Semantics In, Popularity Out

We congratulate Powerset for their launch. Some people must have a gun pointed at their heads to rush to a conclusion using one or two examples. Powerset is good, powerset is bad, etc. Well, I think they all are missing the point. So much for encouragement!

The clear message is this: Semantic technology is here, and will evolve to challenge and eventually push out the popularity based search methods. More on AltSearchEngines

Powerset vs. Google: The Completely Premature Head-to-Head

As our network blog AltSearchEngines reported this morning, the long-awaited and much hyped natural language processing search engine Powerset launched this morning. Kind of. For now, the search service only uses Wikipedia and Freebase as source material for answers to your query. So it’s not really fair to compare it to Google yet, but this is a search engine, and that means it will always be held to the gold standard set by the market leader. Read more on ReadWriteWeb

Yahoo Releases Safe Search Product into Beta

Yahoo has teamed up with McAfee to develop SearchScan, a new safe search service. Here’s what you need to know… Read more on SearchEngineWatch

Very useful feature indeed, however I dont get it why dont they offer it in all the countries…

Google’s Vision of the Future of Image Search

Can Google’s technology automatically analyze what’s inside an image? I mean is it really possible to automatically analyze an image subject then rank it according to the derived description without human intervention? Well for Google’s two scientists who presented a research paper in China last week, it might be possible. Read more on Search Engine Journal

Is Keyword Search About To Hit Its Breaking Point?

As the Web swells with more and more data, the predominant way of sifting through all of that data—keyword search—will one day break down in its ability to deliver the exact information we want at our fingertips. In fact, some argue that keyword search is already delivering diminishing returns—as the slide above by Nova Spivack implies. Spivack is the CEO and founder of semantic Web startup Radar Networks and is pushing his view that semantic search will help solve these problems. But anyone frustrated by the sense that it takes longer to find something on Google today than it did even a year ago knows there is some truth to his argument.  Read more on TechCrunch

Weather Report: Yahoo! Search Index Update

Over the next few days, we’ll be rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. While we expect the update will be completed soon, as you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index. More on Yahoo Search Blog

Nielsen Releases March 2008 U.S. Search Data

We’ve already seen the numbers from Hitwise, Compete, and comScore. Now it’s Nielsen’s turn to serve up its March 2008 data for top U.S. search providers. More on SearchEngineatch.com

Google Sued for Fraudalent Ads Charging?

A federal class action lawsuit is being filed today by Kabateck Brown Kellner of U.S. District Court, Northern District of Carolina in San Jose, against Google for apparently charging customers for ads that they don’t want to. More on Search Engine Journal

MSN Live Search Rolls Out Some New Features

MSN Live Search has been rolling out some new features lately. The latest of which being on its Live Search Products which is now sporting a new look and the site suggestion feature of the main Live Search portal which dives in deeper into search results. Read more on Search Engine Journal

Alternative Search Engines Day – Call For Alts to Band Together

I’m at the Alternative Search Engines Day, in San Francisco, an event put on by our network blog AltSearchEngines. We started out with a keynote talk by ASE editor Charles Knight, who noted that alternative search engines only have about 1.7% market share combined. He thinks this is too small, so he wants all of the “alts” – you can see a list of them on our subsite The Search Race – to band together to make a bigger impact on the search market. Read the whole post on ReadWriteWeb