Google's head of search spam, has decided to publish a bunch of blog posts that were sitting in draft mode on his personal blog. He said his blog needs to cough up a hairball - hence the animated GIF used here. But, we can learn a few things when Matt Cutts coughs up hairballs. A few of the 16 blog posts he published last night contain some Google insight. Helping The Masses Versus Individuals Matt wrote a blog post named email backlog where he explains the rational about responding to individual emails requesting help versus producing videos or posting a blog post that can help hundreds [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Other | SEM Industry: General

Last year, Sergey Brin gave a speech at Google Ventures CEO Summit on the value of failing, and how failing fast can be beneficial. One of the subjects that he covered was his original foray into building a Web service some 20 years ago -- the service that allowed users to order pizzas by harnessing the Internet to send faxes to pizza shops. In the talk, Brin covers how a single failed fax allowed Google to be born. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyKoq-ihao0[/youtube] The service that Brin and his friends created allowed users to fill out an order for what type of pizza they'd l [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Google | Google: Other

There is a new movie coming to theaters on June 7th named The Internship. It is a comedy movie about what it is like to work at Google as an intern played by Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. The movie is about two older men who know nothing about computers who recently lose their jobs. They decide to try to get a job at Google by interning there first. The trailer was released yesterday via Google+ and here it is for you all to see: We've known this movie was coming since August 2012 and been tracking it's progress from when the filming started at the GooglePlex to the movie pos [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: General | Google: Marketing | Google: Other

Google announced earlier today that version 2.0 of the popular Google Books Ngram Viewer is now available online. What's an Ngram Viewer? In a nutshell, Ngram Viewer lets you find and visualize how words and phrases have developed and been used over time using the 30 million print books Google has scanned working with libraries located around the world as its dataset. The service debuted in December, 2010 at the time this research paper was published in Science. Ngram Viewer was developed as a research tool for linguists, lexicographers, historians and others but has proven to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: Other

Google announced the Apache HTTP server module they released to help webmasters speed up their sites about two years ago is now out of beta. Google said that after eighteen releases they are now "taking off the Beta label" off mod_pagespeed, an open-source Apache HTTP server module that helps improve load times, speed, and server resources with CSS, JavaScript, images and other properties to make for faster web pages. Google claims over 120,000 sites are currently using it to speed up their web sites. Webmasters and server administrators can learn more about this server tool at dev [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: Other

Technology news site The Verge shared a photo and video of Google chairman Eric Schmidt doing the "Gangnam Style" dance while visiting Korea this week. He took a break from his tour of East Asia where he is launching the Nexus 7 to meet the PSY - the rapper behind the record-breaking viral YouTube hit. It's a good thing he brought his dancing shoes. The song is currently number two in the country on the Billboard's Top 100. Hankyung journalist Kim Kwang-hyun intially shared the photo in a tweet. You can also get a brief sense of Schmidt's dancing skills in the video below. Perhaps we ca [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Google: News | Google: Other | Google: Outside US | Google: YouTube & Video

With the Apollo moon missions on many minds, after the death this weekend of the first moonwalker, Neil Armstrong, Google has an interesting post out about how a single search uses as much computing power as consumed by the entire Apollo program. Much as been written about how little power the Apollo flight computers had, such as the guidance computer having less than half the power of an old IBM PC XT or that our cellphones have more processing power than the on-board systems. Google's post on Apollo's computer power took a much broader view. It looked at all the computers used in the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: General | Google: Other | Top News

Police credit Google, intuition in fugitive arrest via the AP reports the Chicago police used Google to help arrest Ronnell Jones. The AP reports Ronnell Jones didn't initially give his real name to the police but when he was going through the booking procedure he gave the police his real name and date of birthday. The police used Google to search his name and date of birthday and found an episode from America's Most Wanted where he disguising himself as a woman. Here is the episode description on America's Most Wanted. They say he was wanted for First Degree Robbery in Yonkers, New [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: Other | Google: Web Search

Above is a picture of the Google home page today with a special animated video logo for the first drive in theatre and a text message under the search box to inform people today is the day they switch over to IPv6 protocol. First Drive In Theater 79 years ago today, R.M. Hollingshead Corporation opened the first drive-in theater in New Jersey on Admiral Wilson Boulevard at the Airport Circle in Pennsauken. This drive in theater fit about 400 car. Since then and for decades after, the drive in theater has become a symbol of American culture. To celebrate this day, Google has an abs [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Logos | Google: Other

Google's head of web spam, Matt Cutts, has published a video talking about a topic that Google has never really talked about publicly before - Google Quality Raters. The video goes through the process used by Google with these Quality Raters. Matt Cutts specifically says these quality raters have no direct impact on the Google search results. He explains how what they do is used in the overall Google search quality process: Google Quality Raters rate URLs if they are good, bad, spam and other classifications Then when the Google engineers changes the algorithm The engineers can run q [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Other | Google: Search Quality Raters | Google: Web Search

It was right about this time last year when we gave Google the winner's trophy for a series of gags that put all others to shame. We could do the same again right now, because Google has tried to top itself with another round of April Fool's Day jokes that pretty well span the globe of Google's international properties. Below is a recap of Google's (and a few others) pranks, and we'll do our best to update this as the day goes along. Google Racing: Self-Driving Cars Hit NASCAR The main joke at the moment is Google's "announcement" of a partnership with NASCAR called Google Racing, which b [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: AdWords | Google: Analytics | Google: Chrome | Google: General | Google: Gmail | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Google: Other | Google: Parodies | Google: Street View | Search & Society: April Fool's | Top News | Yahoo: Flickr

Some of those who use Microsoft security software received a security patch a couple days ago that lead to malware warnings for users trying to visit Google.com. Softpedia posted a picture of the warning. Microsoft quickly learned about the issue on their support forums and issued a patch yesterday to address the issue. Microsoft didn't explain it was a Google specific issue but said: On February 14, 2012, an incorrect detection for Exploit:JS/Blacole.BW was introduced. On February 14, 2012, Microsoft released an update that addresses the issue. Signature versions 1.119.1988.0 and high [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Business Issues | Google: Other | Google: Security | Microsoft: Other | Top News

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: Channel: Consumer | 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: Channel: SEM | 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: Channel: Social | 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: Channel: Consumer | 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: Channel: Industry | Google: Other | Google: Think With Google

Google operates one of the largest cloud-based computing systems in the world, and takes great pride in its reliability, investing significant amounts of both money and human resources to make sure that all of its services are always-on and accurate. Here's the story of how, to eliminate what many would consider an almost insignificant issue, Google conducted a "smear" campaign and created software that "lied" to its own servers—all to improve performance and eliminate potential errors that most of us wouldn't even notice. Inside Google's Time Warp As searchers, we want fresh resul [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: General | Google: Other | Google: Security

Google has long received mixed-to-negative criticism for its customer service -- or lack thereof. But Francoise Brougher is changing all that. Perhaps the least well-known senior executive outside Google, the VP of Global Advertising and Product Operations has quietly built an impressive telephone customer support organization for Google AdWords advertisers. Telephone support for AdWords was first announced earlier this year in April and it saw some coverage. However since that time Google has been silent about it. I spoke to Brougher roughly a week ago and was surprised to hear how large [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Employees | Google: Other | Google: Outside US | Top News

Forget using Google Maps when you want to find a hotel to stay at for a business trip or family vacation! You can now use Google's Hotel Finder. Google Hotel Finder is a search tool specifically designed to make it easier to find and compare hotels for your trips. The features include: Draw simple shapes to define the neighborhoods (yes, more than one!) that interest you. See popular locations on maps with highlights One click adds hotels to your shortlist, where you can review them easily. See if you will get a good deal by by comparing a hotel’s current price with its typical on [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Other | Google: Other Ads