Microsoft Earns Yahoo More Money Than Realized
December 26, 2013
Yahoo is pulling itself out of the red and is back on track to becoming a popular search engine and Web service. According to the ZDNet article, “Yahoo Says Microsoft Search Providing 31 Percent Of Revenues,” Microsoft is the reason why. Yahoo credits the 31% gain in its quarterly summary to its partnership with Microsoft. Yahoo claimed Microsoft only brought them 10% in sales from a previous statement. It has most definitely changed!
Yahoo and Microsoft signed a ten-year deal, where Microsoft would power Yahoo’s search and become the ad sales force for Microsoft’s premium properties.
The article states:
“Over the past year, Yahoo has been seeking a way to get out of the deal, claiming the company hasn’t found it financially lucrative. Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer supposedly also has sought Microsoft’s pending change in CEO as a possible loophole for getting out of the deal earlier than expected. As SearchEngineLand noted, there is a clause which would allow Yahoo to exit early from the partnership in 2015 if the revenue-per-share threshold vs. the market leader (Google) doesn’t pass muster.”
Microsoft would like the deal to continue past the ten-year agreement, but both companies failed to provide comment in the article. In a prior article from ZDNet, Yahoo might be building a new search/personalization technology to relaunch itself as its own search provider. Yahoo may not want to break the deal now, especially if they are working on a secret project. They will need the money to fund research and development if they want to stand a chance against Microsoft.
Whitney Grace, December 26, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Advanced Search Edition of Coveo for Sitecore Now Available
December 23, 2013
Is content management hot again? Coveo has been working with Sitecore on what it calls the most powerful contextual site search application in the industry, we learn from, “Coveo Launches Coveo for Sitecore, Advanced Search Edition” at Yahoo Finance.
The press release tells us:
“Coveo for Sitecore – Advanced Search Edition provides cutting-edge search, navigation, personalized recommendations, connectivity, and relevance tuning capabilities. Integrated with the underlying structure of the Sitecore WCM platform, Coveo provides capabilities far beyond the search currently available.
The application ensures more relevant information and products are surfaced to the visitor faster, resulting in higher conversion rates, improved self-service, and greater visitor satisfaction.
Ecommerce sites can accelerate sales and build customer loyalty by integrating product catalogs and other relevant information from external systems, thereby empowering visitors to discover, sort, and explore product offerings with ease.
Coveo’s new offering is seamlessly integrated with Sitecore Customer Engagement Platform 7, built exclusively on .Net technologies and fully embedded within Sitecore’s Search Provider framework. Out-of-the-box, marketers configure and manage Coveo Search & Relevance Technology from within familiar Page & Content Editors.”
Check out the write-up for the full list of features. A few notables: search functionality equipped with auto-completion, search-as-you-type, phonetic matching, and regex search; contextual relevance for rankings rules; and a collection of secure connectors to a range of external resources.
Coveo serves organizations large, medium, and small with solutions that aim to be agile and easy to use yet scalable, fast, and efficient. The company was founded in 2005 by some members of the team which developed Copernic Desktop Search.
Established in 2001, Sitecore maintains offices around the world. The company combines web content management with customer intelligence in their Customer Engagement Platform. Sitecore serves several big-name companies, like American Express, Microsoft, and Nestle.
Cynthia Murrell, December 23, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Fulcrum Technologies Report Available: A New Xenky Profile
December 19, 2013
The Xenky Web site has published a new enterprise search vendor profile about Fulcrum Technologies, a company founded in Ottawa, Canada. For 10 minutes, you can flash back to 1983 when Fulcrum Technologies offered a comprehensive solution to organization-wide information retrieval. Then you can fast forward to the present because Fulcrum’s software continues to influence findability solutions in the market today. That’s a mind boggling span of 30 years. Stated another way, Fulcrum’s technology is aging. But how well?
Many of the concepts marketed as innovation by vendors in 2013 are quite similar and in some case almost identical to what Ful/Text and Search Server embodied. Want federated search? Fulcrum offered it. Need automated indexing? Fulcrum delivered. Require a knowledge centric system? Fulcrum said it had a solution for “intellectual assets.”
The journey of Fulcrum from start up to a unit of OpenText is instructive as well. The company had a number of owners before being acquired by Datamat, then PCDocs, next Hummingbird, and finally OpenText.
Was the company generating significant cash? Did it have a secret technology sauce protected by patents, successful deployments, and a cadre of loyal partners? Today’s enterprise search companies are following a technical and financial trail walked by Fulcrum.
This profile snapshots the company’s trajectory from its founding to its becoming a property of OpenText. You can access the free profile on the Xenky vendor profile page. Other free search vendor profiles are available for:
- Convera
- Delphes
- Dieselpoint
- Entopia
- Fulcrum Technologies
- SchemaLogic
- Siderean
- Verity.
These case studies provide insight into the challenges search vendors have faced in the past. Scanning several profiles reveals the similarity among systems. Please, read the disclaimer for these free, “historical” reports. Within limit, the information in the 15 to 25 reports may help answer the questions:
- “Are search systems able to deliver a payback to their customers?”
- “Have marketers created expectations software cannot meet?”
- “Has information retrieval innovation for the enterprise stalled?”
The information is provided by Arnold Information Technology without charge. You may use the report’s content for your personal learning. Any other use requires prior written permission from ArnoldIT.
If you want to update, correct, or comment on the profile, please, use the comments section of Beyond Search. The Xenky site is not configured for visitor input.
Stephen E Arnold, December 19, 2013
Whither the Bing Thing in 2014
December 18, 2013
I found the data in the “2013 Bing Infographic” surprising. I continue to think of Bing as a search and retrieval system. I don’t use the system directly. I prefer to run queries on metasearch systems that use Bing as one source of content. The reason for my indirect access is that I don’t want distractions, social media content, and videos. In case you, gentle reader, have forgotten, I prefer to read. I read more rapidly than I can watch a video unfold in real time. I understand that some people find videos just the best possible way to locate information. I don’t.
The infographic has a number of data points. Let’s look at three in the context of locating a white paper, information about a person of interest, and a fact.
First, Bing reports that if people looking at a Bing home page each month were to hold hands, the length of that “chain” would be the circumference of the earth. Got it. What’s that go to do with precision, recall, and access to information? Nothing. Okay. That’s fact one.
Next, Bing has more video. That is super. I don’t want video. Period. Well, Bing had twice as much video search in 2013 than in 2012. Got it. I don’t care.
And Bing is the search engine for Facebook (really?), Yahoo (ah, that’s the problem with Yahoo search), and the Kindle Fire (I don’t use a Kindle Fire).
What does the infographic reveal about search at Microsoft?
- Search is not the point of Bing. I thought Powerset and Fast Search were going to improve Bing search? Guess not.
- Why is it getting * more * difficult to locate information instead of easier? Maybe the vastness of the Web and economic pressures are forcing Microsoft to shift from search to some other type of service? That’s okay, just knock off the use of the word search.
- How do professionals at Microsoft locate information? I don’t have any hard data, but I think that Google (an outfit doing a rather questionable job in search) may be good enough. That is indeed chilling to think that Microsoft professionals trust Google to point them to hard to find Microsoft research papers and obscure FAQs about Microsoft products.
Bing had a shot and spent some money shooting blanks in my view. So for 2014 I don’t expect much improvement. I hope libraries in my area have enough money to remain open and provide access to commercial online information resources. The free Web stuff does not strike me as getting better. Oh, if you want video and social media, you may be in business.
How often do I run a query on a Windows 8.1 laptop and want Web hits and not a list of documents on my local hard drive matching my key word query? Never. There you go.
Stephen E Arnold, December 18, 2013
The Future of Semantic Search
December 18, 2013
The article titled The Stealthy Rise of Semantic Search on Search Engine Journal relates the outmoding of SEOs with natural language search. The article explains that Boolean expressions leaped search forward with the abilities of query modifiers. Many people use semantic search without realizing it, but it works nonetheless to determine intent instead of just matching search terms.
The article explains:
“Vertical search engines such as Hakia, Lexxe, and VSW were at the forefront of semantic technology long before Bing, Facebook, and Google. These engine providers built their business around that potential and are using it to create new distribution and business models to deliver options for content makers well beyond keyword search and SEO.
Advertisers will reap huge benefits from semantic search because it increases the relevance of all forms of advertising.”
Semantic search will also decrease the likelihood of ads being paired with unsuitable content. Soon, users will be presented with information they “didn’t even know they wanted.” This may even lead to interconnected devices within the home. The article offers the possibility of the refrigerator notifying the homeowner that they are running low on milk. (Smart House, anyone?) Whether scary or exciting, the article would have us believe that these developments are inevitable.
Chelsea Kerwin, December 18, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
A Non Search Person Explains Why Search Is a Lost Cause
December 16, 2013
The author of “2013: the Year ‘the Stream’ Crested” is focused on tapping into flows of data. Twitter and real time “Big Data” streams are the subtext for the essay. I liked the analysis. In one 2,500 word write up, the severe weaknesses of enterprise and Web search systems are exposed.
The main point of the article is that “the stream”—that is, flows of information and data—is what people want. The flow is of sufficient volume that making sense of it is difficult. Therefore, an opportunity exists for outfits like The Atlantic to provide curation, perspective, and editorial filtering. The write up’s code for this higher-value type of content process is “the stock.”
The article asserts:
This is the strange circumstance that obtained in 2013, given the volume of the stream. Regular Internet users only had three options: 1) be overwhelmed 2) hire a computer to deploy its logic to help sort things 3) get out of the water.
The take away for me is that the article makes clear that search and retrieval just don’t work. Some “new” is needed. Perhaps this frustration with search is the trigger behind the interest in “artificial intelligence” and “machine learning”? Predictive analytics may have a shot at solving the problem of finding and identifying needed information, but from what I have seen, there is a lot of talk about fancy math and little evidence that it works at low cost in a manner that makes sense to the average person. Data scientists are not a dime a dozen. Average folks are.
Will the search and content processing vendors step forward and provide concrete facts that show a particular system can solve a Big Data problem for Everyman and Everywoman? We know Google is shifting to an approach to search that yields revenue. Money, not precision and recall, is increasingly important. The search and content vendors who toss around the word “all” have not been able to deliver unless the content corpus is tightly defined and constrained.
Isn’t it obvious that processing infinite flows and changes to “old” content are likely to cost a lot of money. Google, Bing, and Yandex search are not particularly “good.” Each is becoming a system designed to support other functions. In fact, looking for information that is only five or six years “old” is an exercise in frustration. Where has that document “gone.” What other data are not in the index. The vendors are not talking.
In the enterprise, the problem is almost as hopeless. Vendors invent new words to describe a function that seems to convey high value. Do you remember this catchphrase: “One step to ROI”? How do you think that company performed? The founders were able to sell the company and some of the technology lives on today, but the limitations of the system remain painfully evident.
Search and retrieval is complex, expensive to implement in an effective manner, and stuck in a rut. Giving away a search system seems to reduce costs? But are license fees the major expense? Embracing fancy math seems to deliver high value answers? But are the outputs accurate? Users just assume these systems work.
Kudos to Atlantic for helping to make clear that in today’s data world, something new is needed. Changing the words used to describe such out of favor functions as “editorial policy”, controlled terms, scheduled updates, and the like is more popular than innovation.
Stephen E Arnold, December 16, 2013
BA Insight Makes Deloitte Fast 500 List
December 14, 2013
It looks like BA Insight is growing and growing. Yahoo Finance shares, “BA Insight Ranked Number 393 Fastest Growing Company in North America on Deloitte’s 2013 Technology Fast 500 (TM).” The list ranks the 500 fastest-growing: tech, media, telecom, life sciences, and clean tech companies on this continent. The evaluation is based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth from 2008 to 2012. (See the article for conditions contenders must meet.)
We learn:
“BA Insight’s Chief Executive Officer, Massood Zarrabian credits the emergence of Big Data and the market demand for search-driven applications for the company’s revenue growth. He said, ‘We are honored to be ranked among the fastest growing technology companies in North America. BA Insight has been focused on developing the BAI Knowledge Integration Platform that enables organization to implement powerful search-driven applications rapidly, at a fraction of the cost, time, and risk of traditional alternatives. Additionally, we have partnered with visionary organizations to transform their enterprise search engines into knowledge engines giving them full access to organizational knowledge assets.'”
The press release notes that BA Insight has grown 193 percent over five years. Interesting—while other firms are struggling, BA Insight has almost doubled. But from what to what? The write-up does not say.
BA Insight has set out to redefine enterprise search to make it more comprehensive and easier to use. Founded in 2004, the company is headquartered in Boston and keeps its technology center in New York City. Some readers may be interested to know that the company is currently hiring for the Boston office.
Cynthia Murrell, December 14, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
E-Retailers Guide Ranks EasyAsk Semantic Search Leader in E-Commerce Technology
December 13, 2013
EasyAsk Ranked Among Top Four Providers of E-Commerce Technology, an article on Virtual-Strategy Magazine, recognizes the achievements of EasyAsk, the natural language search company. EasyAsk was recently named one of the top 4 vendors (out of 1,000) in driving e-commerce sales by the E-Retailers Guide. Craig Bassin, CEO of EasyAsk, expressed no surprise at this, since reports show that 43% of visitors to a given website will head straight for the search box.
Bassin expanded on his company’s progress:
“”EasyAsk is poised to capture a significant share of the growing spend on e-commerce technology, said Bassin. “EasyAsk eCommerce Edition delivers amazing value to our clients. EasyAsk is embedded within Infor Storefront and has out-of-the-box integrations with the leading e-commerce platforms, such as IBM Websphere Commerce, Magento, Hybris and Netsuite. Our customers consistently tell us we help them turn shoppers into buyers.” Gartner Inc. estimates that retailers spent about $3 billion on e-commerce technology in 2012. “
Semantic search has become unavoidably important, with Google and Microsoft adopting their own offerings since in the last two years. But EasyAsk stands out as offering “natural language search for e-commerce enterprise, on-premise and cloud platforms.” Their work in raising online revenue by allowing users to search in plain English and receive specific and relevant results has made them a leader in the field.
Chelsea Kerwin, December 13, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Elasticsearch in a Box Through Vagrant for the Holidays
December 12, 2013
The article JavaWorld titled Elasticsearch in a Box explores the possibilities of using Elasticsearch as a platform. There are different options, but Elasticsearch-in-a-box through Vagrant is the subject of this article. The base box is 64-bit Ubuntu 12.04 using Oracle’s Java 7 and the Elasticsearch version 0.90.7. It is free, and all you need to begin is Vagrant and VirtualBox installed. The article explains,
“Elasticsearch-in-a-box is a freely available Vagrant base box. What that means is that you can quickly fire up and tear down an Elasticsearch environment with simple commands like vagrant up and vagrant destroy…First, you need to add and initialize the Elasticsearch-in-a-box template. Go ahead and create a directory, like /projects/esinabox, change directories into it and execute this command: This command will create a Vagrant definition named esinabox from the downloaded template:
1 vagrant box add esinabox https://s3.amazonaws.com/coffers/esinabox.box”
These steps will account for downloading Elasticsearch-in-a-box template.
A search present just in time for the holidays. Following this, you must only create a VagrantFile which will enable you to customize. Once you have finished you can start Elasticsearch-in-a-box running locally on your machine. From there, executing queries and “tearing down instances” should be no trouble. The template was built through Veewee.
Chelsea Kerwin, December 12, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
How to Take Advantage of Local Market Opportunities
December 12, 2013
The article titled Three Steps for Crushing Multi-Location Search on Search Engine Land offers tips for “local market opportunity” aka multi- location businesses taking advantage of local coverage in all of the areas serviced. The first tip is to know your local market coverage by identifying all of the areas you might be missing out in and compiling search volume data as well as average order value and doing some fancy mathematical footwork to understand more clearly where you stand to gain the most in terms of first page coverage on search engines. The second tip is to optimize your business listings.
The article states:
“Beef up your listings with as much data as you can provide — directions, payments accepted, localized description, categories, images, local coupons, photos, social network links and links to individual store pages can really make your listing stand out. I call it good data fidelity. This data — when accurate, current and consistent across locations — helps search engines deliver optimum results to user queries. And search engines live or die by delivering a good user experience through accurate results.”
The third and final suggestion is to keep the bulk and manual feeds for local maps through Google Plus, Bing Business and Yahoo up to date and accurate. These all comprise sound advice, but it was surprising to see that the author left out a major tip: buy Google ads.
Chelsea Kerwin, December 12, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
