Posts on State of Search about ‘Google’

Did Google’s Gaga Moment Obscure Court Settlement

gaga-google

In a rather bizarre yet brilliant piece of external communications last week, Google released a YouTube video of a visit to Mountain View from Lady Gaga.

The video itself is an absolute triumph of humanising search, technology and Google by juxtaposing the data-effect with Gaga’s spectacular rise to fame. Marissa Meyer (who interviews Gaga) appears warm, interested and immediately relaxed; plus Gaga herself gives one of her best, most open interviews. It’s also apparent from some of her opening comments that she is a big Google fan, and talks about how she personally uses Google regularly to research her fans and the content they produce. (more…)

New Media Ads in Adwords target movie and TV ad makers

media-ads

Things are merging more and more in Google. We have Universal Search and within the Ads we already had display off course. And in the past year Google has launched many new ad formats. Now Google ads another very important new format into the ads: video. So called “Media Ads” will be appearing in the paid ads. Simply speaking we will see videos.

You will see a video player in the results which will expand when you click it. The video ad will then take over the Google search page and play.

The new way of ads is not like Video Extensions, which Google has had longer. Where Video Extensions attaches a video player to the Adwords as, Media Ads is a “standalone format designed to put your videos front and center.” In other words: you are throwing the videos in the face of the searchers. (more…)

SERP Change highlight: your Google Reader Subscriptions in SERPS

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We again highlight a few changes in the SERPS. Google is constantly changing them and it’s hard to keep track, so we try to sometimes highlight one or two of them. Today another interesting find again by UK SEO Andrew Girdwood. He noticed that Google is taking another small step with the integration of social into the search results: your own Google Reader subscriptions. This is not a new feature, Google has been doing this for a while, but not many actually see it.

We all now are familiar with the “shared by” messages which indicate that somebody inside your social circle has shared a specific page on one of their social networks. In most cases this is Twitter. We are also all familiar with the “starred results”, the results you either star in the SERPS or save as a Google Bookmarks. These usually show up at the top of the results. (more…)

Google gets fined €100,000 for privacy breach in France

streetview-fined

The Associated Press reports that France’s privacy watchdog CNIL has given Google a fine of no less than €100,000 ($141,300) for privacy issues in relation to Streetview.

The fine is apparently given for “improperly gathering and storing potentially sensitive data from Wi-Fi networks for its Street View application”. This means they have collected e-mail, passwords and other personal information while driving around France collecting the data. (more…)

Nikesh Arora at the Danish Top Exec Summit

Google’s Chief Business Officer, Nikesh Arora, recently spoke at the Top Exec Summit in Denmark. He also took questions from the audience about the future of media and Google. A nice talk to sit back and listen to.

Google continues to grow Instant: video previews now available

video-preview

Last week Google added the feature Instant Previews on the mobile to its mobile users. These users would now be able to watch snapshots of pages, something we were already capable of doing on the web.

We couldn’t however do that in the video section. Soon you will be able to. Google added the Instant feature to the videos making it possible to preview videos. (more…)

Google deleting private profiles by July 31, Googles next social step?

private-profiles

Something is up with Google and profiles. Maybe the rumors which are going around at SXSW about Google newest social efforts, supposedly called Google Circles, might have some ground after all.

Last week I reported about the new Google Profiles lay out. Google really seems to be moving with the Profiles because The Next Web noticed that on the Profiles Help Page it says “All private profiles will be deleted after July 31, 2011.“. What is Google up to? (more…)

A look at some SERPS changes by Google: real time updates, number of words and calories

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Google is constantly making changes to their algorithm and to their SERPS, the things we are seeing when we do a search. We discussed a couple of changes last week and now I’d like to shine a light on a few others again.

Today we see several changes and tests appear in the SERPS. Some of them have been there for a while, others are still in test mode and again others are completely new. Let’s look at real time updates, number of words, calories and recipes. (more…)

Bing gaining share in the US: success rate much higher than Google

Bing-stairs

We keep on asking for a competitor for Google. And all of our eyes are then focussed at Bing. So far in Europe we feel kind of left behind when it comes to Bing, even though they recently started moving towards European mainland by launching in France.

If we however look at the US as an example of what lies ahead we might see some interesting developments in the future. New numbers from Hitwise tell us that in February Google lost some market share, where Bing is gaining. (more…)

Eric Schmidt about leadership

We share presentations from Eric Schmidt more often here at State of Search. He is a good speaker after all, and there is always something interesting he might be saying. And when Eric Schmidt talks about leadership you should keep your ears open, because that is a subject he knows all about.

In this video Eric Schmidt speaks at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in Palm Springs on February 27, 2011.

Google’s new SearchWiki: Block button to hide low quality results

block-site

Yesterday Google introduced a new feature to help users improve the quality of the search results. It is now possible to block results for a search result page. After visiting a result and returning to the result page in Google a link will appear that allows you to “block all example.com” results. Once blocked, results from the specific domain will not appear anymore in any of  your search results. Instead a message shows at the bottom of the page, telling you some results have been blocked. You will also be able to manage your blocked results.

For some of us this feature sounds familiar. You might think of Google’s SearchWiki, a feature that was introduced over two years ago. The features actually differ on a few levels. The table below shows the differences between the two: (more…)

Google admits to whitelisting sites: endangering their European legal issues?

manual-changes

In a panel at SMX West, which has been going on in San Jose last week, both Google and Bing admitted that they have lists on which websites appear that should not be hit by algorithms. They themselves call it “exception lists” but in more general terms they could also be called Whitelists. This remark, which without a doubt was not intended to be harmful, might just harm the legal battle which Google is fighting in Europe.

The term whitelist is used by amongst others Foundem, who filed a complaint with the European corporate counsel about Google in 2006. The complaint was about how some vertical search engines got hit and others didn’t. That complaint is now being handled by the commission. And Google European corporate counsel Julia Holtz said in Brussels that the company doesn’t “whitelist or blacklist anyone”. Were they lying then or are they lying now? (more…)

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