Good Post on Microsoft Search on SEL

Danny Sullivan has a good, passionate and somewhat long winded post today over on SEL titled “Tough Love For Microsoft Search” – worth a read if you have time. I also really enjoyed the old search ads from 1998 – wow that’s 10 years ago now. Here they are:
 



Lingospot Revisited – great search driven app for publihsers and bloggers

Back in June I did a short post about a new web 2.0 service called Lingospot. I have finally found some time to try out and review this service in more detail. My initial thoughts are this is a killer app that is fun for users, a useful utility and has the potential to drive revenue for publishers. The fact that this application can drive revenue while also being useful could prove to be a winning combination as while we are in an economic downturn.

Q:  So what is the Lingospot service?

A:  Lingospot is a content discovery plug-in or application (bubble) for publishers and bloggers.

The one liner from the website is:

Lingospot is an in-text content discovery service enabling authors to increase reader engagement and dynamically interlink their content.

My description description of Lingospot is a search (contextual) driven plug-in/app for punishers that:

1. Helps drive a better user experience
2. Develop and grow your site/network (syndication and content cross-linking)
3. Can lift revenue

Simply, a publisher can hyperlink any keyword or phrase and then a dynamic bubble appears that can have a number of content tabs.  In the discovery bubble you can have related stories, video content, content from other sites – either your site(s) or 3rd parties (such as Clipsyndicate), ads, wiki or even search results.

Here is are an on Lingospot examples from the Forbes.com website:

In 2009 many publishers, especially in the newspaper and other compititve verticals, will be looking for ways to improve user experience, drive page impressions (what I call stickiness and others “audience development”) and most important optimise revenue (or at a minimum protect existing revenues). Lingospot can help with all three and that is a winning combination.

I’ve got to alos think tthere is a SEO angle to this techonolgy that can help drive page rank and traffic via cross links etc.

In addition, Lingospot can also provide a related story widget that is contextually relavant – see below.

Customer of the service include Forbes.com and Brietbart. The technology is behind Lingospot is powerful search based on natural language processing (NLP). I am not aware of any competitors, but the bubbles are similar to services from Snap Shots, Vibrant Media and other web 2.0 bubble apps such at Retaggr.

Additional info about Lingospot:

• Interview with the CEO
• Forbes annoucement
• AltSearch Engines post

Microsoft Builds a New Mouse Trap – its called BrowseRank

Microsoft Research has come up with a new and novel way to rank search results based on user beahviour. The alogorithm is called BrowerRank and is a rival methond to Google’s famous PageRank. Over on News.com there is a very good review of the work and you see the orignal release for MS Research over HERE and the research paper is HERE (pdf).

A New Universal Search Engine – Cuil (’cool’) launches

Over on SEL Danny Sullivan has a great review of new search engine Cuil (apparently it is pronounced ‘cool’). On first use I can’t say I was impressed. The engine has a huge index and a web 2.0 result page layout. One to watch. I would agree with Scoble that they may be looking to cash out like Powerset did to Microsoft.

Where there is Smoke, Fire is FAST to Follow

It is not the best of summers so far for enterprise search player Fast Search & Transfer (FAST – now owned by Microsoft) as additional squalid (TC piece HERE – with lots of details and a translated text of a Norwegian article) and one might say ‘dirty’ details from FAST’s accounting issues continue to be reported. The Norwegian press seems to smell blood in the water and are circling like true pack of ‘hack’ jackals.

Let’s hope that somehow the company gets through this maelstrom and can capitalize on the synergies (that I pointed out earlier in the year) that they can bring to the Microsoft in the media space. Just imagine having a network of publishers with all that content, all those users, all that site search traffic and with technology provided by the ‘publisher’ friendly folks from Redmond (not the Googleplex)? There is a serious play waiting to be exploited using those content assets with MSFT tech resources that still allows the publishers to stay in control… I will call this the ‘meta network’ concept for now (need to flesh it out and post back at a later date on some details).

Microsoft Making Waves in Europe

Microsoft made two interesting announcements so far this week in Europe. The 1st shows strong momentum in the ad serving space with a series of new publishers taking MSFT advertising technology products designed for large publishers. This shows growth across Europe and a continued commitment to the publisher side of the online ad ecosystem.

The 2nd announcement – European Search Techology Centre to deepen investments in Live Search – is much more exciting as it show more commitment to search and specifically to the European market. Setting up a search technology (R&D) hub in Europe is significant. And with such a large war chest of money and no sign of a Yahoo deal, one would anticipate lots of investment on this initiative… I can see many interesting ways for Microsoft to disrupt the search landscape in positive ways in Europe. Watch this space.

[Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft, however the above are my own thoughts and not based on any insider knowledge.]

FAST is now a Microsoft Subsidiary

Microsoft closed its acquisition of enterprise search company FAST last Friday. This deal was originally announced back in January.

Google’s 2nd Site Search Box – some initial views

Had to comment with some initial views and thoughts on the recent roll-out of the “second” search box on some Google results. My initial view is that this could be good for user experience but bad for publishers and potentially even advertisers. Here’s the official Google blog post on this new feature. Search Insider has some good points and so does AdViking that are worth reviewing as well.

I know some publishers and will try to work with them and the AdViking team to see if we can get some real data on what (if any) impact this “search within a search” box is having. If I were an enterprise search vendor (such as FAST or Endeca) or a large publisher who had recently spent time/money etc on site search (especially in ecommerce or travel) this might really piss me off. Apparently site can opt out of this functionality.

I would like to get comments and feedback on metrics we should be trying to track and also any anecdotal info related to this functionality.

Below are some screen grabs of the 2dn search box on The Times Online.

Microsoft & FAST – some details start to emerge

There is a great post over on sister site AdViking that give some insight into MSFT’s enterprise search strategy and how FAST fits in, well worth a read - Microsoft and FAST: Bill Gates at the SharePoint Conference.

Monday Misc – random stuff

The first Monday in March – this makes me very happy that it is finally March. This means we have finally turned the corner on winter here in northern Europe and start to really look-forward to spring! And then summer…

Some random links to check out today – Monday, March 3:

• Tim Harford has an interesting piece on why email is a good way to communicate but also helps drive the need for more face time. I would agree with his analysis.
• Over on AdViking you can read a nice recap of Fast Forward and hear how Simon B is getting religious about SEARCH!
• I might have to rethink quiting Twitter and give it another serious go…
• The coming Search Duopoly on GS – worth a quick read.

Btw – I am flying out to Seattle today for work and a visit to the HQ of my current employer. Might be a sparse week for posts… I am also using TripIt for the 1st time, this site totally rocks (thanks Simon B)! More on that later – for sure.
And here is today’s Google logo… Nice one.