DuckDuckGo: Nibbling at the Little Toe of Googzilla
January 25, 2017
I like DuckDuckGo. I fire queries at the system and see if there are items I have missed after I have checked out Qwant.com, Unbubble.eu, Giburu.com, Ixquick (now StartPage.com), Exalead Search, Yandex, and, oh, I almost forgot, the Google.
I read “DuckDuckGo Hits Milestone 14 Million Searches in a Single Day.” I learned:
DuckDuckGo revealed it has hit a milestone of 14 million searches in a single day. In addition, the search engine is celebrating a combined total of 10 billion searches performed, with 4 billion searches conducted in December 2016 alone. For a niche search engine that many people don’t know exists, that’s some notable year-over-year growth. Around this same time last year, DuckDuckGo was serving 8–9 million searches per day on average.
Just to keep DuckDuckGo’s achievement in perspective, Internet Live Stats says that Googzilla handles 3.5 billion searches per day. Our research suggests that there is room for Web search systems like DuckDuckGo to grow. About half of those with Internet access don’t run queries. Hey, that Facebook thing is a big deal. Also, there are some folks who are looking to expand their search horizons.
So, on a per day basis 14 million searches for DuckDuckGo and 3.5 billion searches for the GOOG.
Stephen E Arnold, January 25, 2017
Bing Gets Nostalgic
January 25, 2017
In my entire life, I have never seen so many people who were happy to welcome in a New Year. 2016 will be remembered for violence, political uproar, and other stuff that people wish to forget. Despite the negative associations with 2016, other stuff did happen and looking back might offer a bit of nostalgia for the news and search trends of the past year. On MSFT runs down a list of what happened on Bing in 2016,“Check Out The Top Search Trends On Bing This Past Year.”
Rather than focusing on a list of just top searches, Bing’s top 2016 searches are divided into categories: video games, Olympians, viral moments, tech trends, and feel good stories. More top searches are located over at Bing page. However, on the top viral trends it is nice to see that cat videos have gone down in popularity:
Ryder Cup heckler
Villanova’s piccolo girl
Powerball
Aston Martin winner
Who’s the mom?
Evgenia Medvedeva
Harambe the gorilla
#DaysoftheWeek
Cats of the Internet
Pokemon Go
On a personal level, I am surprised that Harambe the gorilla outranked Pokemon Go. Some of these trends I do not even remember making the Internet circuit and I was on YouTube and Reddit for all of 2016. I have been around enough years to recognize that things come and go and 2016 might have come off as a bad year for many, in reality, it was another year. It also did not forecast doomsday. That was back in 2000, folks. Get with the times!
Whitney Grace, January 25, 2017
Searchy Automates Your Search Parameters
January 25, 2017
The article on FileForum Beta News titled Searchy for Windows 0.5.1 promises users the ability to gain more control over their search parameters and prevent wasted time on redundant searches. By using search scopes, categories, and search templates, Searchy claims to simplify and organize search. The service targets users who tend to search for similar items all day, and makes it easier for those users to find what they need without all that extra typing. The article goes into more detail,
Your daily routine consists of lots repetitive searches? With Searchy you can automate that. Just write a template for similar search queries and stop typing the same things over and over… Search using Google’s and Bing’s web, image, video and news search engines. Often performing searches on same websites? Spending much time on advanced search filters in Google or Bing? Searchy will simplify that too. Just add scopes for the websites and search filters, and use them like a boss.
Searchy was developed by freelance developer Alex Kaul, who found that entering the same phrase over and over in Google was annoying. By automating the search phrase, Searchy enables users to skip a step. It may be a small step, but as we all know, a small task when completed one hundred times a day becomes a very large and tiresome one.
Chelsea Kerwin, January 25, 2017
Hacks to Make Your Google Dependence Even More Rewarding
January 24, 2017
The article on MakeUseOf titled This Cool Website Will Teach You Hundreds of Google Search Tips refers to SearchyApp, a collection of tricks, tips, and shortcuts to navigate Google search more easily. The lengthy list is divided into sections to be less daunting to readers. The article explains,
What makes this site so cool is that the tips are divided into sections, so it’s easy to find what you want. Here are the categories: Facts (e.g. find the elevation of a place, get customer service number,…) Math (e.g. solve a circle, use a calculator, etc.), Operators (search within number range, exclude a keyword from results, find related websites, etc.), Utilities (metronome, stopwatch, tip calculator, etc.), Easter Eggs (42, listen to animal sounds, once in a blue moon, etc.).
The Easter Eggs may be old news, but if you haven’t looked into them before they are a great indicator of Google’s idea of a hoot. But the Utilities section is chock full of useful little tools from dice roller to distance calculator to converting units to translating languages. Also useful are the Operators, or codes and shortcuts to tell Google what you want, sometimes functioning as search restrictions or advanced search settings. Operators might be wise to check out for those of us who forgot what our librarians taught us about online search as well.
Chelsea Kerwin, January 24, 2017
Indexing: The Big Wheel Keeps on Turning
January 23, 2017
Yep, indexing is back. The cacaphone “ontology” is the next big thing yet again. Folks, an ontology is a form of metadata. There are key words, categories, and classifications. Whipping these puppies into shape has been the thankless task of specialists for hundreds if not thousands of years. “What Is an Ontology and Why Do I Want One?” tries to make indexing more alluring. When an enterprise search system delivers results which are off the user’s information need or just plain wrong, it is time for indexing. The problem is that machine based indexing requires some well informed humans to keep the system on point. Consider Palantir Gotham. Content finds its way into the system when a human performs certain tasks. Some of these tasks are riding herd on the indexing of the content object. IBM Analyst’s Notebook and many other next generation information access systems work hand in glove with expensive humans. Why? Smart software is still only sort of smart.
The write up dances around the need for spending money on indexing. The write up prefers to confuse a person who just wants to locate the answer to a business related question without pointing, clicking, and doing high school research paper dog work. I noted this passage:
Think of an ontology as another way to classify content (like a taxonomy) that allows you to identify what the content is about and how it relates to other types of content.
Okay, but enterprise search generally falls short of the mark for 55 to 70 percent of a search system’s users. This is a downer. What makes enterprise search better? An ontology. But without the cost and time metrics, the yap about better indexing ends up with “smart content” companies looking confused when their licenses are not renewed.
What I found amusing about the write up is that use of an ontology improves search engine optimization. How about some hard data? Generalities are presented, not instead of some numbers one can examine and attempt to verify.
SEO means getting found when a user runs a query. That does not work too well for general purpose Web search systems like Google. SEO is struggling to deal with declining traffic to many Web sites and the problem mobile search presents.
But in an organization, SEO is not what the user wants. The user needs the purchase order for a client and easy access to related data. Will an ontology deliver an actionable output. To be fair, different types of metadata are needed. An ontology is one such type, but there are others. Some of these can be extracted without too high an error rate when the content is processed; for example, telephone numbers. Other types of data require different processes which can require knitting together different systems.
To build a bubble gum card, one needs to parse a range of data, including images and content from a range of sources. In most organizations, silos of data persist and will continue to persist. Money is tight. Few commercial enterprises can afford to do the computationally intensive content processing under the watchful eye and informed mind of an indexing professional.
Cacaphones like “ontology” exacerbate the confusion about indexing and delivering useful outputs to users who don’t know a Boolean operator from a SQL expression.
Indexing is a useful term. Why not use it?
Stephen E Arnold, January 23, 2017
Obey the Almighty Library Laws
January 23, 2017
Recently I was speaking with someone and the conversation turned to libraries. I complimented the library’s collection in his hometown and he asked, “You mean they still have a library?” This response told me a couple things: one, that this person was not a reader and two, did not know the value of a library. The Lucidea blog discussed how “Do The Original 5 Laws Of Library Science Hold Up In A Digital World?” and apparently they still do.
S.R. Ranganathan wrote five principles of library science before computers dominated information and research in 1931. The post examines how the laws are still relevant. The first law states that books are meant to be used, meaning that information is meant to be used and shared. The biggest point of this rule is accessibility, which is extremely relevant. The second laws states, “Every reader his/her book,” meaning that libraries serve diverse groups and deliver non-biased services. That still fits considering the expansion of the knowledge dissemination and how many people access it.
The third law is also still important:
Dr. Ranganathan believed that a library system must devise and offer many methods to “ensure that each item finds its appropriate reader”. The third law, “every book his/her reader,” can be interpreted to mean that every knowledge resource is useful to an individual or individuals, no matter how specialized and no matter how small the audience may be. Library science was, and arguably still is, at the forefront of using computers to make information accessible.
The fourth law is “save time for the reader” and it refers to being able to find and access information quickly and easily. Search engines anyone? Finally, the fifth law states that “the library is a growing organism.” It is easy to interpret this law. As technology and information access changes, the library must constantly evolve to serve people and help them harness the information.
The wording is a little outdated, but the five laws are still important. However, we need to also consider how people have changed in regards to using the library as well.
Whitney Grace, January 23, 2017
Elasticsearch: Security Assertions
January 20, 2017
I read “MongoDB Hackers Set Sights on ElasticSearch Servers with Widespread Ransomware Attacks.” According to the write up, more than 2,400 ElasticSearch services were “affected by ransomware in three days.”
“Attackers are finding open servers where there is no authentication at all. This can be done via a number of services and tools. Unfortunately, system admins and developers have been leaving these unauthenticated systems online for a while and attackers are just picking off the low hanging fruit right now.”
The write up explained:
ElasticSearch is a Java-based search engine, commonly used by enterprises for information cataloguing and data analysis.
What’s the remediation? One can pay the ransom. We suggest that Elastic cloud users read the documentation and implement the features appropriate for their use case.
Stephen E Arnold, January 20, 2017
Some Things Change, Others Do Not: Google and Content
January 20, 2017
After reading Search Engine Journal’s, “The Evolution Of Semantic Search And Why Content Is Still King” brings to mind how there RankBrain is changing the way Google ranks search relevancy. The article was written in 2014, but it stresses the importance of semantic search and SEO. With RankBrain, semantic search is more of a daily occurrence than something to strive for anymore.
RankBrain also demonstrates how far search technology has come in three years. When people search, they no longer want to fish out the keywords from their query; instead they enter an entire question and expect the search engine to understand.
This brings up the question: is content still king? Back in 2014, the answer was yes and the answer is a giant YES now. With RankBrain learning the context behind queries, well-written content is what will drive search engine ranking:
What it boils to is search engines and their complex algorithms are trying to recognize quality over fluff. Sure, search engine optimization will make you more visible, but content is what will keep people coming back for more. You can safely say content will become a company asset because a company’s primary goal is to give value to their audience.
The article ends with something about natural language and how people want their content to reflect it. The article does not provide anything new, but does restate the value of content over fluff. What will happen when computers learn how to create semantic content, however?
Whitney Grace, January 20, 2016
Google Popular Times Now in Real Time
January 20, 2017
Just a quick honk about a little Google feature called Popular Times. LifeHacker points out an improvement to the tool in, “Google Will Now Show You How Busy a Business Is in Real Time.” To help users determine the most efficient time to shop or dine, the feature already provided a general assessment of businesses’ busiest times. Now, though, it bases that information on real-time metrics. Writer Thorin Klosowski specifies:
The real time data is rolling out starting today. You’ll see that it’s active if you see a ‘Live’ box next to the popular times when you search for a business. The data is based on location data and search terms, so it’s not perfect, but will at least give you a decent idea of whether or not you’ll easily find a place to sit at a bar or how packed a store might be. Alongside the real-time data comes some other info, including how long people stay at a location on average and hours by department, which is handy when a department like a pharmacy or deli close earlier the rest of a store.
Just one more way Google tries to make life a little easier for its users. That using it provides Google with even more free, valuable data is just a side effect, I’m sure.
Cynthia Murrell, January 20, 2017
Are You Really Beefing up Your Search Skills?
January 18, 2017
Everyone’s New Year’s resolution is usually to lose weight. When January swings around again, that resolution went out the door with the spring-cleaning. Exercise can be a challenge, but you can always exercise your search skills by reading Medium’s article, “Google Search Tricks To Become A Search Power User.” Or at least the article promises to improve your search skills.
Let’s face it, searching on the Web might seem simple, but it requires a little more brainpower than dumping keywords into a search box. Google makes searching easier and is even the Swiss army knife of answering basic questions. The Medium article does go a step further by drawing old school search tips, such as the asterisk, quotes, parentheses, and others. These explanations, however, need to be read more than once to understand how the tools work:
My favorite of all, single word followed by a ‘*’ will do wonders. But yeah this will not narrow your results; still it keeps a wider range of search results. You’ll need to fine tune to find exactly what you want. This way is useful in case when you don’t remember more than a word or two but you still you want to search fully of it.
Having used some of these tips myself, they actually make searching more complicated than taking a little extra time to read the search results. I am surprised that they did not include the traditional Boolean operators that usually work, more or less. Sometimes search tips cause more trouble than they are worth.
Whitney Grace, January 18, 2016
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