Alltheweb Live suggest

Yahoo! is testing a new functionality via their search engine Alltheweb, with the idea to perhaps integrate it in Yahoo! Search in a later time.

We are talking about Alltheweb Livesearch. This functionality shows from the moment you are typing, suggestions for other search terms. It isn’t completely new. Almost self-evidently is Google also providing such a service (Google Suggest).

Nevertheless I have my doubts about the benefits of this service. Most of time people have a certain goal in mind before they consult a search engine. Also I have the idea that the given suggestions are most of the time not relevant. For example, by typing the search query “mobile phone” does the suggestions, “boost mobile”, mobile phones”, “mobile homes” and “yahoo! Mobile” get you anywhere? I think it does not.

Follow the trends with Google

Once again Google has introduced a new toy. Namely, a service whereby you can keep up with the latest search trends. Google has named this service Google Trends. But what are the benefits?

For the regular internet user the benefits are probably limited. A marketer shall be more bucked with it, because Google offers the possibility to compare search terms and queries. Also you can see how many times people have searched with a specific word. In this way people can for example make a comparison between Volvo and Volkswagen. A graphic visualizes the trend, and shows the differences between both brands.

Also there are news articles coupled to the trend’s highlights. Because of this, you can see which news was responsible for an increased number of search queries.

Finally Google Trends calculates which countries and cities are responsible for most search queries. This can be useful because, people (marketers) can compare multiple products and brands with each other, to see where which product is most popular and where most marketing efforts must be made.

For me Google Trends is just a nice toy, but maybe for the trade and industry it can be of more importance.

Blogger trusts me again!

Peragro Versutia is reviewed by an employer of Google and they don’t consider me as a spammer anymore, according to the following text which I received in my mailbox:

"Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and cleared for regular use so that it will no longer appear as potential spam." (Email contact, Blogger Support)

I’m happy that I can post my messages in a regular way once again. Likewise I hope that Peragro Versutia will be quickly included again in Google’s index. Because what is a website which is not findable in the most used search engine of the world?

Blogger and Google don’t trust me

I seem to be somewhat unreliable. Each time I want to post a message on this weblog, I have to prove (by word verification) that I’m not a robot. Also Peragro Versutia doesn’t appear in Google anymore. To say it lowbrow: Google kicked me out of his index. My first thought was: ”Why?

Blogger gave me the following answer.

"Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog."

My second thought was: what in gods name is a spam blog? Again Blogger gave me the answer:

"Blogs engaged in this behaviour are called spam blogs, and can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site" (source: help.blogger.com)

Well, it seems to be clear to me that Peragro Versutia is not a spam blog. That’s why, I’m expecting that Google will quickly let me enter his kingdom ones again.

One positive point is that Blogger and thus also Google (because Blogger is part of Google) are dealing seriously with spam, and that they try to prevent it as good as possible.

Proximity Search

There are different methods, which increase the relevancy of search results. An example of such a method is proximity search.

Proximity search means that search terms, needs to occur in a close distance from each other in a document. This is useful when you are looking for documents where your search terms needs to be related strongly to each other. The chance to find relevant articles and documents will increase.

In principle it’s not possible to use this technique via the start page of Google. Via Google API Proximity search it is possible. This service looks for documents where the search terms are in a distance from one to three words of each other.

A disadvantage of API Proximity Search is that it works a little bit slow. Also there are relatively a small number of results visible. But I think it’s just nice to try it sometimes.

"Every advantage has its disadvantage"

Quotes are fun. You can put them randomly on your website, you can use them as your messenger name and they are a nice incomer in articles and reports. Above all it brings you to your senses. But where can you find these quotes?

I have done further research. The following websites caught my eye, because of their big quantity of indexed quotes, their search possibilities and their surveyability. Besides the three websites below, there are many more websites which gives access to quotes.

• The Quotations Page
  This website provides access to more then 2.700 quotes of famous people.

• QuoteWorld.org
  This website provides access to more then 15.000 quotes. The search possibilities are much extended and visitors can (if desired) rate quotes.

• Citaten.net
  This is a Dutch website with more then 13.000 quotes. You can search at keyword, category and author.

Google is studying!

It seems that Google is studying. Via Google University Search you can search inside the websites of different universities. Although mainly American schools are included, there are also schools of other countries such as Japan, Australia and Great-Britain available.

Google herself says about this information source: "Try it for things like admissions information, course schedules, or alumni news"

I have encountered that you can use this source also to find information that you can expect from academies and universities. When I click the "University of New York" and try to search information about “information retrieval” or “CMS”, I come across very instructive documents. These documents are mostly in PDF or PPT (PowerPoint) format.

I think the only disadvantage about this service, is that people can’t search all universities at the same time. But it will do.