Firefox plug-in personalises search results

SurfCanyon is a Firefox plug-in that claims mind reading capabilities. Even though there’s no actual magic involved, this nifty little app does a great job of digging though the search results for the hits you need, even though Google buried them on page 12.

SurfCanyon accelerates the search process by re-ranking the search results based on your behaviour. This way, the browser extension applies a layer of real-time implicit personalization. The software is transforming static lists of links into dynamic search results pages that work with the you as you explore the search results.

How does it work?

Once the plug-in is installed, you go to one of the three search engines supported (Google, Yahoo! and MSN) and enter your search term as usual. In the search results, you’ll notice the difference: A little bulls eye icon appears next to each search result. If one strikes you as particularly useful, click the bulls eye and SurfCanyon suggests more hits like it, retrieved from deep within the search results.

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Posted on Thursday 8 May 2008
Filed under: All (summaries) and Search software | Permalink

Pandia Weekend Wrap-up

Recent search engine news stories Pandia has found interesting.

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Posted on Monday 5 May 2008
Filed under: All (summaries) and Weekend | Permalink

Microsoft considers increasing its bid for Yahoo!

According to Associated Press Microsoft’s directors yesterday considered upping their bid for Yahoo! According to the Wall Street Journal they did not make a final decision.

Microsoft has two other alternatives: (1) To give up acquiring Yahoo! (it is just too expensive) or (2) withdraw the bid, wait for the stock price to fall and go for a hostile bid.

Microsoft had given Yahoo! until 26 April to accept its US$41.8bn bid, which Yahoo has said is inadequate.

According to the BBC Microsoft may up its bid from $31 to $33 per share, but Yahoo shareholders are hoping for $35 to $37 per share.

Microsoft desperately needs Yahoo!s web content and search engine to meet the threat from Google, as its own web adventures have been halfhearted at best.

Our guess? Microsoft will get what it wants, simply because the Yahoo! leadership has been unable to develop a viable alternative. A merger with AOL — which has been proposed — makes no sense to us, as AOL is nothing but a weak and less innovative copy of Yahoo!

Microsoft will at least give Yahoo! a strong financial clout.

See also: Microsoft Says They’ll Pay More for Yahoo (Seeking Alpha April 30 2008)

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Posted on Thursday 1 May 2008
Filed under: All (summaries) and The search engine industry | Permalink

Coming up: Google Ocean

Google is planning an oceanographic parallel to Google Earth and Google Sky, giving users access to maps over the ocean floor.

According to CNet Google has established an advisory group of oceanography experts to help them develop the new product.

In December the company invited researchers from institutions around the world to the Googleplex in California to discuss the creation of a 3D oceanographic map.

Not all of the ocean floor has been mapped in detail, and Google’s project may speed up the process of us getting to know the deep.

Google Earth is a free PC program that lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings and even explore galaxies in the Sky. You can explore geographical content, save your toured places and share with others.

Google Ocean is expected to work in much the same way.

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Posted on Thursday 1 May 2008
Filed under: All (summaries) and Online search tools and services | Permalink

Interview with Kosmix, the theme oriented search site

Woman searchingRecently, Pandia reviewed Kosmix, a web portal and clustering engine rolled into one. We liked what we saw, so we talked to Venky Harinarayan, co-founder of Kosmix to find out more about how they see themselves in the search engine food chain.

Pandia: Kosmix generates “home pages” for themes or queries. This seems like a difficult job for a search engine spider. I’m guessing some semantic analysis is involved? Are there any human editors as well?

Venky Harinarayan: Humans are involved not as editors for individual topics, but to help set up the taxonomy i.e. the categories and how they relate to one another.

At the core of our technology is a sophisticated algorithm-based categorization engine. Our technology combs through billions of Web pages and structured data points to aggregate, categorize and return the most targeted content to users, all of which is done algorithmically.

The difference is in the taxonomy

Pandia: The Kosmix result pages have the feel of directory pages but are in reality an alternative way to present universal search results (result pages that mixes different types of search results, like Google Universal Search).

How does Kosmix stand apart from Google Universal Search, Ask’s 3rd column etc.?

Click here to read the rest of this article!

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Posted on Monday 28 April 2008
Filed under: All (summaries) and Interviews and Online search tools and services | Permalink

Tap into the SEO hive mind

Alltop SEO is an all-in-one page where you easily browse through the latest news from all the best SEO blogs. It’s a surefire way to tap into the SEO hive mind.

Alltop SEO contains the five freshest stories from some 50 popular SEO blogs, all on one information packed site (Pandia is there too :) ). And it’s always up to date, so this is a great place to go to feel the buzz of the SEO community.

I can imagine it would work nicely as a start page for SEO research: Browse the headlines, get excerpts by pointing your mouse to the individual entries and open your favorite blogs or stories that interest you in new tabs.

A digital magazine rack

SEO Alltop is one of a myriad of similar collections. Alltop is owned by a company called Nononina, who’s CEO is entrepreneur and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki.

Guy Kawasaki tells Pandia that: “Alltop is collection of “single-page aggregations” organized by topics such as Fashion, Celebrities, Sports, Gaming, Macintosh, Science, Green, and Autos. People can find news from dozens of sites, side-by-side, at a glance. We think of it as a “digital magazine rack”.

At Alltop, you can browse an entire directory of these aggregations in categories like work, living, culture, geekery (our favorite), people, news and more.

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Posted on Saturday 26 April 2008
Filed under: All (summaries) and Online search tools and services and Portal tools and services | Permalink

Top 3 sites for researching search engines

Search engine researchAre you looking for a specialized search engine to research a particular topic? Do you spend a lot of time doing research online or do you simply want to know more of the hundreds upon hundreds of search engines out there.

We present the three best sites for researching search engines or finding that one search engine that delivers exactly what you need.

Click here to read the rest of this article!

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Posted on Thursday 24 April 2008
Filed under: All (summaries) and Online search tools and services and Pandia top 5 | Permalink

Omgili evolves, now spiders social media to answer your questions

Omgili logoOmgili is a search engine that indexes web-based discussion boards to see if your question might already be answered somewhere on the web.

Since we reviewed Omgili back in 2006 it has kept evolving and now spiders Digg, MySpace and other social media sites for answers.

I talked to Ran Geva, CEO at Omgili, to find out what’s new.

Pandia: It has been a while since we reviewed Omgili. How has your product evolved since then?

Ran Geva: Omgili has changed a lot, both on the surface and behind the scenes. Here are some of our new features:

Click here to read the rest of this article!

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Posted on Tuesday 22 April 2008
Filed under: All (summaries) and Interviews and Online search tools and services and Social media | Permalink