Posts Tagged ‘Search Engines’
Tips to Search Better in Google
This is an old one, but very important: Put quotes around phrases that must be searched together. If you put quotes around “electric curtains,” Google won’t waste your time finding one set of Web pages containing the word “electric” and another set containing the word “curtains.”
Similarly, put a hyphen right before any word you want screened out. If you’re looking up dolphins, for example, you’ll have to wade through a million Miami Dolphins pages unless you search for “dolphins – Miami.”
Google is a global White Pages and Yellow Pages. Search for “phonebook:home depot Norwalk , CT,” Google instantly produces the address and phone number of the Norwalk Home Depot. This works with names (“phonebook: Robert Jones Las Vegas, NV”) as well as businesses.
Don’t put any space after “phonebook.” And in all of the following examples, don’t type the quotes I’m showing you here.
Google is a package tracker. Type a FedEx or UPS package number (just the digits); when you click Search, Google offers a link to its tracking information.
Google is a calculator. Type in an equation (“32+2345*3- 234=”).
Google is a units-of-measuremen t converter. Type “teaspoons in a gallon,” for example, or “centimeters in a foot.”
Google is a stock ticker. Type in AAPL or MSFT, for example, to see a link to the current Apple or Microsoft stock price, graphs, financial news and so on.
Google is an atlas. Type in an area code, like 212, to see a Mapquest map of the area.
Google is Wal-Mart’s computer. Type in a UPC bar code number, such as “036000250015, ” to see the description of the product you’ve just “scanned in.” (Thanks to the Google Blog, http://google. Blogspace. Com , for this tip and the next couple.)
G oogle is an aviation buff. Type in a flight number like “United 22″ for a link to a map of that flight’s progress in the air. Or type in the tail number you see on an airplane for the full registration form for that plane.
Google is the Department of Motor Vehicles. Type in a VIN (vehicle identification number, which is etched onto a plate, usually on the door frame, of every car), like “JH4NA1157MT001832, ” to find out the car’s year, make and model.
For hours of rainy-day entertainment, visit http://labs. Google.com . Here, you’ll find links to new, half-finished Google experiments- like Google Voice, in which you call (650) 623-6706, speak the words you want to search for and then open your browser to view the results. Disclaimer: It wasn’t working when I tried it. (Ditto a lot of these experiments.
Microsoft Makes Gains with Bing Search Engine
Microsoft Corp’s Bing search engine won more market share from rivals last week, according to new industry data released on Wednesday, but still trails Google Inc and Yahoo Inc.
Challenging market leader Google — which in turn is looking to break into Microsoft’s core software market — is a long-term project, said Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.
“We have had some very good initial response,” Ballmer said at a conference in Detroit. “I don’t want to over-set expectations. We are going to have to be tenacious and keep up the pace of innovation over a long period of time.”
Microsoft grabbed 12.1 percent of U.S. Internet searches for the work week June 8-12, according to data released by industry tracker comScore earlier on Wednesday.
That is up from 11.3 percent in the June 1-5 period — the week in which Bing was launched — and up from 9.1 percent the week before that.
For comparison, Google got 65 percent of U.S. searches in May, the last full month for which figures are available, followed by Yahoo with 20.1 percent and Microsoft with 8 percent.
Analysts and investors are keenly awaiting data for all of June to see if Microsoft can hold onto early gains.
Ballmer acknowledged the tough task of beating Google, which he referred to as “a big dog competitor.”
The world’s largest software company has long been determined to play a major role in the lucrative Web search market after watching upstart Google take a stranglehold.
At the same time, Google is looking to take advantage of its popularity to launch software that competes with Microsoft’s, which has created a new source of tension between the two companies.
Microsoft ratcheted up that tension on Wednesday by claiming that Google’s new Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook software — which allows users to share data between their Outlook e-mail and Google’s online offerings — disables a key function in Outlook.
“The installation of the Google Apps Sync plugin disables Outlook’s ability to search any and all of your Outlook data,” Outlook product manager Dev Balasubramanian wrote on a Microsoft blog. “It is also important to note that uninstalling the plugin may not fix the issue.”
The problem, though relatively unimportant to users, represents a crucial struggle between Microsoft and Google for e-mail customers.
Google’s new product allows business users to continue using Outlook for email and other tasks, but the back-end functionality and data storage moves to Google, instead of residing on a company’s internal servers running Microsoft software.
Google acknowledged the Outlook problem identified by Microsoft, and several other issues where its software does not mesh well with others.
“We’re working with Microsoft and other partners to help fix these issues and support additional Outlook features like multiple calendars,” said Google Apps senior product manager Chris Vander Mey in a blog post. “We’ll keep you posted on our progress.”
Microsoft shares closed up just less than 1 percent at $23.68, while Google’s fell 0.2 percent to $415.16, both on Nasdaq.
Google Increasingly Battles Facebook in Search
Google has long been the king of search, dominating rivals including Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. But it increasingly sees social networks such as Facebook as challengers to its search engine, a Google official said.
As people search out advice online for everyday, personal decisions, the standard list of links served up by Google is not seen as intimate or trustworthy, Google Group Product Manager Ken Tokusei said Monday. For decisions such as choosing a restaurant or a day care provider, social networking sites or known review sites have an advantage, he said.
Such sites offer information from friends or acquaintances, and Tokusei said users tend to trust that information more. This puts Google’s results at a disadvantage.
“We haven’t gotten to the point where results are seen as if they come from someone you know,” he said.
The search giant has begun to offer tools for users to rate results and delete unrelated links, but it still has work to do, he said.
As Internet users gain savvy and experience, they also expect better-honed answers to queries. Sites such as WolframAlpha, launched earlier this month, comb the Internet for data, and analyze it to provide specific answers to queries, rather than a list of sites.
Google Inc. does something similar for some searches, providing price quotes for “Sony stock” or an answer for “Tunisia capital.” But it also provides the familiar list of sites to dig further, a strategy it is unlikely to change.
“It’s a matter of determining what kind of information the user is looking for. But we will always serve some links to pages with our results,” said Tokusei.
He spoke to reporters at Google’s Japanese headquarters in Tokyo, where he gave an overview of the company’s basic search tools.
Google has developed a host of expanding tools and services, from a mobile operating system to an online word processor, but it devotes 70 percent of its employees and resources to search.
The company still faces fresh competition from its traditional rivals, which are regrouping in an attempt to take back market share.
Microsoft has failed to make much headway in repeated Internet ventures. But the deep-pocketed company, which has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into improving its search engine, continues to develop a new search technology, part of which is called “Kumo” internally.
Yahoo, which has seen its share of total online searches conducted plummet to Google, is tweaking its search results, cutting out some links and emphasizing images and video.
Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has said he is still interested in buying part of Yahoo after a proposed deal was turned down last year.
Google Founders Brin and Page To Sell 10 mln Shares
Google Inc founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin plan to sell about 10 million of the company’s shares over the next five years, the company said in a regulatory filing on Friday.
Page and Brin currently own about 57.7 million shares of Google’s Class B common stock — roughly 18 percent of Google’s outstanding capital stock and about 59 percent of the voting power of Google’s outstanding capital stock. If the two founders both sell 5 million shares as planned, they would own about 47.7 million shares, which would represent around 15 percent of Google’s outstanding capital stock and 48 percent of the voting power of Google’s outstanding capital stock. Page is currently Google’s president of products and Brin is its president of technology.