Posts by Bas van den Beld

Bas van den Beld is a speaker, trainer and online marketing strategist. Bas is the owner of Stateofsearch.com. -- You can hire Bas to speak, train or consult. -- More articles and bio from Bas van den Beld
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How well does Google Translate really work?

Google Translate can be a handy tool. But to be honest, a lot of the times the translations you get back can be really really crappy. But it is getting better, that is true. Still in my opinion Google Translate is there for the quick interpretation, knowing what something is about, not for the actual translations itself. If you optimize a website do not use Google Translate to translate a story and put that on your site. You will not get the right text, I can assure you that.

Still, this video below shows a nice way of how Google Translate can work. And apparently it does work for ordering Indian food! Then again, I can’t really check, because I don’t speak Indian. Still, its a nice video :) .

Ever wondered about Google’s datacenter?

This weekend I was having dinner with friends and we came on the subject of YouTube and how many videos there are online at the moment. The numbers are huge. “Can you imagine the serverpark that YouTube and Google have?” my friend asked me. I knew they were big, but to be honest I didn’t have a real idea of what they looked like. But Eric Schmidt was right when he said “We can more or less know what you’re thinking about” because along comes a tweet from Fili, a Googler yes, can you believe that. He retweeted a video which was shot in 2009 but which gives a great view of how these datacenters look like.

UPDATE: Is Google Partnering up with Amazon? Or does Plugin fool us?

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Original title: Is Google Partnering up with Amazon? Tests Suggest they are

Update: it seems as if a Chrome Plugin, “awesomescreenshot” might be the cause of these results showing up with certain people. This is not yet confirmed but could explain things. Google has not confirmed or denied anything was going on.

“Do no Evil” was a motto which was created a while ago. Everything which Google did had to be tested to that motto. Was it potentially evil? Don’t do it. Many believe that the motto is no longer in use and hasn’t been in use for a while. We’ll probably won’t know until another Googler or another Stephen Levy-type of journalist will report on it from inside Google walls. But if the tests some are seeing at the moment are true than another major group of Google-dislikers will probably arise.

Several people have mentioned on Twitter and in a blogpost that they are seeing “Amazon Results For…” on some of their queries. These results are placed on top of the regular search results, pushing down not only the regular results but also other shopping results. So far it is unclear whether this is a test, something Google is really doing or if it is a deal with Amazon or not. (more…)

Searches on Bing More Successful than on Google

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There has been a lot of discussion about Bing lately. According to some experts Microsoft’s search engine was driving on a dead end street. They were going nowhere and Microsoft should consider selling Bing. But things might not be that bad after all.

Research from Experian Hitwise shows that Bing is not only growing, it is beating Google when it comes to success rates. Where on Google 68% off searches are ‘successful’, on Bing and Yahoo that number was a lot higher: 80 percent of searches. (more…)

Google News creator Krishna Bharat talks journalism

Almost lunchtime on the Friday afternoon and waiting for the next World Cup match? You have one hour to ‘kill’. How about using that hour to listen to Google News creator Krishna Bharat. He was interviewed at Stanford University earlier this month. A very interesting talk with someone who has a great amount of knowledge and is willing to share that. Worth the look!

State of Search radioshow – episode 64: Search and Social in Travel

In the first show after Bas’ holiday Bas and Roy were joined by Wouter Blok who is Chief Marketing Officer at EasyToBook.com. The three talked about the influence of reviews on search, how positive and negative reactions in social can be differentiated, Bing and a lot more.

Missed it? You can listen to the show below!

The delay in shownotes was caused by technical issues in the US, we apologize for that. Be sure to tune in tonight for a live show with Cedric Chambaz from Microsoft!

The shownotes are below. (more…)

Google Developer Timothy Jordan Talks Google+ for SES San Francisco

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This week San Francisco is host to one of the bigger SES Events in the year: SES San Francisco. Again many marketers will gather to absorb information from experts in search and social. You can expect something special from us too.

One of the topics will off course be Google+, how to handle it, how to make it work. And what does it really mean? Searchenginewatch already looked forward to this by doing an interview with Developer Advocate at Google Timothy Jordan, who will be talking about Google+ in San Francisco. (more…)

Boom! Google buys Motorola, Mobile World Turns Up Side Down

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We knew that mobile was going to be huge. We knew that Android was very important to Google. We knew that Google would make some sort of move into mobile sooner or later. But we didn’t expect this move: Google is buying Motorola.

Google is paying $12.5 billion (in cash!) for the handset maker. Google Phones will be rolling out of the Motorola factory pretty soon. (more…)

Facebook Profits from Panda Update in Germany, Ciao Loses

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Only last Friday Google announced that the Panda Update was going World Wide and already things are changing. Google told us last Friday that they expected 6-9% of queries to be affected by the algorithm Update. We’ll have to wait and see what the real impact will be but Searchmetrics has already given us some insights into the German market.

Searchmetrics just moved into new Berlin offices and had a warm Google welcome with the announcement last Friday. They however immediately went to work and created a list of expected ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ from the update. The biggest losers are ciao.de, gutefrage.net and dooyoo.de. The biggest winners are golem.de, Facebook and focus.de. (more…)

Google Plus Links Now Officially in Google Social Search

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We already noticed in July that there were Google Plus posts (public ones) showing up in the SERPS. Now Google has made it official: the latest update to Google Social Search are Public Google+ Posts. Google announced this on their blog.

You can now see results being accompanied by “NAME shared this on Google+”. So this is not direct content from Google+, but shared links through Google+. (more…)

How to Twitter (101) (infographic)

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We all know how to Twitter, right? Well those who don’t know or don’t get it can look at this infographic. For the others who do get it: here is a way to explain to your offline friends what the h** you are doing all day with that bird-thingy. (more…)

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