Tag Archives: Search Engines

Bing, Microsoft, Search Engines

Bing integrates Wolfram Alpha and out of beta in UK – allegedly

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Hitting my RSS feeds this morning was the announcement from Bing that their UK version is out of beta. “So what,”  I thought. “Doesn’t look any different to me this morning”. But looking at the announcement in full I see that there is a plethora of new services that I can now enjoy. To start with:

“When you search for Football, what kind of answers do you expect to find. Well, I guess it depends on where you are doing the asking, if you are in the UK you probably don’t want to see NFL schedules. You probably mean what we in the US call soccer. Well today, millions of searchers in the UK can rest assured that Bing knows what they are talking about. We are excited to announce today that Bing in the UK is shedding its beta tag.  We want to congratulate our pals over in the UK on a huge milestone. You can now use Bing to make faster more informed choices on a daily basis.  Oh, and the next Manchester United game is on the 21st of November at 17:30 GMT (that’s 5:30 p.m. for us Yanks), in case you were wondering.”

My first reaction was that I wanted to be sick: I found this so patronising. We in the UK should be so grateful that Bing has finally realised that we have a life separate from the US and that Bing has taken the trouble to find out what we mean by football. Sorry, but I am not at all interested in football so if this is all you are offering as UK customisation then I nominate you for the #epicfail awards.

But let’s not be hasty. Let’s look at what else they have to offer.

“The daily Bing Homepage image and hotspots are something that now will be localized in the UK, with unique imagery and hotspots.”

At last!  The photos on the home page are of landmarks and locations in the UK and not of the Galapagos islands or Mongolia. This morning we had the Angel of the North and then the Avebury stones. The ‘hotspots’ option is now working and if you are interested you can find out more about the subject of the photo.

Bing UK

“Visual Search using visual images and metadata to make search more visual and more compelling.”

Pathetic! For a start there is no visual search on the home page. You have to click on the More option, which takes you to a page where it is listed. They seem to have deleted US stuff and and given us UK politicians under famous people, and Premier League Football Players and Professional UK football clubs under Sports. That is it. Where are the rugby clubs and cricket?  Oh, and under ‘More’ we have ‘Yoga poses’. Now I wonder why that is there? Could it be anything to do with the fact that there are only pictures of photogenic girlies in interesting poses that might possibly attract a lot of visitors to the site? Surely not. How about some gorgeous male hunks in interesting poses?!

“More Instant Answers. Get quick response answers and results to searches, such as how is Liverpool doing in the Premiership or which tourist attraction should I take my in-laws to at the weekend?”

Yet more football, but I thought I would try out their own search “How is Liverpool doing in the Premiership”. Bing did not come up with any easy to find information on this (I was assuming that the searcher would want to know where Liverpool is in the League Table). Google, however, had the official site of the premier league at the top of the results, which has a link to the current league table positions of all of the clubs.

Bing results

BingAnswers

Google results

BingvGoogleAnswers

“See who or what is being chatted about real-time with a global live Twitter feed with Bing Twitter search.”

#epicfail yet again I’m afraid. You have to know the URL of the Bing Twitter search because it is not listed on the UK home page or under ‘More’. Do not be too disappointed because it is a waste of server space, processing time and your time: see my blog posting Twitter search in Bing and Google

“Looking for the best deals?  – There is now an integrated shopping experience with Ciao UK. With Bing you can search the Internet to find the best prices, reviews and local availability.”

Bing didn’t do too badly on this one. We need a new frying pan and it came up with sensible results apart from the Keith Floyd biography “Out of the Frying Pan”. The best link, though, was one of the adverts for John Lewis.

BingShoppingUK


“With insights from our Multimap users, Bing Maps now offers new map styles, imagery and transit integration as well as draggable routes.”

In general the maps are fine. The Bird’s Eye imagery, which is equivalent to Google’s Satellite view, is higher resolution than Google’s and sometime more up to date. The ‘find a business option’ is as incomplete as Google’s. If you want to locate pubs, restaurants, plumbers etc in an area then go direct to Yellow Pages or Thomson Local. The directions for walking from my house to Reading railway station were sensible but it failed when I asked for Manchester Piccadilly railway station to Manchester Business School  (Google Maps had no problems). In fact, Bing Maps could not find Manchester Business School in any shape or form. As for “draggable routes” – no sign of them here.

“Bing has been built for the UK to help consumers get to key local sites and services in fewer links by including popular links, search boxes and suggestions within best match.”

If you are interested in football and shopping, then that might be true. It is certainly better than the US-centric stuff but overall still nowhere near as relevant as Google’s results.

Let’s move on to the announcement that Bing now incorporates results from Wolframalpha ( How Many Calories in a Burger? What’s 2^2^2^2^2? Bing and Wolfram|Alpha Have the Answers). This won’t take very long because I could not get it to work. I even tried the examples they give with the UK and the US versions of Bing and Wolfram Alpha is nowhere to be seen in the results. Has anyone managed to get this to work as described or has the integration not actually happened yet?

Having spent most of the morning struggling with Bing’s new features, and in some cases failing to find them at all, I was beginning to wonder if I had dreamt the dozens of announcements that littered my RSS feeds. I double checked and they are definitely there. Perhaps it’s a tech issue? I’m running Windows 7 on my main machine but the results are the same on Windows XP, and it makes no difference whether I run Firefox or IE. So I can only draw the conclusion that yet again Microsoft Bing has made a complete [expletives deleted] mess of everything. We could do with another half decent alternative to Google but Bing is just not in the same league.

    Search Engines

    Ixquick becomes Startpage

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    Ixquick has changed its name to Startpage. The name and URL may have changed but the technology and way you use it is the same. Ixquick/Startpage is what is sometimes called a meta search engine, which I find misleading. It doesn’t search web page or document meta-data but takes your search and runs it across several tools at once and generates a single list of results. For the Web option it covers All the Web, Ask, Bing, Cuil, EntireWeb, Exalead, Gigablast, Lycos, Open Directory, Qkport, Wikipedia and Yahoo. All are automatically searched by Startpage but you can de-select individual services if you wish. Google is conspicuous by its absence.

    The great thing about tools of this kind is that it presents you with a single list gleaned from all of the search tools in the list. The disadvantage is that you cannot always use the advanced features of the individual services, although Startpage does have a go at addressing this. On the home page the Power Search option takes you to a page where there are boxes for “at least one of the words” (OR), “all the words”, “exact phrase” and “without the words”. There is also an expert search link that adds options for text in the title or URL, “at this domain name” (site search), pages “with links to this domain name”, and type of domain name (but only .com, .edu, .gov, .net, .org). Note that there is no filetype search. You can bring this screen up by default when you connect to Startpage by going to My Settings and selecting Expert Search as Homepage search mode.

    The site search seems to work well but the link option returns just a fraction of the true results and only displays the top 10. To find pages that link to a domain or specific page, searching direct on Yahoo or Exalead gives far better results.

    As well as Web Startpage does video search, which is powered by Blinkx.com, and allows you to restrict your search to categories such as business, news, sport and entertainment. The Pictures (image) option is disappointing and there is no information on which search engines are used to compile the results. The phone number option varies depending on the country you select but again there does not appear to any information on which telephone directories are used. Oddly, there is a “reverse” option to find a name from a telephone number even if you select the UK as a country. When you click on search, though, Startpage says the combination is not valid. Hardly surprising since reverse lookup is not available for public use in the UK.

    I don’t generally use tools such as Ixquick/Startpage or Dogpile. If I want to search quickly across multiple search engines I prefer to use something like Zuula or Browsys Advanced Finder and click through the tabs for each tool one by one. There are many people who do use them, though, and Ixquick has often been named as a favourite by people on my Advanced Search workshops. It is all down to what suits you and what works for your type of searches.  From the feedback that I have had over the years Startpage is definitely worth trying.

    Search Engines, Uncategorized

    Bing – don’t bother!

    11 Comments

    Bing.com has launched and I just cannot believe that Microsoft have made so much fuss over something that is no better than the existing Live.com. The UK version is labelled as beta and the US one as “Preview” so is there more coming soon as is suggested by Microsoft/Bing in their blogs? I sincerely hope so because so far this “decision engine” does not live up to the hype.

    Phil Bradley has already reviewed Bing and I agree entirely with everything he has said.  The home page is reminiscent of the old Ask home page that allowed you to “skin” the page with an image. I like the snow leopard that is on the UK version but if I should get bored with it, I can’t change it.

    My test web searches came up with results that were mostly identical with those from Live.com. For some of them, for example my search on car ownership UK, Bing puts a fact or a statistic at the top of the page. In this case it came up with 510 cars per 1000 people, a statistic apparently from the International Road Federation but 2004 data! The Advanced Search is as pathetic as ever, but you can use search commands such as ‘filetype: ‘ and ‘site:’ in the standard search box.

    The image search is virtually the same as Live’s with minor changes to the layout.  The Shopping option takes UK users to Ciao.co.uk (very confusing), News is as useless as before, and Maps takes you to Multimap. Much more interesting is the Google-type maps option at http://maps.live.com/ or http://maps.bing.com/ but you cannot find that by following the menu options. You have to know and enter the URL directly into your browser.

    At present, all Microsoft seem to have done is put a slightly different interface on top of Live and given it a different domain name, an impression further reinforced by the help files still being on live.com. I will continue to use Live.com as one of my favourite alternative search engines: it does sometimes come up with unique content and I like the image search. Bing has nothing that is significantly new or innovative. As Phil Bradley says, what a wasted opportunity. Google can rest easy.

    Search Engines

    Wolfram Alpha is out – hmmm…

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    After months of pre-launch hype Wolfram Alpha is now up and running for us all to try out. It has been labelled by some as a  potential Google killer but it has always called itself a “computational knowledge engine” or fact search engine:

    “Wolfram Alpha is backed by Stephen Wolfram, the noted scientist and author behind the Mathematica computational software and the book, A New Kind Of Science. The service bills itself as a “computational knowledge engine,” which is a mouthful. I’d call it a “fact search engine” or perhaps an “answer search engine,” a term that’s been used in the past for services designed to provide you with direct answers, rather than point you at pages that in turn may hold those answers.”

    From Impressive: The Wolfram Alpha “Fact Engine” http://searchengineland.com/wolfram-alpha-fact-engine-18431

    If you are interested in the background and aims of WolframAlpha the article in Searchengineland.com goes into more detail.

    I am not going to go into any more background here, enlightening and informative though it is, because the average punter will not bother and will simply type in a query. This is where the trouble starts. You have to understand that WolframAlpha deals with data and statistics, but only certain types of data. If you are looking for market share data, forget it. My test search on gin vodka sales UK came up with what was to be the all too common:

    “Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.”

    Half a dozen searches later it found an answer for one of my test queries – world oil production. The answer was correct but horrendously out of date: an estimate for 2004. The same search in Google came up with figures for 2008 and estimates for 2009.

    It managed to the find the population of the UK but when I asked it for the population of Caversham it decided that I really meant Faversham. Google wins again on this one.

    This morning’s tweets #wolframalpha suggested that it is very good at comparing country data. It provided some very basic data when I looked at UK and France but adding a third (Germany) caused it to totally lose the plot. Some data was labelled with the country but for the rest I was left guessing.

    As WolframAlpha has a scientific bias I tried it on Planck’s constant, which it got right (but then so does Google in big bold letters at the top of the results list). Spinach vitamin C was another winner, but trying to compare it with mango and broccoli was more of a challenge. If you type in spinach mango broccoli Vitamin C, WolframAlpha only looks for vitamin C in broccoli. You have to type in ‘spinach and mango and broccoli vitamin C’. It came up with a table for vitamin C levels for all three but there is only one nutritional facts table and it is not labelled.

    I then decided to see if could come up with information on the origin of petroleum. Another fail as it tried to look for the origin of  the word petroleum.

    wolframpetroleum

    How about zeolites then? No it asked me if I meant websites.

    wolfrazeolites

    Next stop companies, which WolframAlpha suggests it can handle. It provided limited share price data on Royal Dutch Shell and even managed to compare it with BP and Tullow Oil. The information is rather spartan and you would be far better off going to Yahoo Finance or Google Finance for information on listed companies. WolframAlpha failed totally when I added in Heritage Oil. Was a fourth company too much? I did a separate search on Heritage Oil and it simply did not recognise the company.

    wolframheritage

    Now, come on – Heritage Oil is on the London Stock exchange, which is where I thought WoframAlpha was getting its data (or so the labelling implied) but that may not be the case. When you look at the Source Information it says

    “This list is intended as a guide to sources of further information. The inclusion of an item on this list does not necessarily mean that its content was used as the basis for any specific WolframAlpha result.

    For me, this is a major issue. I need to know where the information has come from and a list of  possible sources is not good enough.

    It is still very early days for WolframAlpha, so it may eventually live up to expectations. It has long way to go and there are major problems to address:

    1. The types of query that it can handle are limited and this needs to be made more obvious to the average searcher

    2. The way you phrase your search is important. For some of my test searches I had to try four or five variations before it came up with any results. The average searcher will give up after the first attempt and go back to Google.

    3. Some of the information is seriously out of date.

    4. Sources are not directly linked to the data. It is essential that one knows where the information has come from.

    I shall go back on a regular basis to see how it is progressing but for the present I am sticking with my existing favourite  sources for serious research.

    Ask, Search Engines

    Jeeves returns but Ask still doesn’t cut the mustard

    After a three year absence Jeeves is back at Ask, or at least the UK version. Jeeves was retired in March 2006 and Ask started doing some really interesting work on the interface, content and presentation of results in both their UK and US version. See http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/category/ask/ for my previous postings about Ask. Over the last year, though, they have ditched just about every useful and innovative  feature. I have stopped recommending it as a Google alternative in my Advanced Search workshops and don’t even bother with the their blog and feeds search, which is still quite good. To get to the blog search you now have to carry out a general web search on the homepage and then on the results screen click on More and select blogs. It is below TV Listings and Recipes!

    They have reintroduced the Questions and Answers section but to be honest Google gives results for searches formatted as questions that are as good as, if not better, than Ask’s. And as for the Question of the Day on the home page… I really do not want to know which celebrities are pregnant.

    Ask claims that Jeeves is back by popular demand but, like Phil Bradley, it looks to me like a pathetic attempt to win back users.  I fear that they are doomed to failure unless they radically improve their search results.

    Search Engines, Yahoo

    New home page for Yahoo! UK & Ireland

    6 Comments

    … and it is GHASTLY!

    It is Monday morning and on my of list of things-to-do when I fire up my laptop is to check My Yahoo! This is where I monitor stocks and shares, news headlines, weather forecasts and have tools such as currency conversion. Before going to My Yahoo I always go to the main Yahoo! UK & Ireland page to view the national and international headlines and see what’s new. This morning was a real shock. The home page has changed dramatically and not for the good.

    Yahoo UK & Ireland new home page

    Apart from the hideous colours and layout there is no direct link to My Yahoo any more. It is now under ‘All Yahoo Services’ (in very small type on the right hand side). The ‘My Apps’ on the left are definitely not My Yahoo apart from the weather forecast and the stock trader. The latter clearly does not work in this context as it tells me that today my stocks and shares are up GBP 270,165.49 and that my portfolios are worth 2,907,437.49. In my dreams! I am not interested in horoscopes, mailboxes, videos and eBay but there does not seem to be any way of getting rid of them.

    Thankfully search.yahoo.co.uk is still plain vanilla. I have now bookmarked My Yahoo and won’t bother in future with the Yahoo home page. I am now wondering what Yahoo has in store for us next.

    Presentations, Search Engines, Search Strategies, workshops

    Workshop on Advanced Search Strategies, London

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    Several people have asked me when I am next running my workshop on advanced search strategies (sometimes known as Google and Beyond) in London. The next date for London is Wednesday, 18th February and there are still some places left. The venue is InTuition House, Borough High Street, London SE1 1JX, which is close to Borough tube station and London Bridge. The cost is £150 + VAT (total: £172.50) and includes refreshments and a buffet lunch.

    Full details of the workshop together with a booking from are on my web site at http://www.rba.co.uk/training/searching.htm . You can pay by credit card, PayPal or request to be invoiced for the event.

    For those of you who live in the Manchester area, I am running a similar event for UKeiG on April 1st. Details are at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/training/2009/April/GoogleandBeyondManchester200904.html

    Presentations, Search Engines, Search Strategies

    The Research Practioner Skills Day Presentation

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    Those of you who attended The Research Practitioner Skills Day at Chelsea Football Club on 26th November should have received all of our presentations by email. If not, mine (Using the Web) can be viewed or downloaded from either Slideshare or authorSTREAM.


    Uploaded on authorSTREAM by karenblakeman

    Search Engines

    Ten science search engines

    9 Comments

    Ten science search engines is actually a list of nine – you are invited to submit suggestions for the tenth via the comments section. The nine are:Scirus, Scitopia.org, Science.gov, ScienceResearch.com, Scitation, WorldWideScience.org, Science Accelerator, TechXtra, and search.optics.org. They all have different coverage and emphasis and none are comprehensive. Which one will work for you depends very much on the subject area. The three I regularly use in this list are Elsevier’s  Scirus, TechXtra for engineering (ICBL and Heriot-Watt University) and WorldWideScience.org. Conspicuous by its absence is Google Scholar!