You have one less excuse for being an uninformed voter this election year in the U.S. Google has launched a new U.S. politics/election hub at google.com/elections. It's kinda like the Google News "Elections" section, but with different filtering options on news content and added data related to this year's campaigns. The new elections hub has predefined filters for the major U.S. presidential candidates (President Obama along with seven Republicans), as well as some of the primary issues being discussed (healthcare, government spending, etc.) Google News offers similar filtering opt [...]

Related Topics: Google: Other | Search Engines: Government Search Engines | Top News

Hotel industry, you're on notice: Google appears to be running a test that places its own Google Hotel Finder at the top of very competitive, hotel-related queries. Search Engine Land reader Alex, who works in the hospitality industry, tipped us to this development and at least one of our SEL editors was able to replicate it on a search for "las vegas hotels." The Hotel Finder ad is listed as a "comparison ad" and is separated very slightly from the regular AdWords listings below it. It occupies premium space at the top of Google's search results and pushes hotel ads and organic lis [...]

Related Topics: Google: AdWords | Google: Other | Google: Other Ads | Top News

Cadbury posted on their Google + page a picture of their latest milk chocolate bars named "Dairy Milk+ Bars." The Milk+ bars come in two flavors, Sergey Brin & Larry Page - i.e. the co-founders of Google. As part of a social media experiment, Cadbury posted this on their Google + page, saying: Remember our 1kg Dairy Milk+ Bars? We've had some special personalised ones made, including these delicious ones for Google founders Larry & Sergey. Whose name would you like to see on a bar? Hat tip to WebProNews for spotting this first. Related Stories: Google+ Is Slowly Invading Goog [...]

Related Topics: Google: +1 | Google: Employees | Google: Other

Light bulbs that connect to the internet? Elevators that reach into space? Robots that show up for work in your place? These are a few of about 100 ideas that Google is reportedly toying with inside Google X, the name of a "top-secret lab" somewhere in the Bay Area. The New York Times wrote about it this weekend after speaking to a dozen people that are aware of the project. According to the Times, robots (and I don't mean the .txt file) play a big part in Google X: Robots figure prominently in many of the ideas. They have long captured the imagination of Google engineers, including [...]

Related Topics: Google: Cars | Google: Labs | Google: Other

Lest you think that Google's product streamlining has completely stifled any new developments, the company has announced a new research center for marketers called Think Insights. On first glance, there's almost an overwhelming amount of information in Think Insights ... thus the "data porn" reference in our headline. If you love statistics and marketing, you could pretty easily get lost in there. It's part of the ThinkWithGoogle.com domain and comes from the same group that debuted the Think Quarterly online magazine earlier this year. Google calls Think Insights a "digital cheat [...]

Related Topics: Google: Other | Google: Think With Google