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Google Launches Android 2.4 – Ice Cream Sandwich

Google launched its latest Android update, Ice Cream Sandwich at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco this morning. Android 2.4 or Ice Cream Sandwich brings all the best features of Honeycomb to mobiles phones. However, Google did not disclose many details about this update. On the other hand, Google addressed one of the biggest problems that consumers and developers have been facing with the Android platform - and that is Fragmentation. There are hundreds of Android devices available in many sizes and shapes. And while there is a great choice, it can be very difficult for application developers to meet all the needs of the various phones and tablets. Google also laid emphasis on the fact that Android 2.4 will address this issue since the applications experience is a big part of the Android platform. Ice Cream Sandwich helps by giving application developers the necessary tools they need to accomplish this. Google also mentioned having a lofty goal of “one OS that can run everywhe

SMB’s to boost their SEO campaigns through Social Marketing

Small businesses are now increasingly turning towards the Internet to market their products and services, and this year, it seems that they will be investing more time and money on the search engine optimization campaigns by using social media marketing. Recent studies have shown that search and social channels are now becoming major priorities for SMB marketers across the world. It has been found that nearly half of all SMBs already have social media marketing campaigns in place, and about 28 percent are currently using basic SEO tactics to improve rankings in organic results. Both SEO and social media marketing will see major gains this year, and more and more people have started adding social media and SEO to their marketing campaigns. This means that nearly three fourth of the SMBs will have their own social media marketing campaigns by 2012, and nearly half will use SEO to boost their businesses. The competition will also get fiercer. And the more intense the competition means onl

Hone your Search Skills before Exploring the Web

You can get any answer to any question almost instantly by using the Internet – as long as you don’t really care about the accuracy of your answers. Search engines like Google are excellent tools for finding out answers on the net. The only problem is that they are often loaded with a whole scrap of junk and wrong answers. Let’s talk about ways to get the right answers without taking too much trouble. For instance, if you’re trying to find an answer with regards to the civil law codes in Georgia on Google, you’d probably include the search terms “Law” and “Georgia”. This alone should ideally tell you the law codes in Georgia right? Wrong! You’ll probably end up getting information on everything from the legal codes of Georgia in Russia to many other unrelated bits and pieces. If you thought that searching for answers online was that easy, then think again. There’s a reason why online navigation experts have to master certain skills in order to get where they are today. With web search,

Should Every Employee have Basic SEO Knowledge?

Search Engine Optimization has now become so valuable that experts are claiming that every online business employee should receive some kind of basing training in SEO. Many SEO experts have been saying that for an online business to really be careful, it is important for every employee to possess certain SEO skill sets. Basic SEO knowledge will benefit all team members of any online business right from the bloggers and content writers to the IT team as well as the management. It is believed that many online businesses are missing out on opportunities by not educating their staff about the importance of SEO to a company’s turnover. Every group should be trained on the importance of search and how it can affect the revenue of a company. Once employees start recognizing the role that SEO plays in driving traffic to a site and in bringing in more leads and sales, then SEO activities will start becoming a priority. What with the competition for more attention growing by the hour, many onlin

News of Bin Laden’s Death being used to Spread Malware Online

With the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death being the most spoken topic on the net today, it comes as no surprise at all that spammers have grabbed this opportunity to exploit the news. It is pretty much expected these days. Scammers latch on to big news events and manipulate it to ensure that unsuspecting victims fall prey to their scams. Reports have shown that the Osama malware has been doing its rounds on the Internet ever since yesterday. A malicious site has been flourishing on the Internet and shows a morphed photo of Osama Bin Laden murdered. The site also urges people to download a copy of the VLC video player to view the video of his death. This downloads a malicious file instead. Malware was also found to be spreading on Google images as well and there are some Facebook pages that offer “FREE subway” and “2 Southwest Plane Tickets” to celebrate Bin Laden’s death. These messages and links are malicious and spread through the victims’ wall. More than a 100 million scam emails ar

Why On-Page SEO Content is all about Relevance and not Rankings

Everybody loves to talk about how search engines determine rankings. It is always advisable to stay away from manipulating the algorithms because such tactics can carry many risks. But search engines do have many limitations on what they can do and what they see. This is why it is important for you to first understand the environment of the search engines and do the right things to make it easier for the search engines. Here are the factors based on how websites are ranked: Authority of Domain or Reliability. Link Popularity. Inbound Anchor Text. Usage of Keywords. Traffic or Click-Through Data. Engagement Metrics. Registration or Hosting. On Page SEO is often referred to as the functions that are required to gain access to the competition. What this basically means is that you cannot compete for rankings on the search engines on a specific key phrases unless your web page gives out those signals that it is a good match for the user query. From an SEO point of view, the On Page content

Achieving SEO Sustainability

One of the most important lessons learnt after the farmer updates is to always do whatever you can to make your site a high quality and useful site. With these latest changes, many companies have now started investing in quality instead of looking for short cuts to get there. Quality and hard work is the only way to yield results in the long run. However, many people are still; finding ways to get around this latest algorithm. If credibility, quality and authority can be identified in a site, then the site will immediately get noticed by the search engines. Other important factors include: density of advertising, address and phone information, author names and titles, content density, badges and memberships in known organizations, W3C compliance and even the quality of a site’s link profile. Good SEO is something that brings various disciplines together, from user experience and information architecture to web design and how a site has scored. The credibility of a website and how it fe

How Google’s latest Algorithm has changed the face of Internet Marketing

Google’s latest Farmer algorithm has changed the face of online marketing all over the world. However, many companies have started welcoming this change as it helps to promote sites that produce original, quality content. Google released this update in an attempt to improve the search quality by regulating the search results based on certain criteria. Sites that have been hit the hardest are those with low quality content and that contains old information or that is never updated. Users have also been affected that have high ads to content ratio, proving that although Google gives high rankings to sites with original content, rankings of sites will be reduced if it isn’t connected to any authoritative content of value. This is why it is important to create valuable and compelling content. So, always provide your readers with information that they want and need and Google will reward you. Social sharing and engaging users also plays a pivotal role in the ranking of a site. Google contin

Google adapts Applications for Smaller Businesses

Google has changed its applications pricing structure in order to make it more appealing to the smaller businesses. Google has recently introduced a flexible plan that offers $5 per month as a pricing option for users and it also requires no contractual commitment. The pricing option currently is priced at $50 per year per user and has a one year commitment attached to it. This has now changed and has been given a new title, the “Annual Plan”. Google has also scrapped the plan for accepting upfront payments from new customers, which ensure that they will only pay at the end of the month. Now, direct debit payments are available. However, it’s not all good news for every business. Google’s changes to its applications will upset new customers. Under the new rules, new customers having 10 users or more will have to sign up for the paid option for the Google Apps. Before, businesses with as many as 50 users could enjoy this service for free.

The Pros and Cons of Android for Smartphone’s and Tablets

Google is the only brand that Apple has been watching carefully lately. Despite reveling in the popularity of its latest iPad release, Apple is still keeping a watchful eye on Google. Google’s lightening speed rise in the Smartphone and tablet market has made it one of the biggest brands around. While Apple has invested the money, research and resources in developing hardware as well as software, Google has simply managed to get everyone interested in Android without have to invest in huge amounts of research and designing costs. Android is fast becoming essential to portable devices and is constantly coming out with new versions. This is a very smart move on Google’s part. The first question that people will ask you when they see you have a Smartphone is “what version of Android does it run on?” It is now taken for granted that every Smartphone runs on Android. What with the benefits of Android 2.0, more and more consumers are beginning to understand that having an Android handset wil

How Social Updates came about on the Search Engine Results Pages

The latest social search updates by Google and Bing have generated a lot of interest from their users in the last few months. Instead of separating the search results from social networks like Facebook and Twitter from the other organic search results; both these search engines have now started combining both the social context and the organic results in their search engine results pages. Google and Bing have both declared that for some kinds of searches, the social updates would help to boost the rankings of the results on the search engine results pages, more so than the regular results. This goes a long way in confirming that social media and search engines are combining, resulting in the increased importance of social media marketing for businesses. But, how are these changes beneficial? Firstly, both the search engines have moved away from simply showing tweets and have sectioned off a “Liked Results” tab in their search engine result pages. Secondly, search engines have now start

Is SEO more Popular with Small Businesses this year?

With the New Year well on its way, it has become increasingly clear that more and more small businesses have begun to opt for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in their B2B digital marketing campaigns as a way to save money and market just as effectively. In the years before, very few small businesses were seen to utilize SEO as a marketing strategy. However, this year, it was found that many more small-medium sized businesses have been turning to search engine optimization as a way to enhance their B2B initiatives. A 36 percent increase in the number of businesses was observed. It was also found that companies that are currently using SEO as a marketing technique were up to 27 percent from 19 percent. Social media is also becoming increasingly popular for small businesses as a part of their B2B digital marketing operations. Search engine marketers have also said that SEO is absolutely necessary for website, as it helps to bring in traffic to the a site and thus increases business.

Latest SEO Techniques for the Wholesale Supplier

Ever since the recession, many of the B2B wholesale suppliers have been operating their businesses with extremely limited resources. This is why it is very important to allocate a large sum of your marketing money to trying out successful and cost-effective Internet marketing strategies. However, SEO tactics are always changing and it is important for companies to keep up with the latest changes. Here are a few of the latest SEO techniques that can help you get better rankings along with increased traffic and conversions. Here are a few of the latest SEO techniques: Keyword Research: Keyword research is generally the first step to every SEO campaign because it informs you about the keywords that your customers are using to find your website. Using this data, you can then develop a list of keywords that can be used to optimize your web pages. Here are a few places in which you can find the most relevant keywords – Your site log files that contain frequently used keywords, your site sear

Search Marketing Tool, Panda, causes controversy for Google

After the recent changes to its search algorithm, Google has increasingly been facing allegations of rigging its search results, after many companies have found that their rankings have dropped. Panda is a search marketing tool that identifies all low quality websites and filters them out of the search results. Since the launch of this tool, many companies have experienced a sharp drop in their rankings. Many companies have even found their rankings to have dropped by almost a hundred places in the search engine listings! This change means that many companies now have to alter their SEO strategies to fit into the new system. Google has been denying these accusations of rigging all along; calling them absolutely absurd. Panda was launched in the United States towards the end of February and by now, nearly 12 percent of all the US sites have been affected by the algorithm changes.

Content Mills, Paywalls affected by Google’s latest algorithm changes

The latest algorithm changes implemented by Google in its page rank algorithm system, “Panda”, have affected paywalls. Owing to the latest search engine updates made by Google, many of the well established UK technology websites and paywalls have experienced a major drop in the visibility of their web pages in the Google search results. The paywalls could possibly have been affected because Google’s web crawlers may not have been able to access the full website. These updates were introduced to its search engine earlier this week with the intention of pushing forward and rewarding high quality content instead of those sites that gain high ranking through SEO tricks. Keywords form a major part of the search engines, and they use these metrics to determine which websites are the most relevant to a specific users search. An entire industry has emerged from this, where people have tried to outwit the search engines by correctly placing keywords in order to improve a websites search visibil

Google works on Search algorithms to stay ahead

If you think that Google’s winning Internet-browsing formula is complete and Google cannot come up with anything new, then perhaps you should give that another thought! Nothing could be further from the truth. Software engineers at Google have been diligently refining its search algorithms so that by the end of the day, it ends differently from when it started. Many Google teams have tested more than 6,000 changes to the search engine in 2010 itself, with nearly 500 of them passing the test and moving on to become permanent. Google has made so many changes to its search engine that it has now become second nature to them. Today, Google has managed to root out all the low quality websites and is only keen on promoting quality sites. Google’s search algorithms are tweaked at least twice in a day. Google is looking to move quickly and to make big changes. But on the other hand, Google also does not want people to say that they don’t recognize these changes. In February, Google took the st

Google’s Android is both open as well as closed

There has been a lot of recent misinformation doing its rounds about the Android platform and the role that Google plays in supporting the ecosystem. But Google’s Android boss, Andy Rubin, doesn’t seem to think so. In an attempt to set the record straight, Andy wrote on Google’s blog last week in response to the latest stories that suggest that Google was intentionally restricting the openness of its platform. However, Andy says that Google has always been committed to developing an open platform for the mobile industry. But if Rubin’s claims of commitment and dedication are to be taken seriously, it is important to first note that many of Google’s own partners are beginning to show signs of uncertainty and doubt. In a recent edition, Google’s engineering directors, Alberto Savoia and Patrick Copeland, were seen to tell the world that Android is both an open as well as closed platform. Google has plenty of projects that follow an open or a closed model, and some others that do not fit

Can Bing dominate over Google in 2012?

Today, Google might be the dominating search engine in the United States, but research has shown that in the last six months, searches that are powered by Microsoft’s Bing have begun to increase at a rapid pace. So rapid, in fact, that if this trend continues, there will be a real competition between Google and Bing next year. And Bing may just about emerge as the winner! Recent surveys have shown that Google was responsible for almost 65% of the searches in the United States last month. Bing powered searches include searches from bing.com and yahoo.com, have accounted for nearly 30% of the searches in the United States. The very fact that Bing’s searches have crossed the 30% mark has made it a significant competitor to Google. Last year, Google controlled nearly 72% of the search market, while Bing powered searches covered about 23% only. But in the last 6 months, Bing’s market seems to be rising rapidly. But Google still dominates over Bing in a 2 to 1 victory. But when you consider

Can the Android Smartphone’s replace Debit Cards?

Reports have recently exposed Google’s future plans of turning Android handsets into the next best way of conducting electronic transactions. Yes, Google is collaborating with Mastercard and Citigroup to create a mobile payment system for all Android handsets. This deal and related technology are of course in their initial stages, but this system could possibly allow users to wave their handsets in front of a wireless reader at a checkout counter. Today, more and more mobile phones have near-field communication features that retailers and other card companies are hoping to exploit, in spite of rampant security concerns. According to the reports, the terms of agreement do not involve Google taking home the slice of the payment, but instead they would be using the data from these transactions to get a better idea of consumer’s spending habits, which proves to be very valuable for retail advertisers. This campaign will get started with users of Citigroup-issued debit and credit cards bein

Feds want to Monitor Google’s Operations

Google is now being pressed by the U.S. Justice Department to let it monitor its business operation in order to gain approval of the company’s $700 million acquisition of travel data provider, ITA Software Inc. Google has been resisting the department’s demands, as this would give the government the authority to review company behavior that could potentially hurt competition. For instance, officials want Google to assure them that it isn’t ranking its services higher than its competitors in the search results. These negotiations between Google and the government are the latest signs that federal antitrust authorities are concerned about Google’s dominance as the world’s most popular search engine. The Federal Trade Commission is considering conducting its own antitrust investigation of the company’s operations. Google’s rivals, Microsoft and Kayak have accused the company of intentionally harming the competition. The outcome of the Justice Department’s probe into the ITA acquisition ma

Google’s YouTube all set to Negotiate with Hollywood?

YouTube, is an online video website by Google, and is recently in the news for negotiating with Hollywood with regards to an offer on a line-up of new channels. In an attempt to overhaul YouTube, the offer was that channels would allow Google to offer ad-related videos to viewers who use the Web to watch movies and TV shows. However, the discussions are still in the preliminary stages and no real plans have been solidified yet. YouTube plans on offering channels that are tailored to TV, sports and music, along with celebrity websites, each having more than 10 hours of professionally programmed material a week. Plans have mentioned 20 channels with a budget of $5 million for programming. This service however, won’t be available until later this year or early next year. YouTube’s initial focus will be on short music videos and programs.

Google comes under scrutiny for antitrust case again!

The Federal Trade Commission is the latest agency to investigate into Google’s practices. The Federal Trade Commission has been considering conducting an antitrust probe into Google, as it is growing extremely concerned about how big Google is and the extent to which it dominates the search engines and search based advertising. Before getting started, FTC will first wait to see whether the Department of Justice challenges the search giant’s $700 million acquisition of ITA Software. Word of the probe comes in the midst of increasing scrutiny of the search giant’s operations. The Texas Attorney General launched an antitrust probe into the company last year. Last week. Microsoft announced that it would conduct an antitrust investigation against Google. Google has been accused of using technical as well as commercial means to root out competitors.

Google Android slams Apple’s iPhone!

Surveys have shown that in the United States, one out of every three Smartphone’s is powered by Google’s Android operating system, making it an industry leader with a mind boggling growth of 7 percent since November only, thus beating Apple’s iOS which has only grown by 0.2 percent since November. This report comes as incredibly good news to Google, who has managed to make Android one of the main forces behind Smartphone’s in just 2 years, thus surpassing all of the former giants like Microsoft, Research in Motion, and Palm by nearly 33 percent. Today, Google’s only main competitor is Apple. Google has done what no other company could have done. Imagine any company starting from zero and then ending up with a third of the market share in just two years! This is something only Google can manage to do. Let’s see whether their +1 system and their pay without your card by phone feature works this well too!

Yahoo! All set to launch a new search engine for the Indian Audience

In an attempt to compete with Google, Yahoo! Has announced that it will be releasing its latest search engine “Search Direct” in India by the second half of this year. However, Yahoo! Rolled out the beta version of the upcoming search engine in the United States last week. This search engine is different, as it helps to predicts results from character to character and presents results dynamically, thus making for a fast and simple search experience. Yahoo! Reaches up to nearly 30 million users per month in India alone and reports have shown that nearly 74% of the Indian website users use Yahoo! as their preferred search engine. Let’s see how Search Direct works for the Indian audience!

Google Unveils +1

Google’s latest effort to find its way into the social networking sphere has just been unveiled. The Google +1 is the company’s version of Facebook’s “Like” button. The +1 button will now start showing up next to search results and on all the pages on the web, and by clicking on it; you will be recommending a site or a page. What’s more, the search results and ads that you see will also tell you if any of your contacts has vouched for or recommended them. Many people feel that this is just another one of Google’s attempts to get into the social sphere, what with most of their other attempts falling flat. How can it be that a company as huge as Google and as innovative as it can fail so miserably at making it in the social networking sphere? At the end of the day, it all boils down to vision. Google has so far been suffering from an acute case of far-sightedness in the social sphere. Right from its early days, Google has sought to organize information and make it easily accessible. Ther

Will Google no longer be the Master of Search Marketing?

Online direct marketers are now being encouraged to concentrate their online search marketing efforts on a new search alliance that has been launched by Yahoo and Bing, thus putting Google in the backseat. With these two mammoth companies working together, they still manage to take up only 8 percent of the market share, as compared to Google’s 90 percent. However, markets have in the past, found it extremely inconvenient to come up with 3 separate PPC campaigns to ensure that their search results appear in all 3 search engines. Now however, keeping this in mind, Yahoo and Bing have collaborated and are urging people to market through their search alliance, as this would mean that search marketers have to come up with only one direct marketing campaign for both the search engines. Both the companies are hoping that this collaboration will give their customers a more realistic choice than using just Google, and it might decrease the popularity of the leading search engine.

Google Releases Disco – A new Application

Google and Apple’s iPhone are two words that you will very rarely find combined together. At least not until now! Google has recently launched Disco, which is a group texting service that allows you to mass message your friends or clients from a mobile phone or web interface. Disco is a service that was first created by Google’s in-house association Slide, which was acquired last year. Ever since, Slide has been operating as a separate entity within the Google property, which is probably why this mass texting service has been released as an iPhone application instead of a service for Google’s very own Android OS. When you sign for Disco.com, you start by creating an account that is based on your mobile number. The service will then verify whether you are the owner of number by sending you a text message, and if you have been verified, it will then invite you to set up your first group for mass messaging. You can name each group whatever you want, and you can add friends very easily by

Indeed.com is the fastest growing job site Search Engine

Union Square Ventures worked really hard to convince Indeed.com to let them invest in it six years back. This capital venture firm is known for some of its prudent investments like for Twitter and Zynga, and has since invested in Indeed because it felt that it was the best candidate for an online job search site. Today, Indeed.com has a top-notch website that works like Google. Being an aggregator, its search engine browses the net for job listings on thousands and thousands of websites from job boards and associations to company career pages and newspapers. Job seekers will typically search for listings on the site’s home page, which is similar in look and feel to that of Google’s home page. As a user, you can use 2 things to get started – what kind of job you want and where you want this job to be. Clicking on a job listing will take you directly to that site where the position has been posted. This includes some of the leading job portals like Monster and CareerBuilder. Indeed’s foc

Can Yahoo be saved

After seeing one failure after another in the last few years, Yahoo may still be able to save itself with its latest search engine update – Search Direct! While this may be similar to Google’s updates, the Google Instant, where you get real time results as you type, Search Direct is all about giving you appropriate answers to what you are searching for, instead of giving you relevant links. This is quite an exciting move on Yahoo’s part. These search engine advancements as far as usability is concerned is quite amazing. Initially, everyone thought that the Google Instant update was quite amazing because it removed the need for the user to hit the search button in order to search for something. But with Yahoo, you don’t even need to click on the first link in order to get the answers that you want, and you can still find out many things like the stock performance, weather forecast and even where to go to find the films you want to see! Why has Yahoo been dying out? It has become less in

Millions Download the Latest Version of Firefox

Ever since its release, more than 5 million people have downloaded the latest version of the Firefox browser. Mozilla, which is responsible for the second biggest web browser, has been keep track of the number of users installing this software through a real time map. But despite the rapid progression, the download’s for this version have been slower that for its predecessor. In the last year, Firefox’s market has declined slightly due to the competition with Google’s Chrome. Firefox 4 was released for downloading less than a month after Microsoft released its Internet Explorer 9. Both these browsers guarantee to provide their users with a faster and more secure online browsing experience. Like its rival, Firefox has also started making use of HTML 5, which is the latest standard of hypertext language that is used to build websites. Both these browsers also come with a variety of features such as hardware acceleration which is used to display web pages and which draws on the power of t

Google Circles to be launched

With the launch of Google Circles, the techniques used to market websites are predicted to change. Webmasters have predicted that Google is going to be launching its own social networking site in the next few months. Some have predicted that the search engine giant will unveil its new site at the upcoming Google I/O conference. Google Circles allows users to share only select content with other people who belong to the appropriate social category in their lives. Google Circles will help put Google in competition with the largest social network out there. But yes, whatever Google launches, it is almost certain that it won’t launch a social network that will mimic Facebook. Google is aware that it cannot outdo Facebook. With more than 600 million users, Facebook is safe in the knowledge that nobody is really going to join yet another social networking site just share photos and status updates with contacts. Google Circles is the third attempt by Google to launch a popular social network.

Can Mozilla’s Firefox take on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Google’s Chrome

The Internet browser’s are at war again! And how! Mozilla has recently announced that it will be releasing its much awaited Firefox browser version 4, which will prove to be a highly critical moment for Mozilla that first challenged the gigantic Internet explorer in 2004. But Mozilla now finds itself not only taking on Microsoft but Google as well! Last week, Microsoft launched its latest version of IE at a swanky event in Texas. With an interesting and highly interactive graphics-rich presentation, Microsoft displayed the various features and capabilities of IE9 – showing how IE9 is indeed superior to Firefox and Chrome. IE9 and Firefox 4 are the only browsers that offer the “Do Not Track” function, which allows the user to notify advertisers and websites that they do not want their online history to be tracked. This puts Google on the spot, as it is a major Internet advertising company that is in charge of all the tracking, but does not know whether it should put the same feature on

Google slams China for Interfering with its Email system

Google has recently slammed the Chinese government for interfering with its Gmail Email system. This move has followed attempts by the Chinese government to control the “jasmine revolution”, which is an online revolutionary movement that was first inspired in the Middle East. According to Google, Chinese advertisers and customers have been complaining about their Gmail services in last month. Users who are attempting to send messages, mark messages and use other email services have encountered various problems. After the catastrophic earthquake took place in Japan a few weeks back, Google proceeded to set up an application that would help people find friends and family in the disaster. This service has also been compromised. Google announced this in its blog on March 11th where it said that it had recently noticed that its users were subjected to highly targeted and political attacks from the government.

Google Improves YouTube’s Video Quality

Now low quality videos from YouTube that are shaky and blurry could be a thing of the past, all thanks to Google’s latest acquisition! Google has recently acquired Green Parrot Pictures, an Irish digital video technology company that has used image processing techniques for movies such as Lord of the Rings, Spider Man and X-Men. Google will use this technology to straighten out all its low quality videos that have been uploaded on YouTube by sharpening the images and producing a steadier video, and by reducing visual noise. Many of YouTube’s most popular videos are shot using mobile phones and low quality video cameras. Many of the most touching videos are both blurry and unsteady or have problems with visual noise. Apart from improving the video quality, Green Parrot’s technology also helps to improve playback speed and encourage videos to use less bandwidth.

Google’s ‘Farmer Updates’ and how it helps Marketers

Google has made some major changes to its search engine algorithm since last month in an attempt to obliterate low quality websites with poor content that still rank highly in spite of these factors. Google has been facing large-scale criticism over the quality of its search results in the past and is now taking the necessary steps to improve things. This is likely to be an ongoing effort the online marketers should know about. Framer Update is the latest update to come on to the scene and is named so because it helps to reduce the visibility of content farm websites that operate by generating low quality content that is specifically created to achieve higher rankings. Studies have shown that since this update came into play, there was a 57% drop in the search engine performance of the content farm styled websites. This is definitely a positive result, as those sites that are not useful to searchers will not rank highly. However, reports have also shown that many legitimate sites have

Japan Earthquake attracts Hackers and Scammers

Cyber criminals have moved surprisingly fast in their quest to make easy money from the recent Japan disaster. Merely hours after the devastating earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, cyber criminals have manipulated search results about this disaster with malicious links. Users who are searching on “the most recent earthquake in Japan” might come across a few malicious links to fake anti-virus software. Malware writers have used black hat SEO techniques to manipulate and push these links to the top of the search results. As soon as the news of the earthquake broke out, the Internet was immediately monitored for any kind of attacks, and true to their cause, many cyber criminals were inserting fake web pages with keywords related to the earthquake. People have been resorting to the Internet for the latest information, news and images about the Japan situation, and cyber criminals have taken advantage of this fact to further their interests. Black hat SEO is not unusual as far as current

Microsoft releases new IE Browser

Microsoft has recently announced that it will be releases its latest version of the Internet Explorer Web browsing software. Corporate Vice President of Microsoft, Dean Hachamovitch has said at a recent press conference that things will change for Microsoft very soon. With the release of this new browser, Microsoft has taken a dramatically different approach. The new browser can be downloaded in 3.0 languages at beautyoftheweb.com. The Internet Explorer 9 has been specifically built to make the most out of Windows 7, Microsoft’s latest OS. It also makes the most out of graphics processing chips that have the ability to power games, videos, graphics and other great visuals. Partners that have adapted their websites to the IE9 are: Facebook, Pandora, Yahoo!, Twitter and Hulu, to name a few.

Google Circles - The latest Social Product to Hit the Scene

According to certain reports, Google has reportedly announced the release of Google Circles, the latest in the long list of super social products that Google intends to release in the future. But a new teaser had emerged on to the scenes from the blogosphere. The teaser is that Google is not only announcing anything newsworthy but it also has denied that Circles even exists! This came straight from the mouth of Google developer advocate, Chris Messina, who was supposed to be directly involved with the product but had no clue that it even existed. According to the reports, Google Circles is very similar to Google Buzz, as it helps to leverage photos, video as well as status message sharing, but it is also similar to Facebook in that it is respectful of user privacy. In short, it helps to create borders between users and friends, family and colleagues, in a way that even Facebook cannot. However, what remains to be seen is how this social effort by Google will take shape.

Is Microsoft’s Bing gaining valuable search engine ground on Google

As astounding as it may sound, Google the search engine giant is all set for tougher competition this year, as more and more search engines are gaining in popularity. Microsoft’s Bing recently saw an increase in its search traffic by nearly 5 percent last month! In February, Bing was found to have nearly 13.5 percent of the Internet searches in its hand in the United States alone. Earlier this year, Bing’s searches grew to nearly 21 percent! A whopping growth if ever there was one! However, Google still dominates as the biggest search engine with almost 67 percent of searches in its name in the United States alone. But this figure has fallen down by 2 percent in January. Yahoo was observed to have 15 percent of the searches in the United States last month, which means it is up by 3 percent. So, is Google losing valuable ground?

Google Displays Tweets in Search Results

The latest tweets coming from some relevant Twitter users have now begun to show up as tiny snippets on Google’s search results. The Twitter search results also features the user’s picture, name, date of posting and the entire message. If there are any links posted in tweets, these also carry high SERP’s. Google seems to be just testing this feature, as no official announcement has been made as yet. Also, this same feature seems to only work or show up in the first few search results when a user has tweeted recently, although the exact timeframe hasn’t been made clear as yet. Soshable recently conducted a survey and found that tweets that showed up within 2 seconds of being posted were typically displayed. Yes, Google is really fast, but is it that fast? As a result of this, Soshable came to the conclusion that Google has probably tied their search results directly with the Twitter API.

Google Maps Navigation beta helps you Save Time by Avoiding Traffic

Owning an Android device comes with its own set of advantages, the most important being the timely updates of Google core applications. Google has really outdone itself this time with the Google Maps Navigation beta automatic routing that is based on real-time traffic conditions. Google Maps Navigation helps by saving your time while commuting daily. Many times, it has been observed that when certain applications are updated, the basic function or the interface tends to change. However, with the Google Maps Navigation beta, the changes that take place, happen somewhere in the background. All you have to do is simply start with the Navigation as usual and then choose your destination. Previously what used to happen was that Navigation would choose the fastest route to a destination without really taking the current traffic conditions into consideration. The new algorithm takes into account the current as well as the past traffic to select a fast route.

Has Google completely tackled the Android Malware Issue

A lot of people prefer Google’s Android to Apple’s iOS for their Smartphone’s. A lot of people also prefer the Droid 2 to the iPhone 4, even though Verizon has now started supporting the iPhone. But, if Google cannot completely clear up this new malware issue, then most people are going to be forced to change their mind. Well it does come as great news that Google has managed to remove the malicious applications, but wouldn’t it be better if Google simply just check the software before releasing it on to the Android market? This isn’t too much to ask, is it? Wouldn’t it be better if Google could just make sure that none of its users are downloading malware from its official store? What’s more, the remote application removal feature has its fair share of skeptics in the market. Yes, there are plenty of ignorant users who don’t the importance of security, but there are still plenty of users who have not been pleased that Google, or anyone else, can literally reach out and rip software’s

Google Resolves Gmail Problems

Google officially announced that the problems that a number of Gmail users have been facing recently about losing old mail, has now been resolved. This incident was first reported on Monday and was supposed to be fixed much earlier, but still wasn’t fixed what with a large number of Gmail users still complaining about lost emails. But according to the latest statements released by Google, all the problems should be resolved. And those who still face this problem should immediately contact Google. This however, should not come as a reality check for those users who completely depend on cloud computing. Offline backups of email should be taken more often. Google on the other hand, has apologized for the inconvenience caused to users and commends them for their patience and support. Google has also mentioned that system reliability is one of its top priorities and continuous improvements will be made to make their systems better. Gmail should be back to normal for all those users who were

Google Discovers Malware-Infected Android Applications

Google has recently pulled up 21 Android applications because of malware infections. Is Google becoming an untrustworthy brand? Is it possible that the only reason why Google is surviving in the apps segment is because they give most of their stuff away for free? Google is undeniably very proud about its Android platform. But recently, it has been discovered that the platform has become an open target for malware. Because of the openness of the platform, Google has recently discovered and pulled out at least 21 infected applications from the Android market. The issue has been confirmed by Google, and the infected applications contain malware that gain access to an infected Smartphone in order to snoop around and find data or to download additional codes onto the handset, without the user noticing. However, this vulnerability has been associated with Gingerbread, which means that any mobile device running the Android version 2.3+ is fine. The vulnerability has been fixed by Google, but

Google celebrates its Latest Android Release by adding a Honeycomb Sculpture in its Headquarters

Google’s Android Honeycomb has been released into the markets, and in keeping with tradition, Google has also added an oversized honeycomb sculpture in its Mountain View headquarters lawn. A great way to celebrate! This sculpture has been planted near the other Android release statues, bang in front of the Google building. It depicts a large honeycomb with an Android mascot popping out of it and a bee heading in its direction. A video has also been posted on YouTube in which the sculpture installation can be seen. And as far as the music for the video was concerned, the folks at Google opted for a modern take on the Flight of the Bumblebee. A person dressed as a bumblebee also showed up at the debut – and commenced dancing for the camera and riding a bicycle, while employees installed the Honeycomb. However, the Honeycomb statue wasn’t the only giant-sized object around at the Google premises. All the previously installed statues were huddled together and were put in new locations. Per

Google’s Latest Algorithm helps eHow

A lot of people scoffed when Larry Fitzgibbon of Demand Media said that Google’s latest algorithm hasn’t had any kind of positive impact on the content and media business. This came after Google announced that the latest algorithm would rid the search engine of unethical content farms and low quality sites. However, examinations have proved that Google’s latest farmed update has seemingly improved the results for Demand’s eHow property. Sistrix, a famous SEO analyst used data from a set of 1 million keywords that was checked before as well as after the update and has come to the conclusion that the overall number of keywords that eHow.com ranked for has increased slightly after the update. Apart from this, Sistrix also calculated that the site experienced a jump in terms of keywords, ranking and click through rates as well. However, many other Demand sites did take a hit, including trails.com and answerbag.com. Topping the list were ezinearticles, wisegeek.com and suite101.com.

Google Changes Search Algorithm to Combat Content Farming

Google is probably making one of its biggest moves of the year to ensure that its search results do not contain low quality articles from content farms. Google has announced that it will be making a big adjustment in terms of search algorithms so as to reduce the rankings of these low quality sites. Its aim is to provide high ranking for those sites that contain original information and content, and even those sites that contain detailed reports, research and analysis. These changes will reportedly impact nearly 11.8% of the search queries it receives. However, Google does not specifically say that content farms are the main target, but it does mention that it will be penalizing all the low quality sites. Low quality sites can be defined as any site that provides low value information to users, or sites that copy content from other sites, and sites that are not at all useful. However, Google has also specifically referred to such low quality sites as content farms in the past. Nearly a

Google’s War against Paid Links continues

As recently as last week, it was J.C. Penny who was making headlines for falling drastically in Google’s rankings for nearly every area from curtains to area rugs. It turned out that the retail site had a number of suspicious looking links pointing towards it and that could all be traced back to a paid link network, which intended to manipulate the ranking algorithms set by Google. In order to protect their unpaid search goal, Google provides some of the most relevant results for browsers. This is why Google has begun hunting down these types of manipulations and knocks down the rankings of the sites belonging to the guilty parties. After the J.C. Penney case, then came the Forbes.com case. Forbes ran afoul in Google’s eyes with regards to the guidelines. Forbes was found to be selling links on their site in order to manipulate the PageRanks. Now, in a recent announcement, it was found that Overstock.com also has lost out on rankings for using other types of links that Google views as

Google News helps firms with SEO

Businesses that are looking to improve the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaigns should strive to get accepted into Google News, which is a great way of increasing click through rates. Horst Jopen of Econsultancy says that producing great and unique content for a website and based on this content being able to get yourself to ranking on Google News is a great way to generate traffic to your web pages. What’s more, he also suggests that businesses should regularly update their website with the latest updates and news, as Google is constantly on the lookout for fresh and relevant content and stories. Very recently, Sam Tilston, the CEO of Awesome Resources said that almost every company and business is willing to speng large sums of money on improving their SEO campaigns. However, Mr. Horst Jopen also added that news on a website can help businesses get increased click through rates, thus generating more traffic for them. One of the first things that Google tracks is whether a site

Want to Win $5,000? Enter Google’s Latest Competition

If you are great at creating infographics, then Google’s latest contest should interest you! Google has recently announced that it will be offering $5,000 to the winner of its Data Viz Challenge, which is basically a contest to find the best person who can offer the best visualization of data about where exactly your tax money goes. The contest was announced today and is largely based on a website called www.whatwepayfor.com, which was started by Andrew Johnson and Lewis Garcia, two developers. Impressed with this website, Google’s staff came up with an idea of having their own “interactive data visualization” or simply, infographics. However, infographics does have its own set of limitations. So, taking up this challenge, Google has teamed up with Eyebeam, a non-profit art and technology center. Those who are interested can participate in this competition.

Google has a New Navigation Tool Bar

Trustworthy reports have shown that Google has rolled out a new navigation bar to the public after nearly 6 months of rigorous testing. This navigation bar could help improve the overall efficiency of the news content marketing services, as it helps to move relevant articles higher up in the search engine rankings, which in turn leads to increased traffic, increased sales and increased effectiveness of the search engine optimization techniques. This navigation bar is shorter than the one before and has more graphics and color in its interface. It also helps to efficiently remove clutter by grouping all the extra links in a menu. The bar has reportedly been inspire by Google Chrome and also helps by removing link underlining and replaces it with a colored bar that allows for more spacing between the links. What’s more, the site also boasts of having an extra gear icon that provides more options and preferences for the user accounts. Google has tested the new navigation top bar last week