In 2013, Google imitated a “mapathon” project in India, offering prizes to encourage people to help fill in gaps and improve Google Maps in the country. At the time, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) asked the company not to collect “classified data,” such as the locations of military installations. The mapathon focused on business […]
Google Maps used its Google+ profile yesterday to announce a new out-of-this-world feature, allowing users to explore the craters on Mars and take a virtual trip to the moon. The announcement marked NASA’s Curiosity Rover expedition to Mars, which has spent the last two year’s roaming the red planet’s surface. To find the moon and […]
Google continues its roll to celebrate the women who have shaped our world, with today’s Google logo recognizing one of the world’s leading paleontologist Mary Anning. The animated illustration depicts Anning uncovering dinosaur fossils shaped to resemble the Google logo. Born on this date in 1799, Anning began hunting fossils at a young age in […]
After opening its “Doodle 4 Google” contest to kindergarten through twelfth graders in February, Google has released its list of state winners, and started a public voting forum to help select this year’s national winner. Asking students to create a Google logo based on something they would invent to make the world a better place, […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: MapQuest Transfers Local Listings Management To Yext Last October, MapQuest started outsourcing local business listings management to Yext. The “claim your MapQuest listings” page is hosted by Yext (I believe) with […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: What Makes You A Best In Class SEO? Survey Says… Today, at Conductor’s annual client summit, #C3NY, Director of Research and Search Engine Land contributor Nathan Safran unveiled research from a […]
Today’s Google logo is an interactive image of Foucault’s Pendulum, a device created by French physicist Léon Foucault who was born on this date 194 years ago in Paris, France. The Foucault Pendulum was the first experimental demonstration of the Earth’s rotation on its axis. Showing the rotation of the plane of oscillation of a […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: DuckDuckGo Launches New Search & Content App For iOS DuckDuckGo (DDG) has launched a new iOS app called Search & Stories to go along with the Android app that’s been available […]
Google prepared — and briefly was showing — a special logo in honor of today’s near miss with Asteroid 2012 DA14. However, the company removed that out of respect, following the meteor explosion over Russia. Below, you can see the logo — or “doodle” as Google calls them — that was intended to run today […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Seeking Maps Fix, Apple Fires Mapping Team Manager And Asks Outsiders For Help According to a widely cited Bloomberg report published earlier today Apple has fired another executive in connection with […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: A Gold Medal Roundup Of Online Olympics Resources The games of the XXX Olympiad begin in a few hours in London. For the next two weeks people around the globe will […]
In early June, at its “next dimension” mapping event, Google promised more complete 3D coverage in Google Earth. Yesterday it rolled out new versions of Earth for iOS devices. The list of fully rendered 3D cities includes: “Boulder, Boston, Charlotte, Lawrence (Kan.), Long Beach (Ca.), Los Angeles, Portland (Ore.), San Diego, Santa Cruz, Tampa, Tucson, […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Insanity: Google Sends New Link Warnings, Then Says You Can Ignore Them Google’s war on bad links officially became insane today. For months, Google’s sending out warnings about bad links and […]
There are a number of companies that operate in the enterprise segment offering products for fleet and mobile workforce management, such as Telenav. Now Google is getting into the game with a new product descriptively but somewhat awkwardly called “Google Maps Coordinate.” (Don’t they know about branding consultants?) The new enterprise tool, which will apparently […]
During its “next dimension” event this morning Google sought to convey to an audience of tech journalists and others how much effort, expense and care it has invested in Google Maps. Indeed, the platform is roughly eight years old and has seen enormous growth and evolution. The rumored and much discussed potential launch of an […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Consider The Ends To Justify The Means In PPC “En toute chose il faut considérer la fin.” (In everything one must consider the end) – Jean de La Fontaine, 1668 It […]
Today’s special Google Logo, aka Google Doodle, celebrates the life of Nicolas Steno, the father of modern geology. The logo symbolizes the study of the earth, from the ocean to the mountain tops. In Google Doodle fashion, the art makes up the letters of Google’s name, and this one has the Google colors as well. […]
FairSearch, a group of search companies including Microsoft which lobbies that Google is too dominant, has sent a white paper outlining its anti-trust concerns about Google to the 50 state attorneys general in the US. Below, a review and some fact checking of the paper. You’ll find the paper here, if you wish to read […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Confirmed: Google Panda 2.4 Update Arrived This Week Google has confirmed that the latest iteration of its Panda algorithm update is live. Based on our tracking of the algo changes, this […]
Don’t be alarmed the next time you use Google Maps: Yes, pretty much everything looks just a little bit different than it did yesterday. There’s not a single, major change; instead, almost all of the individual pieces of the Google Maps interface have been updated: the red marker pins, the navigation controls, the Satellite/Earth/Traffic/etc. widget […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Foursquare: More Than Fun & Games, A Potent Local Search Tool About a year ago, I was feeling Foursquare fatigue. Why on earth was I checking in? The badges were harder […]
About a year ago, I was feeling Foursquare fatigue. Why on earth was I checking in? The badges were harder to get, and I wasn’t going to ever “win” in some places. But now I win all the time, through tips and specials that have been added. Welcome to the new Foursquare. It’s not like […]
Earlier this week at its Inside Search event, Google announced a new way to search the web called Search By Image. Rather than enter a text query, Search By Image lets you begin your search with an image and Google will (try to) tell you what it is and show visually similar images. Search By […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: With +1, Advertising Is Getting Social Anyone willing to bet on Google’s attempts to get social would have to have deep pockets and a short memory. For years, Google crowed about […]
Today on Google you will find a logo of a spaceflight and astronaut remembering the 50th anniversary of when Yuri Gagarin was the first human to take a spaceflight. He completed an orbit of the Earth on a Soviet Union backed Vostok spacecraft on April 12, 1961. He instantly became a hero in his country […]
Five years ago, I wrote a story called “25 Things I Hate About Google.” It went viral, to my surprise. I thought it was worth revisiting that story on its five year anniversary, to see how many of those “hates” have been fixed. So let’s dive in!
Last week I wrote briefly about Google’s John Hanke’s move into a new role, based on a Forbes interview with him. Yesterday I got to speak directly with Hanke about his “new gig,” as they say. The former CEO of Keyhole came to lead the “geo team” (Maps, Earth) at Google after Keyhole was acquired […]
I generally enjoy John Gruber’s writings, but today he’s dishing out SEO advice about HTML title tags. Some of it is bad advice. So with respect, here’s how I’d suggest you write page titles in a way that can please search engines and humans alike. What Is An HTML Title Tag? Let me go back […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google’s “Gold Standard” Search Results Take Big Hit In New York Times Story The New York Times has a great, detailed story out today about a merchant with an unusual marketing […]
Google Earth 6 is being introduced today. It includes a number of significant upgrades and improvements. Specifically, Street View has been more deeply integrated into Earth. Users now can fly “seamlessly” from space to the street wherever Google has Street View imagery. Interestingly, Google is also introducing 3D trees to make Google Earth’s 3D environments […]
Google has added new historical imagery for London on Google Earth. It allows users to see images of how the city looked during recent history, in this case 1945 and various points forward to the present. Below are three “yesterday” and “today” images from the new London archive: You can access this archival photography by […]
It’s a long-standing complaint of mine with Google. You can do a search, then repeat the same search and “subtract” a word from your original set, and Google will return more matches — not less. It shouldn’t happen. But does, and here’s why. Subtracting Gives You More? Consider a search for cars, which reports that […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Showing Four Top AdWords Ads, Top One Google Mortgage Ad When I search for [mortgage rates] in Google, I am presented with dozens of Google AdWords ads on the search […]
Bing announced they have added a new layer to the Maps data. The new layer is from Open Street Maps, a free editable map of the whole world. This layer is a lot like the Wikipedia concept, where anyone can “view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from anywhere on Earth.” You […]
Google has announced Google Earth 5.2 for the PC and 3 for iOS with native iPad support. There are many changes, detailed here, for 5.2 — the biggest of which is probably the ability to open a browser within Google Earth. You can click a button on the top nav and a full browser slides […]
One of the challenges that bloggers face, compared to ‘real’ journalists, is that we’re not conditioned to churn out stories, no matter what. And so with a deadline looming for this post, I wondered what to write about, but nothing really grabbed my attention. But then I got to thinking – maybe I should write […]
Today, Facebook announced new simplified privacy controls designed to ease a settings overload problem that it admitted has challenged its users. Did it succeed? I’d give it an A for effort but a C+ to B- for actually solving the overload problem. Rather than a “one click solution” or a single-page recap, there remains a […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Search Funnel Reports—Tunnel Vision? On March 19, 2010 Google unveiled Google AdWords Search Funnel Reports via this YouTube video. This was a great day for proponents of multi-attribution marketing analysis. […]
The biggest sporting event on Earth is a month away, and Yahoo is out of the gates first to announce special shortcuts focused on the 2010 World Cup. Already in place is a general World Cup shortcut, and once the matches begin, Yahoo will have specific shortcuts for countries, groups, and individual matches, like these […]
I’ve been working on a project to classify all the special logos that Google has done over the years. Crazy? Perhaps a bit, but it’s interesting to see what Google has honored with special logos and the great increase in them recently. Besides, I like to organize things. Below, how Google’s special logos have evolved, […]