Archive for the ‘Google’ Category

Google+ – The New Social Sphere

Saturday, July 2nd, 2011

Rumor is – Google launches Google + (https://plus.google.com/+/), the new social media platform which is said to be Google’s answer to our very own Facebook. The new social network is at present being tested with a limited people but is expected to be out anytime. In less than 24-hours, Google+ has already exceeded its capacity for limited roll-outs. So what does Google has on the platter for us, read on to find out.

Google+ is called a social project and there is a reason for it. With Google+, the search engine master has brought the concept of sharing to all its products. Google+ once open to everyone will be available right from the grey Google taskbar, which after its new addition will be wearing black.

What else? Google+ also has a recommendation button, called ‘+1′ (http://www.google.com/+1/button/) which is already available for use. You can easily locate one right there, placed side to side with the historic ‘Like’ button. Google+ adorns a neat, white and spacey design with simple, self-explanatory icons spread neatly across the page, which is very much in tune with Google’s minimalistic design approach for all its products.

There’s more – Google has named its social features Circles, Hangouts, Sparks, and Huddles, just  what’s it like in the real social circuit!

Things to look out for in Google+

  • The +1 button
  • Instant photo upload
  • Group video chatting
  • Photo editor
  • Huddle (a circle messaging feature)

While Google has got more to pull out of its bag, the limited version has already created a ‘buzz’. The conclusion to the predictable and eventual Google+ vs Facebook debate is already underway even before the launch! Let’s see if FB should be putting on the thinking caps yet.

What ever you love, Just Google it!

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

Yeah you are right! The Big G launches its newest product (right before the hard-to-contain teasers of Google Plus) – WhatDoYouLove!

What do you love? (http://www.wdyl.com/) is also a search medium but with a totally new zing to it. Yes, now you do not have to browse through a number of search results to find (not your love but) what you love.

‘What Do You Love’ search engine allows you to just type in what you love in the search box and what you get is absolutely pleasing to eyes. 20 different widgets on a single page show you everything related to your search. The search results on the WDYL page include:

  • Google News
  • Translators
  • Maps
  • SketchUp
  • Patent Search
  • YouTube
  • Google Voice
  • Google Books etc.

The idea here is to allow a user to find everything he wants to know about his search on one single page.

WDYL has all the results you want and the way you want
Pictures, videos, maps, trends, calender entires and other important things can now be found on one destination and that is WDYL. Google WDYL is also being hailed as the dashboard consisting all Google products for all you want to know about your search. With this Google has tried to make search for some particular product, place and brand more detailed and quick view. Users now have the choice to search either for result oriented Google search or for more attractive, detail based wdyl.com search. If the search is related to something/ someplace very specific, you can use http://www.wdyl.com/ and go on about exploring and enjoying at the same time.

Why WDYL?
Many are of the view that Google has used this new search tool to advertise its products and services like Google Voice, Google Patent Search, Google Groups, Google Trends etc. The motive is to make users familiar with the very useful services Google offers. And what can be better than a well presented display of all of those on one single page. When people see the quality of results delivered to them with such a tool, they would want to use other services too.

We don’t know how will it influence Internet Marketing strategies or eCommerce marketing techniques but it sure is exciting to think about the future where we may replace ‘google it’ with ‘heart it’.

In all we don’t know if it is actually really useful for many of you but it definitely looks good and has a catchy name. To start, see if the results for Scotland make it your dream destination!
http://www.wdyl.com/#scotland.

Enjoy hearting it ! :)

Google 411 – Directory Enquiry for free!

Monday, October 15th, 2007

It’s fast, easy and hip – its Google.

Google, who gave “search” a new synonym, launched Google 411, a free directory enquiry service today.

All you need to do is, dial 1-800-GOOG-411, speak out the location and the name of the business and Google gives you a list of businesses ready to be dialed!

Here’s the YouTube video:

(Source: vnunet.com)

noFollow, Paid Links, Google and Jennifer

Friday, October 12th, 2007

Jennifer’s posts on “paid links and ads” are very interesting.

Part 1 talks about “nofollow” tag and its origin while the Part 2 talks about Google’s new policies of using it.
In my post earlier about Google banning paid links in July, I’d shared similar thoughts on paid links.

I agree that humans should be informed if the product review is paid or not, if the promotion of the third party is being done because you’ve been paid to do it or because you really are recommending it.

But I do feel Google’s going a little overboard with this. Below is what I copied into Jennifer’s comment box as well:

Webmasters have been buying and selling links before Google was even born. It was the very exchange of links ( I’m surprised it was assumed all links were “unpaid for” links when PageRank was invented), including the buying and selling of links that resulted in an algo that is treating links as a voting mechanism. After Google, reciprocal linking became even more aggressive because webmasters realized how important these links were to Google. Soon, reciprocal linking changed to paid links and three-way linking, all methods of link bargaining for webmasters targeting Google rankings. And it worked. I’m sure it still works and thats why now Google wants paid links to be punished – but how exactly will this stop webmasters from running after the rankings. And really, its about rankings, not PR. There are many websites out there with excellent PageRank and no rankings.

There are rarely such cases who only buy links for PR – everyone wants traffic – the whole objective of wanting to rank on Google is to get traffic. Then when a website is getting traffic from another source, why will it not want to? If a PR 6 website is giving a text link for $50 on its homepage, and has some xxxxxx v/m, why should that website not charge. A usability study shows that a text link gets more the click-throughs than an image ad. Then why should ads be just converted to images?

Those who really do it only for PR and not traffic, will figure out a way to beat this too. Many of the genuine cases will suffer (ok, I posted “only genuine cases will suffer” in the comment – but sense has prevailed :) ).

Will Google ban websites using paid links?

Friday, July 27th, 2007

The Internet has been flooded with link directories and link farms that are providing links for free (in return of another link – nothing comes for free these days!) or for a certain fee (does this qualify as a paid link?.)

Its quite understandable that Google doesn’t like it. Artificial inflation of links just doesn’t serve the purpose. The SERP results are then not in control of an algo but in control of the individuals who can build maximum links!

It hurts. But can reporting paid links help?

How do you find out if the votes are genuine or bought?
Is Yahoo directory selling links (its a paid directory – how do you know that people want a link from yahoo directory because of th PR value of that page and not really the traffic coming from there)?
What about other link building directories? How can you find out the purpose for paying for a link? Is text ad a paid link? What about directories that allow free inclusions provided a linkback is provided?

Thats brings us to SEM companies. Are they promoting paid links? Is reciprocal linking paid? No money is being exchanged between parties – only link swapping. But the SEM company is getting paid to carry out the link building campaigns. So, whose selling links and whose buying links here? And how will a computer program come to a conclusion that the link bought was with the intention of increasing traffic and not PR.

I believe one can argue that if traffic is the sole purpose, use javascripts, iframe etc for sending out the link. But why should a webmaster do that? For the sole reason that otherwise, Google “might” think that its a paid link created with an “intention” to increase PR?

Before Search Engines, links were the only source of traffic movement. Anyone today with a PR of 6 on the homepage is (assuming) getting good traffic. So if the webmaster decides to sell links from his homepage to make some money, is he violating Google’s quality guidelines? If another webmaster buys that link in hope of getting traffic from that website, is he too violating Google’s quality guidelines?

How do you know what the intention behind the buying/selling of the link was?

I’m curious to see if any website makes news for buying/selling links.

Can you have your competitor banned by going and buying links for their website on their behalf and then reporting them?

Google PR update April 2007 currently underway!

Saturday, April 28th, 2007

Google seems to be carrying out PageRank (PR) update near the end of April 2007 now. Several of our sites have picked up PR. CueBlocks.com has moved up to PR of 4 now from the earlier value of 3. A good friend called up to inform me about this.

Despite it’s dwindling importance in Google’s algorithm, the event still does not fail to attract a lot of attention. The Search Engine Marketing community, for many years now, has been terming PageRank’s importance to be only of “entertainment value” – a fall from it’s yester years of glory. It’ll be a good idea to let the PR update settle in and be reflected in all data centers before either congratulating yourself or sulking.

For those who are new to this industry and are probably confusing PageRank (PR) with actual ranking of their website in Google Search Engine Result Page’s (SERP’s), please take a few minutes to go through the following links:

Google’s Searchmash is live – Google SERPs with Images & some cool tricks

Wednesday, October 4th, 2006

Google had registered the domain www.searchmash.com on 13th September 06 and have made it live now. Using old google data, it seems to be a testing environment for some interesting changes Google seems to be thinking of bringing in the SERPs. Some interesting use of Ajax on the site.

Some of the features listed on SearchMash are:
- Start typing! You don’t have to have your cursor in the search box to start typing your query.
- URL menu! Click the green URL of a web result to open a menu of options for viewing the URL or refining your query.
- Image results panel You can see the top three image results next to your web results.
- Reorder results Click the number next to a result and drag it around to reorder. This is just for fun right now, but we have some ideas for how to use this.
- More results bar Click the “more results” bar at the bottom of the page (or hit the space bar) to load more results and automatically scroll down to view them.

It would be worth seeing what Google eventually does with SearchMash.

A search on “CueBlocks” shows some of the images of the CueBlocks team playing carrom – taken from our blog posting many months back. :-)