Chris Sherman once compared Ask.com to Apple. Ask CEO Jim Lanzone remarked to me that he liked the comparison because it spoke to quality and innovativeness. Indeed, among the top-tier search engines Ask has arguably been the most innovative. In one sense it has to be. Without that effort it might lose hold on the […]
Screenshots of YouTube’s New Player from Google Operating System shows a new YouTube player being tested to “improve the way you interact with videos and will create a cinematic experience” says Ionut Alex. Chitu.
Last year, Google signed a landmark deal to become the default search engine on new Dell computers, plus to bundle Google software. Now, people are noting anew that a consequence of the deal seems to be pushing Dell users to search results dominated by Google ads, rather than editorial listings. Google’s Browser Address Error Redirector […]
After months of testing, Google is rolling out new ways to navigate within its search results and between different Google properties. Here’s an illustrated guide to the old and new. Let’s start with the home page. How it currently looks, for someone who is logged in:
Google is undertaking the most radical change to its search results ever, introducing a “Universal Search” system that will blend listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines among those it gathers from crawling web pages. The new system officially rolls out today for anyone using Google.com and searching in English. Not everyone will see it […]
It’s Searchology Day today at Google, where the company is devoting time to look at the past, present and future of search at Google. There will be a number of significant announcements coming out of the event. Want to keep up? Stay tuned to this page. We’ll keep it updated with a summary of major […]
The Yahoo Video Team Blog announced that they have redesigned and cleaned up the Yahoo Video home page. The new page now sports a large search box at the top, plus the relocation of navigational elements.
Google Analytics today has released a new version of their web analytics tool. I spoke with Brett Crosby, Senior Manager of Google Analytics about the release, which he explained was a completely “new platform” to enable “non-experts” to use sophisticated web analytics without expert intervention.
Both Yahoo and Google seem to be testing new search results pages. Karl Ribas found that Yahoo is testing a design that has a thin top blue bar above search results. The blue really doesn’t remind me of Yahoo—Yahoo to me is about the purple and white colors. But the blue does remind me of […]
Imagine a local search site without maps. Sounds outrageous, doesn’t it? Most local search sites are dominated by maps. Google, Ask, and Live even begin my experience with a big map of North America. Correct, yes, but now what? Many sites incorporate technically impressive features to make their maps even more elaborate. But imagine taking […]
Soon, Google will quietly begin changing the way it blends news results and standard web search results, co-mingling links to news sources and web pages if your search terms are relevant to current news events. The new format will replace OneBox news links that have normally appeared at the top of a search result page, […]
Back in December 2002, Google launched its long expected product and shopping search engine. It was called Froogle, a combination of “frugal” and “Google.” Just over four years later, Froogle is finally losing its cutesy name for something more descriptive — to become Google Product Search. It will also gain a cleaner interface, as well. […]
Via Google Blogoscoped, another round of the Google services navigation testing, where Google has put the “Other Searches” links normally above the search box at the top of the page. This type of placement was first spotted last month on both the Google home page and on search results pages. The latest version changes the […]
The Google AdWords Blog just announced that they have made two changes on how the top sponsored listings in the Google search results are handled. (1) A color change from a blue background to a yellow background was pushed through today after much testing. (2) Now you have to click on the title of the […]
It appears we have more sightings of Google experimenting with additional navigational link placement ideas. These are links that let you reach various Google search services beyond web search.
Google Operating System reports that Google is testing a new interface for how they currently display the navigation links at Google.com. Google moved the links that used to be directly above the search box to the very top of the page:
Quintura recently relaunched with a new interface, which has been receiving a fair amount of comment. I originally wrote about the search engine back in November, and I was fairly lukewarm in my praise of it; while it was a nice idea, the interface held it back. Well, the relaunched version is now much better, […]
Philipp Lenssen spotted plus box results at Google for Google Video results. He noticed it for a search on nightwish videos, but I do not see it myself. For a screen capture check out Philipp’s Google Blogoscoped. We have covered two other plus box results in the past. Google “Plus Box” Puts Maps In Search […]
If you are an adCenter beta user, they have made some new changes to the account interface this past weekend. Most of the changes are from a usability standpoint, such as better navigation between campaigns and ad groups, the ability to import third party campaigns and remove poor performing keywords right on the keyword performance […]
Last month Google redesigned Google Image Search. Now it looks like Google reverted back to the old design today. Overall, many people did not like the new design, and I guess Google decided to listen to those comments. Why didn’t people like it? Well, it didn’t show the photo credits, the photo specs and some […]
Allen Stern designed a mock up of what it would look like, if Google added their Google Video ads to the Google search results page. It is pretty funny and you would hope that Google would never take it this far. The inspiration for Allen Stern’s design was based on the recent news that Google […]
Philipp Lenssen reports that Google Images has undergone a design change. The most noticeable changes include: Removal of row by row light blue background color Addition of mouse over light blue background color on an image by image basis Removal of image URL source Removal of image file size Removal of image height and width […]
Google Auto-correcting Queries from Google Operating System notes that Google seems to have moved beyond suggesting spelling corrections and now automatically does them for you. Actually, I think this is the stemming feature kicking in. However, it highlights that it’s useful for search engines to tell you exactly what they’ve modified, if they do so.
Today I noticed Live.com trying to get me to search with it in Firefox. Then Yahoo did the same thing. So I guess a new round of “let’s change search defaults” is going on within Firefox. That seemed a good excuse for a revisit how the various search engines are trying to pull us as […]
The Read Write Web blog first spotted Ask.com testing a new interface they named Ask X. The new interface sports a steel background for the home page with more goodies inside. A search on Ask X for barry schwartz shows a three column pane interface. On the left hand side is the search box, where […]
Google Blatantly Copies Yahoo!? from Yahoo’s Jeremy Zawodny makes a pretty damning case against Google for blatantly ripping off Yahoo’s Internet Explorer 7 promo copy. Yahoo offers a custom version of IE7 via a pitch page you’ll see here. Google appears to have launched its own pitch page yesterday, one that was amazingly similar in […]