Nielsen//NetRatings found that in June and July of this year the major search engines enjoyed high user retention but also high audience overlap, suggesting that audiences are actively using two and three engines. Search engines saw the highest user retention of the three categories that Nielsen compared and examined (search, travel, jobs).
Filed under Search Engines by Greg Sterling
To put it in one word, SideKiq is quirky. At this meta search engine, you search by category. Enter the query into the search box and click on the list of categories below for links relevant to the category and the topic. And the topics vary from the usual to the esoteric - movies, music, images, people, employment, Kids Interest, Blogs, Magazines, Books and, many more. And if you feel there’s more categories that should go in there, just drop them a line.
Its more like the engine for the power searcher. There are times when you know what you want and you know where you can find out more on it. SideKiq’s design (patent pending), is simple, sleek and AJAX based. SideKiq was founded by Anuta Udyawar & Steve Hemmady who were the original developers of Onepage Portal (now Sybase Enterprise Portal). Results are returned from major search engines and a number of other portals and directories.
It must be said that apart from the designing search algorithms that are smarter and more adept at defining the relevancy of the vast volume of data on the web, the user interface is the next frontier that needs a remake. The net is no more about people taking to machines with results needed in a serial manner. For the next phase of search technology has to cater to the needs of the seasoned searcher. And SideKiq’s approach is “quirky” enough to delegate a large part of the search categorization to the user and enter the picture when the selections are made.
Filed under Search Engines by Arun Radhakrishnan
The video search engine blinkx has formed 28 new partnerships with special interest broadband based media companies. Among the new partnerships are Cycling TV and Wedding TV, two broadband television channels with specialized offerings. blinkx has also partnered with Eye Music Network, a broadband MTV-esque channel, and GeoBeats, a producer of professional video travel guides for travel enthusiasts.
Through these agreements, blinkx has expanded its index of more than 14 million hours of searchable video content into new genres and categories; highly commercial categories at that which will result in increased revenue for all parties involved.
From the release:
In addition to indexing mainstream media, blinkx is committed to making it easier to locate this niche video content on the Web.
Broadband penetration and advances in video compression have driven the proliferation of multimedia content on the Web and resulted in the mainstream consumption of online video. As technical progress has dramatically lowered the barrier to entry for Internet publishing, more independent producers are distributing their video content online, and achieving great success among smaller, but dedicated, audiences.
“The democratization of media is one of the most exciting possibilities of the Web — the idea that people with common interests can build a community, regardless of their physical location,” said Suranga Chandratillake, founder and CEO, blinkx. “blinkx is helping to deliver on that promise by indexing the broadest variety of video content on the Web today, and making it easier for everyone — from bikers to brides-to-be — to find material that appeals to their specific interests.”
Filed under Search Engines by Loren Baker, Editor
Gary Price points to a Microsoft Virtual Earth blog posting that reflects enhancements of low level orthogonal, "Bird's Eye" photography within the U.S., as well as satellite mapping for a range of countries and locations outside the U.S.
In addition there's also now more 3-D imagery and more 3-D cities in Virtual Earth.
Filed under Search Engines by Greg Sterling
