Yahoo has signed an agreement with Google under which, "Google will provide Yahoo with search advertisements ..., web algorithmic search services..., and image search services."

So now, Yahoo will draw some if its web search results, image results, and attendant advertising from Google.

This is nothing new; Yahoo has already been displaying search results provided by Microsoft's Bing since an agreement between those two rivals in 2009. The Yahoo/Microsoft agreement is scheduled to run through 2019. This new Yahoo/Google agreement does not preclude Yahoo from drawing some search results (and advertising) from Microsoft's services.

"Under the Services Agreement, Yahoo has discretion to select which search queries to send to Google and is not obligated to send any minimum number of search queries. The Services Agreement is non-exclusive and expressly permits Yahoo to use any other search advertising services, including its own service, the services of Microsoft Corporation or other third parties."

Details of the Yahoo/Google deal were included in an 8-K filing by Google on October 20. (Public companies are required to file an 8-K with the SEC to reveal information [such as big deals] that would be important for investors to know about.)

According to the the SEC filing, the Yahoo/Google agreement went into effect on October 1, 2015 and is scheduled to run through the end of 2018.

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First, Bing and Yahoo no longer recognize the Boolean connector NOT to exclude terms from a search. To exclude a keyword, multiple keywords, or a phrase, you must type a minus sign immediately to the left of each term you want to exclude. For example, If you wanted to search for results that included President Barack Obama and Iraq but wanted to exclude results that included Angela Merkel, Germany, and Iran, you would enter your search into the Bing (or Yahoo) search box this way:

"Barack Obama" Iraq -"Angela Merkel" -Germany -Iran

Previously, you could use the minus sign in this way or preceed the terms you wanted to exclude with the Boolean connector NOT (in all caps). Bing and Yahoo no longer recognize the NOT Boolean connector.

Second, you can once again exclude results from a particular site (or multiple sites) from your Bing and Yahoo search results. For example, if you wanted to locate Web pages that included information about President Barack Obama and Iraq but did not want to see any results from the Web sites of The Washington Post or Newsweek, you would enter your search into the Bing (or Yahoo) search box this way:

"Barack Obama" Iraq -site:www.washingtonpost.com -site:www.newsweek.com

Owner's of the 13th edition of the new "The Cybersleuth's Guide to the Internet" (IFL Press, 2015) book should update these functions as discussed on pages 52 and 77, respectively. Owners of earlier editions may want to check the index to see where these concepts are discussed.

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Reuters reported that the outages were caused "after Microsoft pushed out a bad code update and then struggled to roll it back."

Engadget reported that: "Because Redmond's roll-back didn't work, it had to turn off groups of linked servers to get back to the point where things were working as they did pre-crash."

Yahoo! was affected because its search has been powered by Microsoft's Bing search engine since 2009, under a 10-year agreement. In a brief written statement, a Microsoft spokesman confirmed the outage, to Reuters but declined to comment on the cause. Yahoo did not immediately respond to reporters' requests for comment.

Other Microsoft cloud services like Outlook.com, Hotmail.com, Live.com, and the Cortana virtual assistant from the company's mobile phones were also affected.

The post Bing Goes Down: Takes Yahoo! With It appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Previously, we've offered some more detailed tips for creating more effective searches via Twitter.

When you enter a search keyword preceeded by the hash symbol, Bing will suggest hashtags that have been used on the social networking site to categorize posts.

When you begin your search with the @ sign, Bing suggests popular users (mostly celebrities) that match your input.

Not every existing user is included in the suggestion list (even if you type in a complete user handle). however, any valid user name used as a search term will be retrieved in the search results.

The suggestions are presented in a drop-down box that appears beneath the search box - the same way Bing (and Google) already suggest search terms based on other popular searches that match the characters you have typed into the search box.

Based on our test searches, it appears that Bing is simply acting as a front-end to submit searches via the existing Twitter search structure. Searches for hashtags like #ABATECHSHOW yielded the same results whether we ran the search using Bing or Twitter's own search box.

Twitter's own internal search has also long been criticised for it shortcomings targetting older tweets and searching for specific date coverage.

PC World addressed these shortcomings in its coverage:

What's less clear, however, is whether or not users will be able to use Bing to plumb the murky depths of historical tweets. One of the problems with Twitter is that, while it has been easy to discover current tweets and trending topics, it's much more difficult to go back to say, the last World Cup four years ago, and re-discover what fans were talking about. And that apparently won't change.

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 This link is no longer displayed.  There also does not appear to be a direct URL available to access the Advanced Search page.

Although the Advanced Search page is no longer available, you can still conduct advanced searches at Bing by entering advanced search operators and instructions (such as filetype) directly into the search box.

See our "Search Engine Features Compared" chart to learn about some of the more popular advanced operators and instructions that Bing recognizes.

The post Bing Changes Web Search Interface | Completely Removes Advanced Search Option appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

USA.gov provides no search tips and we were unable to easily find any at Bing. However, on USA.gov’s Advanced Search page (which you can only find once you run a search), if you click the “You can also use advanced search operators to help limit and focus your searches” link, you will be taken to the “Advanced search keywords” page. But that page only explains how to use various instructions such as how to limit your search to a specific file type. The more useful help page, where you learn how to search with Boolean connectors, is found by clicking the “Advanced search options” link at the bottom of the “Advanced search keywords” page.

Let’s take a look at how searching Bing/USA.gov and Google is the same for some searches but very different for others.

Phrase Searching

There are no differences when phrase searching at Google and Bing/USA.gov. Phrases are surrounded within quotation marks.

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Connecting Keywords with the And Boolean Connector

There are no differences when connecting keywords and phrases with the And Boolean connector at Google and Bing/USA.gov. The default Boolean connector is AND. Leaving a space between words automatically connects your keywords/phrases with the AND Boolean connector so there is no need to type the word AND.

Connecting Keywords with the OR Boolean Connector

There are no differences if you are only searching your keywords using one Boolean connector, such as nevada OR oregon. Your Bing/USA.gov and Google search would look like this:

nevada OR oregon.

(Yes, the OR must be upper case at Google and Bing/USA.gov.)

However, there are differences between Bing/USA.gov and Google if you are combining your OR search with other Boolean connectors in a search. At Bing/USA.gov, you need to enclose your OR terms in parentheses, so your search would look like this:

"homeland security" (nevada OR oregon)

The same search at Google would look like this:

"homeland security" nevada OR oregon

Exclude a Keyword with the NOT (MINUS SIGN) Boolean Connector

If you are excluding a word at Google and Bing/USA.gov, you would place a minus sign before the word without any space. Your search would look like this:

"homeland security" nevada -oregon

However, there is one difference between Bing/USA.gov and Google when excluding words. Bing/USA.gov also recognizes the Boolean connector NOT, but it must be in upper case. Google does not recognize NOT. So to search at Bing/USA.gov for the phrase "homeland security" and the keywords nevada NOT oregon, your search would look like this:

"homeland security" nevada NOT oregon

Conclusion

As you can see, knowing how to search correctly makes all the difference in the world. You can’t assume that every search engine is the same. We have created a chart comparing some of the most useful, but little known, search features of the major search engines.

The post Searching Bing/USA.gov | Sometimes Very Different Than Searching Google appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

The new Bing results display interface is broken up into three columns. The widest column, on the left-hand side displays a traditional looking list of relevant "blue link" results. The middle of the three columns, the "Snapshot," is supposed to feature "useful information related to [your] searches and compiled by Bing as a single 'snapshot' – all in one place in a separate column." However, all we have seen in this column our test searches are Ads.

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More Social

The far right-hand side of the search results page is where the most visible change to the results reside - in the collapsible "Sidebar." When you're logged in/connected to your Facebook account, the Sidebar includes "recommendations" from your Facebook friends based on your search terms and their "Likes." The Sidebar also includes signals from "experts and enthusiasts" leading to their blogs or Twitter feeds relevant to your search terms.

While conceptually similar to Google's Search Plus Your World, introduced earlier this year, Bing's implementation is different. While Google has chosen to tightly integrate the "social signals" into its main search results list, Bing has (mostly) chosen to segregate the social signals to the Sidebar. However, Bing does include social signals in the left-hand column of search results in the form of a "thumbs up" icon that indicates which of your Facebook friends has Liked a particular site on the results list. (It si unclear if these Likes are figured into where a particular site will rank on the results list. Additionally, where Google is relying heavily on its own Google+ social network for its social signals, Bing is compiling these signals from the more popular Facebook social network.

Less Search

As part of this redesign, Bing has moved the "Advanced Search" features that are available to narrow down your search results after you had conducted an initial search. Now, to access the Advanced search features you have to highlight your keywords in the search box (on the search results page) to bring up the link to the Advanced Search menu. This will also bring up a list of other suggested search terms.

Part of the rationale behind moving these features may be found in a quote from Bing Senior Director Stefan Weitz. "People are using the Web to do things in the real world, and that’s a big change from where things were a decade ago," he said in the press release announcing the changes. "And so the 10 blue links that search has been predicated on for the last decade no longer makes sense. Simply put, that’s not how you get things done." While this may be true for some searches, this is not necessarily true for the types of background and investigative research lawyers, paralegals, and other legal professionals need to conduct via search engines. 

The post Bing Revamps Results: More Social…Less Search appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

In our live Continuing Legal Education seminars, we teach lawyers how to use the lesser known, advanced, and sometimes hidden features of search engines to conduct more effective investigative, background, and legal research on the Internet.

We use Google as a stand-in for "EverySearchEngine" (sort of like "Everyman") in these live MCLE seminars for two reasons. First, many of the features initially introduced by Google have been adopted by other major search engines. Second, because Google is the most popular search engine in the English language it is most likely that the attendees will be familiar with the look, feel, and navigation used in the examples we present. We do also point out some major differences between Google and Bing and Yahoo.

SearchEngineJournal has done a nice job of compiling statistics about the percentage of search traffic handled by Google versus its two most popular competitors. (It should be noted, that with Microsoft's 2009 investment in Yahoo, Yahoo's organic search results are delivered by Bing. The results of a Bing search and Yahoo search are the same. So, the individual market shares of Bing and Yahoo could be combined to show a 28.99% market share for the combination - still less than half of Google's market share.)

Source: Comparison of the Top Three Search Engines: Bing+Yahoo > Google? [INFOGRAPHIC]

The post Google as “Everyman” | Why We Use Google as Stand-in for “Every Search Engine” appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.