Web Moves Blog

How big should you be to successfully fight Google and beat it? Pretty big probably. Far bigger than blekko.com and DuckDuckGo. Even being a multibillion company, such as Microsoft, is not enough – Bing is still behind in the SE battle. Having the law in your hands, however, might help. Especially, if you are the law. Especially in China.

Chinese government has a very strict policy considering the internet, and censorship of information is a major part of it. Back in 2006, Google has agreed to censor the results, despite the critics – a footstep on the Chinese soil was too big to give up at the time. However, when issues arouse in Jan 2010, with the renowned “hacking human right accounts” accusation, they stopped the censorship. And then the government stopped them. Since January 2010 nobody can access Google from inside China (Honk Kong is one exception with the British influence sealing certain autonomy even under Chinese rule). Other options, such as Baidu, who was local Search Engine market leader even when Google was there, or the recently launched goso.cn are, of course, available.

After one year without the about-500-million Chinese users, it seems Google is willing to at least negotiate. According to Google’s Patrick Pichette, the company is going to re-enter the Chinese market soon, opening new horizons to the people of China. The question, of course, remains about the compromises that have to be reached with the Chinese government. Currently, it seems that the communists have the upper hand, as Google needs China more than China needs Google…

The “Slash-the-web” engine is trying to gain ground on its bigger rivals, Google and Bing. The mark of thirty million queries was passed in January – a decent accomplishment for Blekko, launched in November 2010. Additionally, over 100K new slashtags were created by users and editors. If you are not familiar with this term, I would definitely recommend visiting Blekko.com and checking out their concept of bringing the most relevant results for the specific user.

Fighting Spam is the trend of today, and Blekko’s “spam clock”, introduced about a month ago, was another trigger for this trend. Next they announced removing several “low quality” websites from the search results (including the quite popular eHow and Expert-Exchange) before ten days, stating that this “black list” will grow.

Other recent Blekko activity included launching an iPhone and Android app, pretty similar to the desktop version and offering almost all of its features, and integrating Facebook “Likes” into its results. A partnership with DuckDuckGo can be another step to counter Google, combating it out of the “spam” field. Of course, there is a long, long way to go, but for now the key is probably staying in the news and adding new features.

Twitter has mad a strong progress in the recent years. It has been a useful tool both for fun and, of course, business. Respectable companies are tweeting, telling their followers about company news, promotions etc. It is only a matter of time for world’s most popular the micro-blogging platform to reach 200M registered users – the current figure being about 175 Million.  People are sharing their thought and ideas using Twitter at astonishing rate, reportedly over 65M tweets per day.

Notably, according to recent research, only 50% of the tweets are in English. It seems that Twitter decided to carry on its success in the Asian market as Japanese is the second popular tweeting language and Malay is fourth with Portuguese being third due to the tool’s extreme popularity in Brazil. However,  instead of addressing the challenging Chinese market, Twitter skippers have picked Korean as the seventh supported language (don’t confuse with the messages language, which can be almost anything, form Tamil to Hebrew and Arabic) in addition to the existing English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese.

The decision is based on the amazing growth rate of South Korean Twitter users (almost ten times in 2010) and the country being relatively advanced in technological terms. The relevant iPhone app and Twitter mobile for Android in Korean have also been launched, making tweeting easier for the South Koreans.

 When “the internet” was introduced, its main purpose – and the idea behind it – was to allow educational and research institutions to share data. That was back in the 1980s. Of course, since then internet has passed several phases. Globalization and technology have joined forces to make the WWW a must-have feature for almost every household. In the start of the 21^st century the internet was mainy about reading and gathering information. Nowadays, it is mostly about sharing. Facebook success is adorable, however it is the social network concept that made it possible – of course, it was somewhat altered and some even would say reinvented by Mark Zuckerberg and Co. to speed up the growth.

Anyway, there are many others that wish to exploit this approach. The Russian “Vkontakte” (connected), Chinese-oriented “QZone”, Orkut (owned by Google and extremely popular in Brazil and India) are just a few of the social networking websites. With local social networks already present, the next step, it seems, is to create a more “targeted” communities for those who have specific common interest.

SolaMaps,  launched recently by Australia-based Stewe Edwing and his fellow green energy enthusiasts is one such an example. The idea of the network is to connect solar energy users all over the world, enabling them to share tips, ideas and experience with one another. By attracting more and more users, the site founders also hope to increase the global awareness of environmental issues. “You Don’t Need A Solar System To Join the SolaMaps Action!” the website slogan states. All you need is a passion for renewable energy.

Have you ever heard about KidRocket, Konqueror or Amaya? I bet you didn’t. What about Safari and Opera? Sounds more familiar, right? And Google Chrome? Is there anybody who did NOT hear about Google’s web browser? Probably not.

Launched slightly over two(!) years ago – compare that to 14-yeard old Internet Explorer and 7-year old Mozilla Firefox – Google Chrome is gaining ground rapidly, at the rate of about 5% a year. Reportedly it is now the choice of over 15% of internet users. And the good news for the browser is that it is not only attracts IE users (the world most popular web browser is constantly losing popularity as new search engines are emerging  all the time, and users do tend to “try something new”), but FF followers as well. During 2010, the Mozilla browser lost about 4% of US market share – mostly to Google Chrome.

While only a fraction of internet users actually utilize more than 20% of browser capabilities and features, the competition is mostly about two things – GUI and advertising. Google Chrome is pretty successful in both. The tabbed layout was adopted successfully (later than FF, earlier than IE) and the marketing efforts are enormous. Advertising is done both on and of the internet, with buses carrying the “part of your life – part of your browser” theme in addition to endless promotional banners al over the web.

Whether it is superior to others or not, Google Chrome is definitely making a huge progress. Will Chrome take over and dominate, as did Google? I doubt it. Will it compete and maybe become the most popular web browser in the future? Quite possible.

I am really getting tired of Google presenting information and blog posts from 2007. The authority Google gives to these old blog posts and news items causes their results for particular topics to just STINK.

So I jump search engines to BING or for today trying Blekko. Both these engines tend to do a better job weeding out some old content from their results which is great. But…..and this needs to be BUT….

What is with the results in BING and BLEKKO showing websites from every English speaking country? A search on Blekko for “promotional mugs” presents results from all over the world, and although not quite as bad the same thing happens with BING.

http://blekko.com/ws/promotional+mugs

http://www.bing.com/search?q=promotional+mugs&go=&form=QBRE&qs=n&sk=&sc=8-16

Which search engineers decided that it is a good idea to present these international results to a US search query? It seems to me that this is the most basic part of a relevancy algorithm.

I can provide free tips to the engineers at Blekko and Bing:

1.) if the domain ends in .co.uk these results should be provided to people searching in the United Kingdom.

2.) if the domain ends in .com.au these results should be provided to people searching in Australia.

3.) if my IP address is based in the United States, please only show me websites whose IP address is in the US. (Take this same theory and apply it to whatever country the search query originates from).

It is really sad when in general the entire internet community is looking for alternatives to Google, and this is the best competition we can come up with?

No wonder Google is taking over…..

Beside the big and known Google, Yahoo, Bing, Blekko and Ask.com and the local leaders Baidu and Tandex, there are several other, “little” search engines – such as HotBot and DuckDuckGo. The latter was launched in 2008 and has a very, very limited market share with about 2.5 million searches a month. However, everyone is trying to gain ground these days – and if this is done on expense of Google – it is even better.

DuckDuckGo tries to gain users by emphasizing their pretty unique approach – they do no store search data. Either this is done on purpose or the company simply does not have the necessary resources, the manner is now advertised as being solely correct.

In an aggressive marketing campaign, the company specifically highlights “the Google way” of “invading your privacy”, stating that with little effort, your search history associated with computer IP and, stored at Google servers can be tracked down to you in person. Next goes your personal data, credit history, insurance policy etc.

Although the campaign (as most advertising campaigns) is not entirely correct, purposely exaggerating the “big brother” threat of in its quest of “making the privacy aspects of search engines understandable to the average person” (quoted is DuckDuckGo founder, Gabriel Weinberg), it might have an effect on certain privacy-concerned users. Will they switch to DuckDuckGo or go elsewhere? That is another question, of course…

Ask.com and Bing are very anxious to prove the world they can beat Google. Even in minor things, like Image Search that Bing was enhancing constantly over last several month. Or in a Search Engine Jeopardy contest, managed by Stephen Wolfram. Well, it seems Google competitors still have some work to do, as the Search Industry leader was victorious once again.

The SE Jeopardy consisted of Jeopardy questions randomly selected form a database of around 200000 that were fed into the search queries of various engines. The developers then looked at the number of correct answers that appeared in the search results page and also at the number of correct answers that were included in the page that search engines presented as the top result.

The results were as follows:

Percentage of correct answers appearing somewhere on the first page: Google – 69%; Ask.com – 68%, Bing – 63%, Yandex – 62%, Blekko – 58%, Wikipedia – 23%.

Percentage of correct answers appearing in the top result of the page: Google – 66%; Bing – 65%, Yandex – 58%, Ask.com – 51%, Blekko – 40%, Wikipedia – 29%.

Obviously Wikipedia didn’t stand too much chance, as it was only one website competing against “the whole internet”. Still, it must be noted that only about one-third of Jeopardy answers are already in Wikipedia…

As to Search Engines – Google has beaten the competition, although the margins are not that big. But based on these results, Ask and Blekko have to do a better job of listing the most relevant link at the top (see how their percentage dropped when they looked into the first document. And Bing is “almost there” – but still a fraction behind Google.

Yandex numbers were very impressive, as it is basically a local Russian search engine. If the test has been done in Russian (or at least, based on Russian Jeoprdy Analogue, “Svoya Igra”, which includes fewer questions about American culture and history) Yandex would probably beat Google – exactly as it does in the Russian Search Engine market.

In summary, nobody can beat Google in providing relevant information. Not just yet. So, when you want to know “What is” something – don’t ask and don’t bing. Google it!

It seems that Bing decided to combat Google first of all in the Images section. Merely a month after introducing its Image Categorization Panel, Bing now applies a new look to the Bing Image Search page.

It is now showing the 20 top most searched images of the day – people, event, places, animals etc. Yesterday, the squirrel appreciation day brought “Cute Squirrel” to the top of the list. Today, the “National Geographic Photo Contest” occupies the number one Bing Image Search spot, with “Todd Palin” (6) beats “Sasha Obama” (10) and “Chelsea Clinton Wedding”.

Of course, once the search is done the top list disappears – but it can be easily retrieved via the “Browse top image searches” link just below the categorized search tabs bar.

The option is currently available in US, Australia and Canada Bing websites.

The global village and the internet era is everywhere. Long gone are the times when Church opposed science– Vatican itself is happy to use the most advanced technology in the world. And internet is no exception, it seems. In his latest statement, the Pope has shown good familiarity with social networks and their popularity among teenagers, pointing out pros and cons of digital communication.

Pope Benedictus XVI praised the prospects offered by the new technology saying that “if used wisely, they can contribute to the satisfaction of the desire for meaning, truth and unity which remain the most profound aspirations of each human being”, and emphasized that digital communication is a form of sharing.

His Holiness also warned about misleading by creating a “fake” personality in quest for “followers” and “friends” and stated that “there is the challenge to be authentic and faithful”. The Pope invited the Christians to join the global network as relationship is the fundamental need of a human being, and concluded his address with Apostolic blessing to all those that “make good use of their presence in the digital world”.