Posts About ‘News’

Google Tries To Hide The Search Options By Default

test

I just spotted a new Google Search experiment which by default hides the search engines and options on the left, next to the search results. Instead of showing the links in the experiment you have to click the new small red icon next to “Everything” to get all search options. While it gives the interface a really clean look this way you have one click extra to reach the other search engines and options and even some users might think that all links are just gone. Besides that, after clicking for example on Images the menu hides again en that’s a little annoying.

I was suprised too see the experiment after Google recently tried the same approach to replace the black navigation bar on top of all Google products. After announcing the new navigation in November which was hidden under the Google logo it was pulled back only a few months later.

Below a video I shot to professionally :-) :-)  demonstrate the new menu from the current experiment.

Google ‘Buys’ Kevin Rose: How Can They Help Each Other?

kevin-rose

How do search and social get together? Well, Google is trying hard to make that work in Search Plus Your World and Bing is doing the same sort of effort, ‘less visible’ for us. But there are more ways. For example when Google buys a Social company and hires a social celebrity.

AllthingsD reports that Google has bought ‘Oink’ which is a product from “Milk”, the latest Kevin Rose product. According to AllthingsD’s sources the entire company is moving to Google, including Kevin Rose. (more…)

Wall Street Journal Hunches On Google Changes That Are Already Taking Place

Google Personal Search

It is one of those days that articles pop up out of nowhere bringing ‘news’ that might ‘shake the search engine industries foundations’ like never before. It is one of those days that people try to point you at the same article over and over again.

As a blog owner who writes about search engines you immediately wake up on signals like that. What did Google do now? Which change did they make? So with excitement I started reading the article on the Wall Street Journal entitled “Google Gives Search a Refresh”. Here’s something big again! While reading the article I however got less and less excited and got more questions than answers out of it. (more…)

Yahoo Sues Facebook: History Repeats?

patent-approved-stamp

Many many years ago I studied history. Which immediately means that people think I always win at Trivial Pursuit. I don’t, because ‘facts’ isn’t the main factor when it comes to studying history. As I said last Friday at a talk I did at the UK Searchconference, what you do learn is that history seems to repeat itself. Or better said: people keep on making the same kind of mistakes.

When I read on Techmeme (it really is all over there) that Yahoo was going to sue Facebook for no less than infringement on 10 patents, I had a feeling that what I learned back in college was about to happen again: history ‘repeats’. (more…)

Google Showing G+ Conversations and shared Videos in Personalized Search

discussion-in-serps

Google is on the move again making minor adjustments to the SERPS. Usually that means within reasonable amount of time we will be seeing more bigger changes at Google, so it is time to keep our eyes open again.

Yesterday we spotted that Google is now offering you the possibility to thank your Google+ friends who +1-ed an item so it would show up in your search results. Today we can highlight another three changes to how Google displays personalized results in the SERPS. (more…)

Latest Venice Update: Locals Win, Global Amazon, Live and Apple lose

venice-boats

Google’s Panda Update now seems to be a monthly refresh of the Google Index, changing the search landscape constantly. It means that every month sites can either get more or less visibility.

For an SEO this can be frustrating. One month they are the winners, next month the losers. You can hardly make any predictions anymore, except for that your site needs to be ‘Panda proof’ all the time: you need the unique content and you need the value in the site.

Next to the Panda update there is the Venice update, which is focussed on improving local results in the SERPS. Sometimes things happen which you wouldn’t predict but are actually quite obvious. What was thought to be the last Panda Update showed some suprising stats in the UK for example. Searchmetrics calculated who ‘won’ and ‘lost’ in visibility. The biggest winners (Twitter, YouTube and the BBC) were not surprising. The biggest losers were: Amazon.com, Live.com and Apple.com. There is a logical explanation for that however: its the Venice Update. (more…)

Google Lets You Say Thank You To Those Who Shared

Thank-your-peers

Here’s another interesting small change I just spotted in the search results. We are now all familiar with the “your friends X,Y,Z and x-number of people +1′d this” texts below the search results. It shows us who of our friends, or to be more specific who from our social circles, have shared, or +1ed a specific search result. It is part of personalized search and it will trigger most of the searchers to click on a result quicker than they would if there was just a title, link and description.

Now Google seems to have taken another step to make things more personal and to ‘push’ Google+ at the same time. Next to a ”your friends X,Y,Z and x-number of people +1′d this” text it now says “Thank them”. And you can “thank them” on Google+ off course. (more…)

SSL Search Goes Global, Will SPYW Follow?

Not-Provided

Last October Google set the SEO World on fire when they started to encrypt searches, using SSL. Searching from https://www.google.com (note the “s”) will mean some search queries are encrypted.

That meant that SEOs were getting a lot less referral data than before. In your Analytics you can now find several referrals to “not provided”. Until recently that was just for searches coming from Google.com. Now Google is rolling this out to the entire world. (more…)

Europeans Looking at Google’s Privacy Policy

privacyplease

It is March 1st today, which means that Google’s new privacy policy officially is “on”. Just a month ago the new policy was announced.

It now seems as if Google might run into a wall when it comes to European regulations. France’s regulator this week said the new policies might violate the European Union’s data protection rules.

The regulator has sent Google a letter in which they told Google that there will be a European-wide investigation of the policy. Google can expect some questions soon. (more…)

The New Facebook Branded Pages Are Here: Time To Get To Work

New-Facebook-Pages

At the beginning of the New Year I decided it was time to clean up our State of Search Facebook page. That was very necessary because it had turned ‘old’ rather quickly.

It now looks like I have to ‘start all over’, Facebook just released their new Facebook Brand Pages. Until the end of March page owners have time to update their pages. You can switch to the new design before, but if you haven’t changed the settings by then Facebook will do it for you. (more…)

Google Adds Upcoming Concerts To Search Results

google_concert_information

Google has added more concert information to the search results. When you search for a specific artist, information about upcoming concerts can be shown right under the official website of the artist you were looking for. Google only shows this information if an upcoming event will take place in your area, otherwise the information won’t appear.

In the screenshot below you can see the information directly below the Black Keys (an American rock band) website. The first concert will take place on Friday, May 4 in the Oracle Arena in Oakland. Below the location there are links to websites where you can find more information and buy tickets. By clicking the little ‘plus’ icon you can show more upcoming concerts in your area from, in this case the Black Keys. (more…)

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