Here are some of the search engine oriented articles we have found interesting this week.

• Lost that users manual? You can find it on the Web

  There are search engines to target manuals (About Feb 4 2010)

• Microsoft’s Bing ‘will make money’

  Bing, which has struggled to make headway against Google, can be a viable runner-up and make money online eventually (Independent Feb 3 2010)

• Inside Search: Raymond Bentinck of Exalead

  On the French search engine Exalead and enterprise search (Beyond Search Feb 3 2010)

• Some Insight Into How Bing Handles WWW vs Non-WWW Canonical SEO Issues

  It really doesn’t matter if the site your link is residing on is www or non-www. (SE Roundtable Feb 5 2010)

• Siri: Not A “Search Engine” But You Might Use It Like One

  It’s intended to enable you to do more with your voice and your phone in fewer clicks or moves. (SE Land feb 5 2010)

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In Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland Google is celebrating the Sami national day with a special logo today.

The Sami people, one of the largest indigenous groups in Europe, lives in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Their traditional languages are the Sami languages, which are members of the Finno-Lappic group of the Uralic language family.

February 6 was the date the first Sami congress was held in 1917 in Trondheim, Norway. This congress was the first time that Norwegian and Swedish Sami came together to find solutions for common problems. Since 1993 Norway, Sweden and Finland (and now apparently Google) have recognized the date as the Sami National Day.

The Wikipedia on the Sami.

Photo:Sami bride, photo credit: samisknettverk

Here are some of the search engine news stories we have found interesting this week:

• FacteryLabs fact search engine

  Need to research trending topics? Want the basics on a subject quickly and easily? (P Bradley Jan 26 2010)

• Google News Comes Back For More

  Google News has implemented a recrawl feature that allows us to focus on getting the newest articles around while still ensuring that we’re displaying the most up-to-date information. (Google News Jan 25 2010)

• Bing improvements: Twitter Maps, Investor info, and a Mars game

  Bing has set up an interactive game called “Captain Mike’s Mars Adventure” (LiveSide Jan 29 2010)

• Google May Be Crawling AJAX Now – How To Best Take Advantage Of It

  In October 2009, Google proposed a new standard for implementing AJAX on web sites that would help search engines extract the content (SE Land Jan 28 2010)

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This week saw the birth of the Apple iPad. In spite of initial skepticism Steve Jobs has decided that the tablet has a future, and he is right. It will also change the way we search. Pandia argues that publishers should support a tool that lets tablet users surf the web and subscription based content at the same time.

There has been a lot of negative comments on the iPad. It doesn’t do this, it doesn’t do that, and nearly all of these comments come from geeks comparing the iPad to a regular computer. This is not a netbook, even if it can do much of what a netbook can do. Nor is it a plain ebook reader.

It is what I for a lack of a better word will call a media reader on steroids.

The reference tool

Back home we have an old laptop lying in a shelf in the living room. We don’t use it much for word processing, heavy calculations or for designing web sites.

We use it as a reference tool. If we watch a movie, we look it up at IMDB. If we need a recipe we search for one using Google. If we want to convert some measures, we find an appropriate tool. We use it for YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. And we use it for reading news.

My wife also uses it for games, and I pretend not to notice.

We do use the keyboard, but not for heavy lifting.

The ebook reader

On another shelf you will find the Amazon Kindle my wife gave me for Christmas.

I love it! I am a parallel reader, and tend to read several books at the same time, fact and fiction. If the book I am looking for is available for Kindle I download it to my Kindle using the Kindle itself or the Amazon store. I use the simplistic interface to switch between the various publications.

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Here are the search engine stories we have found interesting this week:

• Ballmer Critical Of Google’s China Decision

  Ballmer suggested that Google’s decision to no longer filter out internet searches objectionable to the Chinese government was an irrational business decision. (SE Land Jan 22 2010)

• Google Founders To Sell 10 Million Shares Over Five Years

  Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin each intend to sell approximately 5 million shares (SE Land Jan 22 2010)

• Google Still the Top Search Property Worldwide in 2009

  Interestingly, while Google retains its lead among the search properties worldwide, Microsoft’s search market share seemed to be growing by leaps and bounds. (SE Journal Jan 22 2010)

• Google Adds More Answers & Info To Search Results

  Adding to last year’s announcement of rich snippets for reviews and people, Google has created one for events, too. (SE Land Jan 22 2010)

• Google SEO resources for beginners

  Google Webmaster Central on search engine optimization (Jan 21 2010)

• Search Engines Bringing Back Variables In URLs – At Your Expense

  Now search engines are saying variables in URLs are good, as long as you use the canonical meta tag. (Online Marketing Blog Jan 21 2010)

Click here to read the rest of this article!

Hakia has launched NoBrandSearch.com, a site where you can enact your own battle of the search engines and find out which one you like the best.

This is what hakia says about the tool:

“NoBrandSearch is an experiment to compare the core competencies of the search engines in the market. (…) Each time you enter a query, each side of the screen is randomly selected from the search engines in the market. Their brands and special features are screened out. All you have to do is to decide which set of results are better.”

Every time you search you will get two anonymized sets of search results side by side. Click on the result set you like the best, and you will get the name of both search engines. The idea is that this will give you an unbiased idea of the search quality of search engine like Google, Yahoo!, Bing and — obviously — Hakia.

Note that No Brand Search only includes the regular organic search results. There is more to the search engine result pages of the major search engines than that, of course.

The real reason for this service is that hakia hopes you will select the hakia search results as often as possible, making you understand that theirs is the search engine for you. We admire their self confidence!

By the way: Do take a look at hakia. It is one of the few serious alternatives to the big three (which are to become the big two when Yahoo! starts delivering Bing results).

See also: Hakia, a meaning-based search engine

There has been tons of media attention paid to all of the companies that have entered the real time web. And, in addition to all of the new startups, companies like Google and Bing are now mixing real time results into their engines. However, what about the user? What can the user get out of the real time web? In this article, we will touch on some of the things users can do.

By guest writer Evan Britton

Fresh news on your subject of choice

The main thing users can get out of the real time web is information. You can find out what is being said right now about any particluar subject. If you want to see what people think about a sports event, movie, celebrity, or any other breaking news - a real time search will inform you.

You can head to Twitter’s homepage to perform a real time search. Twitter makes it very easy to see what is being said about a respective subject.

It is also interesting to see which links are being shared on the real time web. Sency has built an interesting real time engine which shows you both what is being said, along with today’s most popular links for a particular search term.
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We have covered the Web buzz on the China/Google conflict in a separate article. Here are some headlines from the rest of the world of search and search engines.

• Google Agrees to Censor Encyclopedia Dramatica Entry in Australia

  Google has agreed to take down links to a website that promotes racist views of indigenous Australians. (Blogoscoped Jan 17 2010)

• How Google Ranks Tweets

  Algorithms judge the relevance of microblog posts containing 140 characters or less. (Technology Review Jan 13 2010)

• Find Twitter Lists by Exploring Tags

  I like List Tags, which allows you to enter a Twitter user, find out what tags are associated with them, and then get lists based on those tags. (ResearchBuzz Jan 11 2010)

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