Archive for the ‘Search Engines’ Category

AOL closes offices

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

AOL is closing the French and German offices in an attempt to reduce their global workforce. Two-hundred and forty jobs will be lost as a result of the closures. They were not able to meet their quota from a voluntary program put forth to employees.

Obama praising Google, Twitter, Facebook, iPhone but not Xbox

Monday, December 14th, 2009

President Barack Obama’s words in his recent speech to the school children in the United States didn’t seemed to be controversial especially to the tech companies and/or products mentioned to the new generation. Perhaps, there are good things being said and indirectly quoting a gadget for bad side.

Quoting from his prepared speech, President Obama said ‘I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.’ This gives negative impressions to Microsoft.

All other companies got praises as Obama quoted saying ‘Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.’

Obama also quoted for positive remarks for Apple’s iPhone ‘Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine.’

Looking on a brighter side, Microsoft should still be proud as Xbox will not be mentioned if it’s value is not marketable giving users the desire to buy for it.

Introducing Google Internet Stats

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

Google recently launched its UK-based collection of statistics from various range of topics. Named as Google Internet Stats, it brings together all the information and latest facts all in one place. This service came from different third party vendors and they’re also opening the service to all interested contributors.

A wide range of data providers offered their services to Google Internet Stats such as B2Bonline.com, Comscore, Financial Times, Forrester, Google Insights for Research, Hitwise, JP Morgan, Media & Marketing, Motorola, New York Magazine, Nielsen, QuickPlay Media Inc., Reuters, Times Online, TNS, Wall Street Journal, and YouTube among others.

The range of topics are divided into several categories including Consumer Trends, Community, Entertainment, Information, eCommerce, Macro Economic Trends, Rest of the World, UK Media Consumption, Changes in Media Usage, Demographic Usage, Media Consumption Stats, Media Multi-tasking, Personalized Media Experiences, All Media, Online Technology, Broadband, Devices, Mobile and Speed.

Though the service is under the globally known Google, this new service will only be available to UK and that there are no current plans of releasing this tool worldwide.

Are Domain Registrations Important? Google says No

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

It’s still a question and part of long discussions whether the domains directly affects SEO or search rankings. But in a recent discussion with Google, nobody says yes, but nobody mentioned a no either. 

Domain registration is a factor to know your website easily. That will help your readers easily search for your site by just typing the name of your site in the URL address. But in terms of web ranking, does it really helps? 

For the record, there’s no search engine that confirmed that they are using the length of registration in domains as a factoring in scoring. It means, as of now, all the scoring are just based on content posts and traffic it gets. 

Trying to think deeper for this scenario, for websites that are popular in its category, length of registration doesn’t matter. Because people already know their sites and could easily browse for it. But for non-popular sites that are struggling to get higher rankings, the domain registration’s length is important in order for the search engines to crawl for it, and have it added on their data banks.

Google proposes Micropayment System to Newspapers

Saturday, October 10th, 2009

Google, despite its frosty relationship with the newspapers, proposed a micropayment system giving the latter’s industry a chance to charge for their online content. The system is ased on Google Checkout which will be available within a year to Google and non-Google services. 

With this proposal which was submitted to the Newspaper Association of America, Google is giving the newspaper industry a scalable e-commerce system through their Checkout product.  

Google’s proposal includes the following five key features: single sign-on capability, ability for publishers to combine subscriptions, ability to for publishers to create multiple payment options, multiple tiers of access to search, and an advertising system. 
Hopefully, this proposal will make both sides – Google and the newspaper industry – take advantage with their partnership.

AOL allows Users to Opt Out Ads in Email 

Monday, October 5th, 2009

AOL, after being faced with two lawsuits regarding their email ad violations, agreed to donate $100,000 to charity. In addition to this, AOL also agreed to inform their members – both paid subscribers and those who are using their services for free – on how to opt out the ads on the footer of the email. 

The settlement is still pending but if approved, this will address the two lawsuits filed against AOL – the first one regarding the misleading and confusing footer ads and the other one is regarding the same ads violating a federal privacy law. 

The controversial footer ads started when AOL decided to insert these ads more than three years ago. Though in April 2008, AOL allowed paying subscribers to opt out these ads, the company failed to reach their members to tell about this news.  

This year, around July, AOL changed its policy to give all their users the freedom to opt out the ads to provide great consumer experiences to their customers which includes the email.

Requests for Google Preferences

Monday, September 14th, 2009

Many of you have written asking us if we have seen the change with the Google preferences and whether we know or not what happened.

Yes, we have figured out what happened so we will answer the question for anyone who is still trying to figure it out.

On the Google search page or home page, there was a link called “preferences” in between “advanced search” and “language tools”. It has been removed but not deleted. Really, it has just been renamed and repositioned.

You may now find the preferences under “search settings” in the very top right of the page. In between “igoogle” and “login”.

Hope that helps!

Bing Live Search

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

Did it ever cross your mind on how a live search can be done? This pertains to a kind of search where search results will appear instantly as you type the term. This is all possible with Bing’s New API.

As some people have questioned the possibility of Bing replacing Google, well here is an answer. Bing with its new live search that utilizes JQuery and JSON equals an amazing search experience.

Yahoo! offers More Search Features

Monday, September 7th, 2009

After Yahoo’s deal with Microsoft regarding the search outsourcing, Yahoo is still making news in proving that they still in online search circle. Coming to its users, Yahoo offers new user interface changes to its search results.

One thing noticeable of these changes is Yahoo’s three-column design template. Actually, this isn’t the first time for a search company to offer three-column search page. In June 2007, Ask 3D introduced this kind of template but decided to pull it out after a year. Early in May, Google released the same template through the feature ‘Show Option.’ And on the last weeks of May, Bing offered their own three-column design.

Also featured on this Yahoo’s latest design, its left-most column is where you can find other add-ons such as search applications, site filters, data filters and assistance.

The Google feature ‘Show More Results’ is a cool thing similar to Yahoo’s newest ‘Site Filters.’ Yahoo’s version is more kind of consistent and is easier to find on the search page.

Also, Yahoo offers results from social network sites which is a pretty helpful piece of add-on. The ‘Search Assist’ feature help users to refine their searches. ‘Real Concepts’, another added feature of Yahoo’s newest template, uses the concept of drill down to provide more helpful results.

Another cool application is Yahoo’s calculator. Of course, the site offered this before but this time, it offers an actual image of the calculator that lets you do the mathematics like the usual. Plus, the Magic Eight Ball and the new Search Pad makes the site more user-friendly.

Google expands YouTube Partnership Program

Sunday, September 6th, 2009

To continuously gain more profit from YouTube, Google finally extends the YouTube Partnership Program (YPP) to other people.

In a recently released report from Google, they explained that they are offering a revenue-sharing deal with people who has videos gaining popularity on YouTube. In this way, its like Google is offering a win-win solution to both YouTube and its users.

According to the said report, Google will send out emails regarding the ‘Enable Revenue Sharing’ message next to their videos the users videos. Again, this is only applicable to those who have uploaded popular videos on YouTube in a condition that the number of views are accurate, frequency of the video being popular and its compliance with the site’s Terms of Service.

This project is said to boost YouTube’s revenues as its users will now start campaigning for their own videos. Though YouTube is one of the popular sites in the US, after Google’s acquisition to the site, it is expecting to gain back its $1.65 billion stock deal within the three years.. Hoping for a positive result, Google said that these will promote YouTube well to more users and visitors.