online seo news

Google Wave,a Tool for Effective Communication

2009-10-23T23:13:00.000-07:00

Google Wave is a pioneering real-time joint tool that has the potential to be a perfect method for members of a group to work together. Yet, it's not lucid how useful it will be in the real world. It's the sort of tool that you prefer to use, but one that you might not be able to figure out easily, how to fit into your work life.

In fact,Google Wave seems to be one of those tools that's extremely difficult to explain to those who haven't started using it. One way to think of it is as a collection of threaded e-mail conversations and instantaneous messaging. Rich content, together with Google maps, interactive polling, videos and much more, can be embedded in conversations (known as waves). Additionally, the rich content is live and interactive. As an example,if you embed a Google map, all members in the conversation can utilize it as if they were on the Google Maps site.All the above features makes for a kind of profound collaboration that's impossible with more conventional means of Internet communication. Theoretically, Google Wave can help groups distribute information, take decisions and actions faster.In practice,however, it's difficult to predict the future of Google Wave, as most people still prefer to use the traditional e-mail.

Presently,Google Wave is still in a fairly strongly controlled, invitation-only beta. Considering that it's free, however, when it becomes public, or if you're fortunate enough to obtain an invite, it's definitely worth to test it out, just for the "coolness" factor.For further details, check wave.google.com

Aardvark Emerges as a 'Social Search Engine'

2009-10-15T06:39:00.000-07:00

Microsoft may be the only company with the means to challenge Google's Internet search dominance head on, but a number of firms are trying to compete with Google with services that tackle aspects of search that is not covered by Google's index of Web pages. Aardvark - a firm whose cofounders also include two ex-Googlers - is tackling something that it calls "social search."

This is how aardvark functions.Instead of looking at Web pages to search answers to obtain queries, Aardvark's service tracks a person's network of social contacts. Ask Aardvark for any kind of question ranging from restaurant recommendations to home enhancement tips, and the service will pass on the question to Facebook and Twitter friends who have recognized themselves as "experts" on a variety of topics.

The aardvark service, which has obtained praise from the New York Times' David Pogue and other tech bloggers, was started as a beta version earlier this year but accessing Aardvark required utilizing instant messaging software or an iPhone app.

Recently, the company put the search box directly on a website - vark.com - enabling it to become more reachable for a wide range of people.

Similar to the so-called real time search engines popularized by Twitter, Collecta and OneRiot, though presently Aardvark depicts a small segment ,it might be quite dangerous for Google in future . Most of the content that transmits through these new types of search services is not essentially reachable by Google's search engine.Google is making its efforts to tackle the situation by licensing the Twitter data feed. As more innovative forms of search evolve,Google will find itself having more such talks.

Zook.in aims to provide local and media search services

2009-10-04T22:14:00.000-07:00

An Indian local and media search site Zook.in (http://www.zook.in/) is using search engines from Yahoo and Microsoft at the back-end of its site to keep its costs low.Rather than pay yellow pages companies to provide local data, which is often limited to only key locations, Zook.in analyzes content thrown up in searches by mainstream search engines, to offer immediately consumable data in the area of local search and media search, said Ajay Sethi,CEO of Ziva Software, the company that runs the new web site.

Zook.in is launching at one go in India and abroad, as it believes that to succeed as a viable business proposition, it has to scale quickly to millions of users.Local searches and searches for media are key search categories for mobile phone users, Sethi said.

While mobile phone users can also search for other general information on the Zook.in web site, the results displayed on its "Web snippets" section will be of a similar quality to those offered by the back-end mainstream search engines.On local searches, the site returns data such as the address and telephone numbers of hotels, restaurants, government offices, consulates, malls, hospitals, and other key places. Users can click on the telephone numbers provided, and dial out immediately.

source:pcworld.com

Google offers speedy page browsing with Fast Flip

2009-09-17T04:15:00.000-07:00

Google has announced the free accessibility of another one of its Google Labs projects-one that is targeted to improve effectiveness in reading content on the web. The new-look news website, Google Fast Flip, will collect content from more than 40 publishers and aims to make reading articles online experience a more appealing and an interesting one. Google Fast Flip presents online news content in visual magazine format for simple browsing and speedy scanning, the manner in which people read when they have print media in front of them.

Fast flip is provided with 4 rows of content , "Sections", "Sources ", "Popular ", "Topics ".Each of these sections are further divided into a tabular format.Clicking on any of the tabs will produce the relevant results.

We selected the Sci/Tech option:

If you click on an interesting item you found on the list,you will be directed to a large image ,with a navigation device on the side to conveniently scroll either to the next or previous article.We clicked the Tech Crunch News, and we were directed to the following screen.

Google Fast Flip will bring about revenue for publishers and reproduces the magazine reading experience online.Revenue collected from the ads(see picture) appearing alongside the article will be split between Google and the relevant publisher, with content providers taking the major part of the revenue.

Josh Cohen, a business product manager at Google, stated that Fast Flip, will collect content from numerous US websites, newspapers and magazines that have opted in to the service, including the New York Times, the Washington Post and Newsweek. Cohen mentioned that this latest news website was one of numerous different experiments Google was working on with publishers to increase the online audience, engage readers more deeply, and make more money for all parties.

Google Fast Flip can be accessed at http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/

Umibozu-The Meta Search Engine

2009-09-10T20:51:00.000-07:00

Umibozu.net,the meta search engine seems to be the need of the hour for frequent net users who need to compare the results of Google,Yahoo and Bing(previously MSN).

Will this search engine umibuzo,with the caption "Change the world" on their page, bring about a major change?

For the moment,this caption might be best to describe them, from the following features

1.The results of the search engine are obtained by simultaneously crawling Google ,Yahoo and Bing.Also there are 3 options to display the results,'Matrix' ,'User' and 'Top'.We searched for the word seo and obtained the following results:

Matrix format:

User format:

Top format:

2. The Umibuzo.net is not only a search engine but also can be used as a Bookmarking site. It offers a double advantage by by offering bookmarking features and search engine results. Bookmarking feature can be utilized by creating an account in this site.

3.Additionally once you type a keyword,along with the results of the search engine ,the link "Donate to UNICEF now!" is displayed,enabling users to make contributions to .Well,looks like they are trying to bring about a change on charitable grounds too.

4.Also the recent keywords searched are displayed on the home page of this site.

5.Additionally there are options to add your websites and to access your settings by signing into this site.

For those who like us are amused by the name Umibozu,here is a history behind the name.Umibozu in Japanese means sea bonze(bonze refers to the Chinese or Japanese Buddhist monk). It might have aquired the name bonze,as Umibozus like the Buddhist monks are said to have large ,round heads in resemblance to the shaven heads of Buddhist monks.In Japanese folklore, umibozus are believed to live in the oceans and if anyone in a ship takes the bold step to speak to it, it would capsize the ship.

Twitter Launches Geolocation Feature

2009-08-31T23:37:00.000-07:00

The micro blogging site Twitter plans to launch a new feature to provide information about the geographic location from where a Tweet actually originates. Currently platform developers have been making some progress in this regard, with the assistance of the very basic APIs available to them. At present ,geolocation based projects are made with the use of the location details filled in by members on their profiles. However, this is not a very dependable and effective method to judge immediate location as users often tweet from multiple locations without changing their location each time.

Twitter will permit their members to include their latitude and longitude if they wish to do so with each tweet. The service will be firmly opt-in, with the default being set to 'off'. Tweet-level geo tagging will be treated another way than the location data entered manually by the user in their profile. Location data in the profile will persist to be utilised to give a general idea to visitors about where a member is normally based.

One major advantage of this feature is that ,you could toggle from reading the tweets of accounts you follow to reading tweets from any person either in your neighborhood or city-irrespective of whether you follow them or not.

Twitter,is thus getting better with the introduction of this fresh opt-in geolocation feature.

Bing Search Market Increases,Google And Yahoo Decline

2009-08-20T22:56:00.000-07:00

Microsoft 's share of the U.S. search market increased slightly in July, at the same time as Google and Yahoo faced slight declines.Among the 13.6 billion U.S. searches which was conducted in July,nearly 64.7% searches were performed through Google which is a.3 percent reduction from June,according to the conclusions drawn from Comscore.Similar to Google,Yahoo too served around 19.3% ,which also reveals a .3 percent decline from June.On the other hand , Microsoft Bing's search share improved by half of a percentage point in July.Its increase is one of the main factors for most of what Google and Yahoo have lost. Microsoft sites accounted for around 8.9% of U.S. searches last month. ComScore's search results however does'nt take account of searches associated to mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites.

Google Caffeine-The new version of Google Search Engine

2009-08-14T06:24:00.000-07:00

The Search engine giant Google has released the developer version of its new upgraded version,which is coded as Caffeine-an interesting name,though ! Most people would have the same opinion that a little jerk of caffeine is just what the body requires in order to kick into high gear and begin moving more rapidly in the morning. It appears that, caffeine can have the same consequence on Google Incorporations search engine. Google themselves have stated this improvement as the "next-generation architecture".

The internet giant promises that "Caffeine" will definitely improve on categories such as speed, size, accuracy as well as comprehensiveness of Google search.

When it comes to the above factors,this is what the net users look for :
Speed: How rapidly can the fresh search engine load results?
Accuracy: Which set of results matches the search term?
Temporal Relevancy: Is the version of search engine good at capturing breaking news?
Index Size: Is it really all-inclusive than the previous version of Google?

Once Microsoft launched Bing ,the whole world was wondering how good this will be and if it can contend against Googles search technology. Bing proved that it is a very good search engine, and after that everybody was wondering what will Google do in order to overpower Microsoft's
new search engine.Probably caffeine is the answer for the doubt raised in people's minds.

Tests so far have revealed that the latest version of Google is twice faster than the the previous Google and it also displays higher search results (depending on queries).At the moment it looks like Caffeine is superior than the old Google, but we need to wait for it to be released.

The development version is available at www2.sandbox.google.com

Windows 7 to be released on October 22nd inspite of the "show stopper bug"

2009-08-08T01:41:00.000-07:00

Windows 7,the latest OS from Microsoft,is set to release on October 22nd.Microsoft managed to sign off the Windows 7 RTM (release to manufacture) build on June 23.A week later ,the RTM build was stamped as a "show stopper" bug and it was expected that this bug will be a hindrance for the release on October 22nd.The bug became a major issue on the web until recently.

The bug that was reported was this..Once a user runs "CHKDSK/r" in command prompt,it will crash the entire system.This was because running this command resulted in a memory leakage,which led to the system crash.

Following the widespread issue this "show stopper" bug created in Windows 7, the president of Microsoft's Windows Division, Steven Sinofsky recently mentioned in a statement that the bug though initially reported as a "critical bug" and then a 'showstopper' bug, would not delay the release of Window 7 on the decisive date.

Microsoft have held a chip-set controller responsible for the error and have suggested Windows 7 customers to call/visit their motherboard manufacturers and download the most modern chipset drivers for their particular motherboard.

A new look for Yahoo Home Page

2009-07-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

Yahoo ,which occupies the second place in the search engine industry has decided to finally revamp its home page.Presently Google occupies around 65% of the market share among search engines followed by Yahoo which occupies 19.65 of the share.

Yahoo has disclosed its new hompage look in US,though the rest of the world will see this only later this week.The revamped page will have several kinds of applications like Facebook,ebay including outside content which the net users can utilise.

The senior vice President for consumer experience Tapan Bhat stated that the main objective of this change is to create an individually germane experience for every net user

Search Engine Strategies in Germany for SES Berlin conference on Nov 24-25 2009

2009-07-14T01:55:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Strategies will return to Germany for the 7th time with the SES Berlin Conference & Expo on 24-25 November 2009. The German event is focused on search engine marketing (SEM), including pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and search engine optimisation (SEO), and will be held at the Crowne Plaza Berlin City Centre. For more details, go to SearchEngineStrategies.com/berlin.

SES is the leading global event for education in online marketing and advertising, including search (SEM/SEO). Organised and hosted by Thomas Bindl, one of Europe's leading authorities on search, the SES Conference & Expo will teach delegates everything they need to know to help them maximize search engine marketing and optimization for their businesses and provide a forum for delegates to communicate with the search engines themselves.

SES Berlin's sessions will help marketers ensure online success. Beginner workshops, intermediate sessions, and debate panels will address applications such as video, podcasts, and blogs, as well as design and writing for search engines. More advanced marketers can attend sessions on search advertising tools, web analytics, and advanced paid search tactics.

With all sessions uniquely ranked according to content and degree of understanding, SES Berlin is a crucial event for beginners as well as experienced search marketers.

Source : prweb.com

Microsoft sets limitations for Windows 7 upgrade

2009-07-01T02:17:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has fixed the date of Windows 7 release as Oct 22nd,but now though this date remains unchanged, Microsoft has announced some limitations.Microsoft has restricted the number of machines which can be upgraded freely to its new operating system to just 25.

Microsoft recently revealed details of the Windows Upgrade Option program for the initial time.Consumers who buy a Vista-based personal computer as of last week are qualified to upgrade their system to Windows 7 at no or modest cost when the latter releases in October.

The limitation has however created controversies from some industry watchers. Michael Silver,Gartner analyst who published a research titled "Enterprises Should Demand Windows Upgrade Option." ,has mentioned that organizations need to comprehend their Windows 7 requirement and obtain the necessary privileges for the most excellent value.

Buzz 140-Twitter Unconference

2009-06-23T06:36:00.000-07:00

Buzz 140-Twitter Unconference was an event held in Chennai, India and organized by Knowledge Foundation.More than 100 people had participated in this event held on June 21st.The participants had called themselves 'Tweeple' and they had actively participated in this lively event.The unique aspect of this event was that the participants decided on what topics and who need to speak in the sessions.

Twitter is an online messaging service.Users can login similar to creating an email account and use twitter. The founders of twitter had began this in order to send messages to just to inform them- What are you doing?Twitter has ensured that to display this message only 140 characters need to be utilized.So guess that makes it lucid why the name of this conference was named as Buzz 140. And interestingly, the theme of Buzz 140 was this...How does one share information within 140 characters?

This is what one of the participants had to say "Twitter is one of the finest and quickest places to obtain information".

Twitter's home page twitter.com displays this- Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?Whether Twitter is here to stay for long or is it just a temporary fad among users,one needs to wait and watch.

Social Media Marketing to improve sales

2009-06-18T01:40:00.000-07:00

There is a myth that exists among several companies that SEO is meant for companies that exist in the IT field.But one company has proved this incorrect by utilizing the concept of search engine optimization in order to increase their sales figures.EmbroidMe,which is the largest embroidery franchise has succeeded in increasing their sales figures tremendously by incorporating a SEO campaign.

EmbroidMe utilized the feature of Social Media such as Twitter and Facebook to order to improve their visibility.As more and more people are actively using the search engines to obtain information in the internet,companies are turning towards SEO in order to improve traffic.EmbroidMe found that there was a tremendous improvement in branding in all of their 450 locations.

Digg removes its controversial tool: "Shout"

2009-06-08T01:23:00.000-07:00

Digg, the popular social bookmarking site had utilized the feature of Shout.This allowed its users in order to share their links with one another and it was the only communication tool. Now the feature of Shouts is replaced with Facebook and Twitter.

Shout made it easier for users to send a story they liked the most directly to other people who employed Digg.In certain circumstances,it was very useful and it helped in some of the stories to catch more attention.On the other hand,shouts was mostly utilized for spamming due to which some users decide to turn it off.Another major problem with this feature was that those links, stories that received shouts were better rated .Due to this, all the users started shouting most of their stories.

Digg in the beginning tried to reduce the value of Shouts tool,in order to eliminate the above problems,but finally removed it completely.Now Digg had added buttons to enable sharing of stories on Facebook or on Twitter.This big move has a possibility of driving more people to Digg,though it enables people to drive people to other sites.

Microsoft releases Beta version of Bing

2009-06-01T02:01:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has released the Beta version of Bing (formerly known as Kumo).Bing is expected to replace Microsoft's Live Search.The full launch is scheduled for June 3rd.

The home page of bing is quite impressive as the images in the background changes everyday.The so called "decision engine" Bing introduces new features with the intention to perform faster.To be more specific the search engine was developed with the aim of offering swift answers to users search queries, especially in the field of shopping,local business,information and knowledge,travel as well as health research.This would also mean that the businesses will have to move away drastically from the common search of keywords during the process of SEO campaigns.

It returns results purely based on their relevancy to individual searchers and displays them based on their subcategories grouping rather than whether they have keywords which match the search query.

Just go to the home page msn.com and type in any of the keywords and press search.You will be directed towards bing.com search result page.Well should we call this clever marketing?Anyhow,we need to wait and see if this search engine is going to be a google beater.

Experiment with the bing search engine at www.bing.com

Release of Google Chrome Version 2.0

2009-05-26T00:12:00.000-07:00

Google has released its second version of Chrome internet browser.The first version of Google Chrome was released nearly 8 months back.Google has succeeded with bringing forth the second version by collecting immense feedback from the user and making further improvements.It has been claimed that around 300 bugs have been fixed by Google before the release of this latest version.

One of the major areas which Google has focused on is speed of the browser. Google claims that a page-loading increase of 30 percent is what Google claims it has included in the latest browser update, version 2.0.172.28.Though Google has improved in the speed factor,it still faces a tough competition from Mozilla which has drawn the support of communities due to its immense add-on capabilities.

New igoogle Gadget "What's Popular" from Google

2009-05-19T02:47:00.000-07:00

Google has launched the new iGoogle gadget known as "What's Popular".This gadget displays the most popular content from the web.This gadget bears a resemblance to Digg, Reddit or Yahoo Buzz,as one is able to vote the web pages. In other words ,it is possible to rate items that you like or dislike by just clicking the ratings buttons displayed close to each item. Later if you change your mind, then the ratings can be changed anytime. The What's Popular gadget ultimately searches what users liked or disliked in order to improve its ranking of interesting items.Also ,it is possible to add content that the users find interesting.

What's Popular utilizes algorithms in order to search interesting content from a combination of submissions and trends in aggregated user activity from Google services such as YouTube and Google Reader.Three categories such as stories, images and videos are available and usually all the pages are sorted according to the algorithm.

Google Launches Profile Search:

2009-04-22T05:30:00.000-07:00

At times, when we searched for our name in Google, we might have been dissatisfied with the results. We usually see that other people who share a similar name dominating the results.Google's new "Profile results" that was being launched recently provide a solution for this.

Google has integrated Google Profiles into their main US name search results.As an example if your searching for a name "Sandra Jose" in Google,at the end of the results ,you will find a picture of Sandra ,brief description as well as links to Google profiles,MySpace,Facebook etc. Upto 4 profiles will be displayed at the end of the page.This kind of Google cross-integration helps to make Google Profiles an extremely competitive product all of a sudden.

In this way,we find that Google Profiles are being extended beyond Google's own services.They are being promoted as a method for people to convey to the world who they are and to some degree, being offered as a way for people to claim their identity in Google's main search results.To start off ,create a profile in Google in www.google.com/profiles and follow the guidelines.

Yahoo provides enhancements for BOSS

2009-04-18T00:43:00.000-07:00

Yahoo adds additional features for its service in building custom search engines,BOSS.Delicious,Language Capability as well as News are the new features added in Yahoo search Boss.

The popularity of Delicious has let to several tools from Yahoo and the Delicious community browser such as add-ons, APIs, and Search Monkey applications.The Delicious data which is available today through BOSS includes Delicious saves, top tags including count information.BOSS has included the Advanced Language functionality to enable filtering of specific language results for a given market.Yahoo BOSS presently supports Czech, Hungarian, and traditional Chinese.BOSS News Service can now be sorted by a date or a specified time range of days, weeks, or hours.

Yahoo Search BOSS, for Build Your Own Search Service, is a new Web services platform that enables Web developers access to Yahoo's search technology. Precisely,it's opening up access,initially in the form of so-called application programming interfaces and in future through custom services from Yahoo and other partners to its Web, news, and image indexes.The goal of BOSS is to nurture innovation in the search industry.BOSS allows access to Yahoo!'s investments in crawling and indexing, ranking and relevancy algorithms including powerful infrastructure.

Enhancements in Digg

2009-04-15T05:56:00.000-07:00

The social bookmarking site Digg has improved significantly.The main aim of digg is to deliver the best stories at the top of the results.In addition to the improved user interface,the following additional changes have been implemented:

1.A faceted model for filtering results means that it is possible to cut your results by factors like Digg count, topic, time, etc. It provides sufficent information about your query and enables you to drill down to your result much more effectively.

2.Advanced shortcuts enable those who are searching for stories with specific promotion characteristics to filter in an effective manner. Include +p to your query for only promoted stories, +u for upcoming stories, and +b for buried.

3.Widely used search tricks like putting your query in quotes for an exact match and adding a negative sign before the term (i.e., -term) to remove that term from your results is possible.

4.Digg has ensured that search is faster now too.

5.A graph depicting the relative number of search results by month for the past several years provides some visibility into the trend of a particular query term over time.

Downgrade options for Windows 7 by Microsoft

2009-04-09T23:11:00.000-07:00

Microsoft provides the option of downgrade for Windows 7 Customers. The options are available to Windows Vista as well as to Windows XP. Microsoft intends to offer n-2 downgrade option with Windows 7 to enable customers to plans their migrations from XP. Thus this download option is a good news for users of Windows Vista and Windows XP.

The Vista version of Windows was not received well by many Microsoft users. Microsoft doesn't usually provide active support for more than 2 versions of Windows. Hence there has been a great deal of apprehension about the loss of XP support when the new OS was announced to be released soon.

With the release of Windows 7, Microsoft hopes to overcome the stains caused by Windows Vista.

Matt Cutts' Explanation about Google guidelines

2009-03-30T21:10:00.000-07:00

Matt Cutts, head of Google's Webspam team has delivered an explanation regarding the Webmaster guidelines provide by Google.This was one of the suggestions provided by the Search Engine Giant.."Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number."

Here are some reasons Matt Cutts cited why it is better to maintain the number of links less than 100.He went on to explain that previously Google indexed just around 100 kilobytes of a page.In case the page exceeds 100 links, it usually exceeds 100kb and the remaining links will be completely ignored or truncated by Google.Suppose, there are more than 100 links on any page ,people who reach the page might be completely overwhelmed and may be unable to find what they were looking for and might decide to leave the page.Google classifies this as a "bad user experience".

However, in some situations, where a large resource library is provided ,it is absolutely necessary to maintain a page with more than 100 links.In these cases Google won't consider these pages as spam,instead Google will either choose to exclude these links from being indexed or might tag them as nofollow.

Latest version of Internet Explorer launched by Microsoft.

2009-03-25T04:50:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has made the latest version of Internet Explorer IE 8, the world's most popular web browser to be available for download .Microsoft revealed that the Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is much faster, user-friendly and extremely secure than the previous versions of IE.

Internet Explorer is presently utilized as the main browser by around 67 per cent of the world. This is a clear reduction from 91% in 2004,due to rival's such as Mozilla's Firefox, Apple's Safari as well as Google's chrome. Due to the ubiquitous occurrence of IE,it has become a target for hackers trying to prey on its programming areas.For Microsoft to get back its lost market share it needs to convince the net users that the latest version is more secure.

Steve Ballmer, the chief executive officer of Microsoft, has conveyed that Microsoft promises to deliver a browser through which people can get apt information in a fast manner.He also stated that IE 8 provides protection which is incomparable to other browsers.A new feature known as "Accelerators" has been added. Through this feature, users can look an address on a map, without the need to navigate to a separate website. In addition,"Web Slices", which are redesigned flash sites helps in accessing favorites for a net user.

Expo and Razorfish collaborated to publish Video SEO white Paper

2009-03-19T03:38:00.000-07:00

Expo and Razorish have partnered to Publish Video SEO White Paper: 'How Non-Video Sites Can Employ Video for SEO'.Expo is the first video-based community targeting consumers to enable them to share their opinion about the products they buy as well as extol the brands they are passionate about. Razorfish, formerly Avenue A is one of the largest interactive digital marketing companies in the world, in addition to being one of the largest buyers of digital advertising space.

Till now,tradional SEO is granted utmost importance for online publishers,whereas video SEO is not given its due importance.Several publishers opt to upload to just upload to video sharing sites ,which eventually causes harm to their sites potential in the long run.The publishing of this paper will ensure the preferences will turn towards video as the universal choice for people.Eventually publishers will be prepared with with abundant search optimized video on their websites.The complete white paper can be downloaded from the following location http://www.expotv.com/about/video-seo-white-paper.