Search Engine Journal

I’ve always said that instead of getting angry with black hat SEOs, we should learn from them. Working and often succeeding in really competitive verticals, these people are just forced to be creative.

We’ve had a number of discussions recently on how black-hats take advantage of trusted domains to promote their websites. Here is a quick example: #4 for [viagra] in Google (!).

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Powerset launches today to an overzealous amount of fanfare, as the mysterious new semantic search technology will open its doors for the first time to the public. The public must understand however, that Powerset is not a finished product, as search and technology is an evolving discipline. Consider today’s launch Powerset’s first Powerstep.

Over the past year or so, the words “Powerset” and “Google Killer” have been breathed in the same breath by way too many in the blogosphere and news corporations. So much in fact, the company has tried to step back from the nearly impossible expectation as being the next Google, and concentrate on its core offerings, a new dimension in search and navigation. Powerset’s search and discovery functionality is different and does lend quite an efficient measure to searching; Powerset will make a difference.

Natural Language Search

Powerset has launched their core semantic research engine today which indexes and searches Wikipedia and Freebase. Powerset claims to reinvent how users search and discover information, and they are taking the right steps in the direction to meet that goal.

Powerset’s semantic technology is a hybrid of patents licensed from PARC (formerly Xerox PARC) and Powerset’s proprietary research; and unlike traditional search technologies from Google, Yahoo and Teoma; which look for words, Powerset matches the meaning of the users’ query to the meaning of sentences.

Natural language search attempts to serve more relevant results for user queries which go beyond the basic keyword model, serving results with higher precision and better recall, due to the searcher actually understanding the matching of results to the query. [Read more →]

In an effort to help the victims of the cyclones in Myanmar (Burma) which resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and after effects of widespread diseases and famine, Google has set up a special Myanmar Cyclone donation page.

According to the Associated Press, United Nations death toll estimates from last weekend’s Cyclone Nargis ranges from 63,000 to 100,000, which is above the Myanmar government’s estimate of about 22,000.

Google is giving users the option to donate to Unicef or DirectRelief International via Google checkout. According to the page on Google, 100% of the funds will go directly to relief efforts. [Read more →]

Facebook’s 23 year old CTO, Adam D’Angelo, is leaving the company to take some time off according to Facebook and BoomTown.

The 23-year-old D’Angelo, the top tech exec for the social networking site, will be leaving the company to take some time off.

He has known Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg since high school.

But, according to sources close to the company, D’Angelo felt his responsibilities no longer fit well with his skills and interests.

Sources close to the company feel D’Angelo just wants to do something different. Given the exodus of numerous Google employees to Facebook and Google & Yahoo responding to Facebook’s popularity with their own social connection offerings, I wonder if we’ll see D’Angelo in Sunnyvale or Mountain View by the end of the summer, or perhaps a top Googler or Yahoo heading over to Facebook to fill their new VP of Engineering position?