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| Google Testing to Bring Search to TV |
(Tue, 09 Mar 2010)
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 Just when you thought Google couldnt possibly find a new avenue for their search engine, along comes Google TV. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is testing a new television...
...programming search service in conjunction with Dish Network.
Details on the project are a little sketchy so far as Google has not officially announced anything. However we do know that the service is currently in a limited testing stage and the Wall Street Journal explains more:
"The service"which runs on TV set-top boxes using elements of Googles Android operating system"allows users to search content from Dish as well as other Web video, like YouTube, and to personalize a lineup of shows, according to these people.
Viewers can search by typing on a keyboard, instead of using a remote control. Google hopes to link the service up with its nascent TV ad-brokering business, allowing it to target ads to individual households based on viewing and TV search data."
This isnt the first time that Google has delved into the TV space. Back in 2008, Google TV Ads were launched as an alternative advertising medium for AdWords advertisers. While adoption of these ads has been a little slow, Google obviously sees the potential in TV.
What do you think about the possibility of having Google on your TV? Let us know your thoughts below.
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| Goodbye SearchWiki, Hello Starred Results |
(Tue, 09 Mar 2010)
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 Google has announced they are dumping their SearchWiki feature and replacing it with a new feature called Starred Results. Starred results are basically a stripped down version of SearchWiki...
..., which will let users bookmark specific search results so that they appear at the top of the page for related searches.
SearchWiki was Googles first attempt at offering personalized search results by allowing users to re-order organic results, remove listings and make comments on the search results page. Heres what it looked like:
As mentioned above, this has now been replaced by starred results that will appear above and separate from Googles organic results. This was noted by Google as a learning they gathered from the year long SearchWIki trial,
"In our testing, we learned that people really liked the idea of marking a website for future reference, but they didnt like changing the order of Googles organic search results."
Heres an example of how starred results will appear for searchers,
Starred results will work across various Google sites, so you may see starred results in Google maps showing up for searches on Google.com. Starred results will show as long as a user is signed into their Google account, and will not carry any SEO impact.
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| Google Public Data Explorer Now Live |
(Tue, 09 Mar 2010)
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 Last year, Google released a new search function which allows users to sift through global public data. Now before any of you get concerned with Privacy " this isnt your personal stats and...
...online data - its more generic public information. Heres an excerpt from the release post last year.
We just launched a new search feature that makes it easy to find and compare public data. So for example, when comparing Santa Clara county data to the national unemployment rate, it becomes clear not only that Santa Claras peak during 2002-2003 was really dramatic, but also that the recent increase is a bit more drastic than the national rate:
This video gives a quick summary on how it works:
Google has now released the Public Data Explorer into Google Labs.
Google Public Data Explorer takes the enormous amount of data available and provides useful visualization capabilities " helping users make sense of the stats.
This information is only useful if its easy to access, understand and communicate. Thats why today were also releasing the Google Public Data Explorer in Labs, a new experimental product designed to help people comprehend data and statistics through rich visualizations.
To give you some idea of what information people are researching in the Public Data search, Google has released its top search topics are. Heres the Top 10:
1. School comparisons
2. Unemployment
3. Population
4. Sales tax
5. Salaries
6. Exchange rates
7. Crime statistics
8. Health statistics (health conditions)
9. Disaster statistics
10. Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
For the numbers and stats buffs, theyll love the data thats available in the database. I recommend heading over and having a dig around the data.
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| How Google Creates Most Of Their Products |
(Tue, 09 Mar 2010)
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 The Pingdom blog consistently puts out top notch content, so I was surprised when I missed the infographic they created 2 weeks ago which was all about Google Facts and figures.
Here are a few highlights from the graphic below:
- Google gave 1.8 million shares to Stanford University for the exclusive license of PageRank
- 620 Million Visitors go to Google.com Daily
- 50% of Google's products originated from "20% Time"
- 270,000 words written per minute on Blogger
- There are 146 Million Gmail Users
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| Finally, Shared Site Ownership Is Possible |
(Tue, 09 Mar 2010)
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 Finally, shared site ownership is possible without having to go through the meta tag or HTML file verification process.
The Google Webmaster Central Blog has mentioned that a verified user can add new users by going to the Verification Details page or the Verification home page.
That (Verification Details page) page will show you information about the site as well as a list of any other verified owners. At the bottom of the list of owners, you'll now see a button labeled "Add a user". Click that, enter the user's email address, and that person will instantly become a verified owner for the site! You can remove that ownership at any time by clicking the "Unverify" link next to the person's email address on the Details page.
The new process requires at least one owner who has verified through the meta tag or HTML file. If all of the directly verified owners become unverified, the delegated owners become unverified too.
One more point to note is that the delegated members will have exactly the same access as you have. So, delegation has to be made carefully.
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| Google Ranking News Video |
(Tue, 09 Mar 2010)
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 I came across this while stumbling stuff for a Spanish language site that I am working on and found it extremely interesting. There is a lot in there, almost all you need to know if ...
...your familiar with SEO, on how to optimize for the news search portion of the site. Without any more hesitation, here we go. The video runs about 15 minutes, so make sure you have some time to devote to watching it, just hit read on to get to the video.
Google News Ranking Factor Video from Google Employee explains the factors both positive and negative that go into ranking news items, whether its on Google Web search or separately on Google News Search:
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| Check Your SEO With Google's New Report Card |
(Tue, 09 Mar 2010)
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 Google is getting serious about optimizing its own product sites. The new *Google SEO Report Card* is an extensive analysis of more than 100 main pages of Google products.
The report is the outcome of an internal exercise to improve these pages from both search engines and user's perspective. Google has made the report public hoping that companies and webmasters will learn from it. The report provides suggestions and examples for fixing the issues, which range from broken links and URL structure to titles/metas and on-page content.
The project looked at the main pages of 100 different Google products, measuring them across a dozen common optimization categories. Future iterations of the project might look at deeper Google product web pages as well as international ones./
You can leave your feedback at the Webmaster Central Help Forum.
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| Check Your SEO With Google's New Report Card |
(Tue, 09 Mar 2010)
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Google is getting serious about optimizing its own product sites. The new *Google SEO Report Card* is an extensive analysis of more than 100 main pages of Google products.
The report is the outcome of an internal exercise to improve these pages from both search engines and user's perspective. Google has made the report public hoping that companies and webmasters will learn from it. The report provides suggestions and examples for fixing the issues, which range from broken links and URL structure to titles/metas and on-page content.
The project looked at the main pages of 100 different Google products, measuring them across a dozen common optimization categories. Future iterations of the project might look at deeper Google product web pages as well as international ones./
You can leave your feedback at the Webmaster Central Help Forum.
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| Google Acquires Picnik |
(Tue, 09 Mar 2010)
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 In great news for Seattle Startups, Picnik gets picked up by Google in some interesting MandA activity, because everyone is going to be thinking of Flickr and SmugMug being right in...
... the sights of Google. Online photo editing and storage just hit an air pocket.
Picnik was a clear winner in the Seattle 2.0 awards in 2009 (look for the 2010 awards as well, tickets are on sale here) because they are an awesome company with a cool software package suit that makes online photo editing and sharing very easy. With todays acquisition by Google, it is looking like Google is taking a direct shot at Flickr and SmugMug which are the two best properties for storing pictures online (in the case of Flickr) and photo editing which SmugMug allows you to do in a limited fashion.
From the Picnik Blog today:
"And all this leads us to todays exciting news: weve just been acquired by Google! What does this mean for Picnik? It means we can think BIG. Google processes petabytes of data every day, and with their worldwide infrastructure and world-class team, it is truly the best home we could have found. Under the Google roof well reach more people than ever before, impacting more lives and making more photos more awesome." Source: Picnik Blog
What happens from here should be interesting with Googles ability to search and parse image data, adding to this the easy way to store and process and share images will give Google a leg up in the picture sharing and management space that they did not have before. While I will stick with SmugMug, and continue to use Flickr for the occasional pictures, Google just landed heavily in the picture sharing, storage, and processing market, with one of the coolest suites of software out in the market place today.
Good for Picnik, good for Google, this is going to be hard on Flickr and SmugMug in the future.
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| New Google SERP? |
(Tue, 09 Mar 2010)
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According to posts on webpronews and search engine land, Google has expanded testing for their new search results page, which we first discussed back in November last year.
As we mentioned last year, the changes include a search options panel on the left hand side which helps navigate between different types of searches.
Search Engine Land has a great image which shows the differences between the original test last year and the new layout which has been recently uncovered.
While these are still minor changes on the previous version, the additional testing shows that Google is keen to push forward with the new layout and potentially roll it out later this year. This will give Google a three column layout which is similar to the look and feel of Bing and Ask.com.
It is interesting to see Google adding more elements to their SERPs pages, after recently going for the minimal, fade in approach on their homepage.
If youre already seeing these changes, let us know what you think via the comments below.
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