Google’s Fading Home Page Tests Continue

Nov 2, 2009 at 9:10am ET by Barry Schwartz   

On October 6th, we reported on Google’s fading home page, which just showed the user a Google logo and a search box. Then after a gradual amount of time, the search boxes and other various links and navigational elements faded in. Since then, Google has seemed to test two alternatives to this new home page [...]

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Halloween ‘09 From Google, Yahoo, Bing & Others

Oct 31, 2009 at 8:11pm ET by Barry Schwartz   

Today is Halloween and the search engines have logos up for the special day. Before I post the logos, here are some posts from others in the community on Halloween. Matt Cutts of Google had a holy costume. Google Blogoscoped noticed Google added trick or treat to their robots.txt file. Bing has [...]

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Outside.in Expands Its Hyperlocal Search Capabilities

Oct 30, 2009 at 2:26pm ET by Matt McGee   

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 [...]

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Google’s Additional Discovery Method: RSS and Atom Feeds

Oct 30, 2009 at 2:24am ET by Vanessa Fox   

For years, Google’s discovery of web pages was solely based on links. If a page had no links to it, Googlebot had no way of knowing about it and therefore, would never index it. Along the way, Google provided an option for submitting individual pages, but that wasn’t really a viable option for site owners [...]

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Google Launches Comparison Ads, Starting With Mortgages

Oct 29, 2009 at 5:24pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Google’s now officially announced “Comparison Ads,” starting with a way for mortgage advertisers to have their products compared against each other but which may expand to other products in the future. “If you’re looking for a mortgage, you really care about a specific offer. You want to know the APR and based on [...]

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Google Music Search 2.0 Launches With Musical “OneBox”

Oct 28, 2009 at 7:00pm ET by Matt McGee   

Saying that it wants to bring music fans “closer to your favorite artists,” Google has added a new Music Search OneBox to its search results. The new OneBox includes content from partner sites such as MySpace, Pandora, Lala and others, and lets searchers listen to song clips right from Google’s search results page. Searchers should [...]

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Live Blogging Yahoo Investor Day 2009

Oct 28, 2009 at 11:08am ET by Danny Sullivan   

It’s Yahoo Investor Day, where Yahoo is briefing institutional investors and financial analysts on the company. I’m here for the morning portion, and I’ll be live blogging out of it. You can also watch the live web cast here. Bartz Welcomes Carol Bartz, CEO, on stage. Saying thing they have great opportunity. Lots to fix. Low return. [...]

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Disruptamundo: Google Adds Turn-by-Turn Navigation To Mobile Maps

Oct 28, 2009 at 9:59am ET by Greg Sterling   

I hate the word “disruptive,” as it’s often used in the internet world, because it’s something of a cliche. But I use it here because the new Navigation for Google Maps for Mobile will in fact be — disruptive. On Monday we covered Google Navigation, the then rumor, asking “Will A Free Google GPS Sink The [...]

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DMOZ: A Solid Directory Or The Great Pumpkin Of Search?

Oct 27, 2009 at 8:36am ET by Debra Mastaler   

Love it or hate it, the Open Directory Project (ODP or “DMOZ”) always seems to creep into the conversation when we’re discussing links and/or SEO. Check any forum, social news or answer site and you’ll see a wide variety of opinions on the 11 year old directory and how it’s managed. When talking about the DMOZ [...]

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iCrossing: Google’s Share Of Search Almost 77 Percent

Oct 27, 2009 at 8:00am ET by Greg Sterling   

We received some interesting data from search agency iCrossing yesterday. The data show US search market share percentages and distribution quite different than the major traffic metrics firms. The company says its numbers are “based on a large representative sample of Fortune 1000 companies, across all major verticals,” which use its search tracking tools. Accordingly the [...]

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Google Rolls Out New Custom Search Features, Including Wikipedia Integration

Oct 26, 2009 at 6:30pm ET by Matt McGee   

Google has made a series of announcements today about its Custom Search Engine service, including a new integration with Wikipedia that substantially changes the search experience on that site for users who opt-in. Other Custom Search announcements today include new custom themes and layouts, as well as better support for “rich snippets.” More on those [...]

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Google Social Search Launches, Gives Results From Your Trusted “Social Circle”

Oct 26, 2009 at 3:38pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Google Social Search is rolling out, a new service from Google that allows you to easily find material written by people you know and trust. It’s a pretty cool idea, especially in that it’s pretty painless to get started using it. The service will be available through Google Labs Experimental [...]

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Will A Free Google GPS Sink The Navigation Industry?

Oct 26, 2009 at 1:03pm ET by Greg Sterling   

Lots of companies make a good living from hardware and software GPS navigation systems. In the US carriers such as Verizon and Sprint and personal navigation device (PND) makers such as TomTom, Garmin, Magellan, among others, earn device and subscription revenues from turn-by-turn routing and directions and points of interest directories. There are a number of [...]

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Video Of Google’s Sergey Brin At Web 2.0

Oct 26, 2009 at 9:31am ET by Barry Schwartz   

Google’s co-founder, Sergey Brin, made a surprise visit at the Web 2.0 Summit last week. The video of his 18 minute interview with John Battelle is now available on YouTube. Here it is:

In summary, he talked about his thoughts on Twitter’s deal, Google’s Social Search, also a little bit about Bing and even [...]

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The Myth Of Great Search Engine Results

Oct 23, 2009 at 6:54pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Too much time is often spent about the new features the various major search engines roll out or the latest deals they cut. Here at Search Engine Land, we can be as guilty of that as anyone. To correct it, I’ll be spending more and more time highlighting poor quality search results [...]

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Google’s Brin: “A Shame” That Yahoo Out Of Search

Oct 23, 2009 at 9:51am ET by Greg Sterling   

Try as they might Yahoo is having a tough time convincing people that it’s still “in search.” On Yahoo’s earnings call earlier this week CFO Tim Morse, who led the call because CEO Carol Bartz was ill, used her analogy to describe Yahoo’s new way of positioning itself around search: The next revolution isn’t with the [...]

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Google Social Search Is Coming & More On Google-Twitter

Oct 21, 2009 at 8:02pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Google’s Marissa Mayer has announced at the Web 2.0 Summit that Google Social Search will be launching in the coming weeks. I’ve seen an early release of it. It’s way cool. Below, what details we have now about this plus some follow up on today’s Google-Twitter search deal that was announced. NOTE: Google Social Search is [...]

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Up Close With Bing’s Twitter Search Engine

Oct 21, 2009 at 2:40pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Bing new Bing Twitter Search has gone live today, made possible through a new deal cut with Twitter. Below, a close-up look at features in the new service. Bing Twitter? Bing Facebook? Bing Social Search? “Bing Twitter Search” is my name for the new service. Bing tells me officially, it’s called “Bing Twitter.” That sounds awkward, two [...]

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Rumor: Here Comes GTunes, Google Music Service

Oct 21, 2009 at 11:30am ET by Greg Sterling   

Google is reportedly about to launch a new music service in partnership with LaLa and iLike (MySpace). — Update, October 28, 2009: This is now live. See our story, Google Music Search 2.0 Launches With Musical “OneBox” for more. — According to TechCrunch, users will access the Google music service through search: Users will be able to stream songs [...]

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Twitter Not Giving Access To Private Tweets

Oct 20, 2009 at 3:44pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Is Twitter allowing search engines access to protected tweets or not? Not, Twitter tells me, though the company probably needs to do a bit more to prevent this type of confusion in the future. The LA Times reported yesterday about a “Twitter hole” that it believed allowed Google special access to protected [...]

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