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Showing posts from July, 2010

Ask.com relaunching its search engine

When it comes to search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing are the few ones which people limit their options to while conducting their searches. But these three are not the only search engines that exist. There are many search engines out there who are fighting for a place beside these three, like Ask.com. Recently Ask.com has announced that they will be providing question-and-answer services yet again and it will be of interest to the industry experts. Ask.com is retracting its original base to create their own identity as a search engine. If they are able to succeed in its relaunch, then it can have a big impact at the search engine market. To achieve this feat, Ask.com will have to create a loyal community through question-and-answer features that are directly plugged into the search engine. The main advantage of this search engine is higher engagement. They will have to build services that will be picked by browsers over the other three big search engine giants.

Google on Gaming to kill Facebook

Google has been on Facebook’s tail to take on the social media platform. However, they still have no luck. Now, they are planning on pushing for social gaming as a major part of their efforts. Google is said to be discussing with several major players to port or develop games over to their emerging platform. After a series of social networking ventures, Google has finally come up with Google Me, a new social networking site, which is posing a treat to Facebook’s dominance in the social networking work. Considering the track record of numerous trail and failures of their social media, Google cannot afford another failure or they must accept, social media is not their cup of tea. Google has taken to creating games to differentiate themselves. Facebook is also popular for their social games but it wasn’t built around them. Google has invested millions of dollar in social gaming powerhouse, Zynga but the confirmation is yet to come from either company.

Yahoo Japan switching to Google's search engine

The largest Internet portal in Japan, Yahoo Japan will be switching to Google’s search engine while refusing to follow Yahoo Inc. in selecting Microsoft as their partner. Yahoo Japan, who uses the Yahoo Inc’s search technology together with Google will control all the search market. The deal was taken after Yahoo Inc who owns 1/3 of Yahoo Japan integrated its search technology with Microsoft. This deal hopes to strengthen the number one position in the domestic market. They will also adopt the search linked ad delivery system as well as feed its data to Google sites. This deal has been remarked by Microsoft as a deal that would hand over the whole search market to Google only. The whole point of competition would be underrated. It may give Google virtually 100% of all the searches both paid and unpaid in Japan. Meaning there won’t be any search competition in Japan and all the personal search information for all consumers and businesses there will be controlled by Google. However, some

24-hour 'hacking' event hosted by Yahoo in India's tech hub

A non stop 24 hour hacking event was held by the global search engine Yahoo! on Saturday in Bangalore where 300 whiz kids used their web tools as well as services to develop new applications. In this 24 hour hacking event, there were about 300 developers across India who participated as well. This feat was a step taken by Yahoo to innovate new solutions for their global netizens. The “Open Hack Day” aims at nurturing the open innovative ecosystem and drive domain expertise in the Internet. It enables talented web developers to create more relevant and better social experiences on the network. Again, it leverages the open APIs and developer tools to develop new innovative applications. Though this concept of hacking the web portal is a different perception of gaining entry illegally, this is a lifetime opportunity to getting into Yahoo! Query Language. The YQL is used by the hackers and use their own table definition by enabling the language to bind to any of the data source via the SQL

1 Billion Page viewers visit Google Images per day

Google announced that their Google images receive 1 billion page views each day. The number was revealed by Google while they were announcing a major change of its image search. Speaking of the number, it is by far the largest image search engine till date. The image search engine has been growing for the last nine years since its inception. This amazing growth shows how the web has improved overall with all kinds of media. Google had updated its image search technology to remain ahead in the search battle. This new technology has the ability to view up to 1000 images per page. They are also planning to improve the density of the image search result page. All is set to launch a feature that allows user to get a bigger preview of an image by hovering the mouse over an image. You can also see new advertiser friendly features that were introduced through a blog post. They are launching a new ad format known as the Image Search Ads. This ad will appear only on Google Images and your lines

New Version Of Google Chrome Due Soon

Google has always been after speed whether it’s for their search engine or browser. Now, they are speeding up another aspect of their browser. Their goal is to release a more stable version every six weeks, that will be twice as the existing speed is. Google is creating new features very quickly and they want their users to get them as soon as possible. Google will be able to have firmly set schedules for chrome from these fast iterations. Google is also putting their efforts to cut down the rapid iteration of versions that are coming: “Since we are going to continue to increment our major versions with every new release (i.e. 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0) those numbers will start to move a little faster than before. Please don’t read too much into the pace of version number changes – they just mean we are moving through release cycles and we are geared up to get fresher releases into your hands!” It’s a great thing to see how fast they will be will be iterating and if the version numbers didn’t

Google Image Search Ads

In addition to the redesign of its Image Search, Google has also launched a new ad format, Image Search Ads. This ad will appear only on Google image and allow advertisers to include a thumbnail image along side with the old lines of text. If you search with a specific keyword, the ads will appear on the search results page in a thumbnail image of the search item. Google Image Search Ads will prove to be a positive development for a business that advertises online. This will allow businesses to target the audiences who are searching for images expressly. Customers respond to images better than words and a text only standard Google AdWords ad is too easy to ignore. If you add a single image you will lure more people to any ad. The image ads will prove more effective for some searches than for others and Google expanding the Image Search Ads to its other services is highly likely. The image ads will also prove to be the most cost effective way to reach new customers. Now, advertisers wil

Google Images finds a Better way to surf the visual web

When you think or search for “information” what most probably comes to your mind are a series of boring words and numbers. Google is very good when it comes to organizing and categorizing these types of information. But unfortunately not everything can be expressed by words. For instance, can anyone really explain how does it feel to be in the middle of a hurricane or a sand storm? This is primarily why Google images was built in 2001. The best answer for many searches wasn't text, but an image or a series of images. In 2001, Google indexed around 250 million images. And by 2005, over 1 billion images had been indexed. Today in the year 2010, Google has nearly indexed 10 billion images. Although there are a large quantity of images, there also needs to be quality. Hence Google has worked hard to make it even faster and easier for you to find precisely the right images. Google images contains pretty much any type of image, be it clip art, line drawings, faces or even colors. Since 2

New Google Buzz API features

After the introduction of Google Buzz API at Google I/O, Google has been working round the clock to make it broader, more useful and better. They are introducing several new features today as a direct result of their users’ feedback. They are launching the Google Buzz firehose, where all public activities would be available as it is published with a single subscription with the syndication through PubSubHubbub. Check out some fun features that come along with the firehose. Some of the new API features available are: Comments by the user – This feed includes activities, which users have commented on. Likes by the user – This feed consists of the activities, which the user liked. Shared counts - This returns the number of times a URL has been shared across Google Buzz. The features above are documented on the Google Buzz API documentation site in detail and can be discussed on the development forum. Google will continue to innovate and iterate the Buzz API. They are encouraging their use

Google reinforces its search with Metaweb

Google announced yesterday that they have purchased Metaweb, which is a company that organizes data on the web through entity, though the sum was undisclosed. With Metaweb in their team, it could add some intelligence to Google’s search engine algorithm but they are getting more than that. Google had also mentioned their interest in one of Metaweb’s products, Freebase. Freebase considers themselves as an entity graph of places, things and people that is a more social and organized Wikipedia. This is a great addition to Google’s Knol. Along with the addition to their ideas of search, Google is also excited about the possibilities of Freebase, a free and open database of over 12 million movies, books, celebrities, companies, location and lot more. Both Google and Metaweb has planned to maintain Freebase as a free and open database. As a matter of fact, they both plan to add and further develop Freebase for better and will encourage other web companies to use and contribute to the data. B

Bing Search Engine Service for Android Powered Clients

Microsoft, in the course of a few weeks, will be spreading their search engine service for the Android powered clients. With Google along by their side, the Android clients don’t seem to need it. The basic Bing clients were offered by Microsoft to Android community, however the main purpose is to map tasks. The old Bing experience will be totally revived by the new Bing client by bringing Desktop Bing site’s full features to the Android users. The Sr. Vice President of Microsoft Online Services Division, Satya Nadella said that Microsoft is getting a good amount of Android users who are quite happy to use Bing as their search engine. The Bing search engine was launched in June last year and it has become a big part in increasing the company’s share in the search market. Microsoft is playing a low key game to avoid bad figures. The company’s site accounted for 13% of the overall searches according to last month’s stats. They are gradually making changes in their search engine to attract

Multiple Google Accounts and One Browser

Google is testing the option, which will allow users to use multiple accounts within the same browser as per the Google Operating System. Before, users had to develop kludgy workarounds in order to use multiple accounts. People have various roles to play online, as a personal Gmail user, contribute a group blog, use the Google Reader, Google Buzz or Google Calender. Performing these multiple tasks in one browser was not possible, which Google didn’t realize. The new multiple log-in screen is not however widely available. It includes Google Calendar, Google Reader, Gmail, Google Sites, Google Code and Google Docs. Gmail and Buzz teams had said earlier that one big project that they are working on is to allow more fluid use for the users with both personal and professional accounts. What they need to brush up is to integrate more between the personal Google accounts and Google Apps accounts. Google noted that they had already thought about testing such changes. “Back in May we announced

Twitter's SocialAds Network

Twitter is now launching a video ad network, SocialAds, which has emerged from its TwitVid. SocialAds has been positioned to help advertisers enhance their social media presence and as an alternative to pre-roll video ads. It allows users to buy followers and re-tweets and provides social analytics. The pricing model is based on price-per-action, which means if the impressions don’t result in action, it won’t be charged. Bidding will begin at 1 dollar per follower and 75 cents per re-tweet. Higher bids will receive a better placement on the ad units. Like, advertisers can place their bids on popular videos or content producers from famous personnel who have selected TwitVid as their preferable video tweeting service. A private alpha testing had earlier yielded over 400 followers to one person in just less than an hour with 2% users were shown an ad followed by a brand. Through this self-service advertising network of SocialAds, advertisers can now create their customized campaigns targ

How to Recycle your Blog Post in the right way

When we start blogging, we are all eager to increase our potential visitors as well as our website link building efforts. But, the thing is that not all our blogs would be successful. If you want great hits from your audiences, then recycling your old blogs could be a good idea. It does make your efforts a lot easier when it comes to getting hits. The following are some of the points you can follow in order to recycle your blogs: Article Directories: Rewriting your blog posts, adding meatier info and submitting it to high ranking article directories can be a great idea. Document Sharing Websites: This has become a vital part of spreading business messages. People have been using these sites as widgets on other people’s websites. Newsletters: Recycling older blogs and putting them in a newsletter can be a huge potential. The newsletter can be dropped into social media networks and directly into the search results. You may be surrounded with new tactics to increase your blog posts, but a

Is Twitter the fastest growing search engine today

People’s response to Twitter since its inception has been remarkable, making it more popular after celebrities started sharing their thoughts with their fans. Twitter is becoming the biggest online social networking site. The site is now supporting about 800 million search queries a day and you won’t believe it but Google supports only 88 million search queries and that too per month. There is a constant fight between the search engines for superiority. Each of them enjoy when there is a drop in their opponent’s search queries stats. Now, Twitter can join the ongoing battle but it has already been outdoing Bing and Yahoo. Compared to Bing’s growth of 22% in the US, Twitter searches increased by about 33%. Recently, Twitter has formed a search partnership with the three major search engines to use all the data from Twitter and implement it into 1 overall package. With Twitter’s own search engine attracting millions of users looking for real-time results on live events, its competitors a

Partner Grant Program announced by YouTube

Youtube is growing fast, and that means super fast. There are over 10,000 partners and out of the top 100 advertisers Ad Age, 94 have run campaigns on Youtube as well as Google Display Network. They are now are announcing the Partner Grants program, which will invest 5 million dollars across selected new and upcoming YouTube partners. The main goal is to bring in new ideas and production models from the most innovative and authentic content partners for the progress of the entire industry. The new program is simple. Those talented people who produce incredible videos are able to generate a substantial amount of revenue and sway an audience that compete that of network television. However, they lack the resources to back studio backed production houses. YouTube, with their new program will infuse additional funds into their production budgets of the small size Youtube partners allowing them to invest in better production of quality innovative videos. How it works: Eligible partners will

YouTube upgrades its Mobile Site

With the availability of the new smart phones, Youtube has taken the opportunity to improve its mobile platform. The release of mobile Youtube site shows a lot of improvement. One thing that stands out is the features. Now, users accessing Youtube through their phone will be able to access most of the features which they can see while using a computer. The quality of the videos is also another great improvement to be seen. There won’t be any blurry video when you watch it through your phone on trains. The quality of the videos have drastically improved. If your phone is a touch screen, no need to worry as they have also made great changes for the touch screen features. Now, it is more touch friendly and it is easier to navigate. The new Web app is based on HTML 5 completely and you need to make sure your phone is HTML 5 enabled if you want to watch videos on Youtube through your mobile.

Are Social Networking Sites taking on the Search Engines

Google is the market leader still dominating the search industry, but now the social networking sites have starting threatening its supremacy. The fact is that when we use the search engines, it is an entirely different experience in the sense that we are always alone while doing this. We are directed to millions of links and we don’t encounter other people. Have you ever thought of directing the link you have and visiting others or talking about your search results when you meet anyone? You haven’t, right? When we use social networking on the other hand, we can see the social interaction almost immediately. Now, people have started generating information from each other rather than from companies. Products and brands are found from friends rather than businesses. Now, a bigger shift has happened in how people spend their time online. Americans are increasingly becoming obsessed with social networking sites like Facebook. Many young women check their accounts first thing in the morning

SEO to be affected by New Mobile Devices

The Internet marketing strategies will see a huge change with the arrival of new devices – iPad being one of them. The thing is that, search engine optimization till now has been tailored, based on the net browser and not on mobile browser. Since customers are not eager to install an application so search sites should work with the operating systems as well as browsers of different tablets. A different strategy of search engine optimization would be applicable for these kind of devices. Now, companies will be encouraged to take advantage of a touch screen and users will be able to interact differently with the search engines in this new form of technology. The new strategy involves expanding the plus boxes by swiping or drawing circles on map interfaces allowing users to find businesses with a specific area. A lot of website designs are also a big barrier that can create a big hindrance in a SEO campaign, which includes the used of flash and implementation of bad JavaScript. Remember t

Related Videos Shown in Google Now

It has always been a battle for web owners to make their sites more visible at the search engines. The constant need of search engine optimization has always been there. You may think that these web owners have been trying to please Google, but have you ever thought that this giant search engine won’t do anything for its users. It has always been a continual effort for Google to make the content of a website more visible. Now, they have started to add links to the related videos for search results from websites like Howcast, GameTrailers, Hulu and eHow. Before they had added sitelinks, which highlighted popular web pages from a site, navigation breadcrumbs, search boxes for site search and related topics from the discussion boards. The related video links will give users options to choose whether they would like to read the content or get the information from a video. And now for the those website owners, promoting their services or products through video would be a great idea.

How do you optimize the ‘Thank You for Your Comment’ Page

You must have never thought that your “Thank-you” page would be worth optimizing. Don’t underestimate the value of this page. It can prove to be very beneficial for your business. Optimizing this page would help the people who find and read your articles to get more involved and interested in your site when they give a good comment. This in turn can attract more targeted audiences for you. Here are a few ways to optimize your comments section: RSS-Friendly Way: You can show a new page where you can express your gratitude and encouragement to the commenter. Email-friendly way: You definitely need to thank your commenter. You can do it by sending a friendly email notice. Social Media-Friendly Way: Encourage the commenter's to click on the ‘tweet’ or ‘like’ options and share the page at different social media networks. The above points can help you get more commenter's and retain the older, loyal ones. Although, this is just a small part to getting targeted traffic, it is still wo

Google’s new social networking service ‘Google Me’ to challenge Facebook

When Google launched ‘Buzz’, it seems that Facebook was facing a competitor, but that didn’t quite turn out so. Now, Google is launching another Facebook competitor "Google Me” very soon. They must have realized that Buzz wasn’t enough and they need to build a full and advanced social network site. This is a high priority project and since Facebook is a strong competitor, Google has to make it big this time. Creating the next Facebook would be a Herculean task. The Google vs Facebook social networking battle has been quite a spectacular debate for all but the fact is that the real battle is yet to start. Buzz seems vulnerable in front of Facebook and Google seems to realize that. Google Buzz and Orkut only acquired a minimal response and low customer retention as compared to the 400 million active user base of Facebook. Coming to the users, there is a mixed response. Some readers are happy that there will be a balance in the social networking world. But, some are totally sure that