Experimental approach to new Google search methods

Google is in the process of launching two new features that will enhance the way users search for images and news, finds Karolyn Judge.

Google, ever the innovator, is trialling the new search methods, Google Similar Images and Google News Timeline, on its revamped development site Google Labs.

Similar Images works by using a picture rather than text to find other matching images. Timeline presents information already available in Google News but organises and displays it chronologically.

With Similar Images, a link is provided for images related to an existing result. Users can click on a link, and according to Google, it will let them find the result they want without having to refine their search.

For example, a search in Similar Images for ‘Paris’ will come up with the Eiffel Tower, the celebrity Paris Hilton and a photograph of an old church. Clicking on any of these images would restrict the search to one of the three.


While Similar Images aims to minimise excess results that aren’t relevant to a person’s search, problems have already arisen. The BBC discovered that after clicking on a similar image search link for a picture of John Prescott, only two of the 21 first page results were of the former Deputy Prime Minister, while 18 in the search were of Renee Zellwegger.

Google News Timeline presents results from different sources, including both recent and archived news, scanned newspapers and magazines, blog posts and sports stories.

The experiments reflect a new approach to search engine techniques, says internet analyst Greg Sterling. “The approach is much more about multi-media, different views and different ways to navigate through data,” he said.


Google’s director of product management RJ Pittman emphasised that traditional methods are the main focus of their search engine.

“Keyword search is still critical and mainstream. It is also pivotal because it is a very efficient mechanism where someone asks a question, and they get an answer that is relevant and useful. I don’t see that going away.”

theEword announces fundraising programme with charity shark dive

At theEword, we like to do our bit for good causes. In the past, members of our team have carried out work for charities and the NHS, and several of our current and former clients operate with an ethical or environmentally aware ethos.

It is with great pleasure, therefore, that we announce theEword Fundraising Programme, set up to raise money for charities and other worthy causes, in order to give something extra to those who need it most.

Our first fundraising event will see creative director Tom Glass and online marketing manager Mark Baker take a dip in the shark tank at the Blue Planet Aquarium, in support of CLIC Sargent, the UK’s leading children’s cancer charity.

The organisation looks after children, young people and their families through the difficulties of cancer, providing support including nurses, therapists, research and holidays for those affected.

“It’s a fantastic charity that I’m really passionate about,” said Tom Glass. “I’ve got family experience of the brilliant work that CLIC do, so it was an obvious choice for them to be our first cause.”

Tom and Mark will be diving on July 5, experiencing a close (“maybe a bit too close,” jokes Mark) encounter with the aquarium’s giants of the deep, who hopefully will be well-behaved.

You can do your bit to support the boys and, more importantly, CLIC Sargent by visiting theEword’s Justgiving page, where you can read further information about the event and, should you wish to, make a sponsorship donation to the cause.

Amazon out of Phorm

Amazon has opted out of Phorm’s targeted online advertising technology.

The move will deprive Phorm of crucial information about what online users are interested in. These details would allow the UK-listed company to build its advertising system.

Phorm allows ISPs to track customers’ actions on the internet so they can gauge users’ interests and present them with relevant advertisements.

Amazon has removed all of its domain names – including Amazon.com – from BT Webwise, which is the platform that Phorm will use to operate.

Amazon is the second most visited shopping and classified website in the UK after eBay.co.uk, according to website monitor Hitwise.

A spokesperson for Phorm said it does not comment on individual cases. The company, which is listed on London Stock Exchange’s growth market AIM, is understood to be planning a meeting with Amazon’s management to explain the benefits of the Webwise system.

Privacy campaigners, the Open Rights Group, have sent a letter to nine internet giants including Google and fellow search engine Yahoo, asking them to opt out.

Legal proceedings against the UK government for breaching data protection and e-privacy rules were launched by the European Commission as a result of secret testing by BT in 2006 and 2007.

Unlike search engines such as Google, Phorm does not store a user’s IP address or browsing history, or log the pages they subsequently visit – known as a clickstream.

Search engine reverts to Ask Jeeves name

After three years, search engine Ask is reverting back to its original name Ask Jeeves.

In a multimillion-pound attempt to take on search giant Google, the all-knowing butler character is returning as the brand identity of Ask.com.

Jeeves was the digital talisman for the search engine from 1996 until early 2006, when he was dropped along with the Ask Jeeves name after the £1bn takeover by IAC in 2005. Ask has now secured investments from IAC for UK marketing activity in the second quarter of this year.

Jeeves has been reintroduced to the search engine’s branding and advertising after a makeover that has seen his pinstripe trousers and coattail jacket replaced by a trendier image (see picture).

Research found 83 per cent of UK consumers still identify the search engine by the Ask Jeeves name and character – and there will be a national media campaign covering TV, press, radio and an online campaign demonstrating his comeback.

As part of the relaunch, Jeeves will be given Twitter and Facebook accounts. The Facebook account will be updated with a travel diary and “pictures” of where Jeeves has been during his three-year ‘leave’.

The television campaign for the search engine uses the strapline “Glad you asked”, with a range of 10-second advertisements that match questions to programmes such as Hell’s Kitchen, Grand Designs and America’s Next Top Model.

Cesar Mascaraque, the search service’s managing director said: “Our users have emphatically told us that they find Jeeves enhances their search experience... they see Jeeves as approachable and trustworthy and, above all, helpful.”

theEweekly news wrap

Spamming the globe

New research from anti-virus gurus McAfee shows that spam email – which accounts for 80 per cent of the world’s email traffic – uses as much electricity as 2.1 million US homes; over 33bn kilowatt-hours of electricity.

The report estimates that 62 trillion spam messages were sent last year. The energy involved in creating and deleting these unwanted emails accumulates to the emission levels generated by 3.1 million cars.

“As the world faces the growing problem of climate change, this study highlights that spam has an immense financial, personal and environmental impact,” said Jeff Green, a senior vice-president at McAfee.

The McAfee research comes as a rival online security group, Symantec, shows a 192 per cent increase in spam email. It is thought 90 per cent of these messages are generated by 'bot networks'; computers which have been hijacked and then programmed to relay and send spam emails without the owner’s knowledge or consent.

Saint Google

Google transformed its homepage to celebrate St. George’s Day on April 22nd this week and visitors to the site were treated to an image honouring the patron saint of England.

This isn’t the first time Google has modified its logo to reflect changing times. Images celebrating Christmas, Thanksgiving and St. Patricks Day have all featured on the Google homepage. A selection of our favourite logos from the company’s 10 year history include:

Andy Warhol’s Birthday - August 6, 2002

Leonardo da Vinci’s Birthday - April 15, 2005

Election Day - November 4, 2008

50th anniversary of the LEGO brick - January 28, 2008

The Week in Stats

• 58 per cent of UK internet users have at least one social networking profile on sites such as Facebook or MySpace.
  
• Yahoo has reported a Q1 net profit of $118 million, down 78 per cent on last year’s profits. The company has said it will cut an additional five per cent of its staff.
  
• The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has ruled that Google’s Street View application – which covers 25 UK cities – does not breach the Data Protection Act. 74 written enquiries/complaints were made to the ICO regarding the service.
  
• The BBC iPlayer service, which allows users to access BBC television and radio online, received an overhaul this week. Video quality has been improved to 15000kps stream and a HD mode has also been added. iPlayer 3.0 is due for release in summer 2009.
  

Google search helps to buoy global profits

Google’s search business has played a key role in guiding the company through the current economic downturn, it has been revealed.

Google.com proved the most lucrative venture for the firm, which has reported a net profit of $1.42 billion (£0.95bn) for the first three months of the year. Google-owned sites generated revenues of $3.7 billion.

Google’s net profit is up 9 per cent compared with the $1.31 billion made for the first quarter of last year, with the UK search market accounting for $733 million.

The company’s revenues came in at $5.51 billion. That is 6 per cent higher than for the same period last year, but a decrease of 3 per cent on the last quarter of 2008.

The positive news comes despite the downturn in businesses’ advertising spends – one of the general symptoms of the recession.

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said: “Google had a good quarter given the depth of the recession.

“These results underline both the resilience of our business model and the ongoing potential of the web as users and advertisers shift online,” he added.
Mr Schmidt did concede Google has been affected by the global economic problems: “We are in uncharted territory economically and Google is, absolutely, feeling the impact.”

Despite this, he said Google is well positioned to cope with the advertising dip, especially given their status as the world’s number one search engine: “Advertisers are still spending, but they are lowering their bids.

“The shift to online advertising gives us a big advantage and outpaces any losses from [decreasing] economic activity,” he added.

Manchester Masters winners announced

Last week, the winners of the Manchester Masters graduate training programme were announced. Here, theEword founder and director Al Mackin talks about his involvement in the project’s judging process.

I was honoured to be invited to be a judge at the first annual Manchester Masters, a pioneering scheme set up by Tangerine PR, in partnership with Manchester City Council, the NWDA and NESTA.

About Manchester Masters

The aim was to give a selection of graduates the opportunity to spend a year working in the creative, PR and media industry in Manchester, with a master’s degree provided on completion. As well as the paid placements, students also get to live rent free in a city centre apartment, have their own business mentor, free membership to the Chartered Institute of Marketing and the Manchester Publicity Association and even a travel card to help them to get around the city. It's quite a package for someone who aspires to work in this industry, and is especially useful in the current climate, where it's becoming harder for graduates to find positions. Candidates were asked to make a 30 second video for the competition, which would form the basis of their application.

The judging took place over the 7th and 8th of April, with 50 students making it through to the first day of boot camp. This was reduced to 20 by the second day, and then a final ten were picked to win Manchester Masters.

View some of the Manchester Masters entry videos

The two days were pretty intense...the candidates were thrown in at the deep end, and were given an hour to trek around the city to find something that they believed epitomised Manchester. Despite the early start they dug up some fantastic items (literally, in some cases!) and spoke at length about why they thought their item, or items, related to the city. There was a real understanding of what makes Manchester the city it is, and some excellent work considering how early in the day it was.

The quality of the candidates meant that the culling session at the end of the first day was hard, and took longer than expected, but we managed to whittle the group down to 20 finalists.

The final

The final day was even more intense, and the students’ euphoria at getting through to the second round was no doubt tempered by another 8am start! To make matters worse, everyone was asked to carry out research on three subjects before they returned. Judging by the stacks of printouts, and the analysis that some of the students did, they wouldn’t have had much time to sleep. Just like working for a real PR/Digital agency!

The first task for the bright-eyed candidates was to build a wooden framework in less than four minutes. The last time I had to do something that complicated was when we put together theEword’s office furniture (we called it team building) and with seven candidates per framework the task required a good standard of teamwork.

It's worth noting at this point that the candidates weren't judged on their success in the tasks per se, but the activities were used as opportunities for the judges to see how they all worked together.

While building the framework, the candidates were taken off for one-on-one interviews with the judges, which meant that the teams were constantly having members taken away, and then returned, with the expectation that they slotted seamlessly back in to their team. It was a fantastic idea that simulated the real world.

Winners

The final judging session to pick the ten winners was tough, but we then had the unenviable task of telling ten students that they were unsuccessful. The good news was that the following day, 25 companies would be available to meet with them to discuss positions within the industry, before the winners were informed.

It has to be said that the team at Tangerine, including Sandy, Lyndsey, Lindsay, Lee, Malin, and countless others, worked tirelessly all day to make the Manchester Masters a smooth-running and enjoyable experience for both the judges and the candidates. It was also a pleasure working with the other judges, and I'm looking forward to taking on a winner and to the Manchester Masters in 2010.


See the ten Manchester Masters winners.

theEweekly news wrap

Fiddling the books

Online retailer Amazon has been accused of censorship this week as thousands of literary works were removed from the site’s ‘Bestseller’ list. The company came under scrutiny after a number of gay and lesbian titles - from authors such as Jeanette Winterson and EM Forster - were stripped of their sales rankings and banished from the top seller list.

High-profile books removed from the ‘Bestseller’ list include:

• Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
  
• Alan Hollinghurst’s Booker-winning novel, The Line of Beauty
  
• DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover
  
• Maurice by EM Forster
  

Thousands of users voiced their protest via social media sites such as Twitter after Amazon initially justified the move as a ‘family-friendly’ procedure. The company has since said the issue had been the result of a technical glitch and will be rectified in the near future.

"If Amazon are making a value judgment here, then that's much more serious and obviously that needs to be addressed,” author Jeanette Winterson told the Guardian newspaper.

Bad Phorm

Amazon made further headlines on Thursday 16th April after the company revealed it would be opting out of Phorm’s infamous targeted-advertising technology. The loss of the second most-visited shopping site in the UK is the latest blow to Phorm’s Webwise programme as it means the system will not be able to use data from Amazon consumers in its targeted advertising.

More trouble at Yahoo?

In what appears to be a fairly downbeat week for news, The New York Times has speculated that search engine giant Yahoo is considering further redundancies in the near future. A story published in the American newspaper has suggested that several hundred employees could soon be laid off.

Yahoo made over 1,000 workers redundant in 2008 and it is believed the cuts are in response to the company’s decreasing share of the online marketplace and a decline in advertising revenue.

Google Street View 'not a threat to personal privacy'

The information commissioner has ruled that Google Street View does not infringe personal privacy.

The search engine’s service has attracted controversy due to it broadcasting 360-degree views of homes and roads in 25 of the UK’s cities and towns via the internet.

Privacy International made a formal complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in March. The ICO said it was satisfied Google was not breaching privacy laws.

Hundreds of complaints have been made about the service, after it was launched in March. Users of the new feature can view millions of photographs of homes, people and cars around Britain through Street View.

Critics have said that Street View is voyeuristic, despite the search engine obscuring faces and numberplates. Images, including one of a man leaving a Soho sex shop, were removed the day after the site's UK launch.

The ICO wrote: "In our opinion, there is no clear evidence that the community find Street View particularly harmful or insidious."

The ICO also dismissed Privacy International’s argument that Street View should seek people’s consent: "If consent were required by the law, then the producers of, say, Match of the Day, would have to gain the consent of all people attending televised football matches who might be caught on camera," it said.

Privacy International said it was "disappointed at the findings."

A spokesman for Google said: "We look forward to a constructive dialogue with Privacy International and other privacy stakeholders."

Clientwatch: ShopLaptop hits the top three on Google

You might remember the launch of ShopLaptop being in the news recently, after theEword helped the site to debut on Google in page one positions on over 500 of its keywords.

Since then we’ve been working hard to maintain the impressive start and are pleased to announce that our efforts appears to be paying off with some fantastic results.

ShopLaptop.co.uk now occupies prime positions on its top two keywords, sitting 3rd on Google for ‘laptops’ and 4th for ‘laptop’.

In addition to this, traffic to the site has increased by 38.12 per cent month-on-month since the start of our involvement in the project.

The improvements in the site’s search engine rankings come as a result of theEword’s ongoing consultancy and support, which includes the provision of bespoke content comprising user guides, manufacturer profiles and laptop reviews for use on the website.

We’ve also set up a news section, with stories written by our team of journalists, which has been pulling in some great natural traffic and search positions (including number one for the oft-touted and apparently imminent ‘nokia laptops’).

theEword founder and managing director Al Mackin said:

“We made a fantastically strong start with ShopLaptop and to have built on that so quickly stands as evidence that the hard work on both sides is paying off.

“We will carry on helping ShopLaptop to optimise their site so that it continues to perform well in search results while meeting the needs of its clients.”

theEweekly news wrap

The Sun Online has been celebrating this month as new statistics revealed that traffic to the tabloid website in February peaked at just under 30 million users; a 25 per cent rise in users from January. The increase of visitors saw The Sun become the most popular online newspaper in the UK. The extensive coverage of teenage dad Alfie Patten and the death of reality star Jade Goody were thought to be responsible for the peak in traffic.

This news may well have been the motivation behind Rupert Murdoch’s comments about digital media this week. The media tycoon (and owner of the Sun newspaper) said that he believes users should pay for any content they read online.

"People reading news for free on the web, that's got to change," he said.

Murdoch’s comments came in response to a suggestion that publications could no longer support their costs through advertising revenue alone. Murdoch owns several newspapers, both in the UK and abroad. His company owns US paper The Wall Street Journal, which currently charges users a subscription fee for its online content.

The issue of online content made the headlines several time this week. Social networking giant Facebook caused controversy (again) by blocked all links to file-sharing service, The Pirate Bay. The Pirate Bay, a torrent-finding site which allows users to download music, media and TV for free (often in violation of copyright laws), released an application which allowed Facebook users to share links to downloadable content with their friends. Facebook responded by banning all Pirate Bay torrent URLs. Controversially, it was noted that URLs to other file-sharing services remained live.

File-sharing hit the headlines earlier in the week when an incomplete copy of the Twentieth Century Fox film, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, was leaked onto the internet.

The film, set for release on 29th April in the UK, was reportedly downloaded 100,000 times from file-sharing websites such as The Pirate Bay. X-Men Origins, which stars Hugh Jackman as the titular superhero, was missing several scenes and a number of visual effects. Jackman was said to be ‘heartbroken’ at the leak.

A number of movie websites quickly rallied to condemn the leak. Leading film site Ain't It Cool News quickly stated it would not be posting any early reviews of the film based on this leaked copy. Jeremy Smith, an editor at the site, said:

"The only way you're seeing it right now is through illegal channels, and we're not going to condone that.”

Earlier in the week, a leading online columnist for Fox News found himself out of a job after publishing his review of the film online. Ironically, the review was generally favourable towards the movie.