Bing Maps Spawn the 'Decade of the Interface?'

Microsoft got some well-deserved praise for the flashy new interface features it's bringing to its Bing search engine. At an event earlier this week, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) showed off a much more visual interface for Bing Maps that lets users pilot their way online to find point of interest and other useful content -- including relevant links to Twitter.

But research firm IDC thinks the improved UI is just the beginning of what it calls "The Decade of the User Interface". Specifically, IDC believes the kind of immersive experience offered by Bing Maps portends key changes to watch for on the Web and software in general as user interfaces evolve.

"The Web today views documents and queries as disconnected objects", said IDC search analyst Sue Feldman, in a commentary released today. "Bing Maps takes a leap forward, piecing together sequences of queries to understand common tasks, and finding relationships among data from disparate sources."

This understanding lets Bing Maps take a best guess at providing the most relevant information in results to the user. Feldman ticked off several examples, such as where is the nearest doctor is, what the hours are for the drug stores nearest you, where to get an absentee ballot, or even where to find a really good pizza.

Feldman notes that many keyword searches fail because people don't use the same terms that a document might.

"But if the path to commonly-requested information is known, why not return the information without requiring a query?" she asks. "The metaphor of the map means that any information tied to the real world can be displayed on it: traffic, local tweets, locations of businesses, events. Finding each of these would be a single query. Or, you could do as Bing Maps does, and serve it all up to let the user select what's of interest."

Bing is not the first Web service to leverage mashups. Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), for one, started doing this years ago, letting users tie data sources to its Google Maps. Bing lets you search within the context of a location. Feldman gives the example of looking for a local concert and how you can query Bing Maps and get back a list of local concerts, related suggestions and see the location of the events on a map.

"Layering data on top of a map, which is what Bing Maps does, suggests things to look for I may never have considered. It presents possibilities," said Feldman.

And while the visual aspects of Bing Maps are more pleasing than the standard ten blue links of search results, Feldman is more impressed that it all serves a practical purpose. She gives this example:

"Type in the name of a town, and get first a map showing locations of major types of businesses. Click on 'more details' to get an overview of the history, the current weather, education, landmarks, etc. with links to more information on each."

Feldman also noted that Bing lets you drill down for details without losing the context of the map, by displaying different types of information with separate icons (coffee shops, dental care, doctors, restaurants, education, grocery stores, etc.) that invite exploration.

What Microsoft still needs to do and watch out for Google

Feldman noted that given the central role location plays in Bing Maps, Microsoft needs to speed up its plans to provide a mobile experience that enables GPS-enabled smart phone users to enjoy the same full range of features. "While mobile releases are on Microsoft's product roadmap, they should be front and center," and include Android and iPhone versions for the non-Microsoft world (the clear majority in this case)," she said.

At the event Microsoft did say it planned to release Bing features for both Android and the iPhone and one demo was done on the iPhone.

From a big picture industry perspective, Feldman said Bing Maps Streetside experience and the addition of community-generated photo "synths" will become an expected feature for geo-interfaces going forward.

"In summary, while many of the features in this system have been seen before, Bing Maps does the best job we have seen of connecting them all in a single, intuitive site that is both useful and a pleasure to explore," said Feldman.

Google will undoubtedly be questioned about Bing Maps on Monday when it's scheduled to show several search-related advances of its own publicly for the first time at a media event. The search giant tweaked the design of its home page earlier this week.

source: www.internetnews.com

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Microsoft and Yahoo Sign on the Dotted Line

Microsoft and Yahoo quietly announced Friday that they have finally signed off on their landmark search in exchange for ad revenues deal. The agreement between Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) has been almost two years in the making. Most recently, the two companies revealed in late October that there were still details to be worked out before they could sign the agreement.

"Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corporation today announced that the companies have finalized and executed the definitive Search and Advertising Services and Sales Agreement and License Agreement in accordance with the letter agreement announced in July," the companies said in a brief joint news release late Friday.

Microsoft and Yahoo first announced on July 29 the ten-year deal that will have the Redmond software giant provide its Bing search engine to Yahoo's sites in return for a share of the sites' advertising revenues.

The main thrust of the agreement is to create a single entity to compete against Google (NASDAQ: MSFT) in the global search engine market.

Web analytics firm comScore's (NASDAQ: SCOR) latest search engine statistics for U.S. searches in October -- the most recent month the firm has tracked -- show that Bing reached 9.9 percent share. That's still puny compared to Google's share in October of 65.4 percent.

However, a combination of Bing's and Yahoo's search numbers would yield a 27.9 percent combined share, a much stronger rival to Google than either one alone.

"Microsoft and Yahoo believe that this deal will create a sustainable and more compelling alternative in search that can provide consumers, advertisers and publishers real choice, better value, and more innovation," said a Microsoft statement e-mailed to InternetNews.com.

Next on the list of hurdles to leap, according to the two companies, is approval by U.S. regulators, as well as approval within the European Union (EU), which may or may not require the approval of the European Commission, due to differences in laws among EU nations.

"We welcome the broad support the deal has received from key players in the advertising industry and remain hopeful that the closing of the transaction can occur in early 2010," the joint statement said.

source: www.internetnews.com

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When Google lose from Yahoo!

In almost all the world, Google is a search engine most used. But in some areas of Japan, Google is still inferior to its predecessor, including Yahoo!. Although Google has opened an office in Tokyo since 2001, but still less than Yahoo! Japan, operated by one service provider, Softbank. Currently 56.5% of Internet searches done in Japan through Yahoo!, Far above Google is only 33.7%.

Earlier this year Google's version of the Japanese have a different appearance, not like in other world regions. Google in Japan does not appear simple but is more lively and full with a link to YouTube, Gmail and other Google services. They want the Japanese people, who liked the graphics, will be more interested. Google also advertised heavily. They even hired 2500 hot air balloon and allow the person being passed, the balloon rises.

For Google, the Japanese market is very important, so necessary to pursue the position of Yahoo!. Currently 90 million Japanese citizens connected Internet. Of that amount, one third also used the Internet via their mobile phone. Every day, an average of 10 million video clips downloaded from YouTube by the Japanese people via their mobile phone.

Yahoo! win, either because the company is the first Internet search engine top. In addition, Yahoo! Japan ,although 35 percent stake owned by Yahoo! United States, the Japanese saw it as a local company.

Google stuttering was apparent when the company introduced the service "Street View" Japanese version. With this service, users can view the photos of the road. But the Japanese protested that disturb the privacy of this service, let alone the streets of the country's very narrow. So they are forced to take a picture with a camera that re-position a foot lower than the original.

Google Earth was also criticized in Japan since ancient map set contains the places where Japanese castaway occupancy. In Japan, the issue is still controversial pariah until now and if the former dwelling of the pariah was revealed, could make the inhabitants affected.

But Google did not give up. For example, Google Map, unlike the U.S. version. In the United States, the map will point to the center of town. In Japan, the map will point to the train station or bus station, local residents refer to rely on public transportation.

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How search engines work

Web search engines work by storing information about many web pages, which taken directly from the html itself. These pages are retrieved by a web crawler (also known as a spider) automated web browser which follows every link on the site. Exceptions can be made by using robots.txt. The contents of each page is then analyzed to determine what should be indexed (for example, the words taken from the title, headings, or special fields called meta tags). Data about web pages are stored in an index database for use in later queries.

Some search engines such as Google, store all or part of the page source (called cache) as well as information on the web page itself. This cached page always holds the actual search text since it is the one that was actually indexed, so it can be very useful when the content of the current page has been updated and the search terms are no longer in it. This problem might be considered to be a mild form of linkrot, and Google's handling of it increases usability by satisfying user expectations that the search terms will be on the returned webpage. This satisfies the principle of least astonishment since the user normally expects the search terms to be on the returned pages. Increased search relevance makes these cached pages very useful, even beyond the fact that they may contain data that may no longer be available elsewhere.

When a user enters a query into a search engine (typically by using keywords), the engine examines its index and provides a listing of best-matching web pages according to its criteria, usually with a short summary containing the document's title and sometimes parts of the text. Most search engines support the use of the boolean operators AND, OR and NOT to further specify the search query. Some search engines provide an advanced feature called proximity search which allows users to define the distance between keywords.

There are other search engines: search engine real-time, such as Orase. Machines like this do not use indexes. Machinery necessary information is collected only if there is a new search. When compared with systems that use index-based machines such as Google, real-time system is superior in several respects: information is always up to date, (almost) no dead links, and fewer system resources required. (Google uses nearly 100,000 computers, Orase only one.) But there are also disadvantages: the search for longer completion.

The usefulness of a search engine depends on the relevance of the result set it gives back. While there may be millions of web pages that include a particular word or phrase, some pages may be more relevant, popular, or authoritative than others. Most search engines employ methods to rank the results to provide the "best" results first. How a search engine decides which pages are the best matches, and what order the results should be shown in, varies widely from one engine to another. The methods also change over time as Internet usage changes and new techniques evolve.

Most web search engines are commercial ventures supported by advertising revenue and therefore most controversial practice, which allows advertisers to pay for their pages ranked higher in search results. Those search engines which do not accept money for their search engine results make money by running search related ads alongside the regular search engine results. The search engines make money every time someone clicks on one of these ads.

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About search engine history - Part 2

In 1996, Netscape was looking to give a single search engine an exclusive deal to be their featured search engine. There was so much interest that instead a deal was struck with Netscape by 5 of the major search engines, where for $5Million per year each search engine would be in a rotation on the Netscape search engine page. These five engines were: Yahoo!, Magellan, Lycos, Infoseek and Excite.

Search engines were also known as some of the brightest stars in the Internet investing frenzy that occurred in the late 1990s. Several companies entered the market spectacularly, receiving record gains during their initial public offerings. Some have taken down their public search engine, and are marketing enterprise-only editions, such as Northern Light. Many search engine companies were caught up in the dot-com bubble, a speculation-driven market boom that peaked in 1999 and ended in 2001.

Around 2000, the Google search engine rose to prominence. The company achieved better results for many searches with an innovation called PageRank. This iterative algorithm ranks web pages based on the number and PageRank of other web sites and pages that link there, on the premise that good or desirable pages are linked to more than others. Google also maintained a minimalist interface to its search engine. In contrast, many of its competitors embedded a search engine in a web portal.

By 2000, Yahoo! was providing search services based on Inktomi's search engine. Yahoo! acquired Inktomi in 2002, and Overture (which owned AlltheWeb and AltaVista) in 2003. Yahoo! switched to Google's search engine until 2004, when it launched its own search engine based on the combined technologies of its acquisitions.

Microsoft first launched MSN Search in the fall of 1998 using search results from Inktomi. In early 1999 the site began to display listings from Looksmart blended with results from Inktomi except for a short time in 1999 when results from AltaVista were used instead. In 2004, Microsoft began a transition to its own search technology, powered by its own web crawler (called msnbot).

Microsoft's rebranded search engine, Bing, was launched on June 1, 2009. On July 29, 2009, Yahoo! and Microsoft finalized a deal in which Yahoo! Search would be powered by Microsoft Bing technology.

According to Hitbox, Google's worldwide popularity peaked at 82.7% in December, 2008. July 2009 rankings showed Google (78.4%) losing traffic to Baidu (8.87%), and Bing (3.17%). The market share of Yahoo! Search (7.16%) and AOL (0.6%) were also declining.

In the United States, Google held a 63.2% market share in May 2009, according to Nielsen NetRatings. In the People's Republic of China, Baidu held a 61.6% market share for web search in July 2009.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_search_engine

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About search engine history - Part 1

Before there were web search engines there was a complete list of all webservers. The list was edited by Tim Berners-Lee and hosted on the CERN webserver. One historical snapshot from 1992 remains. As more and more webservers went online the central list could not keep up. On the NCSA site new servers were announced under the title "What's New!" but no complete listing existed any more.

The very first tool used for searching on the (pre-web) Internet was Archie. The name stands for "archive" without the "v." It was created in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a student at McGill University in Montreal. The program downloaded the directory listings of all the files located on public anonymous FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sites, creating a searchable database of file names; however, Archie did not index the contents of these sites.

The rise of Gopher (created in 1991 by Mark McCahill at the University of Minnesota) led to two new search programs, Veronica and Jughead. Like Archie, they searched the file names and titles stored in Gopher index systems. Veronica (Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives) provided a keyword search of most Gopher menu titles in the entire Gopher listings. Jughead (Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation And Display) was a tool for obtaining menu information from specific Gopher servers. While the name of the search engine "Archie" was not a reference to the Archie comic book series, "Veronica" and "Jughead" are characters in the series, thus referencing their predecessor.

In June 1993, Matthew Gray, then at MIT, produced what was probably the first web robot, the Perl-based World Wide Web Wanderer, and used it to generate an index called 'Wandex'. The purpose of the Wanderer was to measure the size of the World Wide Web, which it did until late 1995. The web's first search engine Aliweb appeared in November 1993. Aliweb did not use a web robot, but instead depended on being notified by website administrators of the existence at each site of an index file in a particular format.

JumpStation (released in December 1993) used a web robot to find web pages and to build its index, and used a web form as the interface to its query program. It was thus the first WWW resource-discovery tool to combine the three essential features of a web search engine (crawling, indexing, and searching) as described below. Because of the limited resources available on the platform on which it ran, its indexing and hence searching were limited to the titles and headings found in the web pages the crawler encountered.

One of the first "full text" crawler-based search engines was WebCrawler, which came out in 1994. Unlike its predecessors, it let users search for any word in any webpage, which has become the standard for all major search engines since. It was also the first one to be widely known by the public. Also in 1994 Lycos (which started at Carnegie Mellon University) was launched, and became a major commercial endeavor.

Soon after, many search engines appeared and vied for popularity. These included Magellan, Excite, Infoseek, Inktomi, Northern Light, and AltaVista. Yahoo! was among the most popular ways for people to find web pages of interest, but its search function operated on its web directory, rather than full-text copies of web pages. Information seekers could also browse the directory instead of doing a keyword-based search.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_search_engine

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About Search Engine

Search Engine is a portal website that provides search information data needed internet visitors. To obtain the information required, the internet visitor went to the site and perform a search. Information may consist of web pages, images, information and other file types.

The search engine allows us to ask for media content with specific criteria (typically containing words or phrases that you specify) and obtain a list of files that meet these criteria. Search engines usually use the index (which was made before and updated on a regular basis) to find the file after the user enters search criteria or keywords.

Search Engine will try to be displaying the most relevant data with the desired visitors. Various possibilities of data to be displayed, and search engines have a lot of considerations set forth in the algorithm. This algorithm continues to grow due to technological developments in addition to many websites that try to make him appear on the website the first page of search results. To get in on the first page, we must create a website has good content but also has a website structure that favored serach engine. This is known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

In the context of the Internet, search engine usually refers to the WWW, and not the protocol or other areas. In addition, search engine data available in newsgroups, large databases, or open directories like DMOZ.org. Because data collection is done automatically, unlike search engine web directory of human work.

Most search engines run by private companies using proprietary algorithms and closed databases. The search engine is the most popular is Google (MSN Search and Yahoo! Left little behind). There have been several attempts to create search engines with open-source, for example is Htdig, Nutch, Egothor and OpenFTS.

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