The Google Operating System blog has a picture of a possible maps experiment for testing how users interact with the layers available in Google Maps. The new buttons seem to be cleaner and easier to read and use. Here is a picture of the new test: Here is the existing user interface: As you can see, a major difference. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Maps & Local

Google's big buy by the New York Post reports Google may shell out $2 billion to buy the New York office building they currently rent a portion of. The building is well known, previously the home of the Port Authority, with space of about 2.9 million square feet. It fills an entire city block, from Eighth and Ninth avenues from 15th and 16th streets. It has several addresses, commonly 76 Ninth Avenue or 111 Eighth Ave and is one of the largest buildings in New York City. In January, we reported Google is looking to expand their New York offices from the two or three floors they current [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Offices

The big buzz last night was from Yahoo releasing the Yahoo Mail Beta globally. The new beta vastly improves speed, security, email search while offering a "more social email experience," said Yahoo. The Yahoo Search Blog briefly explained "you’ll find a faster email search using Yahoo’s wealth of search science and technology." The new left-hand column has added navigation to sort and narrow your search results by sender, attachment file, date, or folder location. Other improvements to Yahoo mail are underlying speed improvements, better spam prevention, sleeker mobile experience, [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Yahoo: Mail

Chitika has just published some very interesting data about voice search on the iPhone. Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently said that about 25 percent of queries on Android devices are voice-initiated. That's an unexpectedly large percentage. By comparison Chitika's research director Dan Ruby said that he found about 7 percent of Google searches on the iPhone are voice searches. Interestingly he also said that voice searches are "three times more likely to be looking for local results" than searches on Google's browser site or text-entered queries on the Google iPhone app. Here's the compar [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Canada’s Yellow Pages Group Acquires EnquiroCanada’s Yellow Pages Group has acquired the well-known search marketing agency Enquiro and folded it into a new entity known as Mediative. As explained in today’s announcement, Mediative will provide digital marketing services for national agencies and advertisers in Canada. YPG has also acquired two other Canadian advertising/marketing companies, Ad Splash Media and UPTREND Media. Enquiro [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Canada's Yellow Pages Group has acquired the well-known search marketing agency Enquiro and folded it into a new entity known as Mediative. As explained in today's announcement, Mediative will provide digital marketing services for national agencies and advertisers in Canada. YPG has also acquired two other Canadian advertising/marketing companies, Ad Splash Media and UPTREND Media. Enquiro is perhaps most well-known for its eye tracking studies that, for years, have educated the search marketing industry about how searchers interact with a search results page. The company was founded i [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Acquisitions

Perhaps appropriately Blekko will launch late Halloween/early Monday morning. Somewhat amazingly Blekko emerges as a credible alternative to the major search engines. With its power-user tools and transparency it will delight some people and no doubt mystify others. It offers a novel and pretty useful take on "social search." In the beginning it won't (and can't) replace Google or Bing or Yahoo but people may find themselves supplementing their usage of the major engines with Blekko in selected areas. Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta reminded me that Google was an annoying little ankle-biter (my [...]

Related Topics: Blekko | Channel: Consumer

My Life With Google TV series continues. Yesterday's test: how well could Google TV locate free (and legitimate) episodes of Caprica on the web? Answer: not very well. But once I found them the old fashioned way, Google TV did make it pretty easy to watch them on the "big" screen of my TV, versus my laptop. I always seems to be missing episodes of new TV shows when a season begins. The promise of Google TV is that wherever a TV show might exist legitimately -- be it pay-per-view, broadcast TV or on the web -- Google TV will locate it. Looking For Caprica Using Google TV Yesterday, I tried [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Features: General | Features: Life With Google TV | Google: TV | Internet-To-TV | Top News

Google's effort to bring photographers to local businesses to capture interior and exterior images now bearing fruit. The company announced that the images that its contractors have been collecting (all over the world) are now online: Starting today, the images we’ve taken as part of the pilot can be viewed on the Place pages of participating businesses. Users and potential customers who look online for local businesses can now see more high-quality photos that give them a sense of what a place is really like. The photos may include the storefront, decor, layout, merchandise, food, signa [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile

Earlier this month Microsoft and Facebook announced a new partnership that essentially makes Bing a social search engine. Danny Sullivan has written a great overview, but basically if you're logged into Facebook and use Bing, you'll now see results which are based on content viewed and shared by your Facebook friends: in this way, "Likes" start to gain the same value as links in the old search algorithm. Bing & Facebook Together [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfpKDmbBH6I[/youtube] Now, I can't comment on exactly how good this new system is due to the fact that like so many ot [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search & Social

When a potential client comes to us for a proposal, the first thing that we do is to analyze the existing backlink profile. We used to put an insane amount of time into this exercise, but when that time is weighed against other tasks for existing clients, we decided that it needed to be made a bit quicker. We've explored various methods of doing this, but here's our current favorite, using Raven SEO Tools. If you're not a subscriber you can do a free 30 day trial, by the way. 1. Go to Raven SEO Tools Backlink Explorer (after you login, it's under Links) and enter the URL you wish you examin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: Links | Link Building | Link Building: General | Link Week

Susan Wojcicki, the woman who rented her garage to Google's co-founders in the early days of Google's existence, has been promoted. Wojcicki was the Vice President, Product Management of Google's advertising and measurement platform products, including AdWords, AdSense, DoubleClick and Google Analytics. She is now one of eight Senior Vice Presidents at Google. I believe her job role will remain the same and this is mostly a title promotion, but a deserved one. Susan was Google’s 18th employee, as Google's marketing manager in 1999. Then she worked on initial viral marketing programs a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Employees

On the heels of a formal privacy complaint by former FTC employee Chris Soghoian targeting Google's embedding of search queries in page URLs, a new class action lawsuit takes aim at the same thing. It seeks monetary damages and an injunction against Google's alleged sharing of searches with third parties. Google Said To Share User Queries Filed in federal court (Northern District of California), the complaint asserts that Google's shares queries in violation of Google's own privacy policies as well as federal law and California state privacy and business practices statutes. The basic allegat [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Top News

A new study suggests that Google Instant Search has already had a positive impact on search advertising, benefiting advertisers through higher impressions and clicks, and adding to Google's bottom line in the process. Marin Software, a company whose search marketing products are used to manage more than $1.3 billion in annual search spending, studied the impact of Google Instant on "a few hundred" of its clients, tracking statistics for the two weeks before and after Instant's September 8th launch. The results? Marin says ad impressions increased more than 9%, clicks increased more than [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: AdWords | Google: Business Issues | Google: Instant

Over the past few months I have had the opportunity to learn more about the current digital market and advertising opportunities in Russia from Preston Carey who is heading up Yandex's new business opportunities outside of Russia. While China often gets the attention for its growth and opportunity, Preston showed me that Russia can also offer opportunities for companies looking to expand their international reach. I first experienced the online opportunities in Russia while presenting an academic paper on using the internet to reach overseas markets at the Saint Petersburg University of Ec [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Multinational Search

For the first time, Google will provide advice to webmasters via a US-based site clinic on Google's Webmaster Central blog. The company's announcement says that members of Google's Search Quality team "will determine trends and share corresponding best practices to improve site quality and user experience." Google may be very purposely avoiding any mention of "SEO advice" in this announcement. They've offered similar clinics before in Spain, India, and Norway. In the latter, Google's post specifically suggested that its employees' advice might help make participating websites "better geared [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Google: Webmaster Central

Google has upgraded its Feedburner analytics product and, in the process, also added real-time stats for individual feed items. But it's still a very limited product and, in a couple areas, actually seems to be a downgrade from the existing Feedburner stats. The new interface brings Feedburner's "look and feel" much closer to what Google Analytics users are already familiar with. The new dashboard shows a statistical summary of feeds in your account, as well as the most recent status messages about your feeds' accessibility. In its announcement, Google focuses on the new, real-time c [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Google: FeedBurner

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Schmidt’s “Just Move” Joke About Google Street View & How It Went MissingDon’t like Google Street View taking pictures of your house? “Just move,” joked Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in a CNN interview on Friday. A controversial joke, no doubt — one made even more controversial for later seeming to disappear from the interview. Don’t blame Google, the company says. It didn’t ask for the quote to [...] [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Don't like Google Street View taking pictures of your house? "Just move," joked Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in a CNN interview on Friday. A controversial joke, no doubt -- one made even more controversial for later seeming to disappear from the interview. Don't blame Google, the company says. It didn't ask for the quote to be pulled. And by the way, anyone can remove pictures of their home from Google, no need to move required. More below. The Full Interview Versus What Aired Last Friday afternoon, Schmidt did a taped interview with Kathleen Parker and Eliot Spitzer, co-hosts of the new Parker [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Critics | Google: Marketing | Google: Street View | Top News

Sphinn's new "Discussion of the Week" was a big hit last week. We asked, Do you think no-follow links are worth more than Google says?, and that discussion received the most comments (25), tweets (42), and Facebook likes (5) of all the stories published last week on Sphinn. It also produced our favorite comment of the week. Sphinn member Olivier Amar shared an opinion that several others in the conversation also echoed about the potential SEO value of no-followed links: On one hand a followed authority link is always better, but on the other the a link is a link is a link applies. Googl [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Sphinn