Ironpaper Current: Web design, online marketing, internet news, security and business online

Posts Tagged ‘search’

Google China Closes After Censorship Talks Fail

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

Today google.cn is no longer active. Google has closed it’s China site after talks about removing the censorship requirement for the China site failed. Instead, the Google.cn domain now redirects to google.com.hk, the Hong Kong site, which does not have censored search results.

Google.com.hk will offer uncensored Chinese-language search services. These services will most probably not be available very long to Chinese citizens living in mainland China–as the Chinese government will mostly certainly block unfiltered search sites.

This move by Google represents a strong statement by the search industry leader against the Chinese Government. In addition to opposing censorship, Google has also claimed that the Chinese Government may be behind the hacker attacks against it’s Gmail service and numerous other US companies recently. The Chinese Government deny any involvement.

Google News Launches Fast Flip

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Fast Flip is a horizontal scrolling tool that was recently added to Google News. This tool allows a user to scroll through visual thumbnails of source news websites and quick filter the options based on a set of predefined criteria such as “Most viewed,” “recent,” or top search interests such as “Glenn Beck” or “fishing.”

The tool was designed to allow users to read the news stories online in the way they would in print–providing a related visual experience.

Fast Flip was introduced to the Google Labs back in September (2009) and appeared to be based on technology very similar to Searchme or Viewzi.

News Corp To Use Microsoft To Pull It’s Content From Search Engines

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

Rupert Murdoch has initiated a series of meetings Microsoft to discuss pulling it’s News Corp websites from search engines. Not too long ago, Rupert Murdoch told Google that it nolonger wanted content from websites owned by New Corp (The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, 20th Century Fox, Fox News, and Hulu) listed within Google and other search engines that profit in any way from the content. Murdoch believes Google is partially responsible for the industry’s increasing financial troubles.

web-based news content

Announcement: New content page: Website technology and design

AOL Is Not Pulling Enough Revenue From Google Ads

Friday, November 13th, 2009

One third of AOL’s revenue is generated from Google Ads. More dramatic than that number, one half of AOL Media’s (AOL’s online publishing division) revenue comes from Google Ads. This revenue is high-margin with little direct cost, which makes it highly valuable to the company.

AOL is having quite a challenge trying to move the company in a positive direction. Now, AOL is faced with a new and quite severe challenge–the revenue coming from the Google Ads is shrinking.

From SEC reports, AOL’s year over year revenue is down 24%.

World Bank Data Added To Google Results

Friday, November 13th, 2009

Google recently added World Bank data to their search results. Now, you can compare the US to other countries using an interactive chart and specific figures. The goal of Google’s effort is to make public information more usable and findable.

Web search data - internation statistics - World Bank

The data provided by the World Bank displays 17 key indicators, including population growth, gross national product, fertility rate, and energy use.

One obvious implementation of the World Bank data will appear at the top of search results of certain topics and displayed in a chart format with some text information.

New Google Search Patent For Query, Click Patterns

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Google was awarded a new patent for a formula that modifies search results based on query patterns and aggregated click results. When people conduct related searches resulting in a click on a specific page, this formula will help to score sites higher when this action is repeated by a group conducting related searches. This patent helps identify that Google is giving more preference to sites that gain clicks from a broad audience looking for related topics. There will be a concern for this formula to be manipulated fairly easily. In addition, just because Google received this patent does not mean that it has been implemented within their ranking factors. They could simply be trying to claim this method as their own.

Sergey Brin Thinks It’s A Shame Yahoo Abandoned Search

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

In a Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco, Sergey Brin stated that he feels it is a shame that Yahoo has abandoned search. “Yahoo had a number of interesting innovations there, and I wish they could have remained in search” Brin said at the conference. Brin believes that competition is healthy in the search industry. Yet, Microsoft asserts that it will fill the innovation gap.

Google Maps Now Supports Bulk Listing Verification

Saturday, September 19th, 2009

Until now, business owners who wanted to bulk register multiple business listings at once would have to verify them individually.

There are certain guidelines in order to qualify for the bulk registration process:
1.) Accurate and up-to-date data 2.) Minimum of 10 bulk uploaded listings already in business owners’ Local Business Center account 3.) Compliance with Google Local Business Center Quality Guidelines 4.) Submitted by the owner of all businesses listed 5.) All businesses have only been submitted by a single user

Google occasionally reviews its listings and if the listings do not meet their criteria, then the listing get demoted to “unverified.”

Google Search Panel Options Now Include Books

Friday, September 18th, 2009

When you conduct a search on Google, there is a link just above the search query results that says “Show Options.” Clicking on that link will display a left sidebar to provide filters for the search results before you. The filtering options include: images, videos, dates, etc.

Google has been committing serious investment in its Books program–from legal defense to the purchase of companies that own potential enhancement technologies.

The latest update for Google’s Book program is the introduction of the filter “Books” under “View options” filtering tools.

Google web design updates - search filters

Hitwise Tells The Tale Of Holiday Interest For Free Shipping

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

Experian CheetahMail and Hitwise released a whitepaper on the subject of email offers and search with offers of free shipping. The paper documented search trends for the queries involving “free shipping” over the holiday seasons. The search data demonstrates a level of interest during the holiday season for free shipping offers.

data hitwise shippinginfo

Source: Hitwise @ http://weblogs.hitwise.com, September 15, 2009