Posts About ‘Google’

State of Search News Update: What happened in week 10

Last week our site was filled with all things around tools. And we have a few more surprises up our sleeves on that front. But in the meantime the world kept on spinning. And although State of Search is not a news-reporting site but a site that interprets the news and looks at why something is happening and what that means to you, we still like to give you an overview of the most important things that happened last week.

In this post we will bring the top stories of what happened last week with links to articles around the web. So you will know what you’ve missed. (more…)

Douglas Adams Google Doodle, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

A new animated doodle globally on the homepage from Google to celebrate the birthday of Douglas Adams, a well-known British writer, humorist and dramatist. Douglas is best known the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which started on BBC radio in 1978. The first episode aired in 1978 on BBC Radio 4. The series originally consisted of six episodes and quickly managed to gather a huge fan base which lead that the series was repeated on the radio twice in 1978. In 1980, new episodes were made and there was a Christmas special bringing the number of episodes at twelve.

Between 1979 and 1984, the story was released in a quite extended and edited version as a book series. In total there are five published books. The books are often described as a trilogy in five parts. This is because later, after the third book had been published, two additional books were published. Because of the popularity of the series on the radio a television series was created consisting of six episodes. The series was directed by Alan J. W. Bell and the first episode was aired in January 1981. There would come a second season but because of an argument between Douglas Adams and the BBC this second season was never produced. (more…)

State of Search News Update: What happened in week 9

Although State of Search is not a news-reporting site but a site that interprets the news and looks at why something is happening and what that means to you, we still like to give you an overview of the most important things that happened last week.

In this post we will bring the top stories of what happened last week with links to articles around the web. So you will know what you’ve missed. ï¿½

Here’s what happened last week

Facebook to show off a ï¿½new look for News Feedï¿½ this week

Facebook sent out an invite to press asking them to ï¿½come see a new look for News Feedï¿½. So this Thursday March 7th we can expect some new things!

Related stories online:ï¿½Â Marketing Land,ï¿½Wired,ï¿½AllThingsD,ï¿½Inside Facebook,ï¿½Reutersï¿½

Facebook Acquires Atlas from Microsoft

Facebook announces to have agreed to acquire the Atlas Advertiser Suite from Microsoft. ï¿½Atlas is a leader in campaign management and measurement for marketers and agencies.

Related stories online:ï¿½Facebook,Â AllThingsD,ï¿½Marketing Land,ï¿½Inside Facebook,ï¿½AllFacebook,ï¿½The Next Web,Business Insider,ï¿½Mashable!ï¿½

Google, Facebook And Twitter Ordered To Delete Photos By UK Law Enforcement

UK Attorney General Dominic Grieve has threatened legal action against anyone posting pictures of convicted killer Jon Venables online.

Related stories online:Â Techdirt,ï¿½Search Engine Land

Facebook asks users to help bolster Graph Search

Facebook published examples of how to use Graph Search. With that they try to get users to make use of the service, but more importantly, to add data to it.

Related stories online:ï¿½Facebook Newsroom,ï¿½AllFacebook,ï¿½Inside Facebook,ï¿½Search Engine Land,ï¿½The Next Web, ï¿½WebProNews.

Facebook testing new version of Offers to increase conversions

WeÂ wrote about it last week as well, Google added a new feature to the Google+ platform: application sign-in. Very similar to Facebook sign in and giving Google access to even more data.

Related stories online:ï¿½Marketing Land,ï¿½Google Plus Daily,ï¿½Business Insider,ï¿½AllThingsD,ï¿½The Verge,ï¿½Engadget

German Copyright Law Targets Google Links

German lawmakers approved legislation that grants publishers the right to charge search engines and other online aggregators for reproducing their stories.

Related stories online:Â New York Times,ï¿½TechCrunch,ï¿½Telegraph,ï¿½Reuters

Gmail Search Field Trial Adds Calendar Results To Google Search

Google keeps increasing the amount of information it will show from your Gmail account within your Google searches, if you’re part of the Gmail Search Field Trial. Now your calendar results will show up.

Related stories online:Â Searchengineland,ï¿½The Next Web,ï¿½CNET,ï¿½9to5Google

Google fights with Spain over data privacy

Google and Spanish officials can’t agree on when data should be deleted from Google’s pages.

Related stories online:ï¿½Google Europe Blog,ï¿½Reuters,ï¿½Softpedia Newsï¿½

Yahoo Is Now Officially Calling Itself A ï¿½Technology Companyï¿½

Instead of being a ï¿½Digital Mediaï¿½ company, Yahoo! has now changed their ‘status’ to being a “Global Technology Company”, which might indicate the direction it is heading in.

Related stories online:ï¿½ZDNet,ï¿½Reuters

Bing ‘upgrades’ Bing Maps with High Resolution Satellite Imagery

Bing announced an upgrade to Bing Maps showing off some very nice high resolution imagery.

Related stories online:ï¿½Bing Blog,Â Register,Â Slashgear

Miriam Makeba Google logo, South African singer best known for Pata Pata

Maybe you know the song Pata Pata and if not you probably will recognize the song when you hear it, it was a worldwide hit in 1967 after it was wrote ten years earlier. The singer of the song was the South African Miriam Makeba who Google honours globally on Monday with a static logo. Miriam Makeba, also called Mama Africa and a civil rights activist was born on March 4, 1932 in Johannesburg and would have turned 81 years on Monday. Her mother was a Swazi sangoma and her father was a Xhosa. The Xhosa are a people living in south-east South Africa, Nelson Mandela is the most famous Xhosa.

When Miriam Makeba was just eighteen days old her mother was arrested for selling Umqombothi, an African homemade beer. She received a sentence of six months and so Miriam lived her first six months in jail. Her father died when she was only six years old. She started early with singing, Makeba joined the choir of the Kilmerton Training Institute in Pretoria where she studied for eight years. At the age of seventeen she gave birth to her first child, Bongi Makeba, a baby girl. Unfortunately shortly afterwards she was diagnosed with breast cancer and the father of the child, James Kubay left her and their daughter soon after.
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Do The Harlem Shake on YouTube – Easter Egg

YouTube has a new fun Easter Egg inspired by the poplar internet meme The Harlem Shake. As you might know the Harlem Shake is very popular at the moment with thousands of videos on YouTube with even videos from Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Intel. The Easter Egg on YouTube works pretty much the same with instead of dancing people dancing elements on the site.

“The Harlem Shake is an Internet meme in the form of a video of various groups of people performing a comedy sketch accompanied by a short excerpt from the song “Harlem Shake”. As a meme, the video was replicated by many people, using the same concept, and this rapidly led to it becoming viral in early February 2013, with thousands of “Harlem Shake” videos being made and uploaded to YouTube every day at the height of its popularity.”

You try this yourself by typing ‘Do The Harlem Shake’ in the search field on YouTube (it doesn’t work on Google) or click here. At first the YouTube logo starts dancing alone with the song Harlem Shake by musician Baauer in the background. After 15 seconds ‘the cut’ takes place, the beat kicks in and all elements including images, titles, descriptions and buttons are dancing. You can stop the Easter Egg at anytime with the pause button next to the searchfield on the left.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_xdh94CVuUA&version=3&hl=en_US&w=615&h=385]

Interflora, Brand Building and the New Role of the Search Agency

Last week Interflora was quite humiliatingly outed for its use of advertorials and unnatural link building; even for its own brand name, the site all but disappeared from the SERPs. Without speaking about Interflora or a collection of newspaper sites that were clearly selling advertorials directly, Matt Cutts wrote a statement reiterating Google’s position on paid links: it’s bad, don’t do it. While that position has been clear for some time, it’s not been clear that Google was prepared to act quite so abruptly on punishing major brands. With the dust from the hit still floating around, it appears that this is another step by Google to clean up Search Engine Optimisation, and another notch in what has been a tumultuous two years for the industry since the first Panda Update in April 2011.

With advertorial link building now clearly presenting higher risk, some SEOs must be wondering where to pivot. Inevitably, brand building will seem a likely option, and building credibility through quality content and inbound methods is the future. I’ve read and heard this rhetoric many times before, but I’ve often wondered how suitable the wedding of SEO and brand building will actually be. (more…)

Google+ sign in: Google is Getting Even More Data

It’s all about big data these days. And there are a few companies who understand the importance of that, one of them being Google. Ever since Larry Page took back his reign at Google and Google+ saw its life light Google has done whatever it takes to get big data.

In another attempt to boost Google+ and to get more big data Google yesterday launched “Google+ sign in”. A feature much like Facebook or Twitter sign in. According to Google for ‘an upgraded experience’ and prohibiting ‘social spam’ but without a doubt also to get an even bigger grip on user data. (more…)

An External Review of Googles Webspam Team.

The past twelve months have been crazy, Content Marketing seemed to have created a fight between PR people and SEO’s with the result a new hybrid genre of “content marketing specialists”, why? Simply because all those statements Google would make about what you can’t do when link building have started to come true.

In February and March 2012 we saw the first major influx of Unnatural Links warnings this was coupled with the advent of Google’s Penguin Algorithm and we saw sites plummet, businesses close, a mad craze happened while SEO’s across the Globe tried to remove links and then Google introduced the Disavow tool.

But does anyone ever Evaluate the Google WebSpam Team?

Well Rand Fishkin mentioned some ideas back in 2010 and I’ll use his quote before I start this article.

First off, let me just say that there are a lot of people smarter and more experienced in scalably attacking web spam than I am working in the Search Quality division at Google and specifically on the Spam team.

- Rand Fishkin

This article focus’s on some of my work over the past twelve months in particular relation to SERP Penalties and Unnatural Links Warnings. it’s also very timely because of the recent uproar across the industry with Interflora being penalized. (more…)

State of Search News Update: What happened in week 8

Last week off course was filled with SES London updates. But while that was going a lot was happening in the world of search and social elsewhere as well. As you know State of Search is not a news-reporting site but a site that interprets the news and looks at why something is happening and what that means to you.

That doesn’t mean however we are not interested in the news. In this post we will bring the top stories of what happened last week with links to articles around the web. So you will know what you’ve missed. (more…)

Google’s Fight Against Fake Online Reviews

I think it’s fair to say that online reviews are hugely influential during your online search process to determine the right solution for yourself. Honestly, think about your own search behaviour – how often has your purchasing decision been influenced by customer reviews? For instance if a friend tells me that a particular restaurant is good I will take his word for it – the same accounts for ‘my’ personalized search results since they also show websites favoured by our peers.

I guess we all agree that fake reviews are becoming a big problem – and are altering the trust of potential customers. Interestingly enough (years and years ago!!) when I was working on my thesis the UK was just about to enforce a law to stop brands using fake reviews in the form of stealth marketing. A major case at that time were teenage bloggers who raved about Lady Gaga on online forums, social media sites etc, however they were actually ‘employed’ by Gaga’s PR agency – meaning that underaged individuals were incentivised and paid. The result? Gaga’s organisation ended up paying a fine. (more…)

Nicolaus Copernicus Google Doodle (Animated)

Lately Google is posting more and more animated and interactive doodles for all sort of events. Last week you could see a doodle to celebrate the birthday of George Ferris combined with Valentines Day and last Friday Google posted briefly a doodle because of the passing Asteroid 2012 DA14. This logo was taken offline after a few hours because of the meteor that hit Russia.

The latest animated doodle is to honour Nicolaus Copernicus, a Renaissance mathematician and astronomer who formulated a comprehensive heliocentric model which placed the Sun, rather than the Earth, at the center of the universe. The astronomical model is used in the logo by Google with the sun in the middle and several planets including Earth and the Moon turning around the sun. (more…)

State of Search News Update: What happened in week 7

A lot is happening in the world of search and social and as you know State of Search is not a news-reporting site but a site that interprets the news and looks at why something is happening and what that means to you.

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