 93 percent increase from the previous year.
“This was a very strong quarter for Google,” revelled Eric Schmidt, chief executive for Google, “We continue to execute well and we have been able to take full advantage of the growth in online advertising.”
Internet advertising revenue as a whole is becoming a large, well-fed cash cow, increasing by 32 percent last year to just under $9.6 billion (£5.02bn/€7.34bn), compared with $7.3 billion (£3.81m/€5.58m) in 2003, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
Google’s own sites, which rely heavily on paid search results and on users clicking on ads, brought home $657 million (£343.6m/€501.7m) – 52 percent of the company’s total revenues and a 116 percent increase over the same quarter a year ago.
Revenues generated from Google’s partner sites through its AdSense programs generated $584 million, or 47 percent of revenues, – a hefty 75 percent increase over partner-related revenues a year ago.
They’ve also been bulk-buying new desks and chairs and introducing crowd control around the water cooler at Google, with the company hiring another 461 employees since the end of the fourth quarter last year, bringing the total up to 3,482 full-time employees.
(*we may be exaggerating slightly here)
Google
22 April, 2005
Google Introduces Local Search To UK
Web search goliaths Google have delivered a large size nine up the rear end of their fierce rivals Yahoo by being the first to launch a local search service in Britain.
Like its popular US counterpart, Google’s local search service will offer maps and driving directions, and is their first such offering in Europe.
Now in public beta, the service is offered in partnership with the UK commercial telephone directory company Yell, who provide the business phone numbers and addresses.
Users can find local services by simply typing in their query into two boxes, labelled, “what” and “where”.
For example, typing in ‘cameras’ and ‘W1’ will produce a list of camera shops in the London W1 area, complete with addresses, phone numbers, a map flagging up the locations and a clickable link for more info.
“It’s the first time we’re bringing local search to a country outside North America,” said Kate Burns, ad sales and operations manager for Google in Britain, declining to give details about launches elsewhere in Europe.
The cooperation with a telephone directories company is unique to Britain, Burns said.
Frustrated Frenchmen and befuddled Belgians were left to mull over their fate with this enigmatic statement: “We take our European audience very seriously, (but) we’ve got nothing to announce this time.”
Local search is the big hot potato for Web search providers, who are salivating at the prospect of a nice new advertising niche opening up.
Global search advertising revenue is already sending cash tills into overdrive, with US investment bank Piper Jaffray estimating spending to rise to US$7.9 billion (£4.1BN/€6bn) in 2005 from US$5.5 billion (£4.1bn/€4.2bn) in 2004 – with most of the growth coming from international expansion and higher volume.
Google has also unveiled its Google SMS (Short Message Service) in the UK. This service enables users to send queries as text messages from a mobile phone and get information local business, driving directions and dictionary definitions. There’s also a facility to compare online product prices with high street ones.
Phone users will be charged with normal SMS text tariffs for the service.
Google local
Google SMS.
21 April, 2005
Google Unveils Mobile Local Search
Google is making its local-search service available to mobile-toting users, offering maps and driving directions optimised for the wee screen.
The nifty service – currently being publicly tested – lets nomadic users find local restaurants, stores and other businesses using their Web-enabled mobiles/PDAs equipped with suitable XHTML (Extensible HTML)-enabled browsers.
Using the service is simplicity itself, with a simple interface offering two boxes to enter “what” and “where” search terms, a search button and a link to get driving directions.
If you’re gasping for a Budweiser beer in Brooklyn, simply type ‘bar’ in the first box and the area’s zip code in the second and you’ll be presented with a helpful list of ten hostelries, with a ‘next’ button offering more locations.
Each search result offers the name, address and phone number of the bar and the distance from your location (sadly the service is currently only available for US and Canadian services).
As with Google local search results, clicking on the link for a result takes you to a page offering more detail about the business (there’s not much there at the moment, though).
Telephone numbers are displayed as a hyperlink, and if the users’ phone supports the facility, clicking on the link will dial the listed telephone number (unlike some local search services, there is no additional charge for this).
At the top of the page, a small map shows the locations of the bars listed, with each marked with a pushpin-like icon. A set of text links below lets you zoom in and pan around the local area.
Basic driving instructions can also be obtained by inputting your start and end addresses.
Naturally, such a genuinely useful service suggests a host of revenue earning possibilities, but Georges Harik, director of product management for Google declined to discuss future plans for sponsored listings, pay-per-call advertisements or other potential enhancements to the local mobile service.
Instead, the cryptic chappie stated that Google “plans to do whatever would be useful” for users of the service.
Local search services are set to be the big hot potato of 2005, with the Kelsey Group reporting that local search ad spending hit US$162 million (£85m/€125m) in 2004.
The local advertising market is predicted to reach US$5.1 billion in the United States by 2009, with local search advertising accounting for about two-thirds of the spend.
With Google’s arch-rivals, Yahoo, already offering a mobile search service, we can look forward to a glorious bun fight as the search engine giants ramp up the feature sets to woo customers. Bring it on!
Google Mobile
Google Local
Yahoo Local
12 April, 2005
Google Launches Q&A Service
Google has started dishing out factual answers for some queries at the top of its results page, thus sparing click-weary users the hassle of navigating to other sites to look up the information.
For example, if a user keen to discover more about the greatest country in the world enters the query, “what is the capital of Wales”, Google will serve up the first paragraph from a wikipedia feature on Cardiff, along with a link to the originating page.
Typing in separate requests for the populations of England, Scotland and Ireland produced the correct results at the top of the page although – disgracefully – there was nothing for Wales. Outrageous!
The Q&A also works for celebrities, countries of the world, the planets, the elements, electronics and movies. Peter Norvig, Google’s director of search quality, states that the company will continually work to broaden the scope of topics and to improve its capability to deliver more complex answers.
Only a small percentage of queries currently produce these factual answers, but the service is still its early stages, added Norvig.
Google are a bit late to the party with this one – other search engine providers such as Ask Jeeves, Yahoo and AOL are already offering similar services.
Norvig went on to explain that Google feeds the service with information from Web sites they considers to be reliable, but it’s yet to establish formal relationships with any of the sites providing the content.
You might think that some of the sites might be a tad miffed to see Google stealing their thunder, but Norvig thinks that they’ll be so chuffed to find themselves at the top of Google’s results list that they’ll want to run naked through the streets, clenching roses between their bum cheeks.
Well, he might have said that. To himself. When he was asleep. Possibly.
Google
Google Blog
8 April, 2005
Google Video To Expand Search To “Video Blogging”
Google plans to invite users to submit personal video clips for archiving as part of its recently launched video search service.
In a speech at the annual cable industry convention in San Francisco, company co-founder Larry Page announced that the company will start taking home video submissions from people, adding that, “we’re not quite sure what we’re going to get, but we decided we’d try this experiment.”
Not surprisingly, Page admitted to having concerns about the nature of content that people may want to upload (but we think that that may only add to the appeal of the service!)
Google first rolled out the test version of its video search service in January, allowing users to find content in television programs from such providers as PBS, Fox News, CSPAN and local ABC and NBC affiliates in San Francisco.
The service, called Google Video, offers up still images from the video clips and associated closed-captioning, but users cannot view video or read a transcript of the program due to unsettled licensing terms.
In the meantime, an “About this show” option provides information on the program’s next air time.
Google has already established search relationships with numerous content and broadband providers, with Google co-founder Sergey Brin commenting, “We’re always looking for ways to expand partnerships.”
The company also announced that it would provide data about popular Web searches to Current, a new television network for the 18- to 34-year-old audience, backed by former US Vice President Al Gore and other investors.
Arch-rivals Yahoo have already begun promoting their own TV and video search site, launched as a beta in December of 2004.
Yahoo has also partnered up with TVEyes to index closed captioning content from BBC, Bloomberg and Sky programming, while Blinxx launched their own movie and TV service, blinkx.tv, at the end of last year.
Google barged its way into the world of blogging after buying the popular blogging tool, Blogger.com in 2003.
The growth of affordable digital camcorders (and movie enabled digital cameras) coupled with cheaper (or free) Web space suggests that vblogging could be big news for 2005, creating a need for suitable search tools.
Google
6 April, 2005
2GB Gmail Inbox From Google
A year after its launch, Google has doubled the capacity of its Gmail service and added new features.
Those lucky souls invited to have an account now get a whopping great 2GB of storage, with the ability to send up to 10MB of attachments in a single message with free POP access – with Google promising further increases in the pipeline.
“Since we introduced Gmail, people have had a lot of places to store e-mail, but some of our heavier users have been approaching their limits, and have been wondering what is going to happen,” says Georges Harik, Gmail’s product management director. “So, starting today, we are going to give people more and more space continuously and indefinitely.”
“Our plan is to continue growing your storage beyond 2GB by giving more space as we are able to do so. We know that email will only become more important in people’s lives, and we want Gmail to keep up with our users and their needs.”
The move comes hot on the heels of last week’s decision by Yahoo to increase the size of its free account to 1GB. Both Yahoo and Hotmail can offer up to 2GB of storage as well, but users must fork out for the privilege.
The company has announced no immediate plans to increase Gmail’s 10MB limit on attachment sizes, and there’s no prospect of subscribers being able to turn their in-box storage into a full-featured virtual external hard disk.
Google is, however, aware that some crafty Gmail subscribers are using the service for this purpose, mailing files to themselves as a way of storing them online.
Google seems cool about it too, with Harik saying, “We want our users to understand that we have a plan and that we are anticipating their needs, and that nothing strange is going to happen with Gmail down the line.”
Google is also testing phishing protection on the accounts, serving up a warning when it detects a dodgy looking email.
Gmail’s arrival on the scene a year ago sent up a rocket up the backsides of the Web mail market, whose main players had been providing minimal inbox storage for their free services.
At the time, Yahoo only offered a paltry 4MB of in-box with Microsoft providing even less at 2MB.
Since then, most major Web mail providers have reacted to Gmail’s generous inbox quotas with Microsoft and Yahoo both now offering 250MB for their free services. Yahoo plans to begin offering 1GB starting in late April.
Curiously, Gmail is still technically in a beta phase, and is not generally available – the only way users can obtain a Gmail account is by invitation from an existing user (each current user has 50 invitations to give).
Google also randomly offers Gmail accounts via its main Google.com Web page.
Google have yet to clarify whether Gmail accounts would ever be totally open, with Harik cryptically commenting, “We keep looking for ways to make it more broadly available to people who want to use it”.
While Gmail is totally free to use, it’s financed by text ads that are served up to users with each message they open. The fact that the ads are based on each message’s text caused an outcry, but Google insist that text scanning is automated and without nosey human intervention.
Google Gmail
Gmail new features list
1 April, 2005