Category Archives: search

Writing news for search engines and blogs

Posted on August 9, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

One of the reasons I love blogging is that it gives me the opportunity to see things at a micro level. I can see patterns and analyze data in a way that I couldn’t in a typical work role. When … Continue reading →

Posted in blogs, journalism, media, newspapers, search, seo | Comments Off

Nielsen tears up page view metrics

Posted on July 9, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

Hallelujah! From the AP story on Nielsen’s move: A leading online measurement service will scrap rankings based on the longtime industry yardstick of page views and begin tracking how long visitors spend at the sites. The move by Nielsen/NetRatings, expected … Continue reading →

Posted in google, search, statistics, yahoo, YouTube | 1 Comment

Aloha to Mahalo, Calacanis’ new reference tool

Posted on May 31, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

Mahalo launched yesterday to much fanfare. The reference tool comes from Jason Calacanis, the entrepreneur behind Weblogs, Inc. and the founder of the Silicon Alley Reporter. Billed as “the world’s first human-powered search engine”, Mahalo is a cross between Wikipedia … Continue reading →

Posted in google, search, wikipedia | 1 Comment

User-created content search comes to Google Maps

Posted on May 28, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

One of the features promised when Google’s My Maps launched was that the content created would be searchable by users. I stumbled upon this feature in action while searching Maps today. This map was created by a local bar, showing … Continue reading →

Posted in google, local search, maps, search, web 2, web 2.0 | 1 Comment

Living in a fragmented media world

Posted on May 19, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

Jason Fry has a thoughtful piece on the fragmentation of media in the WSJ: A Reality Check for Newspapers (subscription required). He talks about fragmentation of television, music and newspapers. Some excerpts from the discussion on newspapers: Articles are emailed … Continue reading →

Posted in blogs, media, newspapers, search | 1 Comment

Google knows people misspell my name

Posted on May 16, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

I’ve been seeing more people search on my name to get to this blog this week. (Wonder why?) This search was interesting: Notice that the searcher misspelled my last name, transposing the “a” and the “r”. I don’t have “Agarwal” … Continue reading →

Posted in google, search, seo | Comments Off

AOL launches new search product

Posted on May 10, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

AOL launched a new version of AOL Search today. Disclosure: I work at AOL Search. (But not on this product.)

Posted in aol, google, search | 6 Comments

The problems with experts

Posted on May 2, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

As I wrote earlier, I participated in an ExperTease game sponsored by search engine Ask at the Web 2.0 Expo. The game was a clever of way conveying an idea that Ask has up its sleeve: returning “expert” search results. … Continue reading →

Posted in search | 2 Comments

On search and privacy

Posted on April 12, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

Today’s Search Engine Strategies panel discussion on search and privacy was easily the least attended session I went to, with fewer than 24 people in the audience throughout the session. If the turnout was any indication of people’s interest in … Continue reading →

Posted in privacy, search | Comments Off

Where is the olive oil?

Posted on April 2, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

I was at Massanutten Resort with some friends this weekend and we decided to cook. Three of us piled in the car and headed for Kroger. One of my tasks was to find olive oil for salad dressing. This seemingly … Continue reading →

Posted in search | 3 Comments