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Bing Works With Wolfram Alpha for Better Search Results

After integrating Twitter to its search results, Microsoft is now collaborating with Wolfram Alpha for getting its computational algorithm technology into the search results of Bing.

The Wolfram Alpha feature will be made available to the U.S-based Bing users within a few days. Initially the roll out will be limited to nutrition & fitness areas along with mathematical computational technology so that users are able to make informed decisions with their Bing search results.

The community search blog of Bing has given an example to illustrate how Wolfram Alpha together with Bing will interplay with each other after integration. Here's the link to the example.

Wolfram Alpha is known to be an innovative and powerful computational engine but it is still not known if this new integration will affect SERPs. As Bing is still looking for potential users, the new integration might turn out to be helpful.

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The End Of Free Content?

The end of what you ask? The end of the newspaper industry? Sure, why not? Thats an easy one and we talk about that probably way too much. The end of free content?

Now were getting warmer. Earlier this week we told of Rupert Murdochs master plan (or is that disastrous plan?) to remove his News Corp. content from the search engines like Google. Thats pretty big talk. Crazy talk possibly but big talk nonetheless. So do you just make that kind of threat then wait and see or do you then draw the line in the sand? You know, set a date as to when this grand gesture will occur. Well, lets not get totally crazy or at least clear on that one. That smells too much like reality.

So what am I driving at here? Its the continued blustering of News Corp. about pay for content models. Now, they are talking about a sort of uprising that they will lead so that all media outlets will follow.

The Telegraph reports

Jonathan Miller, News Corps chief digital officer, said the media mogul was ready to block Googles access to his sites soon and that the company would lead the media industry in this direction.
There is real tension surrounding the free versus pay debate, Mr Miller told the Monaco Media Forum on Friday. It will play out in the next two years. We believe that the value of high quality content is not recognised online -by giving its away for free) so something needs to happen.
I dont believe the media industry can continue to exist in this way.

Soon. Well, thats definitive. In an attempt to further clarify this threat of a pitchfork and torch uprising by the media industry Mr. Miller then gave the ominous threat of when this will all hit the fan.

When asked how long it would be before Mr Murdoch took the step to block Google, which every media company relies upon to send them high levels of web traffic, Mr Miller said it would be soon " months and quarters " not weeks

Pack up the plantation! They're going to remove themselves from the search engines in a couple of months or maybe like 6 or 9 or 12 months. I dont know. Do you? Are you worried yet?

Even Murdoch himself is back-pedaling on his own claims about when this grand gesture might / may take place.

Last week Mr Murdoch warned that his plans to charge for access to content across all of his newspaper sites, by the end of next June, could now be delayed.
During a conference call to discuss News Corp first quarter financial results, the media magnate said he couldnt promise to meet his own deadline " but did say it remained a work in progress and we are all working very hard on delivering the pay solution.

Oh for Petes sake! This is sounding more and more like the ramblings of a mad man than anything else. Why would you rile up the biggest boon to traffic that any news site has then be wishy-washy on the details and even throw into doubt if they have the nerve or, even worse, the backing of the rest of the media industry to pull this off? Also, in all of this talk they are confusing people about pay walls and search engine access. Will that happen together? Are they all part of the same plan?

Heres the final piece that is interesting. News Corp. is even calling out the quality of the traffic that comes from the engines as inferior because it may be one time visitors. Excuse me? What if that one time visitor actually had never expressed real interest in your publication but through the engines landed at your site and thought Hey, not bad. Im gonna keep coming back.? This quote from Miller says a lot

The traffic which comes in from Google brings a consumer who more often than not read one article and then leaves the site. That is the least valuable of traffic to us the economic impact -of not having content indexed by Google- is not as great as you might think. You can survive without it.

Ok, if you can survive without it then just do it already. Well, that wouldnt be prudent now would it.

However, Mr Miller admitted News Corporation could not make the bold step alone but was prepared to lead other media companies in this direction. We will lead. There is a pent up need for this. There has to be a resolution for the free versus pay debate otherwise we cannot afford to pay for things like news bureaus in Kabul.

Looks to me like this whole thing is just keeping News Corp. in the news because there may not be any real news here since there is no plan and no definition coupled with vague threats and dates of even more vague threats.

I say do it and lets see what happens. Theres no way to predict how this will play out and some game of cat and mouse will just tick off more people than its worth. As Henry Rollins shouted years ago Dont think about it . Do it! Amen.

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Google Expands Product Ads

In the recent blog, Google has announced that it is expanding the product ads within AdWords listing. After testing the Product Listing Ads for a while, the team has finally said that searchers in the U.S will be able to see product ads more frequently.

Although, the product listing ad is still a Beta feature but Google has continuous plans to expand it over the coming time.The best part of Product Listing Ads is that they are only charged on cost-per-action basis. Therefore, you will only pay if a user clicks on the ad and completes the purchase process on the website. It is definitely a risk-free option of reaching out to larger audience.

Another benefit of Product Listing Ads is that you don't have to use keywords or additional ad text. If a searcher enters a query that is relevant to a product in your Google Merchant Center Account, he will automatically see the most relevant products along with image, price and product name.

At present, the Product Listing Ads will be available to a limited number of retail advertisers but over the time Google will increase number of users who can see the ads as well as the ones who can advertise their product.

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Bada Bing! Bing Adds New Video and SERP Features

Microsoft has announced several new features for its rebranded search engine - I mean, decision engine - Bing, including the rollout of Bing Videos, a partnership with Wolfram Alpha...

... and a new hover preview feature.

Bing Videos

Yesterday, Bing announced a new video site that will take over the old Microsoft Video (yeah, Id never heard of it, either). In addition to MSN videos, Bing Video will feature content from Hulu, ABC and YouTube.

While its unlikely that Bing Videos will challenge YouTube in a major way, I think its a good idea for them to launch their own site, if their goal is merely to increase time on site, and make Bing even more of a go-to resource.
Partnership with Wolfram Alpha

A searchable database of information, Wolfram Alpha announced APIs this summer in the wake of rumors of a deal with Bing. The APIs seemed quell the gossip"but now the two really are teaming up.

The partnership is limited to the area of diet and nutrition (Im guessing as a test run for a possible wider deal in the future). Bing says this partnership will help its users make decisions about their food choices. When you search for a food on Bing, nutrition information from Wolfram Alpha will appear in a tab on the SERP.

This will also include tools like a BMI calculator.
Advanced Hover Preview Feature

Bing is also bringing and advanced hover preview feature to their SERPs. The press release states that this feature adds:

• An actual snapshot of the Web site in question
• A link to the customer service number (where appropriate)
• Deep links, the most-often-clicked links on the site
• A search-within-this-site box that allows you to scour the site to find what youre looking for.
• Facebook page previews, from which you can view a persons picture, see who is in their Facebook network and send them a message or friend request.

Conveniently, this preview only shows up when you mouse over a plus-sign on the right side of the screen, rather than every time you mouseover a link (like Snap Preview, which I find so obnoxious). Microsoft made a video so you can see it in action if its not on your SERPs yet (warning, it autoplays):

Interestingly, this does showcase some feature that have long been a part of Googles SERPs, including deep links to the most popular pages of a site and a search box to use the sites internal search.

What do you think? Which of these features will you be most likely to use?

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Tag: Bing, SERP

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Rupert, meet Reality. Reality, meet Rupert.

Rupert Murdoch's rantings are so out of touch that they're bordering on lunacy, or, at a minimum, stupidity. He's mad that his old revenue model isn't working anymore.

Maybe, Rupert, that's because we're in a new era and people have changed their minds. It has nothing to do with search engines being kleptomaniacs. It's people doing what they do..finding the easiest path to information. This boat has sailed, dear Rupert. You can jump up and down and stamp your feet, but the only people to really get made at are your readers. They've found a new way to get information, and unfortunately, it bypasses your monetization model. You are no longer in control.

Murdoch's answer is to throw a subscription model in on all his publications and stop Google and other engines from indexing it and "stealing" his precious content. Hmm...let's see now. The entire world navigates through search. Every day, billions of eyeballs go to Google seeking content. You have content. So what do you do? You lock Google out. And you try to lock customers in by hijacking their wallets and leaving them no choice. Let's recap: Lock the world out and lock your customers in. Isn't that what East Germany tried to do with the Berlin Wall? Let me know how that works out for you Rupert.

Murdoch's not alone in this. Wall Street Journal editor Robert Thomson took Google's Marissa Mayer to task for encouraging digital promiscuity. Apparently, Google has built a virtual "red light district", threatening the stability of the sacred union of readers and struggling publishers. Again, maybe it's because the readers aren't finding what they're looking for at "home".

This denial of a dying industry is nothing new. History has repeated itself over and over again in discontinuous shifts in the marketplace. Yet somehow the behavior of the terminal industries never changes. George Bernard Shaw nailed it a century ago:

" If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience."

I guess it's understandable, really. We're looking at evolution and when the environment shifts, dinosaurs can't suddenly decide to become gazelles. Somehow, it helps to rant, rave and rail against the unfairness of it all. Oh..and perhaps it's also beneficial to call the gazelles names like "kleptomaniacs".

THIS JUST IN...

Techdirt has a gritty little post showing all the Murdoch owned sites that "steal" content as an aggregator. So, apparently it's okay to be parasitic as long as you're on the right side of the relationship.

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Tag: Rupert Murdoch, lunacy

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Google Testing Skippable Ads in YouTube Videos

Online ads might be working well for news sites, but YouTube is always looking for a bigger piece of the online video advertising pie. As of today, Google is testing skippable ads...

...on YouTube, as part of its ongoing search for the right way to monetize the most popular video site on the web.

The test will run with videos from content partners who have opted in to the program. The preroll ads will feature a link to skip through the ad and go straight to the video content.

MediaPost says that this test will provide Google with a demographic break down of their audience for high quality ads:

"The test that determines if and when people watch the video clips will provide Google with insight into the type of person who may skip an ad, what type of ad they might skip, and what piece of content does better than another. Google also will look at whether some ads are skipped in a specific portion of the session. Does the person skip the ad in the first video versus the third during a 30-minute time slot while on YouTube? "

This information could be assembled into another ad method: The model is cost per engagement, where advertisers would only pay for opt-in engaged views of the ads. Phil Farhi, product manager at Googles YouTube, mentions that the promoted videos model is another example in this area, and in the future, there could be a model where advertisers only pay for complete plays of their ads.

Theyre also comparing TV ads vs. video ads created specifically for online audiences. Generally, television ads take 30 seconds to make sure viewers get the message, image and contact/purchase information (call to action). Online, the call to action can run along side the video, in accompanying text that remains after the ad is over, they can use direct links or other methods.

What do you think? Will you skip ads on YouTube? Could this finally be the way to monetize YouTube?

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Tag: YouTube Ads

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Yahoo Displaying DMOZ Title? Also Not Following NOODP

Just a few minutes ago, colleague Laura Beatty here at BusinessOnLine notices something on Yahoo, and says Yahoo is not showing the correct title tag.

I took at look at it searching BusinessOL and yup, it does look different.

After looking at it deeper, of course the first think we checked was Yahoo Directory since Yahoo is already known to do this, in the same way how Google and Bing sometimes pull titles from DMOZ, but they are still different.

Its not Yahoo Directory, its not the title tag, so it must be DMOZ?

So far, it does look like the title is pulled from DMOZ aka the ODP. Even if we had the NOODP, NOYDIR tags in there for a very long time.

I am not sure if I have read anywhere that Yahoo pulls titles from DMOZ, all I know is it pulls from Yahoo Directory. And if this is indeed pulling from DMOZ, it is not following the NOODP tag which I believe it should. Is Yahoo broken? Well Im not really surprised right now. In the previous SMX East, Yahoo announced they no longer read the Meta Keywords tags, and just after a few weeks, Danny proves them wrong.

Has anyone else been seeing the same observations? Wed be glad to hear from you also if you are seeing the same thing, tell us about it.

Benj thinks Yahoo and Bing are working out how to merge these two algorithms and is probably working on it already causing some functions running erratically on Yahoo.

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Tag: Yahoo, DMOZ

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Google Will Roll Out "Caffeine" Update After Holidays

Cutts explained on his blog today that Google will be rolling out their indexing infrastructure sometime in January. This will probably only be happening on a few datacenters...

...at a time to collect further feedback before releasing it on all datacenters.

Obviously they probably didnt want to piss off website owners for 4th time by making a change to the SERPs during the holiday season. Good idea Google!

The weird part is that they took down the sandbox URL where we could see the results. Not sure why they did that but Cutts explained that they will post the IP of the datacenter when they roll Caffeine out.

When I reviewed Caffeine on the sandbox URL previously I didnt see many changes, but client sites ranked better so that made me happy. Aaron Wall did a nice review of Caffeine back in August:

http://www.seobook.com/google-caffeine

Thoughts?

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Tag: Google Caffeine

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Real Time Search Coming to Mobile

Real time and local mobile search are two of the major hot spots in search today. and now theyre coming together. Weve heard more and more about OneRiot now that their rumored...

...deal with Yahoo has been confirmed in testing - and OneRiot is bring real time (and social) to mobile, this time through a partnership with mobile search provider Taptu. Says MediaPost,

"People can search on their phone for real-time news. You hear theres a hurricane and want to read the latest buzz on your mobile phone, says Tobias Peggs, general manager of OneRiot. So, you do a search for hurricane, but you dont want to see the Wikipedia page. You need quick access to real-time news.

As a refresher, OneRiot aggregates comments and links from across many social sites, including Twitter, in real time. Taptu is using OneRiots API to provide the real time results.

The next question with real time search is if and how it will be monetized. OneRiots general manager had more to say to MediPoast about that:

"Peggs says the next step to serve up ads in real-time results means developing additional services through the companys API. The move to improve relevant ads will provide the ability to quickly scale up and support partners the size of Microsoft and Yahoo."

And, of course, theyve already begun working with Yahoo. However, currently it seems like advertising on real time search would be less profitable, since there are probably fewer real time commerce searches than information searches.

Neither Microsoft's nor Googles deal with Twitter applied to mobile search.

What do you think?

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Tag: mobile serach

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Google Now Shows Users How To Use Google

Ever wondered what data Google stores about you through the Google services you use? In a bid to appear more transparent with the...

... information from your Google account, the Google Dashboard has been launched.

It's a one-stop shop for browsing through most of the Google services you're using and it shows you everything Google knows about you. There's no need to panic though, there's nothing in the dashboard that can't be found within the individual services themselves. The dashboard simply puts all this information in the one place for your convenience.

Googler's Alma Whitten, Yariv Adan and Marissa Mayer explain more in the official blog post:

Designed to be simple and useful, the Dashboard summarizes data for each product that you use (when signed in to your account) and provides you direct links to control your personal settings. Today, the Dashboard covers more than 20 products and services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts, Latitude and many more.

The "personal settings" that can be controlled include the ability to control your privacy settings, control sharing and limit what data Google stores about you.

The dashboard is limited, however, in that it doesn't give us data for all Google services (no Google Maps or Google Groups). Also it doesn't shed a lot of light on how Google is actually using your data. Is it being used for advertising or for market research?

If you would like to learn more about Google Dashboard then check out the video below.

Alternatively, you can get simply get started by visiting Google.com/dashboard.

I think you will find it a little scary to see the amount of information that Google has on you, I certainly was!

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