SearchMe Changes
May 1, 2009
SearchMe, http://www.searchme.com, promotes itself as “true, blended multimedia search.” You get video, images, music, web pages, Twitter results and more organized by relevance. It’s a visual slideshow interface, so you see a miniature web page instead of having to click through a link. Results returned for “Iron Chef Japan” varied, including a Flickr picture, a Yahoo! video, an About.com listing for Japanese food and the Fine Living channel profile of the show. Results for “NASA shuttle launch” were less impressive, returning the NASA home page, a CBS news article and a CNN news article, but no videos. I didn’t see any social media results on either search. The web site functions like Viewzi, which I talked about here, but doesn’t have the various entertaining display options. Searchme also has a best-selling iApp and is configured for several mobile platforms, which gives it a leg up on other visual search engines.
Jessica Bratcher, May 1, 2009
Web Site Search: More Confusion
May 1, 2009
Diane Sterling, e-Commerce Times, wrote a story that appeared in my newsreader as a MacNewsWorld.com story called âThe Wide Open World of Web Site Searchâ.
. You can find the article here. The write up profiles briefly several search systems; namely:
- SLI systems here. I think of this company as providing a product that makes it easy to display items from a catalog, find indexed items, and buy a product. The company has added a number of features over the years to deliver facets, related searches, and suggestions. In my mind, the product shares some of the features of EasyAsk, Endeca, and Mercado (now owned by Omniture), among others.
- PicoSearch here is a hosted service, and I think of it as a vendor offering indexing in a way that resembles Blossom.comâs service (used on this Beyond Search Web log) or the âoldâ hosted service provided by Fast Search & Transfer prior to its acquisition by Microsoft. Google offers this type of search as well. Googleâs Site Search makes it easy to plop a Google search box on almost any site, but the system does not handle structured content in the manner of SLI Systems, for example.
- LTU Technologies here. I first encountered LTU when it was demonstrating its image processing technology. The company has moved from its government and investigative focus to e-commerce. The companyâs core competency, in my view, is image and video processing. The system can identify visual similarity. A customer looking at a red sweater will be given an opportunity to look at other jacket-type products. No human has to figure out the visual similarity.
Now the article is fine but I was baffled by the use of the phrase âWeb site searchâ. The idea I think is to provide the user with a âfinding experienceâ that goes beyond key word searching. On that count, SLI and LTU are good examples for e-commerce (online shopping). PicoSearch is an outlier because it offers a hosted text centric search solution.
Another issue is that the largest provider of site search is our good pal Googzilla. Google does not rate a mention, and I think that is a mistake. Not only does Google make it possible to search structured data but the company offers its Site Search service. More information about Site Search is here.
These types of round up articles, in my opinion, confuse those looking for search solutions. Whatâs the fix? I think the write up should have made the focus on e-commerce in the title of the article and probably early in the write up included the words âe-commerce searchâ. Second, I think the companies profiled should have been ones who deliver e-commerce search functions. None of the profiled companies have a big footprint in the site search world that I track. This does not mean that the companies donât have beefy revenue or satisfied customers. I think that the selection is off by 15 degrees and a bit of a fruit salad, not a plate of carrots.
Why do I care?
There is considerable confusion about search. There are significant differences between a search system for a text centric site and a search system for a structured information site such as an e-commerce site. One could argue that Endeca is a leader in e-commerce. Thatâs fine but most people donât know this side of Endeca. The omission is confusing. The result, in my experience, is that the reader is confused. The procurement team is confused. And competitors are confused. Search is tough enough without having the worlds of image, text, and structured data scrambled unnecessarily.
Stephen Arnold, May 1, 2009
The Google Causes a Swallowing Problem
May 1, 2009
The Financial Times has picked up the Google bat and taken a whack at Googzilla. The article âGagging on Googleâ appeared in the Financial Times here. The article, written by Maverecon, a serious looking fellow named Willem Buiter has a killer lead:
Google is to privacy and respect for intellectual property rights what the Taliban are to womenâs rights and civil liberties: a daunting threat that must be fought relentlessly by all those who value privacy and the right to exercise, within the limits of the law, control over the uses made by others of their intellectual property. The internet search engine company should be regulated rigorously, defanged and if necessary, broken up or put out of business. It would not be missed.
I have been involved in online information for a long time. I have written numerous and dull articles and monographs. Never did the notion of comparing an online vendor to the Taliban and civil liberties cross my mind. In a way, it is quite imaginative and provides a good example how the dead tree crowd is responding to Google. Metaphors in a blog can be a powerful weapon. At least, I surmise thatâs what the top dogs at the FT believe.
Mr. Buiter touches upon the âmâ word via indirection, copyright head on, and Googleâs street view as âthe universal voyeur.â I donât have the energy to see if Mr. Buiter knows that Udi Manberâs street images for Amazonâs A9 was the pioneer in this type of content enrichment. I suppose Mr. Buiter is happy with a dead tree telephone directory and no photo of the business or home that he is trying to find in the rain in heavy traffic. Mr. Buiter has also discovered Googleâs tracking cookies. I was disappointed that he cited another source instead of my 2005 The Google Legacy for his explanation of cookies. The wrap up is a call to readers to accept this assertion:
Google companyâs founding motto is: âDonât be evil.â But it does evil. It has indeed, become the new evil empire of the internet. It is time for people to take a stand, as individual consumers and internet users, and collectively through laws and regulations, to tame this new Leviathan. When I get back from this trip, I will do my best to remove every trace of Google from my computers, even the tracking cookies (if I can!).
I think that the FT has trumped the vituperation directed at Google by the Guardian and the Telegraph. I am looking forward to what these dead tree outfits write. In my opinion, that Taliban comparison is going to be tough to beat.
Unfortunately for the dead tree crowd, the GOOG has been plodding along for a decade. Now the newspaper folks have discovered how online works. What revelations await me? What do I know? I just captured the information I unearthed about Google in publishing in my new monograph. I wonder if the FT will review it? Probably not. I focus on what Google will be doing in a year or two, not what Google has been doing for a decade. Ah, for the days of yesteryear. When grapes were not sour. When newspapers were the information giants. When paper was cheap. When eight year olds would peddle them for a few pence. When ink was economical. When there was no other way to get informationâŚ
Stephen Arnold, May 1, 2009
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