Posts on State of Search about ‘News’

Google Starts Opening up Google Plus API

Many people have been complaining about the speed in which Google Plus is developing itself. No search, not many new features and most of all: no API. Maybe that will now change rapidly, as Google starting today is launching the first of the Google API’s.

With this move Google hopes to get developers to develop for Google+. Without a doubt we will now soon see applications which can search through Google+ and existing applications like Twitter clients can now start to incorporate Google Plus into their tools. (more…)

Is Google Testing Dropping the Icons?

Some people, including myself, have seen another change to the Google Search Result Pages. Not a big one though, and it is not clear yet whether or not this is a test or permanent.

Google seems to have dropped the icons next to the links on the left side in the sidebar. (more…)

Not pretty: Carol Bartz Fired as CEO of Yahoo on the Phone, responds via email

If she was successful or not is open for discussion. Fact is that the board of directors from Yahoo thought it was enough: they sacked Carol Bartz. CFO Tim Morse is temporarily taking over.

Apparently Bartz has been sacked by Chairman of the Yahoo! Board Roy Bostock, together with none other than Jerry Yang himself. The cruel thing is that he sacked her over the phone.

Bartz responded in a way which shows the break up hasn’t gone smoothly with consent from both sides. She drop an e-mail to all the Yahoo employees saying she got fired over the phone. (more…)

Yandex rolls out Infinite Scrolling

We know Google has been testing infinite scrolling for a while, and we expect Google to come out with some sort of infinite scrolling functionality soon. But the Americans in this case have been beaten by the Russians.

Yandex just announced that they are rolling out infinite scrolling on their search result pages. If you click on the “10 more results” button (either in Russian or the English version) you will get 10 more results below the ten you just saw, keeping the first ten in place and the search box on top. (more…)

Freddy Mercury Doodle: Possibly the Best Google Doodle Ever?

It must be hell working at Google and being responsible for thinking of new Google Doodles. Not because it is no fun, but because the challenges are becoming almost impossible. How can you beat the idea of the latest Doodle every single time? Gone are the days in which relatively easy doodles were just being drawn. Today Google maybe have raised the bar so high they possibly might never make a better one anymore.

Today it would have been the 65th birthday of the lead singer of Queen, Freddy Mercury. And somebody must like Queen at Google because they went all out. If you click on the Doodle, this happens:

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Google Plus One Button Shows Who Plus One-d a Page

The Google +1 Button has been around for a while and is slowly but surely starting to get more characteristics of the like/share button from Facebook. After Google released the feature in which you could share posts using the +1 button, they now also release an annotation option and the possibility to customize the snippet which goes with it.

Members of the Google+ Platform Preview group can already get the code and implement it on their site. We added the annotation option to our share button on the left side. That means that if you hover over the +1 button, you will see a list of contacts who already +1’d the page. (more…)

Google Now Showing Special Snippets for List Pages

I have had several people asking about a new way of snippets they were seeing in Google result pages. Some thought this was some sort of testing by Google. It is not, it is a new feature which was rolled out last week: snippets for list pages.

When pages consists mostly out of lists Google has found a way to show (part) of these lists in the snippet. This means that if you have a list on your page, that list might just be part of the snippets. Opportunity knocking! (more…)

Want to Work At Google? Hack Them and Leak!

An interesting (possible) job-hiring by Google became clear yesterday. It seems as if Google is about to hire Florian Rohrweck, an Austrian blogger and developer. On his blog he mentions he is about to sign a contract with the search giant.

So why is this special? Because Rohrweck got his job by digging into Google+ source code and revealing Google+ features, even some which have not been launched yet. Google figured the best way to shut him up was hiring him. (more…)

You Can Now Ignore People in Google Plus (Without Them Knowing)

Google believes Google Plus should be a reflection of the real world. And in the real world there are people in your environment which you may not want to see or hear all the time. So you ignore them.

Google today launched a new feature on Google Plus which does just that: ignore people. You won’t hear them, you won’t see them. But they will be there. It is a ‘light’ version of blocking.

Where blocking limits the way people interact with you, “Ignore” means people will still see your updates, can comment on your posts and is still ‘in the loop’ so to speak. (more…)

Google Analytics rolls out Multi-Channel Funnel reports for all accounts

Google has announced that as of yesterday (August 24) all Google Analytics accounts will have Multi-Channel Conversion Funnel reports available. Previously available to only a limited amount of accounts, Google has now decided to roll out this feature for all users in the new version of Google Analytics.

Below is a short video from Google explaining what these Multi-Channel Funnel reports are:

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