The breakthrough comes as a result of a settlement between Time Warner Cable and Viacom, which owns cable channels like Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, MTV and others. For months there had been a heated dispute over whether the cable company should have access to Viacom programs through its TWCable TV app.

On Wednesday, Viacom said that the companies had agreed “to resolve their pending litigations” and that “all of Viacom’s programming will now be available to Time Warner Cable subscribers for in-home viewing via Internet protocol-enabled devices such as iPads.”

The companies have been fighting over streaming rights for more than a year. Time Warner argued that its existing agreements give it the right to provide video streams on any screen, rather than just the television. Viacom said the app was “unlicensed distribution of Viacom’s programming.” Viacom still has a pending lawsuit with Cablevision over its Optimum live TV app.

Viacom’s programming will roll out on the Time Warner Cable app over the next few weeks.

Time Warner’s app, TWC TV, is available free on the App Store for its cable customers. [Direct Link]

Good. They’ve gotten use to selling the same content in several different “distribution” channels and banking the whole way. They sell their content to providers and I buy it from them. It doesn’t matter if they let me get that content on my phone, tablet, tv or download directly in my damn headWhat’s with the overdone joke posts? I hope they’re joke posts.

I’ve also always wondered about TMar’s signature.

From our analysis we have seen that, for a three-week period starting in April, the botnet displayed over 10 million ads on compromised computers but only a small percentage of users who were shown ads actually clicked them, with close to 400,000 ads being clicked. These numbers earned the attackers $14,000 in these three weeks, although it is worth mentioning that earning the money is only one part of the puzzle—actually collecting that money is another, often more difficult, job. Many PPC providers employ anti-fraud measures and affiliate-verification processes before paying. Fortunately, the attackers in this instance appear to have been unable to complete the necessary steps to be paid.

It is estimated the actual ad-clicking component of Flashback was only installed on about 10,000 of the more than 600,000 infected machines. In other words, utilizing less than 2% of the entire botnet the attackers were able to generate $14,000 in three weeks, meaning that if the attackers were able to use the entire botnet, they could potentially have earned millions of dollars a year.

Symantec notes that the malware developers displayed more than 10 million hijacked ads and could have delivered many more if the developers had been more successful in their attacks.

Some security specialists have said that the Mac OS is “really vulnerable” to further infections, though these claims should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt — those security specialists make their living off vulnerabilities and it is in their best interest to promote awareness of them.

those security specialists make their living off vulnerabilities, and it is in their best interest to promote awareness of them.

I’ll say. The more afraid we are, the more we’ll pay for their placebo security software.

I say the best security is knowing how to avoid infections in the first place. If you can learn not to download mysterious files, you’re half way there.

What fraction of 1% of the Mac user base does 10000 represent?

I’d estimate the OS X install base at ~50M, so 10k/50M is 0.02%. Using common sense, 0.02% infection does not an susceptible OS make, but remember, there’s always money in fear.

Sounds like it. Some malware :rolleyes:

All that media hype for just another relatively unsuccessful Mac trojan.

So, basically, only 10000 users entered their admin passwords to allow Safari to be successfully infected.

The other 590000 infections were incomplete due to this malware requiring some user interaction for successful infection.

What fraction of 1% of the Mac user base does 10000 represent?

Sounds like it. Some malware :rolleyes:So, basically, only 10000 users entered their admin passwords to allow Safari to be successfully infected.

The other 590000 infections were incomplete due to this malware requiring some user interaction for successful infection.

What fraction of 1% of the Mac user base does 10000 represent?

This has got to be a business model right.

Ad-hijacking. Earn heaps through people clicking on Ads, invest, profit, repay people.

Every time I see news about flashback, I get $$ in my eyes, and spend some time admiring their enterprising attitudes. Sure they were stealing that money from ad organizations, which a lot of people will rightfully object to.

There’s got to be a legit way to do this, if only everyone didn’t hate ads so much…or is that what is going to be so revolutionary with Apple’s new TV? Interfacing/Interacting with ads is something that we’ve only really got to do through TiVo (fast forward) and YouTube…a traditional remote interface doesn’t lend itself to that and stepping away from that requires a Universal remote which again, really only exists to serve to replicate the function of existing remotes, they can’t add new features to TVs. I feel a new signature coming along.

Anyone that thinks Siri is going to be how you control a TV is not a religious 30 Rock viewer.

This has got to be a business model right.

Ad-hijacking. Earn heaps through people clicking on Ads, invest, profit, repay people.

Considering how Flashback infects Macs, seems like a hackers’ basic business model to me..

From Search Engine Land:

Google+ Launches Knowledge Graph To Provide Answers, Not Just Links

Hinted at for months, Google formally launched its “Knowledge Graph” today. The new technology is being used to provide popular facts about people, places and things alongside Google’s traditional results. It also allows Google to move toward a new way of searching not for pages that match query terms but for “entities” or concepts that [...]

With Fix In Place, Wolfram Alpha Explains How Siri “Recommended” The Lumia By Mistake

It wasn’t Siri that was recommending the Lumia as the best smartphone to some last week; it was Wolfram Alpha. That won’t happen again, now that Wolfram Alpha has made changes to to fix problems it had dealing with customer reviews. Reviews Weren’t Weighted To Account For Number When I looked into the Siri-Lumia issue last [...]

3 Guidelines To Scale Your SEM Team

There is a phenomenon within organizations that causes productivity to decline as teams grow larger. This phenomenon is described in economics as a diseconomy of scale and is caused by at least three factors including increased communication costs, duplication of effort, and top-heavy management. These three components can cripple an SEM team that grows larger than four [...]

Did Google Drop 100+ Small Directories

Yesterday I covered a WebmasterWorld thread where SEOs were complaining that Google has been removing tons of free web directories from their index. I conducted some random tests and did notice some of these free web directories not coming up in Google. Later in the day, Terry Van Horne began running larger tests on 500+ [...]

Do Search & Display Really Belong Together?

The premise is simple – PPC and display are both media buys trying to achieve similar outcomes; both are forms of ‘bought media’ and now with display moving to a biddable environment both now require quantitative skill sets to manage them. It’s not a tough sell to convince a budget holder that a single agency [...]

Early Stage Landing Pages At The Top Of The Funnel

For many B2B and considered purchases, buyers go through several stages of evaluating the market and choosing a seller. Different stages naturally benefit from different kinds of landing pages and conversion strategies. Here, we’ll take a look at the very top of the funnel, to see how three different companies are handling early-stage interest on [...]

Bing’s New Social-Friendly Search Interface Now Live

The new Bing interface, with a healthy dose of social connections and discovery, is now live for all users. Bing’s announcement today says that anyone can access the new interface at www.bing.com/new, but you should also see a new message atop the Bing home page that invites you to try “the best search, now with [...]

How To Use The Keyword Funnel To Understand Searcher Intent

Keyword research can give you great insight into customer problems, needs, desires, and intent.I like to categorize keyword categories themselves into a total of *ten* funnel stages. After performing my initial keyword categorization (sort of into micro-categories), I like to categorize the categories themselves into a total of *ten* funnel stages I’ve developed, which are organized around a “problem/solution” mental model.

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Local, Maps & Mobile

Google Launches Street View in Estonia, ERR
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Apple notes that “MacBookPro3,1″, which corresponds to mid and late 2007 machines, is not compatible with the new build, but that issue will be rectified in a later build.

No other details on improvements in the latest build are available yet, but it certainly appears that Apple is making some of its final tweaks for developers leading up to its Worldwide Developers Conference less than four weeks away. Apple is expected to provide extensive previews of OS X Mountain Lion at the conference, with a public launch scheduled for “late summer”.

The new Mountain Lion build is still a bit short of the 12A211 build spotted in a Geekbench entry for an apparently unreleased MacBook Pro earlier this week. While that entry could have been faked, the data does match closely with what is known about upcoming Ivy Bridge MacBook Pro models, and Primate Labs believes the entry to be legitimate.

LOL @ Retina display. Thats exactly what every developer wants! They want a resolution so high that they will need an external graphics card to be able to run the display.

Is this real life? Release more info for developers and allow us to program on Windows so we don’t have to buy overpriced laptops with sub-par components…

People like you are the reason we still drive internal combustion engine vehicles, the reason we still have primitive healthcare, the reason we still program with “text files”, the reason we still have printers and use paper, the reason we still have to fight for social equality, and the reason we have impediments for progress.

Why don’t you go pickup a pc, put DOS or Linux on it & hook it up to a CRT monitor and you can enjoy the power that will crackle out of the crevices of your “power-user” system to p0WN all the things with EZ.

Pfft. What a joke. Hurry up apple, you corrupt company! With all that liquid cash you would think they could pull this out early. What a joke.

Posted from my Droid Razr Maxx (HeHAW)

You’re absolutely right. Obviously Apple is not pending enough money to develop ML just because they’re cheap.

Apple’s corruption and frugality is what is delaying the release of ML.

You’re so perspicacious in pointing out that they should release it sooner. All that bull crap about about proper testing and de-bugging so we get a smooth running OS with a minimum about of bugs and glitches is just Apple’s corruption and refusal to spend any money on hiring enough developers to get ML out sooner.

Boy, I’m glad somebody finally told the truth about all this.

Thanks for your eye opening post.

:rolleyes:

So Apple didn’t update OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview to Retina Display build? I’m surprised.

… Lion is Partially REtina compadible, and I’m sure they have complete builds on 10.7 & 10.8 that are fully REtina, but why would they release it publicly?Very encouraging.

I’m in no rush, it’s important that they sort it out properly.

The more updates they push out before public release, the better

LOL @ Retina display. Thats exactly what every developer wants! They want a resolution so high that they will need an external graphics card to be able to run the display.

Is this real life? Release more info for developers and allow us to program on Windows so we don’t have to buy overpriced laptops with sub-par components…

I don’t want to develop in a sub-par OS :rolleyes:Ohhh I can’t wait for this!

Someone please let us know if you find any new features!

Pfft. What a joke. Hurry up apple, you corrupt company! With all that liquid cash you would think they could pull this out early. What a joke.

Posted from my Droid Razr Maxx (HeHAW)

You’re absolutely right. Obviously Apple is not pending enough money to develop ML just because they’re cheap.

Apple’s corruption and frugality is what is delaying the release of ML.

You’re so perspicacious in pointing out that they should release it sooner. All that bull crap about about proper testing and de-bugging so we get a smooth running OS with a minimum about of bugs and glitches is just Apple’s corruption and refusal to spend any money on hiring enough developers to get ML out sooner.

Boy, I’m glad somebody finally told the truth about all this.

Thanks for your eye opening post.

:rolleyes:

If you feed them, they’ll just keep coming back….

So Apple didn’t update OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview to Retina Display build? I’m surprised.

Why would they? :confused:

So Apple didn’t update OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview to Retina Display build? I’m surprised.

Why would they do that?

Pfft. What a joke. Hurry up apple, you corrupt company! With all that liquid cash you would think they could pull this out early. What a joke.

Posted from my Droid Razr Maxx (HeHAW)

Ahh yes. Using your logic one could throw nine women at a pregnancy and give you a baby in one month. We know how well that works.

As a software developer myself, I despise fools like you. You are the middle managers of the software developer world who have no understanding of how to manage software teams. You think the only solution is to throw more money+people at problems. Then you stand confused when the software becomes more broken and delays grow even bigger.

Thankfully, people like you are not behind any of the software in our world that is actually worth a damn.

1. Dogma Will Get You Killed

You finally got your head around SEO best practices, and then you tackled your first e-commerce site, only to find that nothing worked the way the blogs told you. Search is algorithmic, so we assume it follows the same rules for everyone. In theory, it usually does, but those rules are incredibly complex and situational. Google+ claims over 200 ranking factors, many of those factors are probably multi-part, the algorithm is changing more than once per day, and there’s occasionally a manual intervention to really screw things up.

It’s good to know the basics (and there are some best practices), but you have to learn to roll with the punches. Even something as “simple” as de-indexing a few dozen pages rarely goes as planned, and can take weeks or months. Measure, evaluate, and adapt. If one tag or tactic isn’t working, consider your options.

2. One-trick Ponies Make Good Glue

I wrote an entire post recently on this topic, specifically link-building vs. on-page SEO. People naturally get comfortable with one aspect of search marketing (link-building, on-page, social, etc.) and then want to “perfect” it, but at best they hit diminishing returns fast. At worst, they’re putting band-aids on URLs while they bleed to death from a huge link wound. I’ve seen sites with spotless on-page SEO that have been stuck for months suddenly leap through the rankings because they’ve acquired a few good links. On the flipside, I’ve seen sites that were a total mess but had solid link profiles miraculously improve when their on-page problems were fixed.

3. A Link, by Any Other Name…

…might still stink. In the rush to build links, too many people, especially people with brand new (read that “highly vulnerable”) sites, make the mistake of thinking that all links are equally good. It’s no mistake that my most linked to blog post in Q&A is Rand’s 2010 post “All Links are Not Created Equal”. It’s not just a question of spam and penalties – link value varies tremendously with the page, placement, density of links, and on and on.

Case in point: I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen spend months on a DMOZ link only to have it buried on a page that has little or no internal PR or isn’t even indexed. Link-building is not just a numbers game. I’m not making a white-hat argument – it’s just SEO fact. Some links are better than others. Don’t waste your time on junk.

4. You’re Not a Black-hat Genius

Sorry to break it to you, but better to hear it from me than Google. First of all, if I can spot your paid links and gratuitous spam in 5 minutes of looking at Open Site Explorer data, how hard do you think it is for Google, who can essentially see the entire link-graph at a glance? Obviously, they don’t always get it right, and plenty of spam slips through the cracks, but the algorithm isn’t stupid, either. Ethics aside, the practical problem with black-hat SEO isn’t that it doesn’t work – the problem is that 98.7% of people do it badly.

At the risk of kicking you while you’re down, I also have to add that your link circle/wheel/tetrahedron isn’t brilliant, no matter what your mom says. Just because you’ve cross-linked 157 Squidoo lenses doesn’t mean that you’ve built an impenetrable web of black-hattery. If your link wheel were a Disney movie, the theme song would be “The Circle of Crap.”

5. On-page Is Getting Messier

I keep wanting to write a post on Google’s recent advice about pagination (and rel=prev/next), but then I get so angry I’m afraid I might turn green and start fighting alongside Iron Man – not that that wouldn’t be awesome. The problem isn’t that they’re wrong (although I think the advice is horribly over-generalized and often ineffective), but that they’ve put a tremendous burden on webmasters. Implementing a proper canonicalization + pagination scheme on a dynamic site with hundreds of thousands of pages is incredibly complicated, and requires not only substantial development resources but stellar communications between the SEO and dev teams (if you’re lucky enough to actually have teams of both). Add in HTML5, schemas, and the whole mess of other new options, and it’s only going to get more complicated.

6. Check Your Headers

Sorry, that wasn’t particularly helpful, so here’s an easy tip. When something isn’t going right and you don’t know why, check your page headers. Job #1 is to make sure that crawlers see what you see (or think you see). It’s unbelievable how often a problem comes down to a bad redirect, status code, or other crawler accessibility issue. There are tons of header checkers, from web-based to bookmarklets – I still use this header checker over at SEOBook.

7. Use Basic Tools Well

There are some great SEO tools out there, but I see the same issue in SEO that I do in writing, time management, and basically every single 21st-century human endeavor. We’re so busy chasing shiny new tools and the perfect app that we don’t bother to learn how to use any of those tools effectively. You can go a long way with a solid header checker, Google’s “site:” operator, a link analyzer (like our own Open Site Explorer) and a desktop crawler (I highly recommend Screaming Frog, but Xenu is still great, too). Master the “site:” operator and learn how to use it with “inurl:” and “intitle:”, and it’s amazing how many on-page problems you can diagnose. Stop chasing every new tool and learn how to use a handful really well. You’ll save a lot of time, money, and holes in your drywall.

8. Learn When to Be Patient

Patience may be the toughest skill any good SEO eventually has to learn. There are times when you’ll need to react quickly to a problem, especially a technical problem (like a bad redirect or site outage). There’s a fine line between reacting and over-reacting, though. One of the most common mistakes I see in technical SEO is when someone makes a change, it doesn’t immediately improve their rankings 24 hours later, and so they revert it or make another change on top of it. Even if it doesn’t make the problem worse (and it usually does), you’ll never be able to measure which change worked. Make sure your changes went live, that Google has acknowledged them (i.e. crawled and cached), and that you can measure the impact or lack of impact. Don’t change your strategy overnight based on bad information (or no information).

9. Stop Scheming & Get to Work

This post was originally “8 Lessons…”, but when I wrote #4 I got so annoyed that I had to follow it up with maybe the most important SEO lesson I can teach you. Are you ready? Here it is (warning: this may be inappropriate for younger readers)…

The most frequent excuse I hear in Q&A is “I don’t have time to…” Let me ask you something. Isn’t this your business we’re talking about? Isn’t it your livelihood? Isn’t it the thing that puts food on your table and clothes on the backs of your children? You’d better damned well find the time. If 80% of your traffic is coming from Google, and you don’t “have the time” to do the hard work of improving your product, creating unique content, and participating in your industry, then here’s the simple truth: no blog post is going to save you.

DisplaySearch Senior Analyst Richard Shim says that super high-resolution 13.3-inch and 15.4-inch panels that Apple would be a prime candidate to use are already available from suppliers.

“We’re seeing it at 15.4 (inches),” Shim said in an interview yesterday. “You can get it.”

According to Shim, a Retina 15.4-inch display at 2880×1800 resolution for a density of 220 pixels per inch (ppi) currently costs approximately $160, a $92 increase over Apple’s estimated cost of $68 for the current display in the 15-inch MacBook Pro. In the smaller 13-inch MacBook Pro, a Retina display at 2560×1600 costs $134, a $65 premium over the display used in the current model.

Unaddressed is the 17-inch MacBook Pro, which would require a display of 3840×2400 and undoubtedly carry an even higher price premium over the current display. It is unclear, however, whether the 17-inch MacBook Pro will be receiving the same upgrades as the rest of the family at WWDC, as most rumors so far have pointed to only 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro models being in production. In addition, Apple has been rumored to be following the pattern of its transition to the unibody MacBook Pro design in moving the 17-inch model to the new form factor several months after its smaller siblings.

Shim notes that with these Retina resolution displays available in the supply chain, Apple is the most likely customer for the screens, although he has been unable to confirm what company or companies are purchasing them for use in their computers.

Also unclear is how Apple will handle the cost increase associated with the Retina displays. While some cost savings will be achievable by the removal of the optical drive, Apple will almost certainly see increased costs for storage as the MacBook Pro reportedly moves from traditional hard drives to solid-state drives. While such drives are used in the lower-priced MacBook Air models, higher-end users expected to be drawn to the MacBook Pro will likely demand higher-capacity drives at significantly greater costs. Consequently, it will be interesting to see how Apple ends up pricing the redesigned MacBook Pro given all the changes involved.

Retina +100No DVD -100

And we are good to go

Apple could easily afford to bite the bullet on this and only have a 10% margin instead of a 30% margin while they wait for prices to drop.

I seriously doubt they will, though. They’ll probably let the margin drop 5% or so in the interest of keeping their prices roughly where they are.

Retina +100No DVD -100

And we are good to go

Isn’t that DVD drive worth under $20?I hope there is a matte option with this new display.We’re talking about the company that charges $200 for 4GB extra RAM here I doubt they’ll absorb the costs.I think $100 would be fairly reasonable for a screen of that quality

I hope there is a matte option with this new display.

THIS.

Those glossy MIRROR screens are AWFUL.

I saw and played with the new iPad and the retina display was not a mayor factor at all.

I have an original iPad and a new iPad and I respectfully disagree.

Isn’t that DVD drive worth under $20?

Yes.

Except that the DVD drive is ~$30

No, that’s too much.

A consumer can buy an OEM slim DVD-RW burner for $30. Apple is paying much less, probably in the neighborhood of $12-15 per unit.

If all these mumbo jumbos are true, this is the best Apple and Windows laptop ever forged. $100 in part cost != $100 markup.

It’s understood Mark conducts business in a zephyr-like fashion.  “I met with Mark on a Friday afternoon.  By Sunday night, we’d signed papers and announced the deal on Monday,” states Paul Buchheit of Instagram who is now involved in Y Combinator, but sold FriendFeed to Facebook in 2009.

In one vein, some could see Zuck’s fast and furious acquisition as capricious; yet, in modern times, being quick on the draw enables brands to keep pace and a leg up on competitors.  Buchheit contrasted Zuck’s style to that of traditional brands that let decisions ferment before taking physical action.  It seems when Zuck sees something he wants, he goes after it, regardless of time passed.

Two years ago, Zuck wanted Foursquare.  The latter camp decided it was too soon to merge.  Zuck couldn’t get what he initially wanted, the entire Foursquare; so, alternatively, he got one of its components, a software engineer who’s now working on similar projects for Facebook.

The New York Times author, Jenna Wortham, believes we can likely predict future FB behavior if we consider Zuck’s temperament against the makeup of recently acquired brands.  For instance, Tagtile is a customer loyalty service.  It’s projected that Facebook will be more aggressive regarding coupons in the near future.

Actually, the notion of assuming Zuckerberg is immature due to his clothing, hoods the fact that he seems to be pretty savvy at recruiting for his team.  As referenced above, Zuck not only acquires other companies, he’s strategic in garnering staff members.

Let’s review some facts.  Last April, Zuck brought on the founders of Daytum.    Six months later, FB rolled out its timeline.  Recently, Facebook hired Wilson Miner and Elizabeth Windram; some believe the workers’ expert skills will be used to aesthetically boost ‘the Book’s’ mobile applications.  As one analyst observes, Zuck’s acquisitions are more about talent.  It makes sense; with the talent, Zuckerberg can pretty much replicate or stem-off of technologies and make them ‘his own.’

Facebook has over 800 million users worldwide, yet the number of new users is slowing down in America.  Facebook hopes the acquisition of Glancee, a social discovery app, can change those dynamics.  A similar social service alerts people of others ‘of common interests/friends’ via smart phone alerts, hopefully facilitating the process of friend making.

While all the hoopla centers on his hood I believe Zuckerberg is a savvy entrepreneur in sheep’s clothing.

The iPhone was initially offered with unlimited data plans when it launched on Verizon early last year, but the carrier soon dropped the unlimited option in favor of data plans with allocations of data.

Fierce Wireless has the details, quoting Verizon Communications CFO Fran Shammo at a JP Morgan conference:

As these 3G unlimited data plan customers migrate to 4G LTE, they will have to purchase the company’s data-share plan (which Verizon plans to launch in mid-summer) and move off the $30 per month unlimited data plan. “Everyone will be on data share,” Shammo said.

Verizon currently throttles its unlimited data users only when a particular cell tower is overloaded, whereas competitor AT&T slows its unlimited users after they use 3GB of data in a month. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson recently noted that his one regret about bringing the iPhone to AT&T was offering unlimited data.

Sprint, the number three carrier in the country — and the only carrier to still offer unlimited data packages for the iPhone — has said it will continue to offer unlimited data plans for the iPhone, even if the next iPhone includes LTE, as is expected.

The iPhone was initially offered with unlimited data plans when it launched on Verizon several years ago,

It was 15 months ago, not several years.How to cheat on your customers:

1. Sell them unlimited data plans.

2. End unlimited data plans, but tell those who already have them, that contracts will be respected = grandfathered.

3. Fu$$ it! Who cares! End grandfathering and break contracts. All grandparents must die one day anyway.

For the record: I don’t have an unlimited data plan. But it annoys me anyway to see how cell phone break their word to others. Cell phone cartel keeps prices at twice the price level anybody else in the world pays.

Where is the government investigation into price fixing at cell phone companies?

As expected.

If AT&T follows suite – it will just make my switch to T-Mobile a lot easier as the one thing keeping me is unlimited data.

Not a matter of “if”.jeez what is the point

why dont these mobile companies spend money on expanding their networks rather than trying to out advertise the other guy

really wish Apple would start its own network …

So you get this LTE capability, then you are screwed when you use it?

Bring back the land line!!!

Verizon has cast the first stone.

I’m awaiting AT&T’s announcement next week.

The world is going backwardsDoes this mean a person can switch without paying a early termination fee since the contract has changed ?That makes my decision on whether I’ll keep VZW much easier.If I switch today from my iPhone 4S to a 4G LTE android device, I will still be grandfathered in to unlimited data. When the next iPhone comes out with 4G LTE, I wonder if I can switch to it and keep the same unlimited 4G data plan? I think the problem is if you wait until these new shared data plans are online and switch from 3g to 4g… that’s when you would lose unlimited.

Knowledge Graph? “Graph” is a technical term used to describe how a set of objects are connected. Google has used a “link graph” to model how pages link to each other, in order to help determine which are popular and relevant for particular searches. Facebook has used a “social graph” understand how people are connected. “Knowledge Graph” is Google’s term for how it is building relationships between different people, places and things and report facts about these entities.

Big Change, Subtle Appearance

Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal wrote about the coming change. At the time, I felt what was described seemed more an extension of things Google had already been doing rather than a dramatic shift. Now having seen it first-hand, I stand corrected. The WSJ had it right. This is indeed a big change in line with other major launches like Search Plus Your World last January and Universal Search in 2007.

Big change, but I don’t think it’ll be a shocking change to most Google users who will begin seeing it over the coming days on Google.com, if they’re searching in US English.

Google will still look largely the same as it does now. Knowledge Graph information flows into new units — they have no official name (and I did ask), so I’ll call them “knowledge panels.” These panels appear to the right of Google’s regular results, rather than disrupt those familiar links:

Knowledge panels don’t always appear, only showing up only when Google deems them relevant. But when Google does think they’re relevant, they’re a pretty cool search exploration tool. When the head of Google Search, Amit Singhal, let me play with the new system following his keynote talk at our SMX London show yesterday, I couldn’t help but think of it like a form of StumbleUpon or channel surfing for search.

Fact Surfing

A search for Star Trek brought up a panel that included a reference to Star Trek: Voyager, my favorite of all the series. Jumping to explore that, the Voyager box included a reference to Babylon 5, another favorite sci-fi show of mine. Jumping to that box, there was a reference to Claudia Christian, who wonderfully played one of the main characters in Babylon 5, Susan Ivanova. I surfed over for a look.

If you’ve ever started reading a Wikipedia page and then gotten lost jumping from one topic to another, that’s the experience I think many are about to discover with Google. You’ll not only discover answers to factual questions, but you’ll likely quickly explore more than you had planned and have fun doing it.

3.5 Billion Facts About 500 Million Objects

Google says it has compiled over 3.5 billion facts, which include information about and relationships between 500 million objects or “entities,” as it sometimes calls them. In general, entities are persons, places and things. You know, nouns.

In particular, these are just some of the categories of objects Google has facts about:

Actors, Directors, Movies
Art Works & Museums
Cities & Countries
Islands, Lakes, Lighthouses
Music Albums & Music Groups
Planets & Spacecraft
Roller Coasters & Skyscrapers
Sports Teams

Again, those are just some of the categories. The relationships are also as important as the facts. The relationships allow the Knowledge Graph to know which actors to list for a particular movie or which spacecraft have visited  a planet.

The Most Popular Facts

How do you keep from getting overwhelmed with useless facts? Google picks out the facts for each object that are most sought in relation to that object.

“We are showing all the things that people look for in a given query,” Singhal told me.

Consider these two knowledge panels, one for Simpson’s creator Matt Groening, the other for architect Frank Lloyd Wright (you can click to enlarge):

For both, you’re told when they were born and where they were educated. After that, the remaining facts shown differ.

Only Groening has facts about his parents and siblings listed. Why? Look closely at the names: Margaret (Marge), Homer, Lisa. Groening named characters after his own family. Looking at searches related to Groening, Google can tell these are commonly sought answers.

For Groening, the books he’s authored are listed. For Wright, his famous buildings are. That makes sense. People are far more interested in structures by Wright than by books by him. Indeed, Google’s autocomplete suggestions — which are based on the most popular terms related to a core search topic — reflect this:

I found it fascinating to see what was shown, as I ran through various classes of searches. For Disneyland, popular rides were shown. For a ride like Space Mountain, the duration was shown (really, only 3 minutes?). For an astronaut, I was shown the missions and overall time they’d spent in space (how cool to have that as a fact about yourself). For Buckingham Palace, the size of floor space was listed. For Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg, their estimated net worth was shown.

Each knowledge panel has a “People also search for” area at the bottom which lists related people, places or things. Again, the relationships are determined by looking at search data. People who search for Groening, for example, often search for David X. Cohen, who co-created Futurama with Groening.

For search marketers, or anyone interested in how people search, these panels have become another great discovery resource along with keyword research tools like Google Trends, Google Insights, Google Correlate or the AdWords Keyword Tool.

Facts But Not Actions

One thing I found lacking was that the knowledge panels I saw often lacked links to let people take actions related to these objects. For example, one of the popular things people want in relation to Buckingham Palace is to book tickets for tours. However, the panel had no options for this.

In contrast, the new “Snapshots” announced (but still about a week from going live) as part of Bing’s relaunch last week are heavy on trying to help people do things like book tickets or reservations.

Why not have actions?

“We will, of course, explore that, but right now, we just want to take it out and see how it works,” Singhal said.

Occasionally you can take actions via the links to some of the source providers of facts, as with some music searches that might credit Songkick or StubHub.

Which Andromeda Did You Mean?

For some searches, there may be more than one entity that Google has facts for related to a search. In these cases, rather than make the wrong guess, Google will put up a “See results box” as shown below for Andromeda:

Andromeda could mean, in Google’s Knowledge Graph, the galaxy, the TV show or the Swedish band. This box, also known as a disambiguation box, allows people to make the right choice.

Where Do The Facts Come From?

How does Google know any of these facts? Google Squared was an initial attempt in 2009 to extract facts from the web. Google still has that technology, but the service was never that impressive on accuracy and closed as standalone site last year.

Rather, it was Google’s purchase of Metaweb in 2010 that really jump-started the Knowledge Graph. Metaweb was building both the relationships and, though Freebase, a database of facts.

Since that time, Singhal said Google’s massively grown the fact database. Contributions happen with Freebase, but data also comes from publicly-available sources like Wikipedia and The CIA World Factbook and even information out of Google Books. Beyond that, Google also licenses data from others.

“Wherever we can get our hands on structured data, we add it,” Singhal said.

Fixing Bad Data

Drawing from Wikipedia and other public sources means that there’s no guarantee that the facts are accurate. That’s why the knowledge panels on Google all have a “Report a problem” link at the bottom.

If you click on that, you can then indicate if any particular fact is incorrect. Singhal said that Google will use a combination of computer algorithms and human review to decide if a particular fact should be corrected

If Google makes a change, the source provider is told. This mean, in particular, Wikipedia will be informed of any errors. It doesn’t have to change anything, but apparently the service is looking forward to the feedback.

“They really are excited about it. They get to get feedback from a much bigger group of people,” Singhal said.

Will Publisher Traffic Drop?

Search engines have increasingly moved toward showing direct answers in their results over the years. Such efforts have worried some publishers, leaving them wondering if they’ll be left out of receiving search traffic. After all, if search engines provide answers right within their results, why would anyone click away?

Google’s Knowledge Graph is going to massively increase the number of direct answers shown, which will almost certainly renew concerns.

Singhal’s response is that publishers shouldn’t worry. He said that most of these types of queries, Google has found, don’t take traffic away from most sites. Part of this seems to be that the boxes encourage more searching, which in turn still eventually takes people to external sites.

Still, some are going to lose out, he admits. But he sees that as something that was going to happen inevitably, anyway, using a “2+2″ metaphor. If people are searching for 2+2, why shouldn’t Google give a direct answer to that versus sending searchers to a site? By the way, Google does do math like this already and has for years.

Below, you can hear Singhal talk more about this when asked by a member of the audience at SMX London yesterday:

My concern is what happens if publishers have compiled great information that someone at Wikipedia or Freebase harvests into a database. For example, if a Disneyland fan site has organized a list of ride durations by doing original legwork, what credit do they get if that data is used? Facts can’t be trademarked, at least in the US, so anyone can help themselves assuming they don’t duplicate the exact format or presentation.

Google does list credit links to places like Wikipedia. In turn, Wikipedia does give credit (albeit in a way that doesn’t help search rankings) to the sources it draws from. But that puts actual source material two clicks away from the searcher, assuming the searcher wants to go beyond the fact they already received.

This is one that has to be watched closely. As I wrote before, it seems likely the Knowledge Graph will impact a relatively small set of sites that focus on facts, sites that already likely exposing answers in their listing descriptions and so not getting traffic anyway. But we’ll see.

It’s also important to remember that the “main” results aren’t disappearing. Consider again the Frank Lloyd Wright search, this time with the knowledge panel in context with the regular results:

As you can see, links to sites outside of Google remain to the left and in the most viewed area of a search results page.

Being Included

What if you want to be part of the new knowledge panels and Knowledge Graph in general? Singhal said that at the moment, there’s no mechanism designed for sites to do this. IE, if you run a site about Frank Lloyd Wright, there’s no way to be associated as some type of suggested source for the Frank Lloyd Wright panel.

Potentially, you could head over Freebase, open an account and contribute. Of course, I’m pretty sure adding your blog to a horrible list of blogs like this isn’t going to help. Maybe other categories might be more successful, but I’d hold off, for the moment.

Tagging parts of your pages with commonly used schema might be helpful, though I wouldn’t do this solely in hopes of getting your facts into the Knowledge Graph. The articles below have more about using schema:

Ads, Mobile & Tablet Formats

Anyone familiar with Google’s ads will immediately wonder what happens when the panel shows.

Singhal said that if there are also ads along with a knowledge panel for any search, the ads will still display. Google also has different formats for when a query has a few, many or no ads. I haven’t seen these, but I’ll try to update as they become visible after the launch.

In addition, Google also uses special formats to make the panels work well on tablet and mobile devices, he said. They aren’t restricted to just desktop search, so that’s good news for those of you who want an easier time to cheat at pub and bar quiz nights.

Sadly, there’s no way to just search the Knowledge Graph directly. It only appears with regular Google Search.

The Competition

Google’s not alone in having a knowledge graph, of course. Wolfram Alpha, launched in 2009, has continued to refine its service. It got a big boost being picked as a search partner by Apple to help power Siri (even though that recently embarrassed Apple on a particular search about smart phones).

As for Bing, it has a partnership with Wolfram Alpha plus owns Powerset technology that, somewhat similar to the Knowledge Graph, tries to deeply understand the meanings of words, rather than just really match patterns of letters.

But Bing hasn’t really seemed to capitalize on either its Wolfram partnership nor Powerset. Really, the Knowledge Graph seems to be going more head-to-head with Wolfram Alpha. Does it?

“Wolfram is far more computational,” Singhal said, explaining that Wolfram Alpha’s goal seems to be finding ways that you can effectively use facts in computations.

For example, you can enter cars in california / california population into Wolfram Alpha to have it take those two facts and come up with an average (about 1 car for every two people, by the way, using 2009 data).

Google’s not trying to perform these types of calculations. The focus is instead on providing popular facts.

The Future

The big picture, of course, is that some day the Knowledge Graph won’t just be used for facts. Instead, if Google can better tag actual web pages to entities, then it can better understand what those pages are about and related to, which might increase the relevancy of its regular results.

That’s down the line, as are many other changes to the knowledge panel themselves. Today represents only a start.

“This is just a baby step, in my view, to expose this to our users,” Singhal said.

To learn more about the Google Knowledge Graph, see coverage from others across the web organized here on Techmeme, the official Google blog post, plus the official video, below:

Related Articles

“It looks like Apple doesn’t want to see Samsung and hynix dominate the chip market. Apple wants to maintain its bargaining power by keeping Elpida running,” said Choi Do-yeon, an analyst at LIG Investment & Securities.

Elpida filed for bankruptcy in late February, and Micron has emerged as a likely acquirer for the company. The combined Micron-Elpida would be a strong competitor in the DRAM market, sparking concerns for others in the competitive industry.

DRAM, the volatile memory used to hold active applications and other data for use while a device is in operation, is a commodity in the consumer electronics market, with Apple routinely sourcing from multiple suppliers and shifting orders to achieve the best pricing.

Headline’s a bit misleading, samsung hasn’t taken a “$10 billion hit”.

Headline’s a bit misleading, samsung hasn’t taken a “$10 billion hit”.

How is it misleading? It specifically says Samsung’s market cap, which is indeed what dropped by $10 billion.

How is it misleading? It specifically says Samsung’s market cap, which is indeed what dropped by $10 billion.

errrRead it wrong.If this is true and Apple goes with more vendors then samsung has something more to worry about.

Good for Apple and Elpida. Especially good for Micron if they do acquire Elpida.

Diversity!