With recent discussion of why Google added then removed real time search of Twitter, it doesn't come as a suprise to know that Google have a acquired new social engine Aardvark. Aarvark allows users to ask a question as if they would a friend and the engine automatically finds the best person to answer it. It is still in beta/invite stage and I am awaiting an invite (which I am looking forward to receiving) but once I know more, I will be updating the power and scalability of this new method of search.

Related links

• Aardvark
• Techcrunch article

I'm sure that you've heard the buzz about real-time search launched by Google... and good work guys! I looked into the real-time search options from Mashable's original post and realised that when I Googled "Phailanx" (the name of this blog incase you hadn't noticed!), my realtime tweets were appearing  despite a limited pilot on the functionality - I'm obviously taking that as a personal compliment from Google.

The real-time functionality adds a completely different dimension to how users can search, especially on the way in which they look for opinions, reviews and customer feedback/opinion. The ability to now showcase user communication via search becomes an important factor in corporate communication, reputation and commercialisation. With 28% of Shoppers saying that Social Media has influenced holiday purchases, real-time search instantly lifts the need for businesses to maximise social media marketing. Encouraging consumers to discuss brands is going to be a massive contribution to increasing conversions online, so businesses must get as much conversation going as possible. Just remember this basic rule:

Customer engagement + Simplicity = Success online

Related links:

• Mashable's full post on Google real-time search
• Follow Phailanx on Twitter

Of course it is. It's Google doing search. The new Google Commerce search is the new e-commerce search engine designed for retailers.

A recent post by Econsultancy mentions that a lot of consumers choose to skip search functionality for e-commerce sites as they tend to be well below customer expectations (and ultimately dilute the user experience). This is apparently why Google has entered this market to help retailers who want a robust on-site search but without the setup issues or outsourced assistance. I would have to disagree with Econsultancy as while I was working at a few of the top online retailers in the UK, site search was the most used forms of navigation on their sites. Up to 60% of users used the search function from the homepage and then that number increased on subsequent pages when regular streams of navigation failed. Although I disagree with the customer behaviour insights of the Econsultancy blog post, it still leads to the same result and shows the importance of having a good search function on your website and the potential market gap spotted by Google.

Is it just the same as regular Google site search?
No, it's specifically designed for retail sites. For a start it allows retailers to "promote" and adjust results based on promotions and data/information. It also has advanced filtering/sort functions available which have become a necessity in shopping online. Finally there is also the ability to change result view types so that the search is a little bit more personalised to the customer.

How much does it cost?
It's not cheap starting at £50k. However, for this price you get a very powerful search function with Google's 24/7 support and experience to back it up. There are other competitors such as Fred Hopper and Mercado (taken over by Omniture) who provide some very good alternative solutions. However, they must all now be worried (even if they don't admit it) that Google has launched this product... as not only is it what they do best, but as expected, it also seamlessly integrates with all the other Google packages such as Adwords, Analytics and Checkout.

Related links:

• Find out more about Google Commerce Search

This has been around for a little while so you may have seen this, but with a lot of Google products, it hasn't been publicly announced with a big marketing campaign. Google Internet Stats allows for generic statistics that Google obtains online to be transferred into anonymous information for people to use as data. It also allows (to my understanding) regular users to add their own information. A useful tool for those analytical heads!

Related links:

• Google Internet Stats

After only ever receiving Google merchandise from either meetings or events, I was unaware that Google had it's own merchandise store. That's what I thought - very unorthadox. as although it helps with increasing their brand equity, it does make me wonder whether it contradicts exclusivity.

Anyway, this post isn't about their online sales, but about a particular product. I have never crossed this or even seen it in fact, but Google have a hardware version of their search engine called Google Mini. Google Mini can search up to 300,000 documents in 220 different file types and supports document-level security so that users only see the content that they are allowed to see, Also there is a new "OneBox for Enterprise" feature that enables users to view search results from a variety of business applications in a one Google interface.

You can pick up Google Mini for £3.5 - one thing I have noticed is that the USPs are under sold on the product page (or not really mentioned at all)... maybe Google needs to look at the e-commerce element to their web offering to help maximise sales. Google - I will glad to help :)

Related links

• Google Mini 
• Google Store

Following my post only yesterday on the future of RSS, it seems that some of the big boys must have been reading as Google's representative and CEO for Feedburner has become the the COO for Twitter! Former Google exec and the cofounder/CEO of RSS service Feedburner Dick Costolo is Twitter’s new Chief Operating Officer.

Google purchased Feedburner in 2007 for a solid $100 million in what seemed to be the rise of the RSS feed. Since then, there have been a number of technolgies that have overtaken RSS - Micro-blogging and Twitter being one of them. Mike Arrington mentions his thoughts tha Costolo can bring Twitter the stability and infrastructre it needs... time to find out.

Related links

• RSS is really dead article

There will probably be no surprise when I say that I use Google (as with 70% of the internet population). Even if you take the three major search engines, create 3 identical searches and mix up the logos, Google tests better due to the search giant's perception of being the best.

However, there is a Blind Search test that will allow users to conduct a search and see which set of results best suit their search term vs result expectations. The Blind Search lets you pick which results you prefer before seeing which search engine provided them. I took the test and used three sets of criteria:

1) Professional/Business: Sticky Panda

2) Personal: cheap holiday in majorca

3) Informative: the speed of a 747

The results were as follows:

1) Google

2) Google

3) Google

Apparently I am a Google man through and through. However, others have found interesting results including creator of the Blind Search Michael Kordahi. Statistics from the tool show that Google wouldn't have the majority share if it wasn't for the company's brand equity. The results show that there is actually a more even playing field when just the results themselves are tested; Google 44%, Bing 33% & Yahoo! 23%.

Related links:

• Blind Search
• Techcrunch article

Online video seems to be moving forward. Users are engaging more and more with video, with 83% of internet users having watched a video online, it is a great thing for businesses. It seems that it has now crossed the line where video is actually making money for itself. Due to its homepage banner ads and video pre-rolls that forces the user to look at an advert while the video loads, has given Google a massive turnaround with regards to generating revenue with YouTube which it acquired for $1.65 billion a couple of years ago.

YouTube hosts over 100,000,000 videos and is the largest video website online, over Vimeo, Flickr and other media platforms.

"In 2008 the total UK online video viewing audience grew 10% to 29.6m unique viewers over the age of 15. In line with this, it's predicted that the global online video advertising market will be £4.36bn by 2012. But as brands migrate from TV to online and an increasing number of advertisers follow, it's ever more important for brands to innovate in order to be seen." (New Media Age, 2009).

Video seems to be on the rise with agencies with regards to the opportunities of increasing revenue streams for companies. However, it is important that the engagement factor is there first otherwise your video may just be money out of the window!

Related links:

• YouTube
• Vimeo
• Flickr
• Media & Money
  

Related links:

• Google Blog
• Google Chrome
• Microsoft Windows
• BBC report on Google Chrome OS

Google has rolled out its new filtering interface to YouTube. The Wonder Wheel is an expanding wheel that gets deeper into a search by adding nodes so users can further find information in by "drilling-down."

I don't know where I get these titles from but I thought I would take a look at Microsoft's strategy for the internet and see how Bing (Microsoft's new replacement to Windows Live Search) integrates into this. With Microsoft not launching Internet Explorer (IE) with the new release of Windows (I can hear web developers cheering across the globe), it seems that they are having to rethink their positioning online. While from a business sense, it made perfect sense for Microsoft to bundle IE with Windows, it was ruled by the European commission that they were monopolising the market, and therefore not being fair to competitors.

We all know that Microsoft has needed to rethink it's offering for a while, as their entire digital strategy falls around the sole fact that IE comes as standard and they can showcase all their products by using IE as a portal (For example Windows live mail, Windows Live Search, etc). At present, this was the only way Microsoft could compete with the big guns such as Google, Mozilla, etc. Now that this ruling is in place, what can Microsoft can do to firefight this predicament? 

Well, their first answer to this is to tackle the search market with the launch of their new search Engine Bing. According to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, they are looking at investing 5-10% of their operating income to invest into Search which will translate to anything up to $11billion (Patricio Robles, Econsultancy) - that's not a bad budget to kick-off a project. In fact, I wouldn't mind that budget at all.

Looking at Bing
So let's analyse Bing. Firstly the name is short and concise and is good step forward in my mind. In the same way you associate shoddy workmanship to a Lada, most people tend to think the same of Microsoft when online. Their change to a "trendy" name (in the loosest form of the phrase) not only disengages them from their previous brand equity, but also brings them into the new era of sites. You could potentially hear people say"Bing it" in the same way as "Google it." It may not happen, but if it did, at least it would sound good (as opposed to "Windows Live it").

Bing is also much nicer to look at compared to its precedessor. With an aesthetic image that changes daily and a clear, intuitive, Google approach to the interface, it definately ticks a few boxes upfront.

Ref: www.bing.com

So the next question is do the results step up when they need to?
Let's take a look - the design again, is very clear - again, almost Googlesque, but why reinvent the wheel? So with regards to design and layout, you can't complain too much about the way it looks. It does what it says on the tin.

So are the results valid?
In my opinion, no. I was very disappointed with the results that were displayed. After the hype I was expecting some groundbreaking intuition within the results, but I was delivered less than adequate information for what I was looking for. There were some interesting results that I haven't seen before such as PDA views for some websites; but let's face it, you don't need these unless you're actually on a PDA. 

A basic search for small-medium equity websites (e.g. Search term "Sticky Panda" for the Creative Agency Sticky Panda) delivers a correct top result but little related information. This only seems to be the case for websites above a certain criteria as a few other searches seemed not to make the cut at all.

There were also issues regarding the applicability within the ordering of the results. Items that I felt were more relevant to my need were bumped down due to what looked like a PageRank/hierarchy structure. So the slightest mention of a search term on a high traffic website such as the BBC would automatically get placed above lesser authoritative sites that may actually be more resourceful to the users' need.

Final opinion
Where as the usability and aesthetic design of Bing is well executed, it seems that less time was taken in producing the algorithm(s) driving the results. Microsoft needs to sink a good chunk of their budget into getting this right so that applied results are given at the right time to users, as this is the key to any search engine.

Bing is still in Beta and has a lot of (potential) financial investment available so it is definitely one to watch, but until I have more confidence in the results that I will see, I will not be making the switch from Google.

Related links:

• Bing
• Google
• Yahoo!

Google Wave is tipped to be the next big online collaboration tool, but will this be a success or is it just innovation that won't fit the bill? There are currently a few online collaboration tools such as Huddle and Basecamp, However, Google Wave boasts to be more than just a corporate opportunity. It gives the opportunity for you to communicate and collaborate with colleagues, friends and family.

Google Wave will allow users to converse and edit documents in realtime; from pictures to files. All in one place.

As always, Google seems to be creating tools that are moving with the changes in user interaction and behaviour (that are also useful). I'll be interested to see how this turns out, and whether this is going to be revolutionary, or a product that will eventually be put on the shelf.Beta testing should be soon if the product is released later this year so keep your eyes peeled.

 Related Links:

• Google Wave 
• Huddle
• Basecamp