Posts by Michel Wester

Michel Wester is the owner of the Dutch website WebSonic.nl, started in 2004. WebSonic mainly focuses on news about Google, Twitter, and Facebook. Next to the news the site has a lot of tips for PC users and starting web developers. -- More articles and bio from Michel Wester
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How To Switch Off Google’s Search Plus Your World Permanently

off-switch

Last week Google introduced “Search plus Your World” which integrates Google+ in to the search results. With the update Google also placed a new switch at the top right to turn off the personal results so you only see the non-personal results. These personal results are for example posts and pictures from Google+ but also all the recommendations from people within your own social circle and it even hides the +1 button. Unfortunately the big block “People and Pages on Google+” on the right is still shown, that should be hidden to I think.

You can use this switch but when you do a new search query then the personal results are just switched back on. But there is a simple cure for this if you don’t want these personal results or if you just think it clutters the search results to much. You can see the difference in the screenshot below after search for “YouTube”. (more…)

Google Maps Team Develops Game For Google+

Google is rolling out Google+ to all their own products but the Google Maps team thought it might be time to give something back. Not officially announced yet is a new game the Maps team developed for the social network.

The description reads: “Coming soon, play your world like never before with a game from the Google Maps team on Google+ Games powered by WebGL.”. So, after today you can search your own world but next month you can also play it :-) . The video below shows a sneak peak of the game. (more…)

Record the Movements of Your Visitors With Mouseflow

big_brother

Last year I wrote about an interesting, and a little bit “Big Brother is watching you” tool on my Dutch blog WebSonic.nl and I thought it might be interesting to also share it here. I’m talking about Mouseflow, a nifty tool I discovered in November thanks to @Anneliesje to easily track visitors on a website.

At first this may not sound that special, but when Mouseflow is special since after it is installed, a visit is actually ‘recorded’, and with that I mean the mouse movements are recorded. This way you can literary track and see what your visitors are doing on the website, were they click, how they move and you can even see when someone is filling in a form (in that case you also know who the otherwise anonymous visitor actually is!). Recordings are available immediately. (more…)

New Google Search Improvements – Encrypted search goes regional

google-icon-green

Like every month in the past few months Google posted a list of all recent improvements the team made to search on their blog. In December Google published about 30 improvements, 9 of these were blogged about earlier so 21, listed below, are fresh and new.

Codenames

In addition Google now will use codenames for almost all improvements because they are easier to talk about, to remember and they can also be funny. Google explains:

“Our old question-answering feature in search was codenamed “DAFFIE,” which stood for the “Database of All Fact Fiction Information and Exaggeration.” In 2010 the team did a complete overhaul of the system and released a new short answers feature. Amit Singhal, thinking of Daffy Duck, decided to codename the new system “Porky Pig”, because Porky Pig was trying to kill Daffy Duck. The team laughed thinking that Amit was just confused (everyone knows Elmer Fudd is the hunter). But, it turns out Amit was right, as he often is. In 1937 in the original cartoon to feature Daffy Duck, Porky Pig was in fact hunting Daffy.”  (more…)

Don’t Wait, Try The New Google Bar Right Now

new_google_bar

Google announced last November the black navigation bar (codenamed Sandbar) above all products will be replaced only a few months after it was introduced with a new and bigger gray bar.

This means that all links currently above every property to different products like Google Images, Google Maps, Google News, etc. will be clustered in one simple dropdown menu. This new list is activated by hovering over the Google logo in the upper left corner as you can see in the screenshot below. (more…)

Google +1 Button Most Popular Button On Large E-Commerce Sites

Google+1-share

According to research by Darren Herman, chief digital officer at The Media Kitchen there are currently more e-commerce sites with the Google +1 button than similar share buttons from Facebook and Twitter.

Darren looked at 20 big (really big) e-commerce sites like Best Buy, Walmart, Disney, Amazon and Target. The Google +1 button was found on 45 percent of the sites, Facebook on 40 percent and the share buttons from Twitter were found on only 15 percent of the sites, something I think is quite surprising. (more…)

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