+ On Paid Links & Libraries Like General Web Engine (via Forbes.com)
Yet more ways results can be manipulated. Rand Fishkin, Danny Sullivan, and Apostolos Gerasoulis, executive vice president of search technology at Ask.com* are quoted.
Aside from the story and reporting itself (a very interesting read), it would be nice to see the comparison between Google and web engines (something we used to read a lot) in general, at the least, be made clearer.
Why? Libraries focus on selection (with written policies), organizations, etc. as do directories like Intute, LII, IPL, Infomine, and others. Yes, general web engines are getting better at offering better organization (Zoom Related Results at Ask, Dynamic Clusters at Clusty, and similar services from Yahoo, Live.com, and Google, they still have a way from becoming anything close to a traditional library.
* Note from Gary: At Ask, where I am the Director of Online Information Resources, some Ask "Smart Answers" like Children’s Books, Abraham Lincoln, Kansas City and Dogs, etc. could be considered virtual "ready reference shelves" that ONLY using web resources (and that's far from it all) but not libraries.
Ask is not alone in delivering additional material on a results page especially these days. Let's search for "The Simpsons" and look at results pages from several sources:
+ Live.com: Videos (but we're not sure if they are of Homer, Bart, Lisa and the rest of the family). Related Searches including one for Family Guy, another animated series.
+ Google: When we searched we found related searches at the bottom of the page including "The Simpsons episode guide" and "South Park." Search suggestions as you type.
+ Yahoo: Several images from the program at the top of the page. At the top of the page and if you click the "DOWN" arrow you see related searches and concepts that include IMDB, Matt Groening, Homer, and season one. In other searches this box appeared when searching with more then one term. (You can also click the "See More" link and get to the same place. Clicking the on the left side of the box reruns the search for that term or phrase. Selecting a "conceptual term" term on the right side of the box "adds" that term (you can add multiple terms) as you work through your searcg query. Yahoo has been testing a type-ahead feature, LiveSearch on AllTheWeb since last May.
+ Exalead: Related terms including Simpsons creator Matt Groening and quick clicks to limit by format, multimedia, language and more.
+ Clusty: Clusters like Simpsons Movie have clusters underneath like DVD reviews, and Animation, Sounds. Under the Springfield cluster, "Satiric adventures of a working class family" and Simpsons Movie are found. You do also find clusters relating to O.J. Simpson.
+ Ask: Smart Answer (with episode guide), Zoom Related Results (including related names, Matt Groening is one of them), Images, Profile, Movie Info. Also, search suggestions appear as you enter words into the search box.
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Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
