I’m a big fan of collaborative filtering. Society increasingly seems to have a growing obsession with associative information and the ability to easily access and utilise trends.

I’ve written about collaborative filtering before, and over the last year I have been watching how Google have been slowly incorporating it into their insights for search tools.

Google website trends already displays related websites for a queried URL, and search options now displays related search queries for given phrases and keywords.

Now to some people this may not be a big deal, but I think it is a very valuable tool for us digital marketing folk; the ability to see associative search queries provides valuable insight for all types of planning and marketing.

For example: What other mobile phones are people considering in addition to the G1?

This list of related searches is a real-time indicator of similar products that are actually in demand. You could probably use this data to increase your competitive PPC bidding or inform content for natural search optimisation.

Another new feature in search options is the wonder wheel (stupid name btw). Now I’ve seen people get excited about this, but hold your horses! This was already done years ago by Quintura, which is a “…context-based web search client using data clustering, visualization and context management…”.

Quintura has always been a useful tool for search planning, “wonder wheel” only betters it by providing a cleaner UI. Google’s recent developments clearly demonstrate their proactive approach to rivaling competitors and becoming a one-stop-shop for all kinds of web services, search and social.

Interesting times ahead; love how the game keeps changing!

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• Some music trends (0)
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I was interested to see which music website or web application was the most popular out of all my current favourites:

Is blip.fm slowly losing the battle?

I also started researching DJ Shadow, apparently he’s quite big in Poland — I had no idea!

Poszanowanie!

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For quite some time I have been sanity checking some of my searches in delicious. Basically everytime I do a search in Google, I replicate it in Delicious.

I’ve been trying to see which of the two provide me with the most accurate search results, across a variety of search terms.

Google launching Search Wiki is a sign that they might, in the future, incorporate reoccurring trends from self-organised SERPs to influence their overall ranking algorithm.

There are quite a few self organised search engines on the web such as Wikia Search, and of course Delicious, which isn’t a search engine as such, but does provide folksonomy driven search results.

So here are some of my recent search queries (extracted from my Google Account):

“gap liberty shirt”
“fabric live 44”
“Chase and status”
“5D mkII equivalent”
“free enterprise wiki”
“volvo v70 diesel”
“SRAW”
“italian chef gennaro”

I queried all three of the terms above and compared results between Wikia Search, Google and Delicious. To keep things fair I only analysed the first 10 results I was delivered and I compared the positions at which I was delivered the most accurate information.

In my Daytum account I started to give a point to each service which gave me the best search results:

So as my little test shows, Google is still the search daddy and we’re still some way off people powered search catching up. Will it ever catch up? I’m not quite sure, what am I sure about is that when I have found information through Delicious it has been very accurate indeed.

What am I getting at?

The small sets of search results, which have been organised by groups of people deliver real value. If the information is valuable to me, it must be valuable to the all mighty search powers. I strongly believe that in the near future we will see algorithm based search engines use this information in some way to improve the information users get delivered.

Whilst results are relative according to what information an individual may or may not find useful, it would be good to see more extensive (and accurate) tests and results.

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Google’s Onebox search results get more intelligent and now keeps you up to date with the scores.

It doesn’t stop at tennis though…

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"Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.

"While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2.  Boiling a kettle generates about 15g."

This is one of first the first branded apps I have seen for the G1. First glimpses of Streetview on Andirod were pretty amazing, and now NRU by Lastminute.Com Labs makes me worried.

Why? Because I’m a loyal iPhone user who, might just cave when the G2 makes it to our shores next year. It will come out next year, mark my words.

NRU uses built-in GPS/Compass technology, which is probably mashed with data from the Google Maps API to deliver a really intuitive, personal GPS application: unique UI design indeed.

Apple please pull something genius out of the bag and stop me from moving over to the dark side.

The BBC reports today on the environmental cost of a single Google search.  According to a Harvard University academic, each two searches on Google have the same carbon footprint as boiling a kettle.  So each day, Google is wrecking the environment to the tune of 200 million searches, or 100 million cups of tea.

I suppose none of us have been oblivious to the birth of Google Search Wiki in recent weeks, I’ve already heard lot’s of people say “hang on a sec, it’s not really a wiki”.

Search Wiki at the moment serves a purpose for Google account holders, who want to annotate, customize and improve the quality of their own search results pages.

I personally think Google might have bigger plans for Search Wiki as they may; over time use Search Wiki annotations and amendments collectively, as a means to improve the quality of their overall search results.

Google already have a very firm stance on aggressive link building activity, especially towards paid-for back links. Search Wiki along with other sources of internal data may, in the near future reduce Google’s dependance on analysing back link portfolios in order to judge website authority and relevancy.

The natural search results of Google are often just as manipulated as the sponsored search listings that advertisers use, It’s about time Google did some thing to clean up their search results. I’m sure Search Wiki will be warmly received by Google account holders, who in time will become self-motivated, vigilantly search Police.

It’s a real early warning for old school SEO practitioners that need to wake up and smell the coffee! Delivering good website structure, amazing content and excellent user experience will stop the public from deleting you from their search results.

Friendly Friends

In addition to Search Wiki, Google has also launched Friend Connect. With a quick copy and paste of code any website can now have “social” features. The ease of use makes Friend Connect a great quick win for any webmaster that wants social features on their website at minimum cost.

In addition to the simplicity of the installation, Friend Connect also allows people to join website groups using non-Google ID systems, such as Open ID and Yahoo ID. This is not only handy for users, it is also handy for Google as it increases the amount of people using their products and services.

Further to the points I raised above about Search Wiki annotations and amendments effecting natural search results, will the most socially active websites gain greater authority or improved rankings in the future? It does make sense to some degree as there are newer, UGC heavy websites on the web, which are more useful than top ranking websites that rank well because of their link equity.

 

I love reading Wired, every month the magazine is a good mix of technology, politics, science and other things from the town of Geeksville. 

I never really log-on to their website purely because I read so many blogs and tech websites, picking up an actual paper pub and flicking through it over a coffee makes a nice treat. 

Anyway I digress…

In this months issue there was quite a good piece on Google, their recent acts of immorality and the organisation changing it’s stance on their original promise of “not doing evil”. 

Wired as we all know is a US magazine and all the examples given in the piece were based on Google’s immoral doings in its homeland. 

Personally I think the acts of immorality have not been exclusive to the US. Google’s recent move to allow gambling advertisers to use paid search advertising in the UK really is the icing on their immoral cake. 

They have clearly opened up their advertising platform to gambling advertisers in order to sustain financial business growth throughout the credit crunch. 

With a currently unstable economic climate, people are being encouraged to be wise with their cash. This means living within our means, avoiding credit use, overdrafts etc. 

Taking all of the above into account, what does Google do? They help gambling companies push gambling (a significant waste of money and cause for bad debt) onto the public for the sake of sustaining their own profitability and growth.

Hmm…I’ll leave you guys to be judge of their actions, in the meantime enjoy the pic I’ve scanned from this months Wired.

I've blogged about 404 pages before - they are something of a hidden optimisation opportunity for most websites.  You see a 404 page when you mistype a URL or follow a link to a page which no longer exists.  And normally they represent a frustrating dead end - a page that simply points out that the content you are looking for no longer exists.