Tag Archives: Innovation
Google Autocomplete, née Google Suggest, the Precursor of Google Instant
With all the brouhaha over the premiere of Google Instant, its easy to over look the fact that Google Instant isn’t really very new. In 2004 Google Labs launched a new tool called Google Suggest. Google suggest provided a list of potential search keyword phrases based on the keystrokes a user typed. Initially Google Suggest also displayed the estimated number of results for a given keyword phrase. Google Suggest was developed by Google engineer Kevin Gibbs in Google’s famous 20% time.
Google Suggest in Action. Note the result counts.
Google adds search results to the search box
Over time Google added functionality to Google suggest, providing links, weather information and even ads within the Google suggest powered search box. With Google Instant, Google has taken the next logical step of providing suggested results under the search box rather than in it. Google Instant needs to be seen as an evolution of Google suggest. Indeed, many of the limits of Google Instant, such as supplying local geographic targeted results for US metro areas only, are really Google Suggest limits.
Google Suggest with Weather and search buttons in Search Box
Yahoo Search Marketing Tools: What’s at Risk & How to Avoid Surprises
When Yahoo and Microsoft announced their Search Alliance in July 2009, only the high level agreement details were available:
- Microsoft will provide the development and management of search engine results technology (bing)
- Microsoft will provide the search and content network ad platform (adCenter)
- Microsoft will manage the relationship with self-service advertisers
- Yahoo will manage the relationship with large accounts
- Yahoo will provide their own user interface on top of the Bing results which will appear on Yahoo properties
Now that US and EU regulators have approved the deal, search marketers need to assess which Yahoo tools they rely on – and need to be prepared with alternatives should these tools be discontinued.
During the SMX West 2010 session Microsoft + Yahoo: What’s It All Mean?, I looked at the agreement’s implications for three Yahoo tools search marketing professionals have come to know and love:
People, Internet and Enterprise Business, all without mentioning Google.
Last Wednesday I had the fortune to attend a world class conference on social behavior and technology applied to medium and large sized businesses. Not in San Francisco. Not in Boston, where I worked for 4 years. Not in Milan, even. In Varese. Right, Varese, once known more for shoe production. The conference, the International Forum on Enterprise 2.0, was held at L’Università dell’Insubria as part of their 10th anniversary celebration.
As a search marketing consultant, I was very interested in how the social web is being applied to business environments. The very intertwined nature of the web means that no web marketing project should be seen in isolation. <rant>Thanks to the kind folks at Trenitalia, who canceled my train from Tuscany at the last minute, I almost didn’t make it. Not that you’d find any news about this on their website.</rant>
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