New Facebook SEO tool and 4 new recruitment jobs to check out

I recently played around with Facebook Ads and placed a few ads for a friends business I was helping out with. Up until now Facebook has been lacking a tool of the quality of Google Keywords's Tool. However, I just heard about a new tool called Cash Keywords Pro that looks like it is now the first Facebook keyword tool that does a really good job. Using both tools I was able to get a much better data set of words to chose from to purchase. Check out the video to learn more.



On the job front:

Hays are hiring people in Australia (Perth and Melbourne) here

Principal HR have an IT recruiter position open here.

Salesforce also looking for a recruiter: here 

Accenture also hiring experienced recruiter to work with its Management and Technology Consulting practices. To apply you can contact: Jean.m.flavin@accenture.com

New Real Time Search Functionality with Google

Future of Search

From Search Engines Strategies New York 2009

Google Social Search Explained

Here's the latest Google Lab experiment. I like this a lot and see it as a natural extension from their custom search technology. Search is moving into a mesh type quasi personal quasi standard index hybrid search.  Looking forward to seeing the same with Bing and added Twitter feeds very soon.



To learn how it works behind the scenes check watch the following:

Google Announce Social Search

How the search engine worlds changes. First it was universal search, then it was semantic search, now it's social search! At Web 2.0 Expo yesterday VP of search, Marissa Mayer, gave the surprise announcement.

So far all I know about it is:

• The bottom of search results will soon have social networking information from your friends, like their Flickr photos or their status updates. It’s a blended search integration, similar to seeing news or image results
• These are pulled from social networks connected to your Google Profile. The more that are connected, the more social information that will appear in search results.
• They have also improved searching for images using social networks. Images become more relevant using social networking data.

 I'll track what is happening and report back soon. Rumour has it that it will launch in Google labs real soon.

Microsoft lands Twitter and new Facebook Deals - Bing Mark 2

You can learn more here and here. The world of search has just got a lot more interesting.

Here's what it may look like when launched, here.

 

Google to launch new upgraded version of its search engine and Facebook getting serious about search

Today Google announced it is launching a new upgraded version of its search engine. It even went as far as releasing the developers preview of it today, code named "Caffeine". In the announcement they explain that it will improve the speed, accuracy, size, and comprehensiveness of Google search.

Learn more here

Also, it looks like Facebook are getting serious about search. In particular the FriendFeed acquisition looks very exciting. Learn more here and here. The race for a private and public real time aggregated semantic capable search market has got a lot more interesting. This union is a very significant move that could be Twitter's biggest challenge yet. And it is the joining of the very talented industry recognised founders of the FriendFeed engineering team who were instrumental in launching Google Mail and Google Maps at their time in Google that could be the biggest cout of all.

Nice! Bing Tweet Integration

Microsoft's new Bing search engine was the first of the big search engines to integrate Twitter into results. Yesterday, Microsoft’s fledgling search tool has gone one step further with Twitter launching BingTweets, a separate site that combines Bing search with Twitter search and trending topics.

There will be more from the Bing team in terms of Twitter integration in the future, however. The Bing team writes, “many people share their thoughts on Twitter, and search engines don’t currently do a great job of capturing that real-time content. We designed Bing to help you make faster, more informed decisions, and, since people often turn to real-time content to help them make decisions, BingTweets was a logical next step.”

Microsoft Bing getting great reviews!

So by now you may have heard that Microsoft has launched its new next generation search engine. I'm a big fan and looking forward to it even getting better in the future. Don't take my word for it though try it yourself here. The logicial category functionality and improved relevancy is a huge step in the right direction.

Check out why Steve Woz, the enigmatic joint founder of Apple, is such a big fan here.

Also, check out the video tour:

Google Revs Up Some New Search Features

One of the next Rubicon's for search to traverse is the boundaries of structured versus unstructured search. It is much easier to get answers from databases where everything is organised, labeled, stamped and categories correctly. As the avalanche of data being added to the web keeps growing, keyword searching keeps getting closer to breaking point. Introducing this needed structure to the web is something that has been on the mind of some of the world's most famous search engine development departments for some time now. Google started to look at this topic recently with their dipping of toes into "universal search" e.g. embedding You Tube into the search results. However, they are now starting to tackle this with their own Google Squared initiative that has just come out of Google labs. Google Squared extracts data from Web pages and presents them in search results as squares in an online spreadsheet. See video below.

Understanding how search engines work - not just the big 3 - but those that allow "semantic search" and meta search is imperative to understanding how to mine properly. Understanding spidering, indexing, flipping, x-raying, syntax, operators, modifiers and search engine optimisation (SEO)in all its guises and forms is essential to become a modern day smart internet savvy recruiter. Understanding what cross linking is, organic search ranking, meta-tagging, tagging and cross pollination is important if you are to understand how to search in all the various types of informational systems both light, heavy, and the deep web that recruiters currently have for free at their disposal when traditional recruitment techniques have failed. I'll be showing some of the search engines, outside of the "big 3" that recruiters should be aware of, as well as some tools and techniques, they should also begin to investigate more, in order to get better at recruiting at the Future of Recruitment conference on the 3rd of June.

But back to Google for a moment.

There are dozens of semantic search start-ups trying to impose structure on the Web to perform similar tricks as Google Squared. Another high profile start up, which I have covered before on this blog, that is launching this Monday is Wolfram Alpha. This takes a slightly different approach to Google in that it simply ingests massive amounts of information into its own databases where it can query it to its heart’s delight. There seems to be rivalry between both of the companies already. The big,big difference between the both is size. Wolfram's databases will never match what is available on the web. They currently hold 10 terabytes which is a very small number compared to the size of the web.

Google squared is a very experimental, early, step at trying to organise the worlds data on the web in a far more intuitive format that we have today. Looking at the video below where I believe this may apply to recruitment is we will be able to find candidate CVs, bio's conversations, etc in a much more structured format. We may possibly be able in the future run a search that provide focused results that are pushed back in web format in a database layout that can be converted into .csv and then imported into your own ATS for review and dissemination. I'll be watching to see what comes out of this initiative in the future and how it can be applied to making searching for passive candidates more efficient.

New interesting computational search engine arrives

It's early days for "computational knowledge engines" but one in particular from British-born physicist Stephen Wolfram has hit the information highway a lot this week. It will open to the public in May. Wolfram Alpha is a closed search engine that looks like an amazing hybrid between Wikipedia and Google's OneBox answers for simple, common search queries. The closeness will change soon and when it does I'm looking forward to searching about software development engineers in Ireland and Europe and the related information the index pulls up. Check out the video to make up your own mind.

Alpha will come in free and paid versions. The paid version will allow users download and upload data to the engine. They haven't disclosed pricing yet, but pro users will, for example, be able to not just see a graph, but also download the data behind this graph for use on their own machines or in Mathematica.

The engine is seems not just academic in design. Wolfram is clearly thinking about monetisation and will allows users to embed not just a Wolfram|Alpha search box on their own pages, but they will also be able to embed results and a custom Alpha portal on their own sites. Users will also be able to receive email alerts when a result changes. This is where some advertising may take place.

Google now conducting interesting trial on their search engine

Once again Google is tinkering around with its search engine as it makes small strides towards its universal search concept.

If you want to play with it yourself type the following string into your Google.com: javascript:void(document.cookie="PREF=ID=4a609673baf685b5:TB=2:LD=en:CR=2:TM=1227543998:LM=1233568652:DV=AA:GM=1:IG=3:S=yFGqYec2D7L0wgxW;path=/; domain=.google.com");

You'll see a variety of new options, some of these  I am aware of through Google Labs, others I've never seen before.

Learn more here. Try it out for yourself and/or check out this video.

Yahoo and the "Region" command

All too often Yahoo is neglected by recruiters when sourcing directly and it really shouldn't be as it is one of the biggest indexes that exists on the planet and spider and indexs differently to that of Google and Live.

Recently, Yahoo introduced it's "region" command. The syntax when searching for candidates would look a little like this

region:"continent" intitle:resume "keyword"

For example, if you are looking for resumes of a Auditor in Europe, your search string will be

region:europe intitle:resume auditor -sample -apply -jobs

Happy Hunting

Search Engine Wiki

I've been waiting for this one to come along and finally it is here. The international search engine list is very cool!

Also, worth checking out is a site called www.joinmicrosofteurope.com I have been working on and a new blog that is perfoirming really well for me and is loads of fun brining me all over the world with my trusty camera called. The Microsoft Internationl Core Tech blog!

Alas poor Teoma i knew him well

Teoma is gone or should i say integrated with Ask.com! It used to be that i used 4 search engines when searching for candidates now we are down to three: see article
:(

Microsoft gets better at search

Today I came across Microsoft's new Window's Live beta search site. It's a vast improvement on the old MSN UI and the new toolbar albeit it Beta version has some new tools worth checking out like the Onfolio tab, phishing filter and the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds directly from search results. While the raw horse power is not in the backend to compete with the present incumbent search champions it is a significant step in the right direction to win back some market ground. In particular, for recruitment purposes the new macro functionality and feeder functionality may help with complex string searches. I've tried it and like it. The UI is impressive and the integration work with the other bundled Live services provide for interesting debate in the Google Pack versus Windows Live Bundle debate. Try it.