Tag Archives: SearchEngine

Google tells you how to vote by state with a simple search

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You're running out of excuses to not vote in this year's US presidential election. Google has rolled out a new, state-specific voting guide for anyone who searches "how to vote" or other related queries. Google breaks down the voting process in your...

Bing partners with Pinterest to add image collections to search results

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DNP Bing partners with Pinterest to add image collections to search results

It's no secret that Bing has been waging an uphill battle to stay relevant, and now, Microsoft is hoping that its partnership with Pinterest will be enough to win you over. The Bing team's latest effort combines its own search results with a new feature: image collections, a supplement that presents related Pinterest boards to the right of your main results. For example, an image search for "Pink cupcakes" will pull up a list of boards relevant to your interests. Clicking on one of them -- we opted for "Pretty in pink cupcakes" -- will take you to a new page that collects the user's pinned images along with a direct link to the board on Pinterest. The new feature is designed to introduce a social element to Bing by uniting collections curated by living, breathing humans with the search engine's algorithms. We don't know if it'll be enough to convince people to "Bing it" next time they're on the hunt for images, but we do know that we're now in desperate need of cupcakes.

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Via: The Next Web

Source: Bing

Facebook expands Graph Search to include status updates and posts

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DNP Facebook expands Graph Search to include status updates and posts

Today, Facebook is giving Graph Search something of a power-up by adding status updates and posts to the list of content it can access. Previously, the revamped search engine could only scan four types of information -- people, photos, places and interests -- when presented with queries like "who are my friends in New York City?" Now, if someone types in "posts about bacon from the last month," your recent public complaint about the wilted lettuce in your B.L.T. will pop up. Also included in the expansion are check-ins, comments and photo captions. As it has at every step of the Graph Search rollout, Facebook is quick to assure its users that the feature respects your privacy settings, so only content that's been shared with you or is otherwise publicly accessible will show up in search results. For more information, head on over to the source link below.

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Source: Facebook

Microsoft details Bing’s improved ‘Page Zero’ search results

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Microsoft details Bing's Page Zero search it's all about intents

Wondering how Bing's upgraded Page Zero search feature produces rich details and options before you've even finished typing? Microsoft has posted a deep dive that explains a lot of what's going on. Bing is taking better advantage of its entity relationship engine, Satori; as soon as the search tool finds a likely subject, it both displays an information tile and the most popular intentions associated with that subject. Look for the San Francisco Giants, for example, and Bing will offer search pages dedicated to scores or tickets. The technology is also clever enough to both expand and refine the list of intentions over time. The new Page Zero details won't necessarily get you to switch search providers, but they do show how Microsoft is responding to Google's constant refinements.

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Source: Bing Search Blog

Topsy lets you search tweets from 2006, look up old cringeworthy posts

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DNP Topsy now with tweets since 2006

Next time you're feeling nostalgic and want to peruse old Twitter posts -- such as in 2006, when Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet status -- you might want to pay Topsy a visit. The social search engine, which could previously look for posts up until 2010, has expanded its archives to include tweets from as far back as Twitter's birth in 2006. Simply input terms in the search box, and you'll find their newest and oldest mentions on the site. Even better than that, you can use the site to read every single tweet a user has ever posted by querying "from:yourusername," making it easy to look for the first time you tweeted about Lady Gaga's wardrobe. Before you run off and facepalm at your old tweets, though, check out @engadget's first one by Ryan Block after the cut.

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Via: GigaOm

Source: Topsy

This is the Modem World: The day Google died

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Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.

DNP The Modem World The day Google died

One day, Google will not be the technology giant that it is today. Consider the following:

In 1968, the Pontiac GTO was Motor Trend's Car of the Year. Today, Pontiac is a historical footnote of General Motors.

In 1981, IBM launched the PC, which became the de facto standard of personal computers, spawning hundreds of PC clones and dominating the computing market to this day. In 2005, the IBM PC business was acquired by Lenovo, and the IBM PC is no more.

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South Korea’s FTC finds Google not guilty of antitrust measures

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South Korea's FTC finds Google not guilty of antitrust measures

Google has been acquitted of the anti-competitive allegations brought to it more than two years ago by South Korean search operators NHN and Daum Communications, the Yonhap News reported today. Back in April 2011, the two firms accused the Mountain View company of having an unfair advantage by making its own search engine the default on the Android operating system. After a couple of raids and a lengthy review process, the local Fair Trade Commission has finally decided that Google doesn't hurt NHN's or Daum's competitive chances at all. FTC officials said that both companies presently enjoy a healthy chunk of the domestic search engine market -- NHN's portal maintains a good 70 percent share, for example -- and that users could easily download NHN and Daum apps onto their phones as alternatives. Chalk this one up as at least one victory in the search giant's seemingly never-ending battle with authorities.

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Source: Yonhap

Facebook rolling out Graph Search to US users this week

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Remember that profile-specific social network search tool Mark Zuckerberg announced back in January? It's finally ready for the general public. According to the New York Times and ABC News, Facebook Graph Search will start rolling out to US users this Monday. The update is more than a simple search bar revamp, however -- it allows users to mine their social circle for very specific information, asking questions like "Who are my friends in San Francisco," or searching for "people who went to Stanford who like the 49ers." The tool is designed to harken back to the company's original goal of connecting people, and aims to help users draw lines between their friends and interests. Graph Search will also pull select data from Bing, allowing users to peek at the weather from the comfort of their timeline.

Despite launching on a wider scale, the service isn't perfect -- the New York Times reports that it still has trouble juggling synonymous phrases (something we experienced in our own hands-on), returning discrepant results for searches like "people who like to surf" and "people who like surfing." The tool also works within the confines of a user's privacy settings and public activity, meaning that you won't accidentally uncover your cousin's secret My Little Pony fan-group if its privacy settings are locked down. The feature is set to debut for a few hundred million users this week, and will continue to become available to the all US users in the coming weeks.

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Via: Verge

Source: New York Times, ABC News

Bing news search now shows related topics and personalities

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Bing news search now shows related topics and personalities

Microsoft's Bing may be a boy among men in the search-engine wars, but that's not stopping it from piling on new features. The latest are in its news search, where it just added a "trending topics" carousel that shows timely info in the same category as your query (see the above image), along with a sidebar that displays personalities "you might also like." Clicking on either will bring up further news results, and Bing also said it's now extended the article index several years back in time compared to the curt two-week period it had before. It's an interesting change-up over Google's Knowledge Graph, and Microsoft needs all the help it can get in search, given recent survey results.

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Source: Bing blog