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Google CEO Eric Schmidt must love controversy. In a speech to magazine executives Wednesday he called the internet “a cesspool”, AdAge reported.

I don’t know if that makes Google a sewerage company, but I think Schmidt should realize that many look at Google as their filter to the web. Employees like Matt Cutts spend all their time working on ‘purifying’ the results, to expect publishers to be the answer may not be the right approach.

Criticizing opponents to the Yahoo-Google ad deal may not be a smart move given the recent drop in value of the once “golden child” of the web. Schmidt challenged “if you are going to criticize us, criticize us properly.” Claiming ad prices would not increase under the Google Yahoo ad deal.

Schmidt displayed a certain amount of callous aloofness when he avoided questions about how publishers could improve their ranking with Google.

“”We don’t actually want you to be successful,” he said. The company’s algorithms are trying to find the most relevant search results, after all, not the sites that best game the system. “The fundamental way to increase your rank is to increase your relevance,” he added” AdAge reported.

If you call the web a cesspool but do not offer insights to quality content providers who pay money to provide professional journalism I don’t think you are serious about cleaning it up, so much as taunting an economically challenged industry.

ChunkIt is a new search toolbar that bills itself as an x-ray for search. What it does is search your choice of the “big five” search engines, and then displays results on the right and the textual content of the results on the left.

Once the results are loaded, users can click on a paragraph in the left hand side, and it will highlight the paragraph - and then load the full page in the right side.

Highlighted paragraph

Page loaded in the right hand side

I personally find this to be a great tool for search. But one issue for ChunkIt might be copyright. Google has come under fire from newspapers for the issue of copyright when it comes to indexing their pages. Their argument, which has won over some in Europe, is a poor one since Google primarily provides just links to articles.

So, I contacted Brian Cheek at TigerLogic Corporation, the company behind ChunkIt, and here’s what he had to say:

“ChunkIt! is a user-driven device that resides on the client-computer and is not a web service. All processing is handled by and all logic resides on the user’s local computer. ChunkIt! does not persist, store or cache information and does not use a back-end server to perform any of its functionality.”

Smart companies will see the value in ChunkIt’s search tool and not make a fuss over copyright. But expect a few to ignore a good thing when they see it and challenge ChunkIt, but only if and when the tool gets wildly popular.

In July, Microsoft and Facebook announced an expansion of their existing partnership to include Live Search on the social network. Today, that plan has been implemented. AdCenter ads are being served up along with the results.

Here’s what they’re saying about it:

On the Live Search blog, Angus Norton, Senior Director, Live Search Product Management, wrote “This is a great first step in our partnership. As we evaluate user feedback and results we’ll explore additional ways to integrate Live Search more deeply into the Facebook experience.”

Over at Facebook’s blog, Leah Pearlman wrote, “By integrating web search into Facebook, you can increase the information available to share with your friends, family and coworkers on the site. For example, your friend may invite you to an event at a new restaurant. Without leaving Facebook, you can check out the details of the restaurant on the web. Or, say you see photos in your News Feed about a friend’s recent trip to Dubai. Inspired, you can search the web for more information about travel without having to leave Facebook. Along with your search results, you may also begin to see ads for products, services or other things that are relevant to your query.”

Have you tried out Live Search on Facebook? Let us know your first impressions in the comments.

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E-tailers rate SEO, site search, and email marketing as the most important e-commerce technologies when it comes to promoting their businesses, according to new survey data released by SLI Systems.

• 91% of the retail companies surveyed cited site search as critical, very important or important to their online businesses.
• Of the retailers that have measured the impact site search has had on their businesses, 87% reported positive results.
• 54% saw an increase in sales as a direct result of adding new site search capabilities, while 44% experienced greater conversion rates and 40% cited better customer satisfaction.
• Of the retailers polled, close to 60% said they would be likely to consider a hosted (SaaS) site search solution over a traditional installed application to reduce costs, lessen the strain on IT resources and make for more rapid deployment.

SLI Systems’ CEO Shaun Ryan shares why this data is important to understand in view of the upcoming holiday retail season: “Adopting proven technologies that can guide shoppers to a merchant’s site in the bustling world of e-commerce will enable retailers to deliver a better customer experience and ensure the holidays are fruitful.”

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It must be redesign your search engine day. hakia has a new look and it’s reminiscent of Yahoo’s recent glue pages test with a hint of the old Ask.com.

Of course, hakia already distinguishes itself from the “big” search engines by saying that sites with a bunch of inbound links are not always credible. hakia attempts, through partnerships with experts, to produce more credible results.

Now, it’s adding images and user-generated content to those results.

“We have been working hard for some time now to make the search experience better for users than what they are used to with today’s popular search engines,” said Riza Berkan, CEO, hakia.com. “hakia’s new look bolsters this promise even further, by making credible sources available to all in a more well-focused way - quality over popularity.”

Take a look, and then let us know what you think of the changes:

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After a year of slow but steady growth, Ask.com has redesigned, incorporating Google, Yahoo and Microsoft design elements along with it. Changing things up has helped Ask in the past, so we’ll have to keep an eye on whether this gives Ask.com a nice little boost.

The first noticeable change is the front page. It’s minimalist in nature, but you can change the skin to create a different background.

In the results, the dualing sidebars are gone, and only one on the right remains. The organic results are flush with the left, similar to Google and Yahoo. And there are related searches similar to what you’ll find on Microsoft.

An interesting feature is the AskEraser. It addresses privacy concerns that people have about search.

What do you think of the changes? Give us your first impressions in the comments.

h/t Rafe Needleman @ CNET

Microsoft is today launching a new incentive program for Live Search. The program is called SearchPerks, and it works very much like a credit card reward program.

Every time you search, you earn tickets. You can earn up to 25 tickets a day. Tickets can later be redeemed for all sorts of rewards including music downloads (5 for 525 points) and airline miles (1000 miles for 1800 tickets).

Here’s how it works. Sign up for the program, and download a simple piece of code. That will give you a Perk Counter for your desktop.

You can begin earning tickets today, October 1, all the way through April 15th of next year. You can begin claiming your rewards on April 16. However, you can only sign up for the program through December 31, 2008 and the program is capped at 250,000 people.

Microsoft will be evaluating the program and could possible expand it if all goes well.

Microsoft’s Frederick Savoye, senior director at Live Search, assured me that this is an incentive program that fits into their three overall pillars of search:

• Delivering the best search results
• Simplifying key tasks such as booking airline, travel, shopping, finding user opinions, etc.
• Innovating the business model

So while programs like SearchPerks and Cashback may seem like Microsoft is just trying to pay people off to use Live Search, the team remains strongly devoted to improving technology and the user experience.

What do you think of this program? Will you sign up? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

The New York Times has a great article about using the internet for information on medical conditions, including how search is involved in the process. As you know, results can change just by adding a keyword to the phrase you’re already searching for.

Search for a condition and add the word community, for example, and you suddenly have access to patients dealing with the same issues, according to Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

I can personally attest to the power of the internet, especially the ability to communicate and share experiences with other patients. When I was diagnosed with Thyroid Cancer in 2003, the internet became the authority on my care. Because the cancer affects so few people, doctors with little experience in seeing patients with thyroid cancer can be misinformed on how to treat it.

Thankfully, I found an online community that helped me through every step of the process. I was able to find doctors that knew thyroid cancer and could adequately treat me. My experience greatly improved as the result of “meeting” other patients. (I did, also, eventually meet several in person as well.)

As much as social networking can sometimes get a bad rap for being an untamed jungle of wild party pictures and obscene comments, we can’t forget the power of online communities and their role in so many important aspects of daily life. From jobs to cancer treatment, social networking is impacting lives. And that’s something to feel good about - and get involved in.

Is your company there yet? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Related Reading:
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Yahoo Says Searchers are Better Patients
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Majority of Online Health-Related Queries Start on Search Engines

If you like using Google a lot (who doesn’t, really?), then you must know that there are various commands that you can use aside from simply entering keywords in the search box. These commands can help in narrowing down searches and getting more relevant results immediately. What might not be commonly known, however, [...]

Just in time for the debates (whenever they happen), Google has released a political search engine called “In Quotes.” The search engine helps people find what John McCain or Barack Obama have said about a variety of issues. (For elections in Canada, India, or the UK, see the drop-down menu in the top right hand corner.)

Sad but true, elections are often won and lost on one-liners, whether they be gaffes or zingers. Now, “In Quotes” will help passionate politicos perpetuate the sound bites fast and furious.

Interestingly enough, the “quotes” that appear on the front page are already soundbites culled by reporters. It would be a little more helpful if the search results provided excerpts from speeches posted on the candidates’ websites so that people could (finally) start investigating the context of what was said.

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