Net Questions

[eoinh]

How do search engines make money?



Is there any kind of device that that could turn what you are writing into typed words on the screen? Surely, its quite simple to turn something as you are writing into typed format? It would make reports etc so much easier to draft.

[UCD_4_Life]

Ads, probably.

Google has those "sponsored links" things and some sites may even pay Google/Yahoo/Whoever so as they come up first for a number of keywords. For instance type "Star Wars" and you'll always get the official website

Just some ideas, I could be wrong though.

[dahamsta]

How do search engines make money?

Most of the search engines rely on advertising, however profit margins are very tight on that at the moment. In recent times, some engines let users pay to increase their ranking, although some of them are quite opaque about this, making it hard to tell the difference between paid-for listings and regular listings, which can skew the results and make them less accurate. Others, like Google, mark paid-for listings (http://www.google.ie/ads/overview.html) clearly.

Google also pioneered AdWords (https://adwords.google.com/select/?hl=en) in the mainstream, where a user can choose keywords and have a small ad appear next to searches for those keywords. This is a bit like an auction, where the highest bidder gets the top spot. AdWord-type programs are appearing on other sites now, sometimes via Google, sometimes completely separately.

Another source of revenue is licencing their software. Infoseek was one company that used to do this, allowing you to download their search software and install it on your site so people could search it. Google have extended this a little, by selling search appliances (http://www.google.ie/appliance/index.html), machines with the Google software preinstalled that you install on your network to index a set number of pages.

Is there any kind of device that that could turn what you are writing into typed words on the screen?

Tablet PC's (http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Systems/Tablet_PCs/) are the latest incarnation of this, basically laptops with a screen that can swivel and fold back onto the keyboard to look a bit like a book. Microsoft's Tablet PC (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/tabletpc/default.asp) operating system has support for converting writing to text, but they'll admit themselves that it's a little rough at the moment; it also depends on how clear your writing it, obviously. That said, in a recent meeting with Microsoft a colleague tried it out on one of the MS lad's Tablet PC's, and it worked for his writing 100%.

adam

[eoinh]

Hmm interesting. It seem to be aimed more at note taking rather that full-scale report writing. It will be interesting to see how it develops in the future. Its annoying having to write pages and pages of stuff and then after youve finished type it into a pc.

[EireBadBoy]

It's all Porn-Relative! Us Mid-20's Male wasters (as I have already proven! :p ) like nothing better than a bit of EL Talk, Other Footy related talk, Breasts, Funny Links, Other Funny Links, A bit of Porn, Bizarre Web Sites that make us laugh, contact with Old friends....leading to, well Adult stuff.

Sad really, but long live the Net, I need never be seen buying grubby Mags again! And Google know it! :D

I wonder, do the people at Google check sometimes on searches and wonder what the hell someone is doing typing in 'Harry McCue' or 'Waterford Football Club'??? We've all been doing it, have'nt we..............

[dahamsta]

They have a massive screen in their lobby scrolling searches. Although I'd imagine they get a lot weirder than that.

adam

[UCD_4_Life]

Originally posted by Vetinari
They have a massive screen in their lobby scrolling searches. Although I'd imagine they get a lot weirder than that.

adam

I know someone who had his site found by someone typing "Spider Monkey F**k position". Which was strange.

Unless he's got some secret area on the site that he's not telling me about...;)