Posts Tagged ‘wolfram alpha’

• Warning – your traffic may drop from Google

  Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

  Are you offering facts and figures which people regularly search on? Does it drive traffic to your site?

  Let’s give an example: what is the height of St Paul’s cathedral?

  

  As you can see, the information the searcher requires is (partially) in the search engine listing. However, the likelihood is that this is enough to pique the interest of the searcher, who will then click on the site to find out more information.

  However, Google announced Google Squared during the summer of last year, possibly in response to Wolfram Alpha, which is a knowledge engine rather than a pure search engine.

  Now, using Google Squared, results in the SERPs are likely to generate very different results for search terms if Google Squared assumes it is a research term. The potential is that the entire answer to the search is held within the SERPs.

  In plain English, this means that a searcher may well find their answer on Google, in the SERPs, and will not actually visit your website at all.

  It has long been known that users search the internet in different ways eg to shop, to research or to socialise, and this latest addition to Google searches is an indication of the recognition of those differences.

  Go play! All of a sudden, the SEO industry cannot refer to a particular set of results to show off its prowess or portfolio, because as personalisation and search intelligence kicks in, you are likely to see very different results than your neighbour, even with similar keywords.

  There is a problem here though. If Google endeavours to feed all the information to searchers, without any requirement to visit your site at all, where does that leave your carefully crafted website? Or your PPC campaign if the answers are within the organic results provided by Google?

  The fun has begun!

  

  Tags: facts, Google, knowledge, Search Engine Optimisation, Search engine results page, traffic, Web search engine, wolfram alpha
  Posted in Google, Internet Marketing News, Keywords, SEO | 1 Comment »

• Bing teams up with Wolfram Alpha

  Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

  You can’t beat competition to inspire innovation and keep everyone on their toes. It looks like Microsoft are being quite determined in their attempt to capture some of Google’s market share in the search market.

  Wolfram Alpha had a marginally rocky start last June when, after a blaze of pre-launch publicity, the servers crashed big style and then it turned out much of the world didn’t understand the difference between ’search engine’ and ‘knowledge engine’. Meanwhile, Bing, after  similarly loud launch, has crept slowly into the consciousness of many and has become the favourite search engine of choice for a few.

  It will be interesting to see whether this turns into a re-run of the Apple vs MS debate/saga, with a minority of users adamantly declaring the solution is AlphaBing and the ROW sticking with the only solution many of them have known since they first got online.

  In some ways, it is hard to see how people will adapt from the “Just Google it” mentality, which seems to have become a common term in a vast number of languages. It’s more than just engrained habit; for some, it’s a little like being unaware there are other operating systems, software choices and so on out there, Google is THE internet search engine.

  What search engine(s) do you use? Do you prefer Bing? Or Google? Or A N Other eg the meta search engines? Do you think AlphaBing is a match made in heaven, or doomed to lose? What do you think Wolfram Alpha and Bing together will bring to the search party?

  

  Tags: Bing, Google, Microsoft, search engine, wolfram alpha
  Posted in Google, SEO | No Comments »

• New search engine on the block

  Monday, May 18th, 2009

  Another search engine has been launched this week to much fanfare – Wolfram Alpha. You will not need to suddenly rush out and optimise your websites for this search engine though in the majority of cases.

  Wolfram Alpha’s main aim appears to be available “definitive answers to factual questions”. Whilst it can already provide information about population, stocks, mathematical queries and so on, W|A is unlikely ever to compete with the likes of Google over which retail outlet sells the cheapest trainers near you.

  W|A should become a very useful, nay, essential, resource for Internet marketers as it provides cold, hard facts and data to back up theories and suppositions, as well as research. For instance, when trying to decide which country might be best for a campaign promoting a particular product, you are likely to be able to find the information about your target demographic within W|A. W|A appears to have accessed much of the ‘invisible web’ – those really useful facts and figures which often remain hidden inside government departments, research departments, or databases.

  It has only just launched but it would seem that it this ‘fact engine’ is unlikely to go away, like Cuil did, simply because of the quantity and quality of data already stored, and being collected and collated. Keep an eye on it and remember it when you need FACTS.

  Worth reading: 5 things Wolfram Alpha can do better than Google by Stan Shroeder

  Worth watching: Wolfram Alpha Intro by Stephen Wolfram

  

  Tags: Add new tag, search engine, Web search engine, wolfram alpha
  Posted in SEM Industry | No Comments »