Posts on State of Search about ‘News’

Google enters E-books market, launches E-Bookstore and becomes an affiliate network

Today Google announced that it has opened its very own bookstore. Not one where you can get a cup of coffee, sit down and read through paper books, but an online bookstore. No, not like Amazon either. You can’t get books delivered to your house. It’s a store for e-books. And we are not just talking scanned books by Google here.

With over 3 million titles in store and with 4,000 publishers as partners Google has really made an effort here. Amongst the partners there are major industry names like Simon & Schuster and Penguin and the Oxford University Press and Reed Elsevier. (more…)

Google gets social layer by layer, next step: social sitelinks

The actual “Google Me” in its full potential apparently will not be there until spring 2011 but in the meanwhile it does look as if Google is pasting the new social layers onto their search results step by step. After the “shared by” layer which was spotted in October and Hotpot in November, this time its Google itself revealing another one: Social sitelinks.

Do a search for “Twitter” or “YouTube” and you will see a friends name, combined with, if they have it, a profile photo. (Be aware, it doesn’t seem to be happening on every search, try several times if you don’t see it or update your Google Profile) The link goes to the friends’ content on the specific website. In my case when I search for Twitter I get Danny Sullivan and Zee, chief editor of The Next Web. The weird thing is that Google also returns Bing and Yahoo as my friends… (more…)

The World Cup 2018 Bid: Trying to find out who has the most support

Today in Zurich Switzerland a lot of high placed people come together. They are all anxious to find out who will be organizing the FIFA World Cup Football in 2018 (and 2022, but we’ll focus on the 2018 one here). The final round is between four candidates: Netherlands/Belgium, Spain/Portugal, England and Russia.

During the day the four candidates can make their final impressions on the members of the FIFA who will be casting their votes in the afternoon. In the countries which are candidates this topic has been in the media a lot in the past few days. And almost everybody says the decision has not been made yet and that it all comes down to the last day. Also everybody says that its very important for the FIFA members to know how the support is within the countries. That is difficult to measure.

But maybe we can help the decision makers in Zurich a little bit to see if we can find out what the general feeling is in the different countries. And since we are heavy online users, we’ll be using some online tools to find that out. After all, we always say that online can tell us everything about how people feel, what they are doing and that we can predict based on these numbers. Lets see if we can find out who should be winning the bid… We’ll be using the four big sources on the web currently: Google, Facebook, Twitter and Bing. And we’ll be only using the free available tools they offer. (more…)

Google’s PR-damage-control: call in the special forces and change the algorithm

There was a lot of rumor this week about an extensive article in the New York Times which told the story of a merchant who seemed to be “winning” in the Google algorithms with a rather unusual marketing strategy: being mean to customers. Yesterday Google responded. And guess what, they went full force and called in the special forces and changed the algorithm…

Many sites picked up and analyzed the story. We also talked about it on the State of Search radioshow this Tuesday and Jeroen wrote a post “Bad publicity as fuel for your rankings” about it. Probably the best analysis of the article was given by Danny Sullivan on Searchengineland. (more…)

“Google Me” delayed until spring 2011: what are we waiting for?

We still don’t know what it exactly is or is going to be. But Mashable reports that we’ll have to wait some more before we are actually going to see Google’s latest attempt on going social, “Google Me”.

It seems as if disagreements on the design, purpose, and execution are holding up the project. This is something which we are used to when it comes to Bing, but Google now apparently also is feeling the pain of the large company and has to deal with bureaucracy. A source told Mashable “that he/she has heard “tales of disorganization and too many different teams working parallel or in conflict.”” (more…)

Google closes personal Adwords support in Europe

Google and Ireland are stirring things up lately. The bad Irish economy made Google and other tech companies stand up to any possible tax increases, but Google in Ireland is making another drastic and remarkable move: in 2011 dedicated account management Adwords support for agencies will be stopped.

The story, broken by Accuracast and also pushed on by Searchenginewatch, is remarkable because Google apparently is stepping away from the personal support they were offering and still are offering in the US. (more…)

Google no longer ‘counts’ Instant previews in Google Analytics

The new Google feature instant previews, with which you can ‘preview’ a page in the Google SERPS, has been ‘corrupting’ the numbers of viewers on the specific page in Google Analytics for the past few weeks. Because of an ‘issue’ in Analytics each time somebody looked at the preview was counted as a view in Google Analytics even though the visitor had never actually visited the page itself.

Google now tells us on their Analytics blog that they have “fixed this issue, and visits from Google Instant Preview will no longer show up in your Analytics account”. They will not be reprocessing the data to remove past visits. (more…)

Ireland cannot live without Google, crisis-talks influenced by search giant

Europe is going through some tough times. A couple of months ago it was Greece which as a country was almost bankrupt. These days the attention goes to The Republic of Ireland. The country is close to being bankrupt too and has a big problem when it comes to keeping people employed and the economy going.

Normally this wouldn’t be an issue for the technology business. After all, technology can be ‘made’ everywhere, you don’t ‘need’ to be in a specific place. But in the case of Ireland things are a bit different. The situation in Ireland might have a direct impact on the Tech-business and search in special and vice versa. Why? Because Google resides in Ireland. (more…)

Almost there: the official Twitter Analytics tool (plus some cash for Twitter)

According to Mashable Twitter has released its new Analytics Tool to a select group of users to start testing out the product. This means the launch is not far away.

The new tool is probably a welcome add on to the existing tools out there. It is mainly focussed on the stuff people can see about their own account: which tweets are successful, how many retweets did you get, what caused people to follow and unfollow etcetera.

The tool will be a competitor to other similar tools with which you can already do stuff like this. It looks however that Twitter is going to give this one out for free. At least in the beginning. That will most probably make it a very much used tool. (more…)

The Godfather of IndexTools Mortensen leaves Yahoo

Back in the days when Google Analytics wasn’t as powerful as it is now and when there were great alternatives on the market there was one tool which rocked them all: Indextools. Indextools was run by Dennis Mortensen, a webanalytics expert from Denmark. He made the tool big.

Right at the time that Indextools was becoming a serious alternative to Google Analytics Mortensen decided it was time for a drastic change: Indextools was sold to Yahoo. Mortensen went along with Indextools to Yahoo.

At first the excitement was big. Yahoo could really be a good place for Indextools and if “Microhoo” would come through two great tools (Indextools and Gatineau) would be joining forces and would be the biggest best tool out there. (more…)

Working at Google can be profitable, just don’t tell anyone

Google is doing good. Though they now have to share the webs dominance with Facebook and the Google stocks have fallen below the 600 dollars again, the company is doing very good financially. Their revenue has been going up for the past few years reaching a highpoint of over 7 billion in the third quarter of this year.

And when Google is doing good, so are its employees. It has been like that ever since Google first started hiring. They always treat their employees right. Until the employee screws up.

Yes, its that time of year again when people at companies start talking about bonuses and raises. And Google is no different. And with Google doing well there might be a raise or two some Googlers can expect. Or a new Nexus. Like the raise four of Google’s executive officers got for 2011. They can expect a raise of no less than 30 percent. The executives can also expect some stock awards worth between 5 and 20 million US dollars. Go Google!

But other Googlers are not to worry, they are not left in the cold. Google is awarding everybody else a 10 percent raise. On top of that raise comes a $1,000 bonus, to be taken home in cash for those living in Silicon Valley.

Not bad huh? Actually the only ones not getting a raise are the Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and the CEO Eric Schmidt. They are staying on their 1 dollar salary. Was it something you said Eric? (more…)

Another social local layer: Google announces Hotpot

Slowly the lines of the new “Google Me” are showing up. Eric Schmidt already announced, in between his weird statements, that Google will not be making a new Facebook but will be showing us “Social layers” on top of the search results: adjustments to the SERPS or other Google products which will add to the social experience.

Now its time for the next layer. On the day Facebook announced their ‘messaging system’, which will probably not be the Gmail killer which it was suggested to be, Google launched “Hotpot” a personalized recommendations engine based on what you and your friends are liking.

Hotpot is another step in social AND in local. It looks at Google Places data and then looks at reviews and ratings from you and your friends. Based on these ratings it looks for similarities and then recommends you a place. (more…)

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