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When Bing Went Dark: Lessons Learned Did you try to use Bing on 23 May? If so, you probably encountered some difficulties. Microsoft's search engine experienced a 24-hour outage, affecting not only Bing but also any search engine that relies on the Bing API, such as DuckDuckGo, Qwant, and Ecosia. Even search functionalities for ChatGPT and Copilot were down during this period. (See here, here and here) The wheat was separated from the chaff during the outage: Mojeek and Brave Search, for example, which claim to have their own indexes, apparently remained fully operational, underscoring their independence from Bing's infrastructure. This outage has vividly illustrated how vulnerable the global search ecosystem can be due to heavy reliance on just a few web indexes – and how important it is to build and promote independent alternatives. Search quality is another persistent issue. In our Reading Tips we introduce a study that explores whether the quality of Google search is really going downhill, as many people are saying these days. Additionally, we offer tips on where to find the latest statistics on the Open Web Index and an overview of recent research articles and findings. You'll also find behind-the-scenes looks at ows.eu and plenty of event recommendations. Happy reading – your ows.eu team!

Behind the Scenes Inside ows.eu

Strategising, socialising, shirts Hosted by Radboud University, the Midterm Consortium Meeting took place in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. For three days the OpenWebSearchEU partners gathered to finalise the roadmap for the second half of the project timeline. The agenda was packed with technical, legal, ethical and economic questions to tackle, and the team quickly got deep into discussing the current state of technical research and development for new web search solutions. Of course, there was also time to chat and socialise, and to show off the new OWSome project t-shirts that the Open Search Foundation had launched. The shirts were an instant hit, with many of the attendees eager to get their hands on one.

500 in five months! A reason to celebrate: In March, the ows.eu Mastodon account broke the 500-follower mark.  The account grew quickly, reaching half a thousand followers within five months of its launch in October last year. What a ride! Hats off to the Mastodon community!

Midterm Milestones In May, we had the opportunity to present our mid-term results to the European Commission during an 8-hour session. The discussions with the assigned review committee were engaging and covered various aspects, including technical, ethical, legal and societal issues. It was encouraging to see the committee's strong interest and emphasis not only on the technical and economic issues, but also on the ethical, legal and sustainability aspects of an Open Web Index. We are motivated and fully committed to start into the second half of the project!

Advancing Ethical Web Search In May, ows.eu team members joined the Open Search Foundation's ethics workshop in Bochum, Germany, to delve into #EthicsInSearch. This collaboration enriches ows.eu‘s research into ethical guidelines for web search and helps develop principles for an open web index. Thanks to a grant from the Centre for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS), three in-person workshops are possible this year—a fantastic opportunity! This session focused on applying key values to web search, preparing ethical assessments, and crafting risk scenarios with mitigation strategies. Big strides forward!

Dive deeper ows.eu Resources to Watch

OWLer Dashboard Watch current data, even live data, on OWLers progress. The OWLer dashboard gives an overview over the Open Web Index and provides prototype services on top of it. Obtain statistics and pre-computed sub-collections of the Open Web Index (so called Collection Indices), look up websites that have already been crawled or claim ownership of websites via the Open Console. >> OWLer Dashboard Research Articles and Deliverables Keep up to date with ows.eu‘s progress on the ows.eu website and access articles and deliverables on the Zenodo community page. Current topics are: Extracted external domains from Wikipedia dump Touché24-Image-Retrieval-and-Generation-for-Arguments Launch of the Pilot Infrastructure The OpenWebSearch WARC parsing & content analysis library Version 1.0 Webis Generated Native Ads 2024 A Comprehensive Dataset for Webpage Classification(3 parts) Dictionary of Location Names and Coordinates Touché23-ValueEval >> Research+Results >> ows.eu on Zenodo

Good Reads Media Picks

New study Is Google's search quality really going downhill?  A recent study by ows.eu project partner Webis Group analyses how affiliate content affects search results. Janek Bevendorff, Matti Wiegmann, Martin Potthast, and Benno Stein spent a year analysing 7,392 product review queries. In their paper, they investigate the common observation that “Google is getting worse” by examining its search results for their susceptibility to SEO-driven low-quality content along with those of other major search engines, and in comparison to baselines. They focused on product review search, which are thought to be particularly susceptible to affiliate marketing due to the inherent conflict of interest between users, search providers and content providers. Their findings suggest that product comparison sites and affiliate links are dominating search results pages, negatively impacting the quality of search results. This trend isn't limited to Google; Bing and DuckDuckGo have similar problems. And it seems that none of these major search engines are getting a handle on this kind of SEO spam. Is Google Getting Worse? A Longitudinal Investigation of SEO Spam in Search Engines In: In Advances in Information Retrieval. 46th European Conference on IR Research (ECIR 2024), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, March 2024. Springer.

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"I see the purpose of Open Web Search as being an invaluable investment in the future" An interview with Andreas Wagner, IT Solutions Architect at CERN, one of ows.eu’s project partners, published in the CERN Courier, the International Journal of High Energy Physics. Go to article

Proceedings #wows2024 The information & retrieval and #OpenWebSearch community came together in Glasgow at the first International Workshop on Open Web Search #wows2024, co-located with #ECIR2024 in March. The proceedings are now available. Go to #wows24 proceedings

Proceedings #ossym23 Volume five of the Proceedings of the International Open Search Symposium summarises peer-reviewed articles and research results selected and presented at the Open Search Symposium 2023 #ossym23. Go to #ossym23 proceedings

Mark Your Calendars Upcoming Events

6 July – 3 Nov 2024, Graz, Austria Building your own search engine at DigiDic Exhibition At the interdisciplinary exhibition, a team from ows.eu, led by Alexander Nussbaumer from Graz University of Technology, will contribute with a session on open web search and a workshop on "building your own search engine", making the project's research tangible. DigiDic – Call for Digital Self-Defence 6 July – 3 Nov 2024, Graz, Austria Contributions of ows.eu: 24 and 22 August More information: DigiDic Exhibition and Exhibition Objects

29 Sept, various locations + online Free Web Search Day 2024 #FWSD24 Every year Free Web Search Day reminds us of the important role of free internet access in our digital world. Many online and offline events are organised around web search and search engines. You can take part with your organisation and organise your own event or show your face in person. Stay tuned, we'll keep you up to date! Goto #FWSD24 website

21-23 October, Berlin, Germany EOSC Symposium 2024 #Unconference Session The community voted – and the ows.eu panel won! The 14 ows.eu consortium partners joint forces to pitch for an #Unconference Session at EOSC Symposium 2024.  “Findability in FAIR: touchpoints between EOSC and Open Web Search“: The session will address the importance of transparency and collaboration in the development of search applications and tools, and discuss how widening collaboration, beyond the EOSC ‘usual suspects’, may benefit the whole research community. The Unconference Session will take place as part of the EOSC Symposium 2024. Go to EOSC24 website

9-11 October, Munich, Germany 6th Open Search Symposium #ossym24 This year the open web search community will meet at Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Munich + online. Registration is open, the programme will be published step by step during the next weeks. Topics include: + Crawling, Data acquisition and pre-processing + Enrichment and Annotation + Applying Open Search technologies + IR / NLP + HPLT High Performance Language Technologies + Sustainability and energy efficiency + Artificial Intelligence (AI), LLM/RAG + Ethical and societal aspects of web search + Legal topics + Track on alternative search engines Go to #ossym24 website

How to engage Open Calls

NGI Search: 5th Open Call until 29 July Our sister project NGI search has launched Open Call #5. Get funded for your open source idea and create the next generation of websearching tools. Open Call #5 closes on 29 July 2024. Go to Open Call

Get to know OpenWebSearch.eu Meet the partners and team members of OpenWebSearch.EU Learn more about the ows.eu community program Check out the blog Stay up to date with the ows.eu Newsletter Find Publications and code packages on ows.eu ZENODO repository Get in touch and discuss ows@openwebsearch.eu LinkedIn Twitter/X Mastodon

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