Useful Nuggets From CIL
This information was from a session with Chris Sherman from Search Engine Watch
http://searchenginewatch.com/
Ask.com - A First rate search engine now that he believes will continue to improve (they hired Gary Price as a consultant).
Features:
o Ready reference – can search an encyclopedia o Natural language searching works better than before
o Binoculars next to results lets you preview a page w/o clicking into the website
o Suggestions for narrowing and broadening the search
o Mapping feature is great! Actually draws a line to illustrate the route and gives you an animated tour. Does walking and driving directions. Enables you to click on a location in the map w/o actually typing in an address. Has satellite pictures like Google Earth.
Google- Sherman sees it more as an advertising site than a search engine.
New Stuff:
o You can create a personalized desktop o New Blog Search
o Google Base – Like eBay
o Google Mars and Google Moon
o Google Books Partner Program- online book marketing program. Google has formed contractual agreements with publishers to scan their books. They either scan all of the book or parts depending on copyright restrictions. There is a link to buy the book.
o Google Print Library Project- Includes collections of a few libraries. Full text of books that are in the public domain. They are talking about putting an OCLC link at the bottom so people can find the book in their library.
MSN- They are putting a lot of money into their search engine.
New Stuff:
o Advertising will be targeted toward demographic information and search behavior.
o MSN local – gives you a satellite view as well as a bird's eye view. You can choose to be a racecar driver, person, etc. and navigate through the streets.
o Acquired Onfolio – described as Bookmarks on steroids. (Not on their msn.com site yet.)
o Search clustering? (I couldn't find this, not quite sure what it does, but it sounds cool.)
Interesting Snippet- In China their results displays on Google are almost entirely advertisements and that is the way they prefer it.