Posts on State of Search about ‘News’

Making Things Personal: Google using Face-Recognition “the right way”

Matt-Steiner-face-recognition

Last year Facebook rolled out a feature which gave many people the creeps. From that point on you could get a suggestion from Facebook if you had put up a picture with a friend in it. The suggestion was that you would tag that friend. The creepy part was that Facebook already had recognized the friend and had the tag ready to go.

It lead to some pretty big discussions left and right about whether or not Facebook should do this. Especially the fact that it was an opt-out feature was important here. At that time Google already mentioned they too knew how to do face-recognition, but they were hesitant to use it, because of privacy issues.

Google has now waited an appropriate amount of time since the Facebook discussions and has decided to go and use the technology. But in a ‘good’ way. (more…)

Twitter Moves a Bit Towards Facebook

I always tell my students that one of the main differences between Twitter and Facebook is that Twitter is much more text focussed (the 140 characters), where Facebook is much more visual. Next to that Twitter is much more “newsy” and the updates are less permanent.

I can stop saying that now, if Twitter gets people to use the service the way they want to. Their redesign is very much focussed on sharing your status and less on news so it seems if you take a look at the introduction video they released. Besides that, I hardly use the web-version of Twitter, do you? Let us know what your thoughts are with the new Twitter design.


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Majestic opens Fresh Index for Free Users

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Six months ago keyword research tool Majestic SEO announced they were “now able to find fresh back links within 24 hours“. That meant they were speeding up things.

Since than a lot has changed and Majestic has become even faster. That results in the announcement by Majestic that they are letting ALL users get full link data for their own sites from Majestics Fresh Index. Until now non-paying users could only get reports for their own sites from the historic index. (more…)

Google About to Get Slapped by the EU

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The year is almost over and the new year is approaching rapidly. That new year, 2012, might not start off as well for Google as hoped. Google can expect a more than 400 pages counting document from the European Commission (EC) with objections and allegations of abuse of dominance.

Based on a complaint which goes a few years back from search engines Foundem, eJustice and Ciao!, the EU started investigating Google about a month ago. Their complaints now apparently have lead to a document of accusations against Google.

Google knows the accusations are serious because Eric Schmidt has been sent out to travel to Europe to pay a “courtesy visit” to the European Commissioner Almunia this week. (more…)

Another ten of Google’s Search Quality Changes

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Google has decided it wants to share more often the changes it makes to improve the search quality of their SERPS, which means algorithms and SERPS. Last month we already mentioned several changes. Google now feels we should be updated each month. That’s why they will be giving a monthly update on their blog.

This month they again made clear they have improved their search. Another ten changes, some more important than others. The most important ones? More autocomplete predictions, fresher and more complete blog search results and original content. (more…)

A4U Expo Europe Moving to Barcelona

a4u-barcelona

Since 2009 A4U Expo doesn’t just have a show in London. After their first ‘European’ event in Amsterdam they moved to Munich, Germany. There two great conferences took place.

Now A4U Expo believes it is time to move again. Next years ‘Europe show’ is moving south: to Spain, Barcelona to be exact. (more…)

Major Re-design for YouTube coming Up

YouTube-redesign-intro

It seems like companies like Google are constantly working on improving their products, not just on how they work, but also on how they look. One of Google’s products is YouTube. It seems that YouTube might be getting ready for a major redesign.

Last week the first tests were seen from YouTube redesigning the website. Techlaze showed screens of a new homepage which is very different from the one we are used to. There seems to be an emphasis on your channels and subscriptions in the sidebar. Now there is also a video of a user who was part of the testing group of the new design. (more…)

The End of an Era: Yahoo Site Explorer Closes Today

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We knew it was coming, but today will be an historical day. Today Yahoo officially closes Yahoo Site Explorer. Most of the Site Explorer functionalities will be returning in Bing Webmaster Tools.

However, one of the main reasons people used Site Explorer is the link-data: who links to what site. That specific element will not return at Bing. (more…)

Google+ via Hootsuite? Almost!

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As I’ve said many times before on the radioshow Google+ has potential. I just don’t understand the way they roll out things. Some elements are surprising and maybe an add on (hangouts?) while they lacked other obvious elements like search (!) and business pages.

Step by step Google is playing catch up on those features. One of those things might also be the fact that you cannot update Google+ from anywhere but Google+. But that is about to change, making Google+ yet a tiny bit more important. But again Google doesn’t do it full swing. (more…)

Ten New Algorithm Changes for Google: More Snippet Stuff

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Google is constantly on the move. We could fill our blog entirely with Google news and changes if we wanted. Small ones, big ones, useless ones and important changes. Google itself this week decided to tell us about then changes they made to their algorithms.

The common denominator in most of the changes is meta information and especially snippets. Google seems to be pushing meta information like snippets in their algorithm to be better able to differentiate the different results. (more…)

Finally Google Rolls Out Business Pages: An Overview

StateofSearch-Google+

It has taken Google a while, but finally it is here: Google+ Pages for Businesses. Yesterday Google officially launched the new Google+ Pages. In the next two days everybody will get access to the feature we have all been waiting for.

We are already seeing a lot of people creating business pages at the moment and a lot of blogs blogging about it, so it doesn’t make sense for us to discuss the same. Instead we will try and give you a quick overview of what has been written and we will highlight a few things. Off course you can also take a look at our very own Google+ Page which we set up as soon as it became available to us. (more…)

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