Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 17th January 2009
9 COMMENTS 
David Petherick, Contributing Editor, United Kingdom
Search never stays still. Neither does The Next Web Blog. Today, we found out that Google, where search is the core of its business, have added a link to new experimental features to its home page, which show options that can be added to the ’standard’ search.
The most dramatic of these is probably ‘Alternate views for search results‘ which, due to its nature, gives you different search results and rankings in different views of the same search query. So Search Experts take note: Page 1 of Google now has at least four different results!. Your site can be #1 in one type of search, but be invisible in others.
The standard Google search results page now also has “News about search term” appended to your search results as you can see below.
Google’s New ‘Alternate View’ Search Types
It is worth taking a look at this new feature for searches that include:-
- Search Results in Timelines [try this]
- Search Results on Maps [try this]
- Search Results in ‘Info Views’ which allow further refinement ‘on the fly’ [try this]
- One-click returns you to ‘Standard’ List View
You can obtain these views immediately using the standard google search interface by adding “view:map” “view:timeline” or “view info” following your search term – so rather than a search for ‘the next web’ you search for “the next web view:timeline”.
I’d recommend you check out these new search views, and also ensure that your site’s metadata is structured to ensure you appear in these new formats of search results.
There are also three other experimental search features at present – 
- SearchWiki with sound – when you remove a result from your personal results, toy can have a sound effect play along with the animation whenever you remove a result. The sound is recorded by Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
- Keyboard shortcuts – use your keyboard to navigate results – so J Selects the next result, K Selects the previous result, etc.
- Accessible View – As you navigate, items are magnified for easier viewing. If you use a screen reader or talking browser, the relevant information is spoken automatically as you navigate.
Google continues to innovate and to develop its search technology, and in my view these new experimental features show that it’s still the very best at delivering search results. It’s also a wake-up call for you to ensure that the information on your web pages is given proper semantic structure – or meaning – because that will be a crucial differentiatiator as the amount of data online increases.
(Screen shots created from UK access to Google.com by David Petherick using plasq’s Skitch)
Written on 24th July 2008
6 COMMENTS
David Petherick, Contributing Editor, United Kingdom
I first wrote about Google Knol when the topic was first aired in December 2007 on Google’s Blog, in my article “Knol is on a Roll: Google’s new economy for online authors?” at Digital Biographer.
A knol is a term Google had created for a ‘unit of knowledge’ and the announcement created a great deal of interest and speculation, as much for the lack of details as for the excitement at what it might evolve into. Many commentators called it ‘Google’s Wikipedia killer’ but as I said then, that was simply a lazy and incorrect generalisation – but there was little very specific information. And today, many commentators are again likening Knol to Wikipedia – see related links below.
Today, Google has announced its public beta of Google Knol, defining Knols as “authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects.” So from today, you can start to add your knol, or knowledge. This is a beta version, so of course there are rough edges, and Google will be looking to get feedback on many aspects and issues. (I for one found that I could not log at all in using Firefox on my Mac, but have had no problems with Camino or Safari.)
Some positive features are what Google calls ‘moderated collaboration.’ “Any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public.” Nice.
Google, why I can’t verify my identity?
However, one issue that seems a very basic oversight is that ‘Name Verification’ (so you can verify that you, as an author, are who you say you are) is only available for those based in the USA. The systems available for those Knol authors in the USA are via Phone or Credit Card checks. Pardon me for pointing out the obvious, but there are telephone directories and credit cards used all over the world, Google. The raised credibility that Google cites arising from verifying yourself is therefore, at present, reserved exclusively for you only if you live in the USA.
So if you live anywhere outside the USA, do not send to know for whom Google knols, it does not knol for thee. (Apologies for that play on words to John Donne)
This is not the sort of even-handed approach you’d expect from a global player like Google – and the fact that there is no mention of OpenID or even Google’s own identity systems like Google Checkout or Adsense strikes me as a missed opportunity, even for a beta-stage development. The fact that one can share revenue with Google by electing whether or not to show Google Adsense Adverts on one’s Knol content makes this a very strange omission, and I fear, one that may open Knol up to a lot of spam entries or gaming.
I managed to log in and add a Knol to Google this morning entitled ‘How to read Russian in 75 Minutes‘ (I’ve proved that this works in a 75-minute lecture in 2005, by the way) but at present, my Knol on Reading Russian only appears in a search when I am logged in with a Google login (the login I use for Gmail, Google Reader etc), but it the knol is reachable with a link, whether or not I am logged in.
However, the range of ‘Featured Knols’ as samples that appeared on my screen today had me speechless – they covered Diabetes, Lung Cancer, Toilet Clogs and Tooth pain. Wow. Maybe that’s Google’s way of encouraging you to add better content – or at least, to add more cheerful and uplifting content!
Written on 26th May 2008
2 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Everyday I see at least one new alternative search engine presenting itself as THE new way to find what you’re looking for. Some of them are actually doing a good job, or have an interesting new approach. The problem is though, almost nobody uses these new engines. Only the innovators and some early adopters find the way to services like AndUnite, Eeggi and Faroo. The alt search engines are pioneers, but will they be able to cross the gap between the early adopters and the early majority?
While new ways of searching are coming up, there are also alternatives to other aspects of search emerging. Like HotWords, a site that aims to give an overview of “what the the world is searching for”. After stumbling on Hotwords on MoMB and reading a review on KillerStartUps I figured I might as well have a look on the site. Hotwords lists the top 100.000 most popular searches on the web with trend and ranking reports. Of the hundreds of millions searches – Google alone has 400 million a day -, they will gather data for around 6 million searches per day. Since this is a beta version, Hotwords now “only” tracks 2.5 million searches. Not surprisingly, the most popular searches are for sex and amateur porn sites like YouPorn. Around keywords like these, the London-based HotWords team has developed an incredible set of analytics tools.
Yet there’s one thing missing on Hotwords: transparency. Although they say they’ve partnered up with “several search engines”, yet it’s unknown who those partners are. For all I know, it could be a scam. Therefore, visitors don’t know what they’re missing yet and might as well browse to Google Trends.
However, I do believe that if HotWords developed an alternative search engines section, bloggers and other Internet press would certainly drop by. They’re very interested in what the innovators and early adopters are searching for. Sure, we all know the crowd is looking for porn, but what about those people who predict our geek future?
Written on 21st April 2008
0 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The first guys I met here are Josh and Sum from the young and enthusiastic team of eeggi. They drove six hours from LA to arrive here 7am sharp. And they had all the reason to do that, since they’ve quite an interesting search engine to present. 
They claim it’s the world’s first mathematically-based Search and Retrieve, Response, and Discovery engine (ReDi engine), capable of focusing on the concept of text and not just the text itself”.
So basically, if you searched for an “exciting dvd”, the results would probably also include “breathtaking movie” or “thrilling film”. It reminds me of the iStockphoto’s search engine, that asks you what the meaning of your ambiguous search terms is. Only eeggi will find that out itself.
After five years of protecting and patenting, the guys from eeggi are now ready to “play”. It only took them three months to develop the prototype, which will launch in open beta in a few months. Josh McMillin, the CFO, told me that they’re going in a total different direction than the other alternative search engines. Sounds promising, let’s see how it turns out.
[reported live from the AltSearchEngines event]
Written on 23rd January 2008
1 COMMENT
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
“Yahoo hasn’t given up on search yet”
Yahoo, maybe in an effort to distract us from the massive layoffs coming up next week, has just announced that they have updated their crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. In case you didn’t know, Yahoo hasn’t given up on search yet and has a decent search engine itself. The update is taking some time which means that we may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index. So far, nobody is complaining yet.
“most of these names are completely unfamiliar”
And then there are all the other Google alternatives that have news. Russian based Quintura was recently named named the Alternative Search Engine of the Year by AltSearchEngines.com. The interesting thing about this list is that most of these names are completely unknown to most of us. Here is a list of 100 search engines who work day and night to become the Google Killer but they can’t seem to make an impression. As the author of the article mentions “At the beginning of 2007, the five major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and Ask) had at least 95% of the search “pie” (it could be as much as 98.3%). At the end of 2007, the same five major search engines, with slight individual changes, still had at least 95% of the search “pie.””. So, as expected, search is a damn hard market to enter.
Techcrunch reports about Twingly, a Swedish company launching in a month or two, which will focus solely on european blog search. I have met the founders of Twingly at Le Web last year and we will do a more detailed interview with them once they actually launch and there is news to report.
“Google lost a whopping $40 Billion in market cap”
Oh, and entering the search market is damn hard but staying there can be tough too. Google lost a whopping $40 Billion in market cap since its stock reached a $747 high in early November. Today it lost another $37.95 (or 6.49%) and is currently hovering around $540. I guess being the number one search engine in the world isn’t all peaches and cream either.
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