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Google going real-time

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

We’ve talked about real-time search engines in a previous post. Now, Google has announced that it will become one of the players with its own version of real-time search results which, I must admit, works pretty well. On the official Google blog, real-time results are said to be officially launched in the next few days.

To try it out right away, you can go to Google Trends, click on a hot topic, enable the search options and then select “Latest” from the options on the left side of the screen. Or, if you feel comfortable with URL parameters, you may also go directly to Google, perform a search and add the URL parameter “esrch=RTSearch”.

Once the search is performed, you don’t need to launch it over again to get instant results as they become available. Posts from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, etc. are displayed in real-time as well as blog posts and web results. To follow a topic and stay up-to-date, this feature will become really handy. Perform a search, leave the browser window open, sit back and watch everything that is being said on-the-spot.

Compared to the similar tools which we discussed before, Google’s version is very simple and seems to provide a complete range of results from multiple feeds (not just Twitter).

I haven’t had a chance to play a lot with Bing’s real-time implementation yet, but at first glance, it seems to be a little less “real-time” than Google’s. As tweets keep coming in Google’s window, I see no change in Bing’s and the last tweets appearing are marked “4 minutes ago”. If I want new tweets to appear in Bing’s window, I need to launch the search over and over. Google vs Bing
Google Real Search vs Bing

Unfortunately, Bing’s realt-ime search implementation is not ready to face Google right now. It is still in Beta, so there might still be hope for improvements before it is officially launched.

- Melissa Clermont, Director Marketing Ops

Pixazza – what are your pictures worth?

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Have you read about Pixazza?

Founded in 2008, the Google-backed picture-tagging tool offers an interesting way to advertise through online images. If this startup gets all the attention it is aiming for, online buyers will never browse the web the same way again.

How it works
Ever looked at an online image wondering how you could get your hands on the apparel that a celeb is wearing or on the fabulous furniture appearing on a great interior design site? With Pixazza, the search for that special item will no longer hog your time. No need to launch multiple searches with your favorite search engine. Simply move your mouse over the image and a price tag will display the price, details and exactly where to get it along with a link.

Publishers simply ad a line of javascript code to their website and the items shown in their pictures will be matched with advertisers’ products. The item matching process is performed by product experts so the price tags will not appear instantly on your images. But the more traffic you get, the faster your images will be tagged.

Pixazza currently offers tagging only for apparel, but aim to expand the offer to home furnishings, travel, sports, electronics and more over time.

Now what?
With Pixazza, we might see a change in the way we look at online pictures. Over time, they could become a new, effective, way of advertising. Advertisers might no longer need to spend big bucks in banners and other online marketing content since publishers will do the job for them with the pictures they put up on their website. This could become a win-win situation where publishers get more traffic, advertisers get more customers and the end-user saves time for their online shopping.

Pixazza currently does not have a large network of publishers that have put the javascript tag on their site but they hope to be able to support many more over the next year. You can find a list of featured publishers on pixazza.com.

What do you think? Could this new tool save you time for your online shopping or add more advertising noise to your favorite websites?

- Melissa Clermont, Director Marketing Ops

Get in touch with a sales representative online!

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

Copernic recently updated its web site with a new online chat tool. This tool will give you the chance to speak directly with a sales representative concerning your interrogations on our products, therefore they will be able to guide you throughout your online shopping experience and help you make the best software choice adapted to your needs.

You can find the online chat tool on our website home page and store pages. When a representative is online, the tile will appear green. You can click on it and type in your name. The tool will locate a representative that is available to answer your questions. It is designed to be fast and easy to use with a user friendly interface.

When looking trough our web site, you will be able to find answers to some of your questions. For your unanswered queries prior to your purchase, this instant messaging tool is an addition to enable you to get all the answers fast.

Please note that for technical questions or support, we ask you to send your requests to: http://www.copernic.com/en/support/form-contactsupport.html. Our support team will be glad to help you with your issues.

Copernic is always looking for ways to improve its customer service and we are confident that this chat service will profit both our clients and ourselves, by giving us the chance to be closer to our users.

- Jessica Touzin, Web Marketing Agent

Stay up-to-date with real time search engines

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Lately, I’ve been reading and testing out some of the most discussed real time search engines and for all those of you who wish to stay up-to-date with the latest hot topics, shared links or just what’s being said about your company or other subjects, I think these can be helpful.

So what are real time search engines?

Well basically, imagine a search engine such as Google or Bing that only provides results that come from social media networks. These networks are filled with content that is constantly being updated, thus providing search results that vary as new posts appear. Unlike conventional search engines that provide relevancy-based results that are pretty much always the same, you get information on what is being said about your searched keyword in real time.

Currently, in the race for the “Best real time search engine” title, most of the engines available concentrate on Twitter posts and the difference between each one lies in the organization and filtering the overwhelming data that is being shared on this network.

Here is a couple of the ones I’ve given a look at:

Topsy concentrates on displaying the most shared links about a given subject. It indicates how many tweets the link has gotten and by clicking on the number of tweets displayed, you will be able to dig deeper and view the list of related tweets.

Collecta is simple and updates automatically as new posts appear, without having to launch your search over. Click on a result to read the whole thing and quick links enable you to share the post easily. However, the constant monitoring for your searched keyword can sometimes slow your browser down a bit.

CrowdEye is more complex with a screen filled with a lot of information. After launching a search, you not only get the latest tweets about your query, but also a whole bunch of other information related to your search, such as: a breakdown on the tweet volume per hour, the most popular links and related queries. This might be the most complete – or most complex for some users- real time search engine for the twitterverse today.

Wowd provides results that update live, as topics become more popular on the entire Web rather than in Twitter posts. It does not rely on crawlers or page rankings, but rather depends on users installing a browser app on their PC. As users browse the Web with the app installed, the visited pages are added to the public pages that appear in the Wowd results. As more and more people visit the same pages, they become more popular and get a better ranking in the Wowd results.

Of course, as the buzz around real time search engines grow, there are more and more engines available. Twitter offers their version that pretty much does the trick if you don’t need any other fancy feature than just getting the tweets as they get posted. Yahoo might also be teaming up with OneRiot in order to offer their version of real time searching. One thing’s for sure, real time search engines are getting a lot of attention. Even Google and Bing have announced the implementation of Twitter search in their engines.

Will it become the new way of doing online search? Will crawler-based search engines lose popularity to this new type of hype-based searching? Is popular information better than relevancy-based information?

What’s your opinion?

- Melissa Clermont, Director Marketing Ops

5 Ways to Perform Advanced Searches With myCopernic on the Go!

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

Since the release of myCopernic on the Go!, we noticed that our user could benefit from some advanced search criteria that can be used within the product. We have narrowed it down to 5 easy to use tips to help you perform advanced searches from the main search box available in myCopernic on the Go!.

  • Use the “@all” keyword or launch an empty query to retrieve everything By proceeding this way, you will be able to see the entire content of your index and all the documents contained in each category.
  • Use logical operators such as:

    • AND : retrieves documents that contain all keywords. This is the default search performed.
      Ex.: flower soil is the same as flower AND soil and retrieves only the documents that contain both flower and soil keywords.
    • OR: retrieves documents that contain either one or both keywords.
    • NOT : retrieves documents that do not contain the specified keyword.
      Ex.: flower NOT soil retrieves only the documents that contain flower but not soil.
  • Exact phrase searches: use the double quote to perform an exact phrase search.
    Ex.: “flower soil” will retrieve documents that contain exactly flower soil written in this order. This will limit the results obtained with only the relevant information you need.
  • Use field keywords: for advanced users that wish to bypass the refine fields but still want to perform refined searches. Here is a list of some of the field keywords available:

    Fields Type Values Examples
    @emailto
    @emailcc
    @emailfrom
    Text   @emailto=George
    @emailcc=“George Smith”
    For exact word search, use the double quotes
    @emailfrom=copernic
    @subject Text   @subject=meeting
    @subject=“meeting with law firm”
    This field can only be used if the Desktop Search tool used on the queried PC is Copernic Desktop Search.
    @importance Choice
    (Drop down list)
    0 = low
    1 = normal
    2 = high
    @importance=2
    @importance>1
    @importance<=2
    @mediaartist Text   @mediaartist=U2
    @mediaalbum Text   @mediaalbum=“no line on the horizon”
    @filename Text   @filename=document1212
    @filename=“Game rules”
    @extension Text   @extension=xls
    @extension=xls AND copernic
    @uri Text   @uri=MyDocuments
    @uri=“C:\MyDocuments\music”
    @taskstatus Choice
    (Drop down list)
    0 = Not started
    1 = In progress
    2 = Completed
    3 = Waiting
    4 = Deferred
    @taskstatus=0
    @taskstatus<2
    @taskstatus>=1
    Note that there are other field keywords available but this list highlights the most commonly used.
  • You can also use operators on field keywords
    Possible operators are =, <, >, <=, >=, <>.
    With these operators you will be able to narrow down the results in a flash to get closer to what you are searching for.

We hope that these tips help you pinpoint your searches with myCopernic on the Go! and help you save time by getting exactly what you want with a single query.

Are there other field keywords that you would like to see added to this list? Is this information useful to you? Let us know what you think!

- Melissa Clermont, Director marketing ops