Search Engine Showdown Blog

More Punctuation Searching at Google

2012-05-14T16:01:49Z

Somehow I missed the announcement last month from Google which included a note that Google has started indexing more punctuation marks. Based on this announcement, it looks like we can start searching with all of the following (some of which have been possible for...

In-Depth Bing Relaunch Overview

2012-05-11T14:01:53Z

If like me you are not yet seeing all the new Bing features (or if you are outside the U.S. where they have not yet been introduced), Danny provides an excellent and in-depth overview with his Bing Relaunches, Features New Social Sidebar posted yesterday....

Trends Highlighted on Bing

2012-05-10T14:25:30Z

Yesterday I noticed a new left margin icon appearing on some results at Bing. A small, grey, curved, upward arrow shows up just to the left of the title on results that are "trending" on Facebook and/or Twitter. These trend icons appear whether or...

Google Resurrects Realtime? No, Just More News Noise

2012-05-04T19:59:53Z

Google News has announced a few changes: "Realtime" news Larger images on main page Integration of Google+ content But no, this is not a new version of Google Realtime search that searched Twitter and other social networks and was killed when Google was unable...

New Bing Results Page Live in U.S.: What's Missing?

2012-05-02T14:26:52Z

Late last night I started seeing the new Bing user interface live on results pages in all my browsers. I first saw it last week in a slightly different version, but now it is official and has been reported on by Verge, TechCrunch, and...

New Bing User Interface Test

2012-04-25T04:48:42Z

I see or hear about all kinds of Google user interface changes tested by being made available to a small fraction of users. Yesterday I came across one from Bing. The main changes I noticed: History gone Related searches moved to the right of...

Google Adds "Top Answers"

2012-03-29T02:38:32Z

After panning Google earlier today for non-search changes like the addition of Play and disappearing search tools experiment, I should give them credit for a potentially useful search results change. Barry reported on SearchEngineLand that for some results from the Google Discussion database subset (web...

Google Plays & Experiments with Collapsible Search Sidebar

2012-03-28T21:10:22Z

Google Play, the new combined online Google store for music, books, and Android apps, is now being featured prominently in the top Google bar, highlighted with a "NEW" superscript. Clicking the Play link does not transfer a search that you have already done in Google...

Tried Yandex? Russian Search Engine Available in English

2012-03-16T16:05:07Z

The search engine Yandex is big in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus,Kazakhstan, and Turkey, and an alpha version in English has also been available for awhile. Yandex builds its own search engine databases and currently has a web, images, and video database on the English Yandex...

Google: Advertising Company & the Corporate-Mandated Focus

2012-03-14T14:24:38Z

It is always interesting to hear people's rationale about leaving or joining a company. Yesterday a former Googler hit hard with "The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company...

Advanced Search Changes

2012-03-13T23:31:41Z

Back in November, Google launched and then withdrew a new advanced search page. The new version is back, if you can find it, and it is improved over the buggy November version. I do like the new look and the removal of the need...

Cache Keyword Highlighting Disappears When Logged In

2012-03-08T14:30:10Z

Google Operating System reports in Bring Back Keyword Highlighting to Google Cache that logged in users have lost the ability to have search words highlighted when looking at Google's cached copy of a web page. "For some reason, Google's caching feature is more and...

Tilde Tricks at Google

2012-03-08T01:57:10Z

Google's expanded synonym operator, the tilde (which must be right before the word with no space as in ~cancer), can be used in some interesting ways. Garrett French's "The Link Prospector's Guide to the Tilde" from yesterday gives several ideas of use from an SEO...

Blekko to Add Ads

2012-02-16T15:38:07Z

MediaPost reports that Blekko will begin experimenting with search ads. The report is that Blekko will use ads from Google or Bing. At this point, I do not yet see any advertising appearing, but it bodes well for a longer-term survival of Blekko as...

Google Bar Goes Back to Top, but Still Forgets Scholar

2012-02-15T02:10:14Z

Back in November, Google started launching a new interface it dubbed the Google Bar. At that time, in my comparison between the old and the new versions, I was dismayed by the removal of several databases from the drop down list. Over the months...