Internet News

US Government-Related Search

A Roundup Of New U.S. Government Search Tools, Gary Price, Search Engine Land (Jan 30)

For researchers seeking out US government data, this list of very specialized US government-related search engines may be useful.

One on the list is Global Think Tank Directory - it lists organizations that deal with public policy. There are several listed by province for Canada. Find this under North America, and look for a small forward arrow to page through.

Statscan data to be free

Statistics Canada to make all online data free, Carl Meyer, Embassy (Dec 2)

I can scarcely believe this - "All of Statistics Canada’s standard online products, including the census, socioeconomic and geographic data, will be offered to the public for free starting February 2012, Embassy has learned."

"“As of February 1, 2012, Statistics Canada will begin to implement a new dissemination model. Standard products readily available on its website—including CANSIM data, census data and geography products—will be offered free of charge,” reads one letter sent to a distributor dated Aug. 23, and obtained by Embassy."

Read on. To what do we owe this generosity from our government?

Federated Science Search

Free Federated Search Engines for Scientific Data and Literature, Joelle Mornini, Intellogist (Nov 21)

Guide to four US federated search portals for scientific data: Science Accelerator, Scitopia, Science.gov, WorldWideScience.org.

"All four portals seem to use very similar search technology (Deep Web specifically for Scitopia and Science.gov), and the OSTI played a large part in the creation of three of the portals (Science Accelerator, WorldWideScience.org, and Science.gov). Despite these similarities, each portal searches some unique databases, so each portal will produce a different result set for identical queries. "

Wolfram Alpha on crops

Breaking Down World Food Production, Harvest, and Crop Yield Data, Wolfram Alpha Blog (Oct 18)

Look at the great answers you can get from Wolfram Alpha on world's food supply and consumption. It gets its "food supply estimates from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, covering more than fifty foods spanning over forty years for countries all over the world".

However, the examples Wolfram/Alpha gives always work out better than the searches I pick. Still - potatoes grown in Canada - is interesting.

Find Public Files

Findfiles.net, a search engine that specializes in public files, has partnered with Fileminx to integrate filesearch, file conversion and antivirus scan.

Press release:

FindFiles.net - September 12, 2011
-----------------------------------------------------
Public Files in the Web: Fileminx and FindFiles.net Anounce Cooperation

FindFiles.net, the search engine for public files and Fileminx, the file conversion portal, now offer combined online services, integrating filesearch, file conversion and antivirus scan.

Frankfurt, Germany, September 12, 2011 Users of FindFiles.net may now access the free online file conversion tools offered by Fileminx with a simple click. The file conversion tool of Fileminx is seamingless accesible directly from the search engine result page of FindFiles.net.

The URLs of files found by customers of FindFiles.net are transmitted to Fileminx when clicking the convert button at FindFiles.net. More than 50 filetypes can be converted, among them all popular document, audio and video formats.

Customers may now, to give two examples, convert an avi video into the 3gp format suitable for mobiles and smartphones or an mp3 music file into a ringtone (m4r) for iPhones.

The conversion service is fast and free.

about FindFiles.net
-------------------
FindFiles.net is a leading file search engine. FindFiles.net operates its own crawler indexing exclusively public files, no files on file-sharing site or file lockers.

FindFiles.net offers integrated free online antivirus tools based on the open-source ClamAV engine.

FindFiles.net has indexed more that 700 Million public files, among them over 21 Million audio files and several thousands of Apps for Symbian and Android smartpohnes.

about Fileminx
--------------
Fileminx is a platform offering free online file conversion tools for over 50 file formats.

contact - FindFiles.net
-----------------------
Claudius Gros, for public relations
gros07[[at]]itp.uni-frankfurt.de
Gregor Kaczor, for dvelopment
gKaczor[[at]]gmx.de
http://www.findfiles.net

contact - Fileminx
------------------
Tom Hawkes
support[[at]]fileminx.com
http://www.fileminx.com

World News Network has global coverage

Local newspapers and television stations are notoriously poor at reporting on world affairs and events - and the online aggregators at Google and Yahoo often customize to your location as well. World News Network aggregates news in 49 languages from sources around the world.

There is a strong taxonomy to support topical groupings for entertainment, science (which has subtopics environment and pollution), technology, sport, and business. There is a particularly excellent view by industry at WNIndustry.

The source is shown for each article along with the indexing providing readers a way to get a quick view of main topics and to find more.

Through Worldwide, you can drill down to a country. The Canada page is diappointing - with content drawn mainly from non-Canadian sources - such as a report on the end to the Canadian postal strike from the New York Times. But with some digging you'll also see Canada Newswire, CBC, Canoe. And it may be the one place to get a view of Canada as others see it.

The Advanced Search has several aids - auto-complete for suggested searches, time range choices, search query options for matches. A search on quebec sovereignty did pull in articles from as far back as 1999.

World News Network was a selected site in The Information Advisor's BestBizWeb Enewsletter for June 2011. Subscription is free.

Several Google Verticals Closed

So Long and Farewell: Google’s Oldest Vertical Search Engine, Uncle Sam & Others Gone, Gary Price, Search Engine Land (Jun 7)

Most people had probably forgotten that Google had specialized search indexes for US government, Linux, Apple - and others. Well - they are gone now. Gary Price often argued for the value of vertical engines and does not accept Google's claim that "Today, search quality has advanced tremendously, and based on our analysis we’ve found that in most cases you’re better off looking for this kind of specialized information using the regular Google search box, ..." I'm with Gary on this - but doubt that there is much to be done to stop the Googlenaut.

Gary's concluding remarks are very valid, but seeking out those verticals and using them takes more effort than most searchers can spare.

"Specialty search/verticals have as much if not more value on the mobile web since starting with a smaller universe of focused or limited data can potentially allow users to access focused results from the outset. This can mean fewer click, less to input into the search box, and a large savings of time and most likely aggravation."

FindFiles on the Invisible Web

A great way to find files online, Pandia (Mar 16)

FindFiles.net may be taking a big into the invisible web. It helps searchers find the downloadable files - document formats, audio and video, executables, archives etc. This isn't web search - it's internet search. Reminds me of Archie, an archiver for searching ftp servers, of years ago but Findfiles is better.

Results are organized by tabs into text (xml and feeds), document (pdf, doc), audio, video, image, software, archive (like zip, gzip and jar), geo-3d (Geomap formats like kmz and kml 3d object formats), chemical, and misc.

Pandia says it's "simple and powerful", and recommends studying the FAQ for ideas.

This is a specialty engine that will take some study to see if it holds the types of files you need.

There is some syntax - use quotation marks for words together, and the - to exclude. It looks for any of the terms (roughly). If you want all, use either AND or +

"gold mining" AND ontario +"gold mining" +ontario

Synonyms in Google Custom Search

Synonyms made easy, Google Custom Search Blog (Mar 17)

Enhancements to Google Custom Search for better search.

"Today, we're excited to announce that we've made it easier than ever for Custom Search and Site Search administrators to enable advanced synonym options. Now, you can add sets of synonyms specific to your website content and can also trigger search expansion, so that a query automatically triggers results for synonymous terms."

Using Craigslist

Top Craigslist scams and how not to be bamboozled By: Rachel Sadon, IT Business (Feb 10)

Describes some scam classics - how they work and how not to fall for it.

Links to Ten tips to get the most out of CraigsList, Brennon Slattery (Marc 2009)

First tip - use Google to get more information.

" One of the best ways to get the most out of Craigslist is to start outside of the site itself. Using Google Advanced Search can narrow down your browsing options in an effective, clean manner. Say you're looking for a couch in Boston, but you don't want to drive 25 miles to pick it up. Using Google Advanced Search, you can put your desired neighborhood in the 'this exact wording or phrase' field and keep "couch" in the generalized search.

You can also add other words you'd like to see in the posting, such as "good condition." Specify your city's Craigslist site (boston.craigslist.org, in this example) in the 'Search within a site or domain' field, and tell Google to do its work. You'll see your results, organized how you want them, in Google's easy-to-read format. "

US Census Questions

Searchable Database: All of Your U.S. Census Questions Answered, Resourceshelf (Nov 17)

US Census has opened a question and answer section. . Best to search by keyword. You can also page through the long list of questions.

I think we'll call this a vertical.

Inkmesh for ebooks

ebook search engine Inkmesh, Altsearchengines (Nov 1)

Inkmesh is a meta-search engine for ebooks - free and for a fee.

Use keywords - Inkmesh shows titles in a window. Or browse by category - with facets on price, device, type of media (ebook, audio, newspapers, magazines, Blogs).

Inkmesh searches Amazon, Audible, Barnes and Noble, Project Gutenburg, Sony, Internet Archive and more

New Features at Google Custom Search

Google refines Custom Search, delivers Wikipedia skin by Don Reisinger, Webware (Oct 26)

Google offers users of the Custom Search engine more options:

+ Custom search themes - more layouts
+ Structured custom search - rich snippet metadata attributes if you are using these on your website
+ Custom search Wikipedia skin

Also described in Google Custom Search blog.

Education DiscoverEd

Creative Commons Launches Education Search Engine by Tara Calishain, ResearchBuzz (Jul 27)

Reviews DiscoverEd - http://discovered.creativecommons.org/search/ for finding educational resources. Resources are "open educational resources" such as Open Courseware Consortium and some universities.

Simple keyword search - results are the metadata - "Metadata, including the license and subject information available, are exposed in the result set."

There are options to narrow the results by educational level, language, curator, license.

Advanced Google Custom Search

Advanced Custom Search Configuration, Google Custom Search Blog (June 29)

Presentation at Google I/O by Nick Weininger on Advanced Custom Search Configuration. [46 minutes]

Key tools for building and presenting - including new features for rich snippets and microformats.

Shows About.com's uses of CSEs on topics. Also - the Google Blogger search gadget for creating a search on the blog's domain of interest.

In last 20 minutes Adobe showed a use case of Custom Search for community help.

XooxleAnswers - Research Resource

XooxleAnswers has an annotated directory (or link list) to free newspaper archives starting with a description of Google News Archives. This is an extensive list that covers the US, some international including Canada, college newspapers, and magazines. It received a strong recommendation from The Information Advisor's BestBizWeb's enewsletter.

XooxleAnswers (zooks-il answers) is the home website for David Sarokin, a researcher who offers for-fee services. He used to research for Google Answers, and also writes articles for eHow.com about research, computers, investing and much else.

He has created several useful guides to resources for legal and business, and links to articles he has written on a variety of topics.

For example, see David's article on Find Old Newspaper Articles and Archives Online for Free (Nov 2008)

In total, this is an excellent resource to help one go well beyond Google for specialty searches, and as a for-fee service to be helped on the really tough questions.

Yahoo BOSS Vertical Lens

Search the Web Through a Vertical Lens, Yahoo Search Blog (Nov 26)

Yahoo Boss - Build your own search service - offers vertical lens technology - partners can create vertical search engine using the Yahoo search index and tailored ranking algorithms. Techcrunch is the first to do this.

Yahoo Glue for Topics

Yahoo Brings “Glue Pages” To The US by Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (Nov 20)

Sounds interesting --

"Glue Pages are essentially structured search results, pulling content on particular queries or topics from a range of sources: Wikipedia, news, Yahoo Answers, image search, blogs (in some cases) and video. There are also paid search ads on the page. The sources change with the particular topic and not all topics are available, although the Yahoo Search Blog says more will be added over time."

Try it at http://glue.yahoo.com/

TrueVert for the environment

Truevert - vert means green in French - and this is a "green search engine". "

From the about page: "All searches are done from the point of view of environmental and social concern. The results are obtained from YAHOO BOSS. They are then organized and clustered by Truevert. If you search for the word "carbon" for example, it knows that you want information about carbon's impact on climate change, not its physical chemistry. What's most surprising, is that the Truevert search engine learned all this in less than one hour on a single server with no ontology, taxonomy, or thesaurus."

Mentioned in Truevert and Semantic Search, AltSearchEngines (Nov 19)

More from Deep Web Tech

Deep Web Tech Dives Into Vertical Search Portals by Paula Hane, Newsbreaks (Nov 13)

Paula Hane provides background on Deep Web Technologies and its work to create federated search engines (or portals - depending on your preference) that address specific information interests - business, medicine, science.

Biznar scans business sites, blogs, news, patent sources, and has received favourable reviews from Bob Berkman. Mednar is for medical research. This searches many US national health sites plus Google Scholar (interesting).

Deep Web provides the technology for Scitopia.org, Science.gov, WorldWIdeScience.org, U.S. Department of Defence search.

Google Travel AnyOne?

Travel Appears To Be Next Up For Google by Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (May 26)

Google might get into travel. Why not? Has video, maps, shortcuts for flights.

Also Google's Travel Plans, Catherine Holahan, Business Week (May 22)

Custom Search Engines

Custom-built Search Engines by Phil Bradley, Ariadne (April 2008)

There are several services by which you can build your own search engine by selecting the sites or pages you want from a source database. These services extract the pages from the wider crawl that they do. The effectiveness thus depend son the thoroughness of the indexing.

Phil Bradley comments on the benefits of building your own and describes Rollyo, Google Custom Search, Yahoo Search Builder, Gigablast, Topicle, Microsoft Macros, Eurekster Swicki.

UpTake aggregates and analyzes travel

Travel Search Engine Kango Relaunches As UpTake by Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (May 15)

"UpTake [formerly Kango] describes itself as a "travel search and discovery site." It's aggregating consumer reviews and listings information from many travel sites to attempt to create a trusted destination to begin travel search. Content comes from Expedia, Fodors, goCityKids, Virtual Tourist, TripAdvisor, Citysearch and Yahoo, among others."

B2B Search

The Big List Of Major B2B Search Engines by Galen DeYoung, Search Engine Land (May 7)

Presents a "roundup of the most important search sites and resources B2B search marketers should be targeting" List is useful for researchers too.

Observes: "While business searchers may start their quest on a general search engine like Google, as they become more informed and progress further in the buying cycle, they often turn to other sources for additional and more detailed information. Many turn to general B2B search engines or head to niche-oriented search sites, where they hope to find fewer extraneous search results and other types of content, such as white papers, case studies, and other content marketing vehicles. The searcher's aim is to get better information and to get it more quickly."

Lists and describes several specialty business related verticals.

Kosmix Search

Interview with Kosmix, the theme oriented search site Pandia Search (Apr 28)

Inside scoop on Kosmix , a web portal that builds "home pages" in three topical areas: health, travel, and autos.

Taxonomy is key -- "At the core of our technology is a sophisticated algorithm-based categorization engine. Our technology combs through billions of Web pages and structured data points to aggregate, categorize and return the most targeted content to users, all of which is done algorithmically."

3 Vertical Engines

Will Vertical Search threaten Google? by Max Warton, e-consultancy (Apr 2)

I think the answer to this question is No - but the examples or the verticals are interesting.

"Vertical search is the new breed of Search Engines that more intelligently mine data, from searching for keywords in audio files to focusing on specific industry sectors. "

+ pluggd.tv for podcasts
+ Farecast - travel engine for airline tickets - helps in figuring out best time to buy
+ Retrevo - reviews on consumer electronics

Yahoo for Women

Yahoo targets women with new 'Shine' site by Elinor Mills, Webware (Mar 30)

Shine -- http://shine.yahoo.com/

Shine is a new vertical web site launched by Yahoo to serve the women in its audience ((40 million women between the ages of 25 and 54 every month)) The site will feature original blogs and content from major partners who publish for women (Conde Nast, Hearst, and Time) and will include Glamour, Epicurious.com, Style.com, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar, Women's Health, and Good Housekeeping.

Competition is with the well established iVillage and the fashion place Glam.com.

"Shine will distinguish itself by having more of an editorial voice than the other sites and by interacting more with readers, she said."

Postscript: Yahoo portal defies niche mantra, Matt Hartley, Globe and Mail (Apr 1)

Suggests that Shine may be too wide. Women are going to sites that are very niche - "Analysts agree that women interested in celebrity gossip are more likely to visit TMZ.com just as those who enjoy reading about home decor probably visit apartmenttherapy.com."

On the other hand, 40% of Yahoo users are women - maybe they will want to start at Shine. Advertisers will be happy if they do -- "Shine will be “especially attractive” to advertisers in the retail, packaged goods and pharmaceutical industries."

Of interest: "Other female-focused sites such as iVillage.com, which was bought by NBC Universal for $600-million (U.S.) in 2006, have seen their unique monthly visitors plateau and then decline. According to data from Internet tracking firm compete.com, iVillage saw its unique visitors in February drop by 37 per cent over the same period last year."

Wine is the subject

Let’s Wine a Lot! Researchbuzz (Feb 15)

Good leads from Tara Calishain on three wine sites.

+ Able Grape ( http://www.ablegrape.com/ ) - specialty search engine that has crawled about 10 million page - wine only. Nice example of the advantages of the specialty engine for narrowing the field and for providing subject-appropriate filters.

+ Wine Map (http://winemap.org/) - where grapes are grown.

+ WineMad (http://winemad.net/) - Google custom search of 900 wine sites for wine reviews and articles.

Google CSE

Briefs: Using More than 3 Sites When Building a Google Custom Search; Zoho’s Powerful Web-Based Notebook Adds More Features ResourceShelf (Aug 20)

Quotes Avi Rappaport (SearchTools.com) on finding that Google Custom Search that searches more than 3 domains may not return the same results as Google.com.

Convera's verticals

Convera's Vertical Search Customers -- Convera sells the technology and intrastracture for building specialized / vertical search engine. Its customer list offers examples of new vertical search engines in retail, STM - science, technology & medical, and business to business.

Eurekster build yourself swickis

Eurekster Emerges From Beta A Different Product Than When It Started Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (Dec 4)

It's really about the Swickis - build a custom search for yourself with keywords, add it to your website, and let your users improve results with votes and based on what they look at.

"Eurekster sits at the center of several Internet trends, including vertical search, communities, blogging, widgets and more recently video. Today it officially comes out of beta."

Google Custom Search for Small Businesses Everywhere

Google takes hosted site search worldwide, iTnews (Nov 22)

"Google has announced the international availability of its Custom Search platform allowing companies to add Google's search technology to their websites." ... "The platform allows users to integrate search into personal and community sites and blogs, and developers can use the Google Custom Search APIs to allow searching from within their applications."

Thomson searches Web with WebPlus

Thomson Beta-Testing WebPlus Optimized Internet Search Engine by George Pike, Newsbreaks (Nov 12)

Thomson is enhancing its product line of information services with a selective web search engine. WebPlus uses the Microsoft Live search technology to crawl and search the public Web, and editors to "provide a measure of classification and authority control to the results by identifying and vetting relevant legal, scientific, financial, and other Web sites."

"WebPlus used human editors at Thomson as well as proprietary search technology to create an Internet search engine that targets and prioritizes its results as an adjunct to Thomson’s data products. The WebPlus Legal search engine, currently being beta tested in law schools and selected law firms, focuses the query results on government, educational, nonprofit, and commercial legal information Web sites that complement its Westlaw database. Thomson Scientific’s WebPlus does the same, albeit with the focus on science Web sites that complement Web of Science."

George Pike ran some comparison tests of WebPlus against Google and Scirus. See the comments in the article.

There is a beta version of WebPlus for Thomson's ISI Web of Knowledge at http://scientific.thomsonwebplus.com. Try it while you can.

Customize with a Swicki

Customizable search for your Web site visitors Posted by Stephan Spencer, CNet News Blog (Oct 12)

Describes the Swicki and how to use it - "A Swicki is a combination search portal and widget that can be customized on any topic or topics either within a Web site, group of Web sites, or the Web at large. The end product is a custom search experience returning relevant, targeted results as well as revenue opportunity (yes, you can monetize your visitors!) for blog and Web site publishers."

Vertical Search on Games

GenieKnows.com Games search engine gets tune up with version 1.1 PR Newswire via Marketwatch

GenieKnows, a Halifax-based company, has released a search engine to find games - "Games search engine offers users a cleaner, more relevant and better focused alternative online destination to find information contained within the Games sector."

GenieKnows has two other verticals - Health and Local. Health, oddly, had nothing on sciatica. Local is for US locations.

Cooking with Tara

Cookin’ With Google 2.0. ResearchBuzz (Sep 12)

Yay - cooking with Google from Tara Calishain is back but it is a Google CSE

"http://www.researchbuzz.org/wp/tools/cookin-with-google/ , has undergone a serious update. From a tweaked-search-tool, it’s been turned into a Google Custom Search Engine that is currently searching over 140 cooking-related sites and recipe collections (and I’m still adding more.)"

Try it.

Build a Google CSE

Creating Google Custom Search Engines by Bernard Farrell, ONLamp.com (Sep 6)

Detailed instructions on how to build a Google Custom Search Engine.

Google Custom Search for Business

Google Launches Custom Search Business Edition, Chris Sherman, Search Engine Land (Jul 17)

Describes the new offering from Google of version of Google Custom Search for small and medium sized businesses to use to create a web search engine.

Code Search Engine

Google Code Search gets major upgrade Garett Rogers, ZDNet (July 5)

"Google Code Search is a tool that is used by programmers who need to find a piece of code to do a specific function"

Find Google Custom Search Engines

Search for Google Custom Search Engines Google Operating System (June 22)

Use Google Base to search custom search engines.

Google Custom Search

Google Custom Search Engines Easier To Build With New Link Learning Tool by Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (June 13)

Instructions on how to use the new feature for Google Custom Search that lets you customize search results based on who you link to on your site.

Google's Universal Search v Vertical

An Intimate View Of The World Through Google's Eyes by Gord Hotchkiss, SearchInsider (May 24)

Reflects on the implications of Google's universal search for melding results from blogs, news, etc.

- "and yes ads" - Ads, I guess they would show in the results too.

- "So, in effect, Google is no longer a search engine. It’s an “idea portal,” aggregated from Google’s vast Web reach around a specific query, on the fly and brought together for the user. And Google, in its infinite wisdom, will apply a universal ranking algorithm across disparate content to pull what it feels is the most relevant to the top of the page."

But can Google succeed at this? Hotchkiss proposes that this will only work if Google can draw on knowing more about the searcher ... "universal search becomes much more interesting when you combine it with personalization" .. "Google will be able to be more confident in offering a much richer and more diverse set of universal results when you can tap into previous search and Web history. "

Eric Enge takes issue with Hotchkiss' point that vertical search is made irrelevant by universal search in The Impact of Universal Search by Eric Enge, Seachenginewatch (May 25)

Specifically - "I also think that there are plenty of vertical search engines that use completely different contextual crawling methods, or use and integrate specialty data bases which are not easily interpreted by, or may not even be accessible by, a web search crawler. I suspect that borh of these scenarios will be unaffected by Universal Search."

Frankly, I think this explains why Google's universal search will be somewhat superficial. I can't see how terms intended for a web search will apply well for finding videos or images; or that people will want such a mix.

Will Google Universal hurt Verticals?

Google Universal Search - is Vertical Search Space Finished? by Alex Iskold, Read/Write Web (May 17)

Interesting position -- "But really, Universal Search is much more than that. It's a calculated shot aimed at a particular subset of the vertical search engines - the ones that claim to understand the underlying domain. Google already had search for each of these verticals, so all it has done is combined the results from all these searches into their main search results (where all the page views are)."

Suggests that vertical search will be hurt - but I doubt it. The vertical search engines have tools and context. A universal search will never have that - there will always be extra noise.

Four US State Government use Custom Search

Google Burrows into State Government Data by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (May 7)

Four states will be using Google's Sitemap and Custom Search to make their public records more accessible. By this means, they will make what was invisible because data was locked in a database, visible. Very impressive, but will this impinge on privacy?

"Google has begun a move to change that with a new effort using the free Sitemap protocol and the free Google Custom Search Engine. The governors’ offices in four states—Arizona, California, Utah, and Virginia—have announced partnerships with Google, instructing state agencies to begin opening up previously hard-to-find public information. Already some concern over privacy issues has been raised as state public records go on the open Web."

This is the method: "As explained in a Google Information for Public Sector Organizations page (www.google.com/publicsector), the difficulty with reaching all information available through state government Web sites lies in the trouble crawlers have reaching inside database applications. If extracting results from a data collection on a Web site requires that the user performs a search, then the results returned usually will have a dynamic URL that incorporates the search terms. With no stable, static URL in place for the data, Google’s spiders cannot reach the content. The new initiative with state governments offers two tools to help solve access problems. The Sitemap protocol opens up previously unseen data to Google and its users, while the Google Custom Search Engine brings data already on Google to the attention of state government Web site users."

And it could lead to mashups with maps: "However, future developments in using this data will probably include connecting to Google Maps and Google Earth using mashup tools. Why should this country or this planet be any different? Google has already partnered with a federal government agency—NASA Ames Research Center—to produce 3-D maps of the moon and Mars."

Knuro - Business Search

Knuru from the UK is a new business search engine that uses natural language processing and promises content from "top-tier academic and institutional sources". Knowledge Wharton is on the front page.

There are some additional features not commonly seen.

+ sort by date
+ contextualized summary
+ relevance score bar

I like the idea of natural language search, but when it comes to doing the search and finding that the results are way off base, I'd really like to search the title, or require the presence of certain words.

Google CSE

Google CSE Interview and Complaints by Greg Notess, Searchengineshowdown (Apr 16) - more about Google's custome search engine - "Overall, I found the Google CSE easy to set up and use. I just wish it would fix a few issues that basically would make the results display more like a regular Google search."

Gary Price on Vertical Search

Interview of Ask.com's Gary Price on Vertical Search Engines, by Eric Enge, StoneTemple Consulting (Apr 9)

Eric Enge interviewed Gary Price of Ask.com and Resourceshelf about vertical search and related topics. Gary, who has been preaching for years on the importance of finding the right database for the query and for using what is available from your local library, hit the nail on the head in saying -- "The challenges for Vertical Search are, (1): getting people to know about it, and (2): getting them to try it. And after they try it, getting them to comeback and use it again. I think the biggest challenge though is just getting people to know you have a Vertical Search offering, and getting them to look at it."

Interview had discussion on

+ vertical search platforms - "... products such as: Eurekster, Google Custom Search Engines, Yahoo Search Builder, Microsoft's Live Search Macros, and Rollyo."

+ new custom search such as Kayak for travel, or AskCity for local search in the U.S.

+ integrating speciality database into general results - as Ask.com does with Smart Answers.

+ federated search across databases

+ personal information agent - Gary proposes "your own personal information client in one form or another, that will search multiple databases, take advantage of the controlled vocabularies, de-dupe the results, and merge them all into one place, is something that we will be seeing more, and more of in the future."

+ critical information skills

+ gaming of the search engines

+ role of librarians

Lots of meat for everyone.

Inside Google Custom Search

Interview of Google's Rajat Mukherjee by Eric Enge, StoneTemple Consulting (Apr 19)

Eric Enge, who contributes to the Search Engine Watch blog, interviewed Rajat Mukherjee, product lead for Google's Custom Search Engines project.

Custom search engines are create-your-own using the Google search engine for domain-specific search. Mukherjee said that over 100,000 registered CSE engines.

Enhancements to Custom Search: "We have added improvements on internationalization, where you can actually restrict your search by domain, or by a specific language, and that's been very popular with users, and there are several customs search engines that are now enabling search in different languages. Although the end user experiences are available in other languages, at this point, the administration interfaces are available only in English, so that's something that we are looking at adding as well."

"We have added statistics, which is again very popular, and there is a lot of demand for more statistics around Custom Search Engines. We have added the ability for people to create gadgets, for both custom search, as well as custom search administration, and these gadgets can be included in Google personalized homepages. And, that is something that we believe will make it much easier for people to quickly access Custom Search experiences of their choice."

Closing: "One of the things that I would like to draw attention to is the fact that the very premise of this product is high quality search. You get the benefits of all the data that Google has about all the different sites out there."

People who are interested in custom search as users or webmasters can follow developments at the Google Custom Search Blog. Enge also has several links from this interview page.

At Google - http://www.google.com/coop/cse/overview

Custom Search - Greg Notess

Customizing Search Engines and Searching State Libraries, by Greg Notess, Searchengineshowdown (Apr 12) - Greg's work with the roll-your-own search engines. Shows them all in use on the State Libraries page.

Law.com Quest Search Engine

Law.com has a new search engine for law that searches the Legal web in addition to its own network of journals. Law.com Quest is primarily for U.S. law but there will be some Canadian content in the legal web search. Law.com is owned by ALM, a media company "serving legal, real estate, financial and business professionals."

More at Law.com launches legal web search engine , Virtual Chase (Apr 13)

Rush to Vertical

Just to show how strong the move is to vertical search, the Searchenginewatch blog had several stories in the last week.

Troogle? - speculation that Google may launch a vertical search for travel, a rumour that Google denies. Maybe it's wishful thinking.

Medical Vertical Search Being Chased by Microsoft and Google - companies are rushing into this vertical. Microsoft will be acquiring Medstory, and Google talks a lot about working with the health community.

Rich Skrenta, Google, Vertical Search - Erik Enge picks up on thoughts expressed by Rich Skrenta, CEO of Topix.net, on how to compete with Google - "You need to position your product to sub-segment the market and carve out a new niche. Or better, define an entirely new category". In other words, create a service with a vertical search engine.

"They [vertical search engines] perform custom crawls of custom data sets, including data not open to the web, apply custom algorithms to the data from their crawls, and then offer up a custom presentation of the data to their users. They are truly vertical. However, too vertical means "not scalable". This fits these start ups because they only need to get to a certain size to provide the management team and the investors the exit they are looking for."

Convera Focusing on Vertical Search for Publishers - Convera sold its RetreivalWare to FAST and will focus on providing vertical search for publishers.

Vertical for Social Work

Online Portal to Extensive Social Work Content Launches on First World Social Work Day, press release (Mar 27)

"Powered by Google® search technology, the new Social Work Portal will help the public find information about social work issues, services, education and careers—all in one place, from more than 100 sources. In the coming months, additional social work Web sites will be added to the portal in an effort to make it the most comprehensive gateway to research, education, policy, and practice information about the profession."

Google CSEs

Getting Link Love From Google Custom Search Engines by Eric Ward, Search engine land (Mar 26)

Advice to webmasters to make sure their site is included in any custom search engine that seems to be specializing on their topic.

Most remarkably there is a directory to Google Custom Search Engines (CSEs) - http://www.customsearchguide.com/

Mentions other players in custom search - Rollyo, swicki, Gigablast, and Yahoo Search Builder.

More Vertical Search

"Moving Up: Vertical Search Proliferates" by Tim Houghton, Freepint (Mar 22)

Has a good definition of vertical search - "So a vertical search engine is trying to solve a different, more specific problem than a generalist one, focusing on the needs of a specific market segment, user group or alternatively a highly specific dataset."

Gives a few examples in --
+ consumer search
+ professional needs; eg SearchMedica for general medical practitioner, Northern Light for searching tailored to an enterprise.

Predicts - "I think they [major search engines] will develop vertical offerings in the larger consumer niches, as indeed they are already doing. But skills like the ability to support complex structured searching, taxonomies, access to databases and complex data visualisation tools all have a healthy future for those services targeted at information professionals."