Search results for "Google"
Google News Updates Mobile Site for iPhone, Android, and Palm Pre
Google has made some enhancements to its mobile news site. The updates are just for the iPhone, Android, and Palm Pre. The look and feel is pretty much the same. What's new is more stories, sources, and images. A new "Jump to" link brings a pop up box offering quick access to a specific news category. Any personalizations you make on your desktop will be accessible via your mobile now, as well (as long as you're signed into the same account on both). Screenshots: News.Google.com on an iPhone Jump to...
Yahoo! Adds Tweets, Breaking News to News Shortcut
After announcements from Google and Bing about incorporating Twitter into their search results, Yahoo! is throwing hopping on the real-time results news bandwagon. Yahoo!'s Twitter integration is part of a new update when the News Shortcut is implemented in the search results. Yahoo! is also recognizing when there's breaking news and indicating as such on the News Shortcut. Here's a screenshot of a search for the space shuttle Atlantis shortly after launch earlier this week (per the Yahoo! Search blog): What do you think of these updates to the Yahoo! News shortcut? Let us know by leaving a comment below....
Google Tests Permanent Sidebar for Results, Blue Submit Buttons for Homepage
Lately, Google is experimenting more than Sheldon Cooper on their homepage - and now, also on their search results. They're testing a permanent left sidebar in their search results, which would turn the results into three columns: new sidebar, organic results, search ads. Hmm, this reminds us of Bing. And Bing reminded us of Ask's 3D design (which they've since abandoned). Additionally, after experimenting with removing the submit buttons on the homepage, now Google is bringing back the buttons and testing them with a new color: bright, primary blue. In the Google help forums, two screenshots of these experiments were...
YouTube Launches Automatic Captions; Great for Accessibility and Search
YouTube is introducing machine-generated automatic captioning to YouTube. The captions can also be translated. This obviously has incredible implications for the hearing-impaired and language translation. But it also has great implications for search. Automatic captions will be generated using Google's automated speech recognition (ASR) technology and the same voice recognition algorithms used in Google Voice. Additionally, auto-timing is being introduced. If you provide all the words in the video, Google will automatically time the captioning for you. Of course, having what essentially amounts to transcripts for online video means that the text can be crawled and indexed and then yes...
AdWords Creates Easier Access to Advanced Performance Data
When using AdWords, in order to access some advanced performance data, you had to create reports, which can be time consuming. AdWords is making access to certain data points easier by integrating them into the campaign management. For example, instead of running a placement performance report to manage automatic placements, you can use the "Networks tab." Instead of running a search query report, you can select the "See search terms" option under the Keywords tab. AdWords also recently introduced time-based segmentation. Use this to break down your data by day, week, month, or year to understand changes in your campaign's...
Boost eLearning Provides Course on New Google Search Features
Boost eLearning provides search training for organizations, so that employees can conduct efficient searches for their business research. Now, Boost eLearning has unveiled a new course featuring Google's new search features. The new course explores the new "show options" feature which allows searchers to filter their searches by time and type. "A large percentage of enterprise employees use Google for business research," said Victor D. Alhadeff, CEO of Boost eLearning. "Enterprises therefore gain significant benefits when they help employees learn a greater portion of Google's powerful search features. With a few minutes of easy online training dramatically improving both search...
iPerceptions Launches New Interactive Dashboard Compatible with Web Analytics Programs
iPerceptions has launched a new integrated web analytics solution called A&B Interactive Dashboard. The tool is designed to draw out behavioral and attitudinal data to provide marketers a clearer idea of what's drawing conversions and why. It's compatible with web analytics programs such as Google Analytics, Omniture, Coremetrics, and Web Trends. Stephanie Hamel, Director and Treasurer of the Web Analytics Association is calling the tool a "game changer." "Today, there is no simple way for companies to combine behavioral and attitudinal data without a tremendous amount of effort and cost," said Hamel. "Now, iPerceptions is offering a simple and easy-to-use...
Google Scholar Adds Legal Search for U.S. Federal and State Courts
Google Scholar is adding legal search to its offerings. This enables anyone to search the full texts of legal opinions given in U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts. Simply go to Google Scholar, select the radio button for "Legal Opinions and Journals" and then search your keyword. Here's how the results will look:...
FacteryLabs Launch FactRank Engine
The search industry has seen a lot of new engines developed moving towards a diversity of specific needs. Recently, "real time" search has been a hot topic with the use of social media in search. This week a new engine was launched by FacteryLabs - an search technology company founded by Paul Pedersen and Sean Gaddis who have worked at Google, Powerset, eBay, and Skype. The company has developed a FactFinder API that can be used to combine data from Twitter and Yahoo BOSS. The results I found for various searches may need some fine tuning but the product offers...
Google To Preview Chrome OS Thursday, Launch In New Year
Google has announced they will hold a preview of the Chrome OS this Thursday and the product will launch in the new year, according to the Washington Post. "Sundar Pichai, Google's VP of Product Management and Matthew Papakipos, Google Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS will be speaking at the event,: the newspaper reported. Rumors of the operating system have been around for much of the year and Thursday will be the first time the product will be shown with technical information and some demos. Did-It CEO Kevin Lee suggested some interesting ways to prepare Adwords for the OS launch....
Bing and Google Both Gain Half Point in October 2009 comScore Rankings
comScore has released their search market share rankings for October 2009 and the news is good for both Google and Bing - they both gained 0.5% in search share. This came at the expense of Yahoo! who lost 0.8% and AOL, which lost 0.1%. Ask.com stayed steady. After experiencing a slowdown in the rate of growth in September, Bing is back on the momentum it was gaining since launch last June. Bing has now gained 1.9% share since launch. At first, Bing's growth came at Google's expense. As of this new report, Google has recouped all losses, while Bing keeps...
Google Launches 'Image Swirl' Into Labs
Google is unveiling a new type of image search they're calling "Image Swirl." It's available as a limited preview in Google Labs. You can access the Image Swirl search here. Here's an example of what you'll see when you do. I did a search for "golden retrievers" and the initial page of results looks like this: Then, once you click on a result, you get this: Click on an individual pic and you'll, well, just get the thumbnail of that pic in a bubble: The preview is limited to 200,000 queries, and that will seem like a lot until you...
Google Replaces Some URLs with Site Hierarchies in Search Results
In Google's search results, they've always included the URL to the link associated with a given result. The URL is set in green text at the bottom of the result. Now, they're replacing some of those URLs with site hierarchies. Let's say you're searching for cat toys. Previously you may have seen: http://www.domain.com/example/cattoys Now you may see: Domain.com > Example > Cat Toys Here's an example as seen at the Official Google Blog: The root domain will always show. If the site's hierarchy is deep, you may see an elipses to represent skipped categories: Domain.com > .....>Example > Cat Toys...
Shaking My Head at Mark Cuban...
Mark Cuban has suggested that Microsoft simply pay sites to be removed from the Google index. This is his big idea to even the playing field and make search more competitive. This. simply. will. not. work. All that will happen is those sites will get less traffic. A LOT less traffic. No one will go to Bing to exclusively search 1,000 sites. The general public doesn't keep up with the politics of search enough to care about that kind of crap. They would just think that Microsoft is being a big evil corporation, and they'd turn on the publishers who...
Ask.com Sharpens Focus on Q&A
When Internet users conduct searches at Ask.com, they pose their keywords as questions three times more than any other search engine. So, it makes sense that Ask.com is focused on improving the Q&A experience on their site and on the web. Last summer, Ask launched a specific Q&A section with 300 million Q&A pairs in their database. They've recently reached the milestone of reaching 400 million Q&A pairs. Adding 100 million Q&A pairs in 5 months is impressive indeed. But Ask's focus on Q&A is not *just* about finding pairs and serving them up in search results. Ask.com has big...
Google Polishes Translate, Adds Features
Google has cleaned up Translate with a new look, and threw in a few new features for good measure: Translate as you type - The only problem with this is that any translator will tell you that langauges don't translate word for word. But this has always been a problem with computed translation, so it's not like the problem is worse with this or anything. Taking away the need to click a button feels like part of a greater strategy Google is testing, such as the recent homepage tests where the buttons under the text box were removed. Romanization of...
AOL Spinoff to Occur on December 9, 2009
Last spring, Time Warner announced that it would spin off AOL as an independent company. The announcement was made shortly after hiring Tim Armstrong away from Google as President. This fall, they've named members to the future Board of Directors and hired key financial executives needed to run the publicly traded company. Now, we know that AOL's independence day is December 9, 2009. All Time Warner stockholders as of 5pm on November 27, 2009 will receive 1 AOL share for every 11 shares of Time Warner. AOL has openly talked about their focus on content, in ways reminiscent of Yahoo!...
Revised Google Book Settlement Addresses Rightsholders Issues
The Google Book Settlement has finally been revised. There are two main changes that have been made: how the settlement pertains to other countries and unclaimed works. Here's Google's official statements on those two issues: International Scope: As revised, the settlement will only include books that were either registered with the U.S. Copyright Office or published in the U.K., Australia, or Canada. After hearing feedback from foreign rightsholders, the plaintiffs decided to narrow the class to include only these countries, which share a common legal heritage and similar book industry practices. British, Australian, and Canadian rightsholders are joining the case...
Fliqz Launches Online Video SEO Tool
Video solution provider Fliqz has announced the launch of a new online video search engine optimization (SEO) tool. The tool is dubbed SearchSuccess and Fliqz says that companies who tested the product are experiencing early success. A whopping two-thirds of the videos submitted by these early customers have reached first page Google rankings. 25% have seen the number one position. "SearchSuccess addresses many of the common flaws in existing Video SEO strategies," said Benjamin Wayne, CEO of Fliqz. "Many publishers are mistakenly under the impression that submitting videos to YouTube will drive traffic back to their site, or are working...
Google Updates API for SideWiki with RSS Capabilities
Back in September, Google launched Sidewiki. When you're using the Google Toolbar, you can access Sidewiki for any web page (that's been annotated with the tool). You'll see comments and notes about the site, as chosen and ranked by Google. Now, Google is updating the API for Sidewiki. With the update, you can now view new entries created for a Sidewiki page via RSS. If you're interested in developing with the Google Sidewiki API, check out the documentation here....
