#searchengines — Public Fediverse posts

Google loses fight to strip 90%+ of unique queries from EU rivals' data: Rival engines and AI chatbots get daily records, NUTS 3 location and 5-year access at cost-based prices. What does the full text show about Alphabet's campaign? https://ppc.land/google-loses-fight-to-strip-90-of-unique-queries-from-eu-rivals-data/ #Google #EURegulations #DataPrivacy #AI #SearchEngines

Searches with words used by under 50 people won't reach Google rivals: Rival engines and AI chatbots only get records where 1,000 signed-in users share region, device and language. First data deliveries could come in early 2027. https://ppc.land/searches-with-words-used-by-under-50-people-wont-reach-google-rivals/ #Google #AI #Chatbots #SearchEngines #DataDelivery

MediaPost: Google Search Introduces Live NFL Game Feed. “Google added a live National Football League game feed to search on Wednesday, allowing fans and spectators to follow along with game developments as they unfold on the field.”

Ars Technica: Google complies with EU rules for travel searches, says the new results stink. “As the world’s largest search engine, Google is often a target of Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which seeks to rein in Big Tech. The European Commission hit Google with a hefty 460 million euro ($543 million) fine in July for preferring its own services in searches for travel and shopping. […]

Ars Technica: Google complies with EU rules for travel searches, says the new results stink. “As the world’s largest search engine, Google is often a target of Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which seeks to rein in Big Tech. The European Commission hit Google with a hefty 460 million euro ($543 million) fine in July for preferring its own services in searches for travel and shopping. […]

Ars Technica: Google complies with EU rules for travel searches, says the new results stink. “As the world’s largest search engine, Google is often a target of Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which seeks to rein in Big Tech. The European Commission hit Google with a hefty 460 million euro ($543 million) fine in July for preferring its own services in searches for travel and shopping. […]

Ars Technica: Google complies with EU rules for travel searches, says the new results stink. “As the world’s largest search engine, Google is often a target of Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which seeks to rein in Big Tech. The European Commission hit Google with a hefty 460 million euro ($543 million) fine in July for preferring its own services in searches for travel and shopping. […]

Ars Technica: Google complies with EU rules for travel searches, says the new results stink. “As the world’s largest search engine, Google is often a target of Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which seeks to rein in Big Tech. The European Commission hit Google with a hefty 460 million euro ($543 million) fine in July for preferring its own services in searches for travel and shopping. […]

Search Engine Roundtable: Bing Ads Revenue Up 10%. “Microsoft reported its fourth-quarter 2026 earnings, showing that its search and advertising revenue was up 10%, indicating its ad growth was 2 points lower than the previous quarter. The previous quarter it was up 12%, before that up 10% before that, up 16% and the one before that was 21% and this quarter, it is only up 10%.”

Reuters: Yandex reports 16% increase in Q2 revenue, recommends H1 dividend at 110 rbls/share. “Russia’s largest internet-company, Yandex , posts ​a 16% increase in ‌revenue to 386 billion roubles ($4.89 billion) for the ​second quarter of 2026.”

I posted this about a year ago. Might be a good time to repost it.

"Search With Stateful Chat" patent (Cf. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20240289407A1/en ) - appears to describe the Gemini app for smartphones.

"Method for Text Ranking with Pairwise Ranking Prompting" (Cf. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20250124067A1/en ) - documents an experimental process described in this research paper titled "Large Language Models are Effective Text Rankers with Pairwise Ranking Prompting" (Cf. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2306.17563 ). There is no indication this was introduced into a live agentic system like Gemini.

"User Embedding Models for Personalization of Sequence Processing Models" (Cf. https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2025102041A1/en ) - documents an experimental process for improving recommender (sub-)systems (like movie searches) that incorporate large language models. The process is described in this research paper titled "User Embedding Model for Personalized Language Prompting" (Cf. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.04858 ).

"Systems and methods for prompt-based query generation for diverse retrieval" (Cf. https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2024064249A1/en ) - updates a 2022 patent for a process named PROMPTAGATOR that generates queries more efficiently based on a small number of examples, as described in this research paper titled "Promptagator - Few-shot Dense Retrieval from 8 Examples" (Cf. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2209.11755 ). This could be used to generate query fan-outs (but query fan-out has been used in multiple systems at least since the 1990s, so there are many implementations).

"Instruction Fine-Tuning Machine-Learned Models Using Intermediate Reasoning Steps" (Cf. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20240256965A1/en ) - documents an older method for fine-tuning instructions submitted to LLMs, as described in this 2022 research paper titled "Scaling Instruction-Finetuned Language Models" (Cf. https://www.jmlr.org/papers/volume25/23-0870/23-0870.pdf ). The work has been superseded by this paper titled "Mixture-of-Experts Meets Instruction Tuning: A Winning Combination for Large Language Models" (Cf. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.14705 ).

This is the AI Overviews patent, titled "Generative summaries for search results" (Cf. https://patents.google.com/patent/US11769017B1/en )

#google #aioverviews #aimode #machinelearning #search #searchengines #generativesearch #seo #searchengineoptimization #webmarketing #digitalmarketing #ai #patents

https://www.seo-theory.com/how-to-read-patents-for-seo/

Reuters: Google urges EU top court to back ruling scrapping $1.7 billion antitrust fine. “Alphabet unit Google on Wednesday urged Europe’s top court to dismiss EU antitrust regulators’ appeal against a lower court ruling that scrapped a €1.49 billion ($1.7 billion) fine, saying the regulators’ arguments were flawed.”

Wikipedia Is Battling for the Soul of the Internet

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/05/business/media/wikipedia-ai-elon-musk.html

Courthouse News Service: Federal judge’s ruling gives Yelp a leg up in antitrust case against Google. “A federal judge on Tuesday agreed to recognize another judge’s finding that Google has monopoly power in the internet search market. The ruling effectively gives Yelp a step up in its lawsuit against the tech giant, allowing it to skip discovery on the issue.”

No, informational content is NOT dead. The SEO industry is getting ridiculous with all this fear-mongering.

The outright hypocrisy from all these SEO Chicken Littles crying "the information Web is dead!" with their informational articles, videos, and long social media posts is the best clue about whom NOT to trust with your Web marketing.

#seo #searchengineoptimization #webmarketing #ai #search #searchengines #google #bing

How Important Is SEO in an AI-Powered Internet?

https://kierendaystudiosofficial.wordpress.com/2026/06/24/how-important-is-seo-in-an-ai-powered-internet/

Will AI Replace Google Search?

https://kierendaystudiosofficial.wordpress.com/2026/06/24/will-ai-replace-google-search/

Google didn't force Websites to load their pages with SEO bullshit.

The SEO community did that to the Web.

Yes, Google ranked the SEO bullshit, but it was always a choice in the first place on the part of Website publishers to accept that bullshit.

For all its faults, Wikipedia continues to outrank many of these sites without all the SEO fakery and flim-flammery.

So when I see people ranting about how Google "forced" all the crap onto the Web I just want to gag.

Google just took whatever you fools gave it and ranked it for you because if all you create is crap then all the search engine can do is index and rank the crap.

Don't blame Google for what YOU chose to do with your Web copy.

#seo #searchengineoptimization #webmarketing #digitalmarketing #google #search #searchengines

How to add Google News, Google Books, and Google Scholar search directly in your browser, to search those sites with fewer steps, and less chance of being distracted.

One of my hobbies is contributing to Wikipedia, and more so, creating new Wikipedia articles. Citations of reliable sources are key to both good contributions, and new articles, especially in making them stick (not get reverted/deleted).

I use Google News to search for citations, and depending on the topic, sometimes Google Books and Google Scholar.

Unfortunately, to search Google News, you have to first go to Google News (news.google .com - deliberately unlinked here), upon which you are immediately shown distracting (if not dire) news photos, headlines etc. which present a non-trivial challenge to staying focused.

If only there was a way to directly search Google News from your browser search box / address bar (like you can search Wikipedia from your browser).

Unfortunately, there is no site-specific search option for Google News (like there is for YouTube, e.g. see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-or-remove-search-engine-firefox#w_add-search-engines) that you can select an add to your browser in one click (enabled by OpenSearch support, link in footer).

This is another technology I use for category 2 (defending focus) that I mentioned in my previous post on focus.

Steps to add a Google News search option to Firefox:

1. open Firefox Preferences ("Firefox" menu, "Preferences" item)
2. select "🔍 Search" from the left column
3. scroll down to "Search Shortcuts"
4. click the "Add" button under the list of search engines which opens a dialog
5. enter "Google News" into the Search engine name field (without quotes)
6. enter "https://news.google.com/search?q=%s" into the URL field (without quotes)
7. enter "gn" into the Keyword field (without quotes)

The dialog should look like this:


8. click (Add Engine)

Now you can go to your address bar, type in "gn " (without the quotes), your news search term or phrase, e.g. "Broken Arrow Skyrace", and press return to directly see search results.

Similarly for Google Books, follow the same steps except:
5. enter "Google Books" into the Search engine name field (without quotes)
6. enter "https://books.google.com/books?q=%s" into the URL field (without quotes)
7. enter "gb" into the Keyword field (without quotes)

And similarly for Google Scholar:
5. enter "Google Scholar" into the Search engine name field (without quotes)
6. enter "https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%s" into the URL field (without quotes)
7. enter "gs" into the Keyword field (without quotes)

Thanks to folks in the #indieweb informal chat who reminded me (when I complained about the distracting Google News home page) of this way to add new site-specific search capabilities to the browser even for sites (or subsites) without explicit OpenSearch support.

Looking forward to using these capabilities to more quickly find citations for updating and creating new Wikipedia articles.

Previously:
* https://tantek.com/2026/158/t2/three-insights-improving-focus
* https://tantek.com/2024/287/t2/setup-search-shortcuts-firefox

OpenSearch FYI:
* https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/XML/Guides/OpenSearch

#focus #Wikipedia #Firefox #GoogleNews #GoogleBooks #GoogleScholar #search #siteSearch #AddSearchEngine #searchEngine #searchEngines #OpenSearch #webSearch #SearchShortcuts #browserTip #FirefoxTip #searchTip

Courthouse News Service: Yelp argues Google’s dominance in search market continues for now. “Yelp argued in a motion for partial summary judgment that it should be given in its favor based on issue preclusion from a September 2025 ruling. In that Washington, D.C., ruling from United States v. Google, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, a Barack Obama appointee, said Google must share its search […]

You cannot optimize for Information Gain.

You cannot optimize for Information Gain.

You cannot optimize for Information Gain.

Information gain = the difference between 2 probability distributions and any single Web document can be placed in thousands of different information gain computations PER DAY.

#seo #searchengineoptimization #searchengines #webmarketing #digitalmarketing

2 days away. You don't have to wait for the Webinar to make a donation and you can browse the library of other Webinars they've already hosted. There should be plenty of time for questions so come one, come all.

#seo #searchengineoptimization #searchengines #ai #webmarketing

https://www.seocharity.com/upcoming-live-streams

Yahoo Finance: Alphabet stock rises on Q1 earnings beat, cloud growth. “Google parent Alphabet stock climbed higher Thursday after the company reported better-than-anticipated first quarter results after the bell on Wednesday and strong cloud growth.”

Search Engine Roundtable: Bing Ads Revenue Up 12% – 1 Billion Monthly Action Users Milestone. “Microsoft reported its third quarter 2026 earnings and it showed that its search and advertising revenue was up for 12% and that means its ad growth is growing again. The previous quarter it was up 10% before that, up 16% and the one before that was 21% and this quarter, it is only up 10%.”

TechSpot: Google adds search to Play Store reviews to improve app discovery. “Most Android users rely on Play Store reviews to decide which apps to install. But sifting through hundreds – or even thousands – of reviews has rarely been convenient. Google is addressing that with a new search function that lets users find specific information within app reviews, a small but meaningful […]

Reuters: China’s Baidu revenue falls as AI cloud growth fails to offset ad weakness. “China’s largest search engine operator Baidu reported a 4% revenue drop for its December quarter on Thursday, ‌as persistent weakness in its mainstay advertising business offset strong growth in its ‌cloud business.”

Kelly Evans: Goodbye, Google – CNBC

The Exchange

Kelly Evans: Goodbye, Google

Published Wed, Jan 7 20269:51 AM EST

Kelly Evans@KellyCNBC Share

Kelly Evans, Co-Host of CNBC’s Power Lunch, David A. Grogan | CNBC

For the first time yesterday, when I went to Google (which I do less and less of anymore), it asked me if I wanted to switch over to AI mode. I figured sure, since I’ve been using its AI summaries anyhow, and it put me into what looked like a full-blown version of Gemini or ChatGPT. No ads. No blue links. 

What this tells me is that the era of Google as we knew it is officially over. And I, for one, certainly do not mourn that. As great as the product was when it was first introduced, is as bad as it became towards the end. Good luck finding any really useful links buried beneath all of their ads. Smaller businesses were justifiably furious at having to pay to compete up top against the deep-pocketed big guys for traffic they were rightly owed. 

The search engine, in other words, had become nowhere near as effective as it used to be. And while regulators drool at the opportunity to jump in and set rules and prosecute offenders and collect big fines, it’s far better for society that monopolies are disrupted because they become less useful and leave an opening for better products to break through. 

Enter ChatGPT. 

Now, the irony here is twofold. One, after a few early missteps, Google has answered ChatGPT with its own excellent chatbot, Gemini, that we are using more and more of in our house. (If you want a chuckle, ask it to give you this job/personality test.) Shares of parent company Alphabet soared 65% last year, for the best performance of all the “Magnificent 7.” 

So while it’s goodbye to Google as a search box, the company itself has pivoted nicely, and regulators can at least breathe somewhat easy that they have a formidable rival now, with ChatGPT’s 900 million active weekly users. 

Secondly, the real question is what happens to the entire internet ecosystem that once relied upon Google search traffic. I’m thinking of recipe bloggers, websites like Vice and Buzzfeed that once had hundreds of employees, and so forth. I’m not sure how much of the former internet economy realizes it’s never coming back, and they will have to dream up entirely new business models. 

I also expect the lawyers are salivating. The class action suits against chatbots that scraped the internet of content that people once made a living off of must surely be coming apace. News providers can survive and even thrive in a world where chatbots have to pay to maintain access to up-to-the-minute information for users, but someone who gave the internet their maple-glazed salmon recipe? Forget about it. 

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Kelly Evans: Goodbye, Google

MakeUseOf: Google Drive search is bad—here are 8 better ways to find files. “Google Drive is fantastic for storing and sharing files, but actually finding the file you need can sometimes be a challenge, especially if you don’t remember its name. Luckily, there are smarter ways to search, filter, and navigate your Drive so you can find exactly what you’re looking for—fast.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/09/04/makeuseof-google-drive-search-is-bad-here-are-8-better-ways-to-find-files/

As part of the final judgment, Google is now required to share click-through data with qualified competitors.

This is a historic move toward search engine interoperability and could reshape the competitive landscape of search and AI training data.

📄 Full judgment (286 pages):
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25032745-045110819896/

#Google #Antitrust #SearchEngines #Interoperability #OpenSearch #DigitalMarkets #CompetitionLaw #TechPolicy #DataAccess #PlatformRegulation #SearchMonopoly

Search Engine Journal: LinkedIn Study: Professionals Trust Their Networks Over AI & Search. “LinkedIn reports that professionals are more likely to seek workplace advice from people they know than from AI tools or search engines. A new LinkedIn study finds that 43% turn to their networks first, with nearly two-thirds saying colleagues help them decide faster and with more confidence.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/08/31/linkedin-study-professionals-trust-their-networks-over-ai-search-search-engine-journal/

Search Engine Journal: LinkedIn Study: Professionals Trust Their Networks Over AI & Search. “LinkedIn reports that professionals are more likely to seek workplace advice from people they know than from AI tools or search engines. A new LinkedIn study finds that 43% turn to their networks first, with nearly two-thirds saying colleagues help them decide faster and with more confidence.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/08/31/linkedin-study-professionals-trust-their-networks-over-ai-search-search-engine-journal/

More and more AI tools are abandoning the use of user-agents and honoring "robots.txt" directives. The age of voluntary restraint in site crawling is coming to a close.

#seo #analytics #bots #webmarketing #digitalmarketing #searchengineoptimization #searchengines #answerengins #ai

The more I dig into this "Google is stealing all the clicks" drama, the less inclined I am to side with all the SEO studies. The SEO community is notoriously unreliable in these kinds of analyses and so far they haven't raised the bar on their performance.

Before Google published its blog post explaining they're sending traffic to more Websites than previously, I had suggested as much to several people in the industry. Their immediate reactions were almost all the same: "NAH! Google is lying!"

Sorry, SEO community, but as usual you have no credibility when it comes to explaining what happens behind the curtains in Mountain View.

#seo #searchengineoptimization #analytics #webmarketing #digitalmarketing #searchengines #google

Major Google Trial Begins as DOJ Pushes Chrome Sale to Remedy Search Monopoly

#Google #Antitrust #DOJ #Chrome #SearchMonopoly #BigTech #Regulation #GoogleTrial #SearchEngines

https://winbuzzer.com/2025/04/21/major-google-trial-begins-as-doj-pushes-chrome-sale-to-remedy-search-monopoly-xcxwbn/

TechCrunch: Perplexity acquires Read.cv, a social media platform for professionals. “Read.cv, a social media platform for professionals that competed with LinkedIn, has been acquired by AI-powered search engine Perplexity. As part of the deal, Read.cv will begin to wind down operations Friday. Users will be able to export their data, including their profiles, posts, and messages, until May […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/01/18/techcrunch-perplexity-acquires-read-cv-a-social-media-platform-for-professionals/

TechCrunch: Perplexity acquires Read.cv, a social media platform for professionals. “Read.cv, a social media platform for professionals that competed with LinkedIn, has been acquired by AI-powered search engine Perplexity. As part of the deal, Read.cv will begin to wind down operations Friday. Users will be able to export their data, including their profiles, posts, and messages, until May […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/01/18/techcrunch-perplexity-acquires-read-cv-a-social-media-platform-for-professionals/

[À noter] Le 18e c@fé Renatis "Retours d’usage d’ @OpenAlex_org à l’ @INIST_CNRS " aura lieu le 10 déc. à 13h30➡️https://renatis.cnrs.fr/event/18e-cfe-renatis-retours-dusage-dopenalex-a-linist-cnrs/
#openscience #searchengines #scientometrics #opencitations #PID #metadata #INIST #France #IST

Unsealed court doc shows why Apple rejected Microsoft’s offer to buy Bing - Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)

After fail... - https://arstechnica.com/?p=2005869 #departmentofjustice #googlemonopoly #searchmonopoly #generalsearch #searchengines #antitrustlaw #microsoft #usvgoogle #policy #google #safari #apple #bing

I'm using #BraveSearch since a couple of weeks now and i really like it. The results are very good, the speed too. In terms of comfort, really no different than #google.
#search #searchengine #searchengines #brave #privacy #PrivacyFriendly

In this guide, create your methodology for finding keywords none of your competitors have even thought about.

Tangential SEO: Finding Keywords for Content No One Else Has https://www.searchenginejournal.com/tangential-seo/487279/

#SEO #WebDesign #Keywords #KeywordResearch #SearchEngines

Microsoft’s ChatGPT-Powered Bing Makes Search Interesting Again - Google has stiff competition now, after Microsoft integrated powerful A.I. technology int... - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/technology/microsoft-bing-openai-artificial-intelligence.html #computersandtheinternet #artificialintelligence #desktopcomputers #searchengines #microsoftcorp #webbrowsers #openailabs #googleinc #software #chatgpt

At Last, Online Travel Planning Is Becoming (a Little) Easier - Airbnb, Google Travel and a few other platforms have tweaked their search engines, and th... - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/17/travel/online-travel-planning.html #travelandvacations #searchengines #expediainc #skyscanner #googleinc #research #airbnb

Lawmakers Urge Tech Companies to ‘Mitigate Harm’ of Suicide Website - A House committee is seeking briefings from search engines and web-hosting companies whos... - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/21/technology/suicide-website-google.html #unitedstatespoliticsandgovernment #housecommitteeonenergyandcommerce #suicidesandsuicideattempts #computersandtheinternet #blumenthalrichard #searchengines #cloudflareinc #microsoftcorp #googleinc

Lawmakers Urge Tech Companies to ‘Mitigate Harm’ of Suicide Website - A House committee is seeking briefings from search engines and web-hosting companies whos... - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/21/technology/congress-microsoft-google-suicide-website.html #unitedstatespoliticsandgovernment #housecommitteeonenergyandcommerce #suicidesandsuicideattempts #computersandtheinternet #blumenthalrichard #searchengines #cloudflareinc #microsoftcorp #googleinc