Google is planning to rename two of its popular services soon: Blogger will become Google Blogs and Picasa will become Google Photos. That's according to Mashable, which says the changes are due in the next six weeks. Google's YouTube property will not be included in the company's rebranding efforts, but other products beyond Picasa and Blogger could be. We reached out to Google for more information, but the company told Search Engine Land it would not be commenting on the report. The last time Google rebranded one of its existing and established properties (i.e., not a new or recent [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Google: Blog Search | Google: Blogger | Google: Picasa

Google has added a new filter to its blog search option that makes it easier to find blogs themselves, not just individual blog posts. The filter is part of Google.com search, not Google's specific Blog Search service at blogsearch.google.com. The filter appears in the left-side menu. When you choose the Blogs option after your search, it defaults to showing individual posts. But below that is the filter to see posts or home pages. While Google's full Blog Search site doesn't have this filter, it does list blog home pages at the top of the search results. And, as you can see, the blo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Blog Search | Google: Search Customization | Google: Web Search | Top News

With a final "fairness hearing" scheduled for February 18, the US Department Of Justice has filed briefs (PDF) in opposition to the Google Book Search Amended Settlement Agreement ("ASA"). The DOJ commends the parties for their efforts to reach an amended agreement that addresses some of the problems with the original settlement but concludes that there are still fundamental anti-trust issues with the ASA: Despite the commendable efforts of the parties to improve upon the initial Proposed Settlement, many of the problems previously identified with respect to the original settlement remain in [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Blog Search | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Legal: Copyright | Top News

A lot of the innovation in search these days is all about What's happening right now? Twitter is the poster child where real-time search is concerned, and despite its ongoing spam problem, Twitter Trends has become one of the primary places to get a snapshot of what's happening now. Google Blog Search is getting in the game with its announcement today of "Hot Queries," a new addition that appears in the upper right corner of the Google Blog Search home page. It shows 10 queries that are "happening now" -- or, "currently popular" in Google's words -- in Blog Search. What we don't know is if [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Blog Search

There's no official announcement (yet), but Google tells Search Engine Land that it's made several improvements under the hood of Google Blog Search. In an email conversation, Google's Jeremy Hylton -- head of the search quality group in Google's New York office -- explained how the changes impact the "clusters" of stories that appear on the blog search home page. "We're doing a better job of choosing the blog posts to include in clusters," Hylton says. "We're also working on changes to expand the number of posts we consider for clustering." One of the algorithmic changes is aimed at [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: General | Google: Blog Search | Top News

While Twitter is looking at ways to be more search-ey, Google is apparently thinking about ways to be more microbloggy. Buried in a Reuters article about Google's shareholders meeting yesterday is this paragraph about the company's interest in the social web: "Company executives who appeared alongside Schmidt at the media briefing said Google was looking at ways to generate money from the surge of social networking activity on the Internet, as well as at ways of integrating microblogging capabilities, such as those popularized by Twitter, into its search product." (emphasis is mine) I [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Google: Blog Search | Twitter

A couple weeks ago, we reported that Google fixed the blogroll indexing algorithm in Google Blog Search, but has not yet fixed the link operator, which returned links found in blogrolls. Google has recently updated the link operator for Blog Search to not count links in the blogroll for the link operator command in blog search. As I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable this morning, Jeremy Hylton of Google said Google Blog Search "now drops most or all of the links that occur in the blogroll or in other parts of the page that are just boilerplate." This issue dates back to early N [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Blog Search | Google: Web Search | Top News

As Barry Schwartz points out today on Search Engine Roundtable, the Google Blog Search team is rolling out fixes to how it separates blogrolls from actual blog posts. Back in December, we wrote about Google's switch to full-text indexing for Blog Search, but that led to problems identifying blogroll links as part of blog posts. Barry points to a Google Groups discussion, where Google's Jeremy Hylton says: "We have launched a ranking change that reduces the number of results that are returned because of blogroll matches. There are still problems to work out, but this change appears t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Blog Search

There's a lot of stats and analysis today about Twitter's traffic, how it compares to other social search sites, and who's benefiting from all the traffic Twitter can send. It seems no one argues that Twitter is on the rise, but just how high it's risen is still up for debate. Let's start, appropriately, with a tweet: comScore posted a note that Twitter's February traffic was up 55% over January. (We don't see a formal release of this data yet, but will update when we do.) 55% is nothing to shake a stick at; it's serious growth. Steve Rubel dug into Twitter Search traffic (i.e., to searc [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Features: Analysis | Google: Blog Search | Search Engines: Blog Search Engines | Stats: comScore | Stats: Hitwise | Top News | Twitter

One of the requirements of class-action lawsuits is notification of potential class members. Most of the members of a class never know that a lawsuit has taken place on their behalf (e.g., bank X credit card holders). So the courts require attorneys to tell class members of the suit and settlement terms and allow them to opt out of the settlement if they desire. If they fail to opt out typically they're bound by the terms and cannot sue independently. Google is now in this position with the settlement of the Google Book Search Copyright Class Action lawsuit against its book scanning project [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Blog Search | Google: Critics | Google: Legal

It has been almost three months since Google Blog Search began indexing full text of the page and, since then, there have been numerous complaints from searchers and webmasters. The majority of the complaints are that Google Alerts are coming up for irrelevant or outdated blog results. In addition, many blogs are no longer indexed quickly anymore. Plus, Google is indexing blogroll code and including them in the link command results. Jeremy Hylton from the Google Blog Search team updated the Google Groups thread saying that Google will be conducting "visual experiments early next mont [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Blog Search

It's been about two months since Google Blog Search was relaunched with a new front page that summarizes stories. I talked with Google more about some of the inner workings at the end of October and finally am getting around to posting this, spurred by one of the planned changes becoming official. Google Blog Search now uses the full-text of posts (in most cases), rather than using whatever was in a blog's feed (which could often be only part of a post). It was always annoying that Google Blog Search only depended on what was put out in a feed, rather than actually indexing the ful [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Blog Search | How To: SEO | Top News

When Google announced its new, clustered results on the Google Blog Search home page, they promised support for more languages "in the coming months." Well, less than two weeks later, the clustered home page has launched on Google China Blog Search. This is the first non-English launch of the new blogsearch interface. Google China Blog Search covers just Chinese-language blogs. As Google promised a couple weeks ago, expect more launches of the new blog search home page in the future. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Blog Search | Google: Outside US

When Techmeme opened in 2005, I'd found a new online newspaper to begin my day with. It quickly and neatly organized top stories as reported by various blogs and news sources for the area I cover. But if you weren't into technology, you seemed kind of out of luck. Now Google Blog Search has stepped in to bring Techmeme-like organization for all subjects buzzing in the blogosphere. Below, a look at how it compares along with other resources such as Technorati and Blogrunner. Major Search Engines & Blog Search Google's new service has only been out for less than a day, so I don't [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Features: General | Google: Blog Search | Search Engines: Blog Search Engines | Search Engines: News Search Engines | Search Engines: Word Of Mouth & Buzz Search Engines

Google Blog Search just had a big change announced today -- top blog posts are now clustered on the home page around particular story topics, similar to how Google News (or Techmeme) operates. You can also drill into various categories of posts, such as technology or politics. It looks interesting and promising, and we're going to play with it in more depth shortly for a longer review. In the meantime, check it out and read more in the Google Blog post about it. Postscript From Barry Schwartz: Since Danny posted this news brief, I have seen a lot of discussion brew up on the topic of [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Blog Search

Google Operating System reports Google Blog Searches are now included in Google Web History. I personally use Blog Search often to find new links to my blog, as well as locate more details on recent stories I may be covering. Here is an example of a search in blog search that shows the new feature being announced directly under the search box. Here is an example of my recent Google blog search, including link command and normal keyword searches. Note that they include both the searches I have done and the results I clicked on. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Blog Search | Google: Web History & Search History

Last month, I wrote Public Spam/Splog Report over on my personal blog, begging Google to stop the "people search" spam that's been clogging my Google Blog Search feeds with junk off Google's own Blogger service. Today, I noticed Steve Rubel writing recently on the same issue. Steve gives you the screenshots of how the junk shows up on Google Blog Search. My post goes into depth on the redirection and scraping that's going on. End of story, the junk needs to step. C'mon, Google -- fix it. FYI, here's today's latest junk out of my newsreader from just today: United State [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Blog Search | Google: Blogger | Google: Critics | SEO: Spamming

Hitwise reports that Google Blog Search has passed Technorati in visits this week. Hitwise explains that when Google added a link from Google News to Google Blog Search in October, the traffic for Google Blog Search spiked by 168%. Hitwise reports that currently about 60% of Google Blog Search traffic comes from Google News referrals. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Google: Blog Search | Search Engines: Blog Search Engines | Stats: Popularity