I was overjoyed this past weekend when I was granted access to Facebook Graph Search. I have spent hours playing with it and I have to say, I am very excited about the possibilities it brings. From both experience with the tool and independent research, I have gained some insight which I think will help [...]
If you have been in the social media game for a few years, you know that Facebook LOVES making changes. The internet wept with the implementation of the most recent Timeline changes, but what will happen when the even newer Facebook Timeline changes begin hitting users? During the past few days, it has been reported [...]
“…hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly, I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood.” This search, depicted in an 800-year-old poem, is successful – and the inspiration for a relatively new China-based search engine, Baidu. “Baidu” means “hundreds of times.” It also means [...]
From its launch, Blekko has striven to be the outsider, the search engine that could deliver highly accurate, relevant results without the spam. This, of course, is a direct challenge to Google, which, while it is the world’s largest search engine with a 65 percent market share, is known to have a bit of a [...]
Over a year ago, Google left China because of its refusal to censor search results any longer. It found the Chinese government too restrictive and was not willing to filter results. It was willing, however, to leave the country with the most internet users in the world, a step that, thus far, hasn’t affected Google’s [...]
Blekko is the anti-Google. The small “alternative” search engine made its mark by being the engine that “slashes the web” to produce more targeted, relevant search results. It bills itself as being low-spam, low-malware, and low-content farm. Its recent “Zorro Update” doesn’t focus on “slashing out spam,” like the Panda Update from Google; instead it [...]
Maybe you’ve switched to a hybrid and ditched your gas-guzzling Suburban. Maybe you’ve planted your own garden and started to ride your bike to work. Maybe you’ve searched online for ways to reduce your carbon footprint. Climate change is, and has been, a major news issue, and everything from your car to your icemaker to [...]
Despite rivalry and competition, the “big 3” search engines teamed up on a new initiative, called Schema.org, which will help web publishers to make content more easily understood by search engines, and it is hoped, better represented in the SERPs. Google fellow Ramanathan Guha says, “With Schema.org, site owners can enhance how their sites appear [...]
Even if Google and Facebook felt no inherent rivalry towards each other, the world has set them at odds. Every move that one makes is seen as an advance on the other’s territory. Google’s +1 button is their counter to Facebook’s Like. Facebook is trying to take over search. Inevitably, it all comes down to [...]
What’s the difference between search and social media? Increasingly, the answer is “very little.” There is no dividing line: Facebook has become more of a force in the search industry, particularly in local search and current events. But what have search engines done to venture into social territory? One would look to the undisputed king [...]