Tag Archives: search

search, tech

Google’s search monopoly, the decline of organic search and its implications

A piece by Rand Fishkin tells me what I already knew: that Google has a de facto monopoly in search, and that organic search (meaning clicking on a result from a search engine that is not an ad) is in decline, especially on mobile.

According to Fishkin, using data from digital intelligence firm Jumpshot, Google properties deliver 96.1% of all search in the EU and 93.4% of all US searches. “Google properties” include Google, Google Images, Youtube, and Google Maps.

To the extent that this shows high satisfaction with Google’s service, this is a credit to the company. We should also look carefully though at the outcome of those searches. In the latest figures available (Jan-Sept 2018) they break down as follows (EU figures):

  • Mobile: 36.7% organic, 8.8% paid, 54.4% no-click
  • Desktop: 63.6% organic, 6.4% paid, 30% no-click

On mobile, the proportion of paid clicks has more than doubled since 2016. On the desktop, it has gone up by over 40%.

A no-click search is one where the search engine delivers the result without any click-through to another site. Users like this in that it saves a tap, and more important, spares them the ads, login-in pleas, and navigation challenges that a third-party site may present.

There is a benefit to users therefore, but there are also costs. The user never leaves Google, there is no opportunity for a third-party site to build a relationship or even sell a click on one of its own ads. It also puts Google in control of information which has huge political and commercial implications, irrespective of whether it is AI or Google’s own policies that determine what users see.

My guess is that the commercial reality is that organic search has declined even more than the figures suggest. Not all searches signal a buying intent. These searches are less valuable to advertisers and therefore there are fewer paid ads. On the other hand, searches that do indicate a buying intent (“business insurance”, “IT support”, “flight to New York”) are highly valued and attract more paid-for advertising. So you can expect organic search to me more successful on searches that have less commercial value.

In the early days of the internet the idea that sites would have to pay to get visitors was not foreseen. Of course it is still possible to build traffic without paying a Google tax, via social media links or simply by hosting amazing content that users want to see in full detail, but it is increasingly challenging.

There must be some sort of economic law that says entities that can choose whether to give something away or to charge for it, will eventually charge for it. We all end up paying, since whoever actually provides the goods or services that we want has to recoup the cost of winning our business, including a share to Google.

Around six years ago I wrote a piece called Reflecting on Google’s power: a case for regulation? Since then, the case for regulation has grown, but the prospect of it has diminished, since the international influence and lobbying power of the company has also grown.

tech

Google search to become even more opaque? From answers to “journeys”

Google’s Ben Gomes has posted about the future of search. Nothing in it surprises me. Quick summary:

  • From answers to journeys: search to be more personalized and contextual, helping you “resume tasks where you left off”
  • Queryless information: surfacing information “relevant to your interests” without you asking.
  • More visual results. Because everyone likes a picture.

Personally I would prefer search to be improved in different ways. I would like:

– clearer separation of ads from search results. It is to my mind wrong that brands have to advertise based on their own brand name, just to ensure that users searching for their brand find the official site, and not a competitor or intermediary

– Better results. As a techie I am often looking for answers to technical queries. Search is very useful, but in general, I find too many results with the same question but no answers, too many old results that are no longer relevant, and not enough focus on community forums (where the answers often exist).

– Better authority. As a journalist, authority really matters; and I do not mean “reported by a well known news source”. Authority means first-party information, the announcement from the actual people or companies involved, the information on the first-party sites or from actual employees. Finding this is quite a lot of work, and the algorithms could be much better.

What I do not want includes:

– over-personalized results. There are two reasons. First, I am wary about giving away all the personal data which Google wants to use to personalize results. Second, factors like objectivity, balance, and accuracy matter much more to me. I do not want my own version of fake news, results designed to please me rather than to inform me. Nor do I want this for others, who may end up with a distorted view of the world.

Of course it depends what sort of search you are making. If you search for “best restaurant in Oxford”, what do you want? The most highly-rated restaurant (by some standard) among places where you typically choose to dine? Or the best according to the general population? Or the best according to top restaurant critics? It is not clear; and a journalist (say) might want a different answer to someone looking for a place to eat tonight.

All of this touches on a key point, which is search results versus marketing. Is search a way of researching information on the internet, or a marketing tool? I want the former; but unfortunately it will always be, at least in part, the latter. Particularly as we are unwilling to pay for it.

– too few results. Ten blue links was a luxury: 10 answers to the same question, hopefully from different sources, so we can see any diversity and make a selection. The search, um, experience now more often gives us just one result, or at least, one prominent result and more available if you work at it. This is especially true of voice assistants as I’ve noted elsewhere. There are obvious risks in the trend towards one-result searches, including dominance of a few sources (and the squeezing out of the rest).

– opaque results. Wouldn’t it be great if you could find out why, exactly, Google has chosen to give you the results it has yielded. Puzzling this out is of course the realm of countless SEO experts, and there is always the argument that if too much is known about the algorithms, they are easier to game.

The downside though is that we have to trust Google (as the dominant provider) to do the right thing in many different ways. It will not always do the right thing. If its vision of the next 20 years of search is accurate, we are being asked to become increasingly trusting, even as we are also discovering, through devastating political outcomes, that you cannot trust big algorithm-based, commercial internet providers to look after our best interests.

amazon, android, gadgets, google, Internet of things, search, tech

Google Assistant was all over IFA in Berlin. What are the implications?

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Last week I attended IFA in Berlin, perhaps Europe’s biggest consumer electronics event, and was struck by the ubiquity of Google Assistant. The company spent big on promoting its digital assistant both outside and inside the venue.

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Mach mal, Google; or in English, Go Google.

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On the stands and in press briefings I soon lost count of who was supporting Google’s voice assistant. A few examples:

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JBL/Harman in its earbuds

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Lenovo with its Home Control Solutions – Lenovo also uses its own cloud and will support Amazon Alexa

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LG with audio, TV, kitchen, home automation and more

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Bang & Olufsen with its smart speakers. No logo, but it is using Google Assistant both as a feature in itself (voice search and so on) and to control other audio devices.

And Sony with its TVs and more. For example, then new AF9 and ZF9 series: “Using the Google Assistant with both the AF9 and ZF9 will be even easier. Both models have built-in microphones that will free the hands; now you simply talk to the TV to find what you quickly want, or to ask the Google Assistant to play TV shows, movies, and more.*

I was only at IFA for the pre-conference press days so this is just a snapshot of what I saw; there were many more Google Assistant integrations on display, and quite a few (though not as many) for Amazon Alexa.

It is fair to say then that Google is treating this as a high priority and having considerable success in getting vendors to sign up.

What is Google Assistant?

Google Assistant really only needs three things in order to work. A microphone, to hear you. An internet connection, to send your voice input to its internet service for voice to text transcription, and then to its AI/Search service to find a suitable response. And a speaker, to output the result. You can get it as a product called Google Home but it is the software and internet service that counts.

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Vendors of smart devices – anything that has an internet connection – can develop integrations so that Google Assistant can control them. So you can say, “Hey Google, turn on the living room light” and it will be so. Cool.

Amazon Alexa has similar features and this is Google’s main competition. Alexa was first and ties in well with Amazon services such as shopping and media. However Google has the advantage of its search services, its control of Android, and its extensive personal data derived from search, Android, Google Maps and location services, GMail and more. This means Google can do better AI and richer personalisation.

Natural language UI

Back in March I attended an AI Assistant Summit in London organised by Re-Work. One of the speakers was Yariv Adan, a Product Lead at Google Assistant.

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I attend lots of presentations but this one made a particular impact on me. Adan believes that natural language UI is the next big technological shift. The preceding ones he identified were the Internet in the nineties and smartphones in the early years of this century. Adan envisages an era in which we no longer constantly pull out devices.

“I believe the next revolution is happening now, powered by AI. I call it the paradigm switch to natural UI. Instead of humans adapting to machines, machines adapt to humans. What we’re trying to create is we interact with machines the same way we interact with each other, in a natural way. Meaning using natural language, showing things, pointing at things, assuming context, assuming a human-like memory, expecting personality, humour, opinion, some kind of an emotional connection, empathy.

[In future] it is not the device changing, it is the device disappearing. We are not going to interact with devices any more. We are starting to interact with this AI entity, an ambient entity that exists everywhere.”

Note: If you ever read Isaac Asimov’s science fiction novels, you will recognise this as very like his Multivac computer, which hears and responds to your questions wherever you are.

“Imagine now that everything is connected, that the entity follows you. That there is no more device that you need to take out, turn on, speak to it. It’s around you, it’s on the TV, it’s in the speakers, it’s in your headphones, it’s in the watch, it’s in the auto, it’s there. Internet of things, any connected device that only has a speaker you can actually start interacting with that thing,”

said Adan.

Adan gave a number of demonstrations. Incidentally, he never uttered the words “Hey Google”. Simply, he spoke into his phone, where I presume some special version of Google Assistant was running. In particular, he was keen to show how the AI is learning about context and memory. So he asked what is the largest castle in the UK where people live. Answer: Windsor Castle. Then, Who built it? When? Is it open now? How can I get there by public transport? What about food? In each case, the Assistant answered as a human would, understanding that the topic was Windsor Castle. “I found some restaurants within 0.4 miles,” said the Assistant, betraying a touch of computer-style logic.

“Thank you you’re awesome,” says Adan. “Not a problem”, responds the Assistant. This is an example of personality or emotion, key factors, said Adan, in making interaction natural.

Adan also talked about personalisation. “Show me my flight”. The Assistant knows he is away from home and also has access to his mailbox, from where it has parse flight details. So it answers this generic question with specific details about tomorrow’s flight to Zurich.

“Where did I park my car?” In this case, Adan had taken a picture of his car after parking. The Assistant knew the location of the picture and was able to show both the image and its place on a map.

“I want to show how we use some of that power for the ecosystem that we have built … we’re trying to make that revolution to a place where you don’t need to think about the machine any more, where you just interact in a way that is natural. I am optimistic, I think the revolution is happening now.”

Implications and unintended consequences

An earlier speaker at the Re-Work event (sorry I forget who it was) noted that voice systems give simplified results compared to text-based searches. Often you only get one result. Back in the nineties, we used to talk about “10 blue links” as the typical result of a search. This meant that you had some sort of choice about where you clicked, and an easy way to get several different perspectives. Getting just one result is great if the answer is purely factual and is correct, but reinforces the winner-takes-all tendency. Instead of being on the first page of results, you have to be top. Or possibly pay for advertising; that aspect has not yet emerged in the voice assistant world.

If we get into the habit of shopping via voice assistants, it will be disruptive for brands. Maybe Amazon Basics will do well, if users simply say “get me some A4 paper” rather than specifying a brand. Maybe more and more decisions will be taken for you. “Get me a takeaway dinner”, perhaps, with the assistant knowing both what you like, and what you ate yesterday and the day before.

All this is speculation, but it is obvious that a shift from screens to voice for both transactions and information will have consequences for vendors and information providers; and that probably it will tend to reduce rather than increase diversity.

What about your personal data? This is a big question and one that the industry hates to talk about. I heard nothing about it at IFA. The assumption was that if you could turn on a light, or play some music, without leaving your chair, that must be a good thing. Yet, having a device or devices in your home listening to your every word (in case you might say “Hey Google”) is something that makes me uncomfortable. I do not want Google reading my emails or tracking my location, but it is becoming hard to avoid.

For most people, Google Assistant will just be a feature of their TV, or audio system, or a way to call up recipes in the kitchen.

From Google’s perspective though, it is safe to assume that the ability to collect data is a key reason for its strong promotion and drive behind Google Assistant. That data has enormous value. Targeted advertising is the start, but it also provides deep insight into how we live, trends in human behaviour, changing patterns of consumption, and much more. When things are going wrong with our health, our finances or our relationships, it is not implausible that Google may know before we do.

This is a lot of power to give a giant US corporation; and we should also note that in some scenarios, if the US government were to demand that data be handed over, a company like Google has no choice but to comply.

Personalisation can make our lives better, but also has the potential to harm us. An area of concern is that of shared risk, such as health insurance. Insurers may be reluctant to give policies to those people most likely to make a claim. Could Google’s data store somehow end up impacting our ability to insure, or its cost?

Personalisation is always a trade-off. Organisation gets my data; I get a benefit. I shop at a supermarket and this is fairly transparent. I use a loyalty card so the shop knows what I buy; in return I get discount points and special offers.

In the case of Google Assistant it is not so transparent. The EU’s GDPR legislation has helped, giving citizens the right to access their data and the right to be forgotten. However, we are still in the era of one-sided privacy policies and in many cases the binary choice of agree, or do not use our services. This becomes a problem if the service provider has anything close to a monopoly, which is true in Google’s case. Regulation, it seems to me, is exactly the right answer to the risks inherent in putting too much power in the hands of a business entity.

For myself, I am happy to cross the room and turn on the light, and to find my flight in my calendar. The trade-off is not worth it. But if Adan’s “ambient entity” comes to pass (which is actually most likely Google) I am not sure of the extent to which I will have a choice.

Adan’s work is terrific and the ability for machines to converse with humans in something close to a natural way is a huge technical achievement. I have nothing but respect for him and his team. It is part of a wider picture though, about data gathering, personalisation, and control of information and transactions, and it seems to me that this deserves more attention.

google

Blocked from Google search: agree our terms or else go away

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Late last week I encountered behaviour from Google that I had not seen before. It was related to my habit of not signing into Google automatically; I only sign in when I want to use Google+ (I know; but I have quite a few followers there and use it from time to time). Nor do I always use Google for search; I have Bing set as default, but Google is better for some kinds of searches – such as the kinds of searches admins and developers make when trying to fix a problem – so I use whichever one I think will get me the best results.

I therefore hit Google, only to find that I could not proceed. The only thing on the page was a notice stating that I could only continue using Google services if I “review key points” of Google’s Privacy Policy.

google-privacy

The word “review” turns out to be misleading. The next banner you see asks you not only to review but also to click “I agree” to a range of statements including delivering “ads based on your interests”.

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If you click “Other options” you find that there are none, other than a list of minor tweaks you can make to your settings on a per-browser basis.

In my experience these do not work well anyway. I have opted out of every interest-based ad that I can, but I still see many ads that are obviously “interest based”, such as ads that mysteriously match recent searches on ecommerce sites.

Once you have reviewed these options, you have to go back and click “I agree”, or give up using Google search.

Most web sites in the EU now have at least some form of cookie consent banner, but in my experience it is rare that a site blocks you completely. Some simply state that by continuing you implicitly agree to their terms. Some let you dismiss the banner with an x, leaving ambiguity about whether or not you agree. Google has gone for the nuclear option: unless you specifically agree, no search for you. I found the same banner both on Google.co.uk and Google.com.

My immediate question was in what circumstances Google chooses to block search (and other services) until you agree its policies. I asked Google, but have yet to receive a reply; if and when I do, I will update this post.

It seems that some others also noticed this change of behaviour. Privacy advocate Aral Balkan tweeted about it.

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Google is doing the right thing here, if it is not willing to let you use search or YouTube, for example, unless you agree its policies. No doubt it is trying to stay the right side of the law, especially in the EU.

At the same time, I do for some reason find this disturbing. Agreements like this are one-sided; there is no use in my trying to get Google to change some clause or other because I do not agree. Further, the extent to which I have choice in the matter is limited. Perhaps I can do my job without Google search, but without *any* Google services? What if I want to report on a conference where the sessions are on YouTube? Google has not created this content, but does deliver it. Is it reasonable for me to tell people, sorry, I cannot report on that, because it is on Google and I do not agree with its privacy policy, that feeds me pestilential interest-based ads and records my data in ways I cannot control?

You have choice but not that much choice; and the same applies to Facebook, where you may information that requires log-in and cannot easily be obtained elsewhere. I am sure that to most people putting something on Facebook is exactly equivalent to putting it on the Internet, but it is private property and there is a distinction.

google, search

Reflecting on Google’s power: a case for regulation?

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Via Martin Belam’s blog I came across this account of how the well-known flower vendor Interflora has, it is claimed, been penalised by Google for violation of its webmaster guidelines on paid links:

Searching for the terms [Flowers], [florist], [flower delivery], [flowers online] and hundreds of other related search terms yielded the interflora.co.uk domain in first place – until yesterday afternoon.  Now the website does not even appear for its own brand name.

Possibly by no coincidence, an official Google post reminds us of the rules:

We do take this issue very seriously, so we recommend you avoid selling (and buying) links that pass PageRank in order to prevent loss of trust, lower PageRank in the Google Toolbar, lower rankings, or in an extreme case, removal from Google’s search results.

I find this troubling. Here are a few statements (some may be contentious) that taken together will, I hope, express why.

1. Google has a market-dominating position in search, certainly in the UK. With good reason, users wishing to visit Interflora’s site are more likely to type “interflora” into a search engine, probably Google, then to type the URL directly. The combined address bar and search box in most browsers encourages this. Many users probably do not appreciate the difference. Of course they might also type “order flowers” into the box, delegating to Google the responsibility for finding suitable sites.

2. In consequence of 1, Google has direct and immediate power over the amount of business that will be achieved by a company trading online. In some cases that might be make-or-break, in some cases not, but it is a significant influence.

3. A further consequence is that Google’s search and ranking algorithms form an incentive to businesses to do all they can to climb higher in the search ranking. Since this appears to be influenced by incoming links (though probably less so than it once was) Google’s algorithms attempt to judge which incoming links are meaningful and which are not. Paid links fall into into the latter category, hence the guidelines which prohibit them.

4. Despite (3) above, the internet is infested with paid links and link exchanges. Even running a small site like mine, I get thousands of paid link and link exchange requests every year. The implication is that Google is not all that good at ignoring and/or penalising them, otherwise the activity would cease.

5. Worth noting: web site owners are free to accept paid links and vendors are free to buy them. They are not doing wrong. The only disincentives are first, whether you want to fill your site with worthless links, and second, whether you will be penalised by Google for doing so.

6. Google’s process for determining whether or not a particular web destination is down-ranked is not transparent. This is for good reasons, insofar as a transparent process would arguably be easier to game. On the other hand, this also means that a business which is penalised has no recourse other than to plead with Google, unless it felt inclined to experiment with legal action (prohibitively expensive and uncertain for most).

7. In fact there is another option, which is to advertise with Google, a form of paid link which the search giant is happy to accept. It seems to me obvious that this form of advertising is designed to look similar to unpaid search results, despite some small effort to distinguish them with small print and a light background colour change:

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It is not clear to me that this intermingling of paid and organic results is in the user’s best interests.

8. It is also obvious that advertising in this form is more important in cases where a business is absent from organic search results. It follows that Google has a direct incentive to penalise businesses by downranking them, since it has the potential to bring more advertising business. Please do not misunderstand: I am not accusing Google of doing this and have no reason to believe that it does.

9. Users of Google will be grateful that it attempts to improve the value of its search results by reducing the influence of meaningless incoming links. On the other hand, I find it difficult to understand why a user who typed “interflora” into Google would not want to see the official site at the top of the list, since it is a legitimate business and not in any sense malicious. Of course they do in fact see this, judging from my own experiment minutes ago, but it is an advertisement and not an organic link. The top organic link is not Interflora’s own site.

10. Pause for thought: what would be the effect on Google’s business if it put ads below organic search results rather than above?

11. The only rationale for (9) above is that Google considers it worth inconveniencing its users (presuming you do not accept that it simply wants to sell more ads) for the sake of the higher objective of penalising sites which, in its view, breach its guidelines.

12. We all have a choice whether to use Google or not; but this choice is not one that fixes the problem. The problem, rather, is the choice which our customers or potential customers make, over which we have no control.

13. It is a company’s duty to maximize returns to its shareholders. Making a profit is not wrong, and Google is entitled to design its search algorithms and web site as it wishes. None of the above is intended to imply that Google is doing wrong.

14. Despite (13) above, the combination of this concentration of power in a single business entity, the lack of transparency in its procedures, and the difficulty smaller businesses (in other words, almost everyone else) have in fixing issues, is something I find troubling.

15. It is also worth noting that the power of a dominant search engine goes beyond SEO (Search Engine Optimization). There is a long-standing debate over how easy it should be to find sites which offer illegal music downloads, for example. Another recent case I encountered showed how Google can make it hard to find a business in the real as well as the online world. I also note the influence of search engines on education, as the first destination of students and pupils looking for answers, and on human knowledge in general.

These issues are both complex and important. Should Google be regulated? Should all search engines be regulated? I do not know the answer, but believe that the question merits wider discussion. In this instance, it is not obvious to me that the free unregulated market will achieve the best outcome.

google

Extraordinary: the FTC says it is OK for Google to bias search results in its own favour

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The most remarkable statement in the report from the US Federal Trade Commission’s investigation of Google is this one:

The FTC concluded that the introduction of Universal Search, as well as additional changes made to Google’s search algorithms – even those that may have had the effect of harming individual competitors – could be plausibly justified as innovations that improved Google’s product and the experience of its users. It therefore has chosen to close the investigation

In other words, the FTC did not find that there was no bias in Google’s search results. It found that bias is OK if it “improves Google’s product and the experience of its users”, a phrase which is something I would expect to hear from a company’s own public relations team, not from a government report.

It is an extraordinary conclusion and runs counter to normal expectations of what a government body investigating anticompetitive business practices would be likely to support. It does make me wonder if the FTC appreciates the power of Google over which web sites are visited; given the use of the search engine by people such as students and journalists the company has remarkable potential influence over a wide range of human knowledge, as well as the power to make or break a company for which the web is critical either for direct sales or for marketing.

I also wonder what precedent it sets. In other words, can any company justify activities that harm competitors unfairly by claiming that they “improve the experience” of customers?

Update: It looks like the EU may take a stronger line, according to this article in the Guardian. From which I cannot resist posting a screenshot.

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tablets, tips, windows

All about Search in Windows 8: a feature every user has to understand

Windows 8 is a frustrating experience until you work out how Search works. Once it is discovered though, it is an elegant and powerful feature.

A confusing aspect of Windows 8 apps (on the tablet side) is that features such as menus and toolbars are hidden by default. There can be menu bars at top and bottom of an app, but you have to display them either by right-click or by swiping in from top or bottom. There is a philosophy behind this. Microsoft has called it the “immersive user interface”, one which puts content first and hides anything distracting.

Even this will not generally show Search though. Rather, Search is in the Charms bar, which you show by swiping from the right or pressing Windows key and C. There are also better shortcuts for Search, which I will come to in a moment.

When you click or tap Search in Windows 8, you are really in a kind of search centre. Take a look at the following screen, where I have displayed Search and typed “Keyboard”:

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Note that the active search is restricted to Apps which have the word keyboard in their name. However, if you look at the right column, you can also see numbers: 25 against Settings, and 911 against Files.

This means Windows has found 25 settings for the keyboard, and 911 files. If you click or tap the different context, you see the new results.

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Even this is not everything. The column below shows apps which have a search feature, such as Wikipedia, Store, Maps and Bing. If I tap or click Wikipedia, for example, I see encyclopaedia entries for keyboard.

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Bing of course would give me an Internet search. Even Tunein Radio gives me results, and I can hear a broadcast about How does a QWERTY Keyboard work:

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What this means is that the Search feature is a fast and efficient means of navigating the Windows user interface, finding documents and files, and discovering information from a variety of sources.

To get the most our of search, learn the following shortcuts:

  • Windows key and Q: Search apps
  • Windows key and W: Search settings
  • Windows key and F: Search documents and files

These shortcuts save you some clicks. If you use the mouse or Windows key and C to show charms, you have to then click or tap Search, and then choose the context you want. The shortcuts on the other hand get you a cursor ready to type your search. Search is incremental, so often just a few letters will do.

There is one subtlety. If you are  in the Start screen or on the Desktop and press Windows key and Q, you will search for an app by default. However, if you are in a Windows 8 tablet app, the shortcut will search within the current app by default. This is an inconsistency, and annoying if it comes up “This app can’t be searched”, but you can understand why it is designed that way. Otherwise, we would have four shortcuts to learn.

rants

Google: a search engine, or affiliate site?

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According to my current web stats, 95.6% of those using a search engine to find a post did so using Google. That represents market dominance, and power to make or break a business which depends on web traffic.

Google’s search engine is the best in my experience, but I am increasingly concerned about the quality of the results, which are noticeably worse today than they were in the early days.

Ideally (from the user’s perspective) its search results should be objective as far as possible; for example, it should not favour sites which spend more money advertising with Google, nor should it favour Google’s own web properties above rivals.

I noticed an article in the Guardian stating that this is not the case:

A Google search for credit cards returns with an advert at the top of the screen, far bigger than the rest and bigger than any other website link. Adverts of this size and prominence will attract a high click-through rate. This will prevent searchers going via other affiliate sites or applying directly for a credit card.

I tried it. Here is what I got:

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The most prominent results is the one with the images, admittedly marked “sponsored” but in a grey, small font that you could easily miss. This is actually an ad for Google’s own affiliate site for credit cards, just click Apply:

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I do not get the same issue with Bing, although I do think the designation of which results are ads is too small:

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Still, at Bing has not awarded itself a large ad with images that links to its own affiliate scheme.

Of course I can choose not to use Google. Unfortunately though, businesses cannot choose what search engine their customers or potential customers use to find their sites.

I am one of those who believes regulation should be as light as possible, but considering the power Google currently exerts and the lack of fairness in examples like this, it seems to be that some kind of regulation is needed.

Disclosure: this site uses Adsense, a web advertising scheme operated by Google

google, internet, search

The power of Google: how the Panda update hit Experts Exchange

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Searching Google recently it struck me that I rarely see results from Experts Exchange. I used to see a lot of these, because I typically search on things like error messages or programming issues for which the site is a useful source.

The site is controversial, because it (kind-of) charges for access to its knowledgebase but does not pay its experts. I posted about this back in 2009. That said, the quality of its advice is often good, and most answers are available without payment if you scroll far enough down the page. You can also get free access as an expert if you answer a few queries successfully.

Experts Exchange has to some extent been replaced by the StackOverflow group of websites, which are nicer to use and free, but I have found that the chances of getting your obscure query answered can be higher on Experts Exchange, particularly for admin rather than programming queries (of course for admin I am comparing with ServerFault).

Still, I wanted to test my perception that I no longer see Experts Exchange results in Google. I had a look at the Alexa stats for the site.

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Wow! That vertical line is around April 2011, which is when Google rolled out its "High Quality Sites Algorithm". The site still ranks in the top 3000 in the world according to Alexa – 2787 at the time of writing – but according to the chart it lost around 50% of its visitors then, and has since declined further.

As noted above, the site is controversial, but I personally never minded seeing Experts Exchange results in my searches since the advice there is often good.

The bit that disturbs me though is simply the power Google has over what we read on the Internet. I appreciate the reasons, but it is not healthy for one corporation to have this level of influence, especially bearing in mind the black box nature of its workings.

windows

Finding apps in Windows 8

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I’ve been spending some time in Windows 8, complete with the Metro-style Start menu. The new Start menu is not great in a virtual machine without touch. You have to navigate with the horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the screen, which I find somewhat jerky. DirectX is not particularly fast on the VM, which I view using Remote Desktop. Another puzzle is that many apps are not represented by tiles on the big menu. How do you find them?

The answer is that the tiles are not exactly equivalent to the items on a Windows 7 Start menu. They are more equivalent to the items that you have pinned to the taskbar in Windows 7; and in fact, if you pin an app in Windows 8, it appears as a tile. To get the full list of Start menu items you are meant to start typing.

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When you press a key in the Metro Start menu, the tiles disappear, and you get a list of all the apps that match what you have typed. The match seems to be based on words with initial letters that match your string. So if you type CL you match Disk Cleanup, but typing PAD does not find WordPad.

If you press Windows key – Q it brings up the Search Apps screen with an empty search box, and lists all your apps in a columnar A-Z view.

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Now, the thing that gives me hope here is that the search is very fast, much faster than I am used to with search in the Windows 7 start menu. It could almost convert me.

Search is baked into Metro, and searching apps is only one of the options. You can also search settings and files (though files seems to mean documents), and any applications that implement the search contract. For example, from the same search pane, you can search the custom BUILD app for c#:

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One other thing: “All Apps” is not really all apps, of course; just the ones that would have been in the Windows 7 Start menu. If you want, say, Dxdiag, you will have to press Windows Key – R and type it in there. It would be nice if typing DX would find it, but it is not that smart unfortunately (update – but see comments below).