Google has expanded its Google Trends tool with new numerical data. Google Trends was originally released as a tool that let you see visual comparisons between search volume of keywords. It’s a new tool that lets users take a peek at the traffic data from sites around the web. The new feature pits Google against a number of well-established players in the traffic data space, including Compete, Comscore, Alexa, and a host of others.

Instead of turning to their goldmine of Analytics data, Trends combines information from a variety of sources, such as aggregated Google search data, aggregated opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in consumer panel data, and other third-party market research.

The company claims to have high hopes for Trends: “Google Trends is not only a fun tool; it also offers some practical uses as well. Suppose you own an ice cream shop and don’t know which flavours to serve, or suppose you’re responsible for stocking supermarkets across the country; Trends can help you explore the popularity and seasonality of your products.”

The useful applications for a tool like this is pretty extensive. Trends for Web Sites is a global product, available in the US and worldwide but the only supported language is English. In any event, I am personally very excited to use, Search Engines, this new product.

Source: PC pro

The new search engine company, Powerset, has released a public beta version of its search engine. Right now, Powerset can only search Wikipedia. In the new version, people can search using simple phrases, short questions and keywords. The product launch comes just a day after reports that the company is being shopped to potential buyers by investment bank Allen & Co.

The way that Powerset returns queries means that answers are often found in the result snips. They are also structuring a lot of the Wikipedia and (and already structured Freebase) data and inserting it into results. So a search for “Bill Clinton” shows results, but also shows Freebase structured data along with additional query refinements to get to more information. The important thing below isn’t the structured data in the results, its the fact that you can click on the action words and drill down into very specific queries (to find, for example, what bills he signed, or which Supreme Court justices he nominated).

Powerset is indexing web pages much differently than normal search engines, which generally just record content to match against keyword queries. Instead, Powerset is trying to understand the content on the page so that it can be matched meaningfully to queries later. Even queries that don’t use matching words.

Powerset definitely has an interesting search product on its hands. Its approach of pulling third-party content into its own UI and providing tools to better analyze it is undeniably useful. On the other hand, Google and Yahoo will be watching to see if Powerset’s semantic search proves popular.

Source: Washington Post

Internet search engine Google lost revenue from search ads to its rival Yahoo! in the first quarter of 2008 fiscal, according to a study by SearchIgnite, a search advertising technology firm.

The report shows that spending by search advertisers on Yahoo grew a robust 57 percent while spending on Google grew only at about half that rate. That meant Google’s total share of search ad dollars declined slightly to 70.4 percent, while Yahoo’s rose to 24.2 percent. Microsoft’s declined slightly to 5.4 percent.

ComScore, an internet data researcher, said Google’s sites received 59.8 percent of searches in March from among the top five search engines. The results were an improvement from the 59.2 percent market share it had in February.

Yahoo’s search share fell to 21.3 percent in March compared to 21.6 percent the previous month. Microsoft sites were down to 9.4 percent from 9.6 percent. AOL sites were down to 4.8 percent from 4.9 percent. Ask Network sites rose to 4.7 percent from 4.6 percent.