While the National Association of REALTORS® is planning to launch its own national property database sometime next year, Google seems to have just stolen the NAR’s thunder. How? By rolling out individual “place pages” for every property that’s listed in Google Maps. Like this one for a home in Seattle:

The real estate listing place pages include property information, photos, map placement, Street View imagery and functionality, nearby public transit details, and even AdWords ads. Google has added links for “Directions” and “Search nearby,” as well as a “Send” link that opens an outgoing email with the place page link embedded inside. The property details in the example above are sourced from two separate Prudential Real Estate web sites, and from NWSource.com, which is the Seattle Times’ web site. It’s all presented just as you’d see on any standard MLS web site, though it lacks some of the deep information (such as square footage of individual rooms) available in a typical MLS listing.

There’s no announcement of this new feature yet on the Google LatLong blog, but it was announced today on the official Google Australia blog. That post says the real estate place pages may also include things like videos and inspection times. Left unsaid is that the place page format gives Google the space and flexibility to add new types of information in the future.

Google Maps has, of course, shown individual property information for some time. But it was relegated to the old, small, somewhat user-unfriendly info pop-up windows. The new place pages offer more information, are more user-friendly, and have short, clean links (like http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=18428966863334951733) that home buyers can easily pass around.

It’s the latest in a string of upgrades that Google has made to how it presents real estate information in Google Maps. For more, see Land Grab: Google Expands Real Estate Listings from July and Google Maps Makes Real Estate Search More Visible from last month. Add them all together, along with other updates that are sure to come, and it’s obvious Google is on its way to building what amounts to a national MLS-like database of property listings.

Over the weekend, I received several emails, noticed dozens of Tweets, saw several forum posts and noticed for myself that Google Social Search experimental search feature went offline.

If you have opt in to the Social Search feature at google.com/experimental you will notice an error on your Google searches that reads, “The experiment you’re trying to access is no longer available. Go to experiments overview.”

Google has confirmed this is a temporary issue and that a fix will be in place sometime today or tomorrow. Here is Google’s official statement on this matter:

The Google Social Search experiment is temporarily down. We are working on it and expect to restore access sometime Monday or Tuesday.

The label, “TV Guide for the internet,” doesn’t fully capture the intent or the extent of Clicker. We first wrote about the site when it appeared at the TechCrunch50 event. It was then in a closed beta. However today, a mere 58 days later, the site launches to the public with a number of new features and additional content.

Former Ask CEO Jim Lanzone, now the CEO of Clicker, has described the site as “the first structured, comprehensive and unbiased programming guide for internet television.” And in today’s press release the site calls itself “Complete Programming Guide for Internet Television.”

Clicker may look like a more organized version of YouTube or a broader version of Hulu or a video search engine; and while there have been TV programming guides online, the gestalt of Clicker is something new. It both expresses where video programming is today and anticipates the “converged future.”

Increasingly people are watching movies and TV programs online. According to comScore, “more than 168 million U.S. Internet users watched online video during [September] . . . with nearly 26 billion videos viewed during the month . . .”

Clicker doesn’t compete with any of the video sites or destinations listed above; it aims to sit on top of all this content and serve as a comprehensive guide to them. Clicker also features movies, music video and made-for-Web video. Some of this content can be viewed on Clicker (if the video player is embeddable) but mostly Clicker refers people to the original sources.

Though it may not be entirely obvious, Clicker has a bright social future with a long road map of community features that will be built out over time. Imagine playlists and favorites “curated” by aficionados and experts in genres or sub-genres. And Clicker’s structured data approach provides lots and lots of information about programs and ways into content and related content:

The new features making their appearance with the public launch include:

• More content: 400,000 full episodes from over 1,200 sources in more than 1,200 categories [and] over 30,000 movies from Netflix Instant Streaming and Amazon VOD.  (Clicker also catalogs more than 50,000 music videos from over 20,000 artists.)
• Improved DVR-like Playlist functionality, including new episode alerts and full “season passes”
• Facebook Connect integration, so anyone can create a Clicker account with Facebook and/or tie their Clicker account to their Facebook profile
• User-Generated Content: fans can contribute their own thoughts, observations, and facts about any show or episode
• Search Within: The ability to restrict a search to topics within a specific program. For example, searching “Warren Buffett” within the show Charlie Rose specifically brings up those episodes where Buffett is interviewed
• Related Search: Machine-learning based suggestions on related programs. For example, 30 Rock, The Office and Larry Sanders Show are offered as related suggestions for the show Seinfeld

As mentioned above, Clicker also anticipates the coming era of the internet in the living room (on TV). As mentioned in our original post, Clicker CEO Lanzone told me that almost immediately after the demo he did at the TechCrunch50 event he was getting inquiries from the mainstream broadcasters and cable companies. Below is a “TV interface” that Clicker mocked up that could replace the kludgy cable programming guides of today.

There’s no doubt competitors will come out of the woodwork and existing companies will reposition themselves to match Clicker’s positioning and claims. However Clicker is in a very solid if not unique position to realize its ambition to be a comprehensive programming guide for video and entertainment content whether online — or on TV.

There’s a lot of news today coming out of Bing headquarters, perhaps most notably that the long-rumored partnership with Wolfram Alpha is finally coming to fruition.

Bing’s announcement today explains that the collaboration will cover two specific areas: nutritional information and mathematics.

Nutritional Data

With help from Wolfram Alpha, Bing says it can now help users make smarter diet choices. When searching for specific food items, searchers will see a new Nutrition tab that offers more information. And at the bottom of the search results page, Bing will show the nutrition facts labels — the kind you see on product packaging.

Bing is also pulling in a Body Mass Index calculator from Wolfram Alpha that lets user learn about BMI within Bing’s search results.

Mathematics Data

This is where we all expected any Bing-Wolfram Alpha partnership to be revealed: using Bing’s search box to get the kind of computational results and data that Wolfram Alpha is perhaps best known for.

These new Wolfram-powered features will roll out in the U.S. “over the next several days.” Bing has also posted three short video interview clips with Wolfram Alpha founder Stephen Wolfram talking about their partnership.

State of the search engine

In a separate blog post, Bing has shared what amounts to a “state of the search engine” report. In it, Bing recaps and reveals some of the new features and tools that have been added since its May/June launch and talks about what Bing has learned from usage patterns and focus group testing.

The new features include

• quicker access to Bing’s popular travel search features from the Bing.com home page
• faster access to flight search and listings data
• new “city results pages” with important information about popular attractions, city photos, local neighborhoods and more
• new “page preview” features, including pulling contact information from a web page and showing it in Bing’s search results previews
• new “event search” functionality with categorized events for “major cities”
• a “search sharing” tool for product results that lets users send a result to friends via email or on Facebook/Twitter
• new search results for some health-related queries, with more information and newly organized sets of results

As with the Wolfram Alpha integration, Bing says these new features will start to show up in search results over the next “several days.”

Bing and MSN have combined to create Bing Videos, a new video portal that combines the content from MSN Videos with Bing’s search technology.

According to today’s announcement (and more here), the new site combines videos from a variety of sources. The former MSN Videos offered original programming, as well content from the likes of MSNBC, Fox Sports, National Geographic, and others. Bing Videos will house that content, and offer web-based videos from sites like YouTube, Hulu, MySpace, and others.

Videos are organized into a handful of categories (News, Sports, TV Shows, etc.) and there are sections for “Hot Viral Clips,” “Last Night on TV,” and “Best of Bing” among others.

Overall, it’s a compelling interface with what appears to be a lot of content, and finding exactly the specific type of video you want is painless. It may help Microsoft add to its second-place video market share, but as recent numbers suggest, it has a long, long way to go to even approach YouTube’s dominance.

Recently IDG News Service asked Google’s Marissa Mayer about the “perfect search engine.” Here was the question posed: “What is the perfect search engine? If you had a magic wand and could create it, what would it look like? What would it do?”

Mayer replied: “It would be a machine that could answer that question, really. It would be one that could understand speech, questions, phrases, what entities you’re talking about, concepts. It would be able to search all of the world’s information, [find] different ideas and concepts, and bring them back to you in a presentation that was really informative and coherent.”

What Mayer may have unknowingly described is Siri, a “virtual personal assistant” that uses artificial intelligence to determine user intent and then match data or applications that can fulfill that intent. The company will launch its iPhone application soon and already has a deal with a “tier one” US mobile carrier. The NY Times offers background on Siri and some of the technology behind the system:

SRI International’s software venture, called Siri, is more ambitious, in that it allows users to speak or write natural-language requests into the device (“Find me a place to eat dinner tonight with Karen, reserve a table and put it on our calendars.”), which will complete the task independently and inform you when it is done.

In terms of long-term predictions, Siri is actually an easy bet. Dag Kittlaus, the company’s chief executive, said one of the four major carriers would introduce the service early next year, and he said it would also be available as an iPhone app. But over the next two years the technology should be able to complete a wider range of tasks.

I’ve seen Siri in action and found it impressive. The system is not perfect but it brings users closer to transactions and fulfillment of their objectives — at least in a range of use cases — than can Google on mobile devices today. It uses a voice interface to receive queries. You can use the keyboard if necessary but that’s entirely secondary to the experience. 

The way one interacts with it is “conversational” and “transactional” rather than providing a verbal version of a conventional search query. 

I moderated a panel at the recent Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco called “new directions in navigation and search.” The panel, among others, featured Siri CEO Dag Kittlaus. What became clear during the panel is that we’re going to see lots of innovation and change in mobile search and that the present version of the experience could well be regarded as Jurassic in only a few years as the unique attributes of the device (e.g., the camera) become input mechanisms and search tools. Augmented reality is also a part of this, although in its present form it’s fairly undeveloped and limited.

And, as another example of how far things could develop away from the current “query box and blue links” search paradigm,  look at the video demo below of “SixthSense” a “wearable gestural interface”:

This week in Germany world leaders gathered to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The tearing down of the Wall, a potent symbol of East German oppression since 1961, marked the end of one era and the start of a new one. Strange though it may sound, the tearing down of the Wall in 1989 was a significant influence on how we do search marketing in Europe today.

When doing SEO in Europe, you are bound to run into some issues which that originated in some way from the fall of the Berlin Wall. In this column I’ll try to give you a little historical insight which will help you look at search in Europe through that lens, offering a somewhat different perspective than usual. With this background you’ll benefit when entering the European market by knowing more about the wants and needs of your target audiences, increasing your chances of actually reaching them.

In one day, Europe suddenly became much bigger

One of the obvious consequences of the fall of the Wall is the fact that Europe got bigger. Where before capitalism and therefore business (and search) was focused on Western Europe, the potential market is now more than twice that size. Countries like Poland, Czech and Romania now are big growing markets, especially on the affiliate marketing front.

With the bigger market there is more money flowing around. That is a direct consequence of the tearing down of the Wall. Eastern Germany was almost bankrupt when the Wall went down. Because of Western Europeans coming into Eastern Europe there is a lot more money which went to the East.

The rise of the European Union

In my last column I talked about legal issues in Europe. Many legal issues are caused by the way the European Union works, designed to protect European citizens. In 1989 the European Union was called the European Economic Community (EEC). That was the case until 1993. The EEC wasn’t by far the size of the current European Union. It was only the Western European countries which were members. And they were just working together on some economic issues, not on other regulations.

Eastern European countries weren’t allowed in the Union at first. The German councilor Helmut Kohl fought for their rights and succeeded. After 1993 the European Union saw big growth, and with this growth regulation also started to expand. Many current regulations come from the thought of giving all Europeans the protection and freedom they want and need. Keep in mind one thing: with all the different European countries one institution which regulates may seem to make a lot of regulations. But at least now all the regulations are the same for every country, unlike the fifty different rules marketers might have had to comply with just a few short years ago.

Common coin: The Euro

In 1989 the French Prime Minister Francois Mitterand was at first no fan of the German unification which came shortly after the Wall went down. But he did take the opportunity to get something done he had wanted to do for a while: the introduction of the European coin, what would later be the Euro. He originally wanted this coin just to keep the German Mark, which was very strong, under control. But indirectly he changed the way you do business in Europe. In 1991 was decided to introduce the coin which has been around for a decade now. This decision could never have occurred without the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Politics

The fall of the German Wall had many political consequences, both inside and outside European countries. The best example is Germany itself. After 1989 Helmut Kohl quickly came up with a plan to unify East and West Germany. The German unification still has its influence on the way we work. primarily because now Germany is by far the biggest market in Europe. That wouldn’t have been the case without unification. And Germans need special care. They are very protective of their “own people.” It’s not a coincidence that its the Germans who are attacking Google in different ways. This comes from the German mindset—they have strong protectionistic instincts regarding their country. The fact that German councilor Angela Merkel is herself an original East German citizen might give you a little bit more insight in the way she thinks about big capitalistic companies like Google.

The political climate changed significantly with the fall of the Berlin Wall. And it still works through in the way we do business in Europe. If you optimize for Germany you have to keep in mind the differences between East and West Germans and you have to keep in mind the history to understand why Germans respond (or don’t respond) to what happens on the web.

Google alternatives: Yandex and Seznam

Finally, something directly search-related. Europe is pretty much dominated by Google. In every country Google is the biggest—with two exceptions. In Russia, Yandex is the biggest search engine by market share. In Czech there is Seznam that’s more popular than Google. These search engines have origins in the way things were before 1989. They didn’t exist then, but they were founded with the thoughts and ideas of the people who lived in Eastern Europe before communism fell. That is an entire different mindset than engineers who created US search engines. So if you want to optimize for them you have to think differently.

What if the Berlin Wall hadn’t fallen?

What would search in Europe be like if the Berlin Wall hadn’t gone down and communism in Eastern Europe was still flourishing? The “what if” question is always difficult but it could have looked like this in Europe:

• Yandex and Seznam would dominate the entire Eastern European area. Google wouldn’t probably even get a percentage.
• The potential market in which search marketers could work would have been just half of what it is today.
• Eastern Europe would probably be broke, so you wouldn’t be able to get much profit there.
• There would be more different regulations to work with. Every country would think of their own.
• Instead of a single, unified currency, you would have to work with more than 50 different currencies.
• In all it would have been a lot less interesting market to work in.

So why this lesson in European history then? What is that worth for working in search in Europe? Well, a lot. Let me give you some takeaways:

• If you look at Europe don’t just look at France, Britain and Spain. Also consider Poland, Romania, Russia and other Eastern European states too. These are big markets with lots of opportunities.
• As in the US, politics plays a big role in Europe. Be aware of the political situation and it can work in your benefit.
• Chances are that in Europe if you want to do business you’ll run into European rules. Keep that in mind and keep in mind where Europeans come from: a divided continent, trying to work together. It could have been a lot worse with lots of different regulations everywhere. Now, be sure to look at the European Union first.
• Though Google is the biggest, there are other interesting search engines that offer opportunities for smart marketers. Try looking at Yandex and Seznam if you target Eastern Europeans. You might be surprised about the ROI you can gain from a well executed search marketing campaign.

Looking for where to get a seasonal flu shot or that hard-to-find vaccine against H1N1 swine flu? Google has a new flu shot locator that can help.

When the locator loads, you many need to manually enter your location. Do so using the “Change Location” option:

After doing your search, a red needle icon shows where to get regular seasonal flu shots, a blue needle for the H1N1 vaccine or colored both ways if both are offered at a particular location (so many needles — don’t let your kids see this map before you go!):

Click on any of the icons, and you’ll be shown more information about that location:

A list along the left-hand side of the map also gives more details about a particular place and reflects all the locations on the map. Many of these are pharmacies, but Google says more locations will be added:

We’ve been working with HHS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state and local health agencies to gather information on flu vaccine locations across the country, particularly for the H1N1 flu vaccine (both the nasal-spray vaccine and the shot). At the moment we have data for locations of flu vaccine directly from 20 states and counting. We are also continuing to add information from chain pharmacies and other providers in all 50 states; today, you’ll find results from chains such as Walgreens, CVS and PDX participants, such as Kmart, Duane Reade, WinnDixie and Giant Eagle.

Unfortunately, you can’t tell at-a-glance if a particular location is out of stock on flu vaccine. For example, in the map above, you can see H1N1 is said to be available near Fountain Valley. But according to the list, it’s out of stock:

It would be nice if the map could also reflect the availability status. Plus, I wish there was a way to share a map tailored to a particular location. Even when you’re signed in to Google and using the My Maps feature, it doesn’t seem possible to save a map for a particular ZIP code. Using the share options also just shares the generic URL, not one that will bring up a location-specific map.

The locator will also soon be added the the Flu.gov site from the US government and the American Lung Association’s flu site.

Google also maintains a Google Flu Trends site designed to help you spot where flu activity may be peaking.

Yahoo has confirmed the recent rumors that it will test a real-time search feature in its search results.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo will run a test “in the coming days” with OneRiot, a real-time search engine that focuses on links and content from Twitter and other social media sources. PaidContent reports that Yahoo will also be running real-time search tests with other players, too. (See Danny Sullivan’s What Is Real Time Search? Definitions & Players for more background on possible partners.)

Yahoo will conduct its real-time search testing on a limited set of queries, the WSJ says, before deciding if the feature is useful enough to roll out to all Yahoo searchers.

While real-time search gets all the attention these days, there’s also increased interest in hyperlocal search. Where real-time search answers What’s happening right now?, hyperlocal search answers the question, What’s happening right here? It’s like local search on steroids, you could say.

Outside.in has, for several years, been somewhat like a clearinghouse of hyperlocal information and services — collecting and publishing local news feeds, and providing tools for local bloggers, for example.

With its recent relaunch, Outside.in has placed itself squarely in the realm of hyperlocal search engine. Aside from a new design, Outside.in made three fairly significant upgrades that impact hyperlocal search and discovery:

• you can search by city, ZIP, neighborhood, address, and place from a single search box
• you can do a keyword search within any of those same geographic options
• you can get RSS feeds for any search you conduct and any page on the site

The ability to search by place and keyword (see first two bullet items above) makes for a convenient option that’s similar to the “search nearby” option that Google Maps and others provide. But unlike maps, with Outside.in you can search for local news and information.

The limiting factor in all this is, of course, the amount of hyperlocal content available. There’s not much in my smallish hometown, so Outside.in tends to surface content from our local paper and TV stations, as well as the local blogs that my wife and I run. But in larger cities with more active hyperlocal publishing, this new emphasis on hyperlocal search might offer a compelling answer to the question, What’s happening right here?