Advice for Adwords
December 6, 2013
According to Eric Liu, chief custodial technician at Rocket Lease, people are using Google Adwords wrong. He offers advice on how to correctly use the advertising tool in his blog post: “How To Bid For CPC Campaigns (aka “Stop Doing Adwords Wrong”). Liu states that most Adwords advice suggest users play the guessing game with bidding. By grouping keywords together and applying a consistent bidding strategy users can rely on computers to manage their ad campaigns to make the biggest profit.
Liu calculated how to maximize profits with an algebraic formula and illustrates with sample scenarios. The formula is a bit complex to follow, but play around with few numbers and it should work out.
Liu notes that his formula is entirely experimental:
“It’s important to note again that you can’t look up the information to set your CPC bids or calculate it theoretically — it has to be determined experimentally. There’s nothing you can do to just start with the perfect campaign. You will make your best guesses, experiment, and then use the feedback to estimate the shape of the curve. That means you will start by running suboptimal campaigns, then use the information to get closer to optimal. The better your initial guesses, the less money you’ll spend in the “curve discovery/estimation” part of the process.”
Who says you do not use math outside of high school? By applying Liu’s formula you may be able to make a little more money out of your Web site’s ads and lower overhead costs.
Whitney Grace, December 06, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Business Intelligence For The Excel User
December 6, 2013
Microsoft Office Suite might not the same heavy-lifting data discovery solutions as specially designed software, but Database Journal reports in the article “Getting Started With Microsoft Power Query For Excel” that an equivalent solution is available. Power Query is a Microsoft Power BI Excel add-in that provides data discovery, data reshaping, and data combination from multiple sources. Power Query’s user interface is both interactive and intuitive and can be used for a variety of basic yet powerful functions: search, discover, acquire, combine, refine, transform and enrich the data.
The article explains how to download Power Query and covers elementary procedures to program it to your specific needs:
“Power Query (code name for this feature was “Data Explorer”) is a free Excel add-in (supported both in Excel 2010 and Excel 2013) which can be installed from the ‘Download Microsoft Power Query for Excel page. To install the Power Query add-in, you require Microsoft Office 2013 Professional Plus, Office 365 ProPlus, Excel 2013 Standalone or Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus with Software Assurance. You can find more information on this under the Software Requirements section of Microsoft Power Query for Excel.”
In a way, Power Query is a mini-big data machine in Excel. Microsoft may want to trademark that idea. Excel is the basis for most data storage and collection in organizations. Viable business intelligence solutions usually do not come this cheap and it is worth investigating to make use of data sitting on a server.
Whitney Grace, December 06, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Libraries: A Reminder of How Research Used to Be
December 5, 2013
A library invites search. A library experience can be social or solitary. One can proceed by asking a reference desk staffer where something is. One can locate books by wandering around. The word “serendipity” applies to this approach. One can use a card catalog with actual paper cards.
Image source: http://www.bibliotheque-institutdefrance.fr/catalogues/catalogues.html
Whoops. Wrong tense.
One used to be able to search in this way. No more. On a recent visit to the local library, I did speak with a reference desk professional. We browsed a computer screen looking for information. Unfortunately due to commercial database vendors’ policies, the information I sought was not available. One of my team called the commercial database vendor to find out how to access the specific information, and we did not reach anyone. Neither our voice mail nor our email elicited an answer. No joy.
I walked around the library. When I was a much younger version of myself, I found great satisfaction in the serendipity method. I recall learning about giving talks by browsing and coming across an illustrated volume by “Redpath.” I recall only the single word, and I have not been able to locate that particular volume again. No joy.
If you recall the libraries with books, magazines, card catalogs, and vertical files, I have a recommendation for you. Navigate to The Atlantic and peruse “The Evolution of the College Library.”
I have access to a wealth of information on my local system and via the Internet. I have a number of information retrieval systems and tools. I even have a few books that I keep as a reminder of the good old days.
Know what?
None of the modern tools is as satisfying to use as a traditional library. For me, I enjoy the physical space and the experience of using a traditional book or reference book. I even like the distinctive odor of ink on paper. I can live without microfilm, but it was fun once to figure out how to locate a reel, thread it, and look into the past in odd, slightly off kilter representations of a page.
There were filters just like there are today. But there were, as now, ways around them. What’s lost? More than an old-fashioned, labor-intensive approach to research. The physicality of the library was for me as important as the collection.
Stephen E Arnold, December 5, 2013
Search Innovations: Revisiting the Past
December 5, 2013
I printed out an article from ReadWrite Web five or six years ago. The story was “Top 17 Search Innovations Outside of Google.” I suggest that anyone tracking Yahoo’s decision to jump back into search or struggling with the dearth of Web search options may want to read this article. I think the list, prepared in May 2007, is a useful reminder of the lack of progress in search.
Let me highlight five of the innovations. These are “breakthroughs” that various search vendors and satraps have explained as the “next big thing.” Well, maybe.
- Personalization. The idea that the user does not see a list of results that are believed to be objective and relevant to the query is fascinating. When vendors filter information, vendors control the information agenda. Quite an innovation. I thought something similar happened in other spheres of interest years ago.
- Algorithm improvement. I like the idea that search has broken free of the algorithms that have been in use since the early days of SDC, SMART, and STAIRS. If the “improvement” erodes precision and recall, is that a good thing? If “improvement” means computational efficiency to reduce costs, is that a better thing?
- Parametric search. Yep, structured query language queries. What’s new? The fact that fewer professionals want to hassle with figuring out a query is fresher than the method itself.
- Semantic search. Does a user understand the upside and downside of semantic search? Do marketers? Oh, yeah.
- Results visualization. Hollywood style outputs have helped Palantir raise lots of money. Does a user know what a visualization “means”? Not too often.
The point is that the ReadWrite list makes clear that no significant progress in search has been made in the last five or six years. Am I missing progress?
To get some details about the dead end for search and content processing, check out the vendor case studies at www.xenky.com/vendor-profiles. The similarity among systems, features, and methods is interesting.
Stephen E Arnold, December 5, 2013
LeadFerret Publishes SharePoint Directory
December 5, 2013
With the growing complexity of enterprise search, SharePoint is of course growing more and more complicated. Enterprises struggle to find the best implementation and the best means of customization. In order to meet that need, many are turning to enterprise experts. LeadFerret is hoping to connect organizations with appropriate experts. Their efforts are discussed in the NewsDay article, “LeadFerret Publishes Directory of SharePoint Professionals.”
The article begins:
“LeadFerret users already enjoy free access to over 15+ million business contacts with complete information, including email addresses, social media links, and a robust set of search tools. Today LeadFerret announced the release of a specialized directory of SharePoint Professionals which allows users to search and see full contact information for them.”
SharePoint experts are in demand because of the growing complexities of SharePoint, but also because of the growing options for SharePoint customization and add-on solutions. Stephen E. Arnold is a long-time leader in search. He offers world-class advice and expertise on ArnoldIT.com as well as a subscription service, Honk, for effortless industry news at your fingertips.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 5, 2013
TEMIS Gets Another Client
December 5, 2013
Good news for TEMIS, everyone! According to The Sacramento Bee in the article, “OECD Chooses TEMIS To Semantically Structure Its Knowledge And Information Management Process,” TEMIS has a new and very big client. The OECD stands for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and they have selected TEMIS’s semantic content enrichment solution Luxid. OECD has started a new project called the Knowledge and Information Management (KIM) Program to create framework for managing and delivering information as well as improving its accessibility and presentation. The OECD collects and analyzes data for over thirty-four member governments and over one hundred countries to help them sustain economic growth, boost employment, and raise the standard of living. The KIM Program will be a portal for the organization’s information and will hopefully increase findability and search.
What will TEMIS do? the article explains:
“In this context, the OECD has chosen TEMIS’s flagship Luxid® Content Enrichment Platform to address all Semantic Enrichment stages of the KIM framework. Luxid® will help OECD to consistently enrich document metadata in alignment with its taxonomies and ontologies, providing a genuinely semantic integration layer across heterogeneous document storage and content management components. This semantic layer will both enable new search and browsing methods and improved relevance and accuracy of search results, as well as progressively build an integrated map of OECD knowledge.”
Glad to see that enriched search and findability are not dead yet. Metadata still has its place, folks. How else will the big data people be able to find their new insights if metadata is not used?
Whitney Grace, December 05, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Watson Loses to Amazon Look Ahead for Work at Healthcare.gov or Homeland Security
December 5, 2013
The article titled IBM Introduces Watson to the Public Sector Cloud on GCN explores the potential for Watson now that IBM has opened it up to developers. IBM Watson Solutions recently won the 2013 North America New Product Innovation award for its combination of communication skills and evaluation abilities. Even more recently, IBM gave up on its competition with Amazon Web Services for a CIA contract for 10 years and $600M. But the loss has not rained out the parade, as the article explains:
“The initial target market for IBM Watson Developers Cloud is the private sector, with IBM touting third-party applications in such areas as retail and health care. But analysts say the offering will impact big data problems in the public sector, too. McCarthy sees potential for Watson-powered apps in such areas as fraud analysis, which the White House is ramping up due to worries about scammers taking advantage of consumers signing up for its new health care plans. “
Sounds like there is a job for Watson at Healthcare.gov, what with the massive potential for fraud issues. Another possibility is putting Watson to work on entity analytics for Homeland Security, looking for patterns in data. Entity analytics is mainly about comparing huge amounts of data and who could be better at that than IBM’s supercomputer?
Chelsea Kerwin, December 05, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Tips to Customize Your Bing Start Search on Windows 8.1
December 5, 2013
The story on LifeHacker titled How to Configure or Disable Bing Web Search in Windows 8.1 explains a step-by step process to shut down or adjust Bing Search. The article responds to some complaints about Windows 8.1 search being slow and frustrating. Windows latest version is set up so that any search from the Start screen will yield web results.
The article explains:
“You can either turn off Bing search completely, or simply tweak settings like whether to give personalized results using your location or turning off safe search. To do any of these things, here’s where to go: Open the charms menu (place your cursor in the top right or bottom right corner) and select “Settings.” Click “Change PC settings.” Click “Search and apps.” Click “Search” in the side bar if it’s not already selected. Disable or change any options you choose.”
Some may find the search option useful, and time-saving, but for others the web search option is unnecessary. Depending on the connection speed, this might be a very frustrating option. For a more thorough tutorial laying out all of the options for customizing your Start search read How to Customize or Disable Search with Bing in Windows 8.1.
Chelsea Kerwin, December 05, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
SearchBlox: Jumping on the Survey Bandwagon
December 4, 2013
I suppose the notion of a biased sample is of little interest to the search and content processing mavens, poobahs, and vendors who want inputs. I just received from SearchBlox a request to provide information via a survey. I have seen survey requests from LinkedIn people, unknown PR types, and search vendors.
Here’s that the SearchBlox email displayed for me:
Are these surveys useful? In my experience, no. The dry stuff presented in Statistics 101 about sample selection is taught for a reason. Results from “please, respond” surveys are easily spoofed, distorted, or plain wrong.
SearchBlox offers a cloud search solution. Last I heard it was based on ElasticSearch’s technology. If you want to know more about a search vendor with no recollection of sampling methodology, navigate to www.searchblox.com.
Stephen E Arnold, December 4, 2013
Yahoo and Search: Innovation or PR?
December 4, 2013
I read “You Are the Query: Yahoo’s Bold Quest to Reinvent Search.” The write up explains that “search” is important to Yahoo. The buzzwords personalization and categorization make an appearance. There is no definition of “search.” So the story suggests that the new direction may be a “feed”, a stream of information. The passage I noted is:
So what is Yahoo building? To wit, the company is working on a new “personalization platform,” according to the LinkedIn profile of one Yahoo senior director. Cris Luiz Pierry, the director who headed up Yahoo’s now-shuttered Flipboard clone Livestand, writes that he is heading up a “stealth project,” and that he is “building the best content discovery and recommendation engine on the Web, across all of our regions.” Pierry also has an in-the-weeds search background, with experience in core Web search, ranking algorithms, and e-commerce software — which may come in handy when dealing with monetization.
A stealth search project. Didn’t Fulcrum Technologies operate in this way between 1983 and its run up to a much needed initial public offering in the early 1990s? Wasn’t the newcomer SRCH2 in stealth mode earlier in 2013?
The hook to the new approach may be nestled within this comment in the article:
That search experience would likely be layered on top of another company’s Web crawler, like Microsoft’s Bing, which took over those operations for Yahoo in 2010, as part of a 10-year deal. (More on that later.) Beginning in 2008.
Indexing the Web is an expensive proposition. No commercial publisher can afford it. Google is able to pull it off via its Yahoo-inspired ad model. Yandex is struggling to find monetization methods that allow it to keep its indexes fresh. But other Web indexers have had to cut back on coverage. Exalead’s Web index is thin gruel. Blekko has lost its usefulness for me. In fact, looking for information is now more difficult that it has been for a number of years.
Another interesting comment in the article jumped off the screen for me; to wit:
We firmly believe that the Search Product of tomorrow will not be anything alike [sic] the product that we are used to today,” says the job description for the search architect. The posting also name-checks Search Direct, Yahoo’s version of Google Instant, as the “first step” in changing the landscape of search. After testing out a few queries on Yahoo’s home page, the feature, which looks up queries without requiring the user to hit “search,” looks to be dormant.
The write up concludes with this speculative paragraph:
Some theories: The company could be planning a Bing exit strategy for 2015 or earlier, and look to partner with another Web crawler, aka Google. Some reports have said Mayer has been cozying up to her former company on that front. Or Yahoo could be rebuilding its own core search capabilities, though that’s the unlikeliest of scenarios because that would be a nightmare for the company’s margins. Or Yahoo could even be beefing up its team just enough to gain more authority within the Bing partnership, in case it wanted to advise Bing on what to do on the back end.
What I find interesting is that the term “search” is not really defined in this write up or most of the information I see that address findability. I am not sure what “search” means for Yahoo. The company has a history of listing sites by categories. Then the company indexed Web sites. Then the company used other vendors’ results. What’s next? I am not sure.
Observations? I have a few:
First, anyone looking for specific information has a tough job on their hands today. In a conversation with two experts in information retrieval, both mentioned that finding historical information via Web search systems was getting more difficult.
Second, queries run by different researchers return different results. The notion of comparative searching is tricky.
Third, with library funding shrinking, access to commercial databases is dwindling. For example, in Kentucky, patrons cannot locate a company news release from the 1980s using public library services.
The article about Yahoo is less about search and more about public relations. Is Yahoo or any vendor able to do something “new” in search? Without defining the term “search,” does it matter to the current generation of experts?
Personally I don’t want to influence a query. I want to locate information that is germane to a query that I craft and submit to an information retrieval system. Then I want to review results lists for relevant content and I want to read that information, analyze the high value information, synthesize it, and move on about my business.
I want to control the query. I don’t want personalization, feeds, or predictive analytics clouding the process. Does “search” mean thinking or taking what a company wants to provide to advance its own agenda?
Stephen E Arnold, December 4, 2013
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
