There is always something happening in Google Maps. The latest is that it unveiled a new directions gadget, which proves helpful for businesses, such as hotels for they can offer customers with customized Google Maps directions to their business locations. The new gadget also gives an end to the need of typing and updating sets of text directions!

The gadget proves to be a useful addition for customers who look for directions from their specific location and need step-by-step directions from their starting point to reach their destinations. Businesses with websites just need to copy and paste a single line of code in order to offer the customized directions powered by Google Maps to their customers.

Directions gadget allows users to pre-fill the “To” field with one or multiple addresses. It takes only one single click to print all the directions. Besides driving directions, the gadget also provides walking and public transit directions.

When users enter a unclear or unfamiliar address as the starting point, the gadget offers the option to specify a more clear address, which will then fly into the “From” field.

Directions gadget makes it very flexible to provide directions from Google Maps. Businesses can also provide directions with a generic ZIP code to a specific set of latitude-longitude coordinates, besides general addresses to any of their business locations.

For example:
123 River St, Woods, MA
90210
42.06782° N, 71.756963° W

The gadget also allows users to use an alias for their address or a name that everyone will understand. For this all they need to put the alias in parentheses just after the address:

42.06782° N, 71.756963° W (Grandma's House)

For more understanding of how the gadget can be used visit Legoland California, Emeril Lagasse or Harvard University. After having a good understanding, you may want to create your own directions gadget. In that case visit here. As of now, the directions gadget is available in 23 languages.

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Google Maps Gadget Makes It Easier To Find Destinations

IxQuick, one of my favourite meta search engines and what it bills itself as “the world's most private search engine” has renamed itself to Startpage. Name change apart, there is no difference in the existing search engine.

The meta search engine has been known for using privacy as a marketing feature, which set it part from many other search engines. In 2006, shortly before the mistaken release of three months of AOL search data, IxQuick announced that it would remove its users personal data within 48 hours. Last January, it stopped recording IP addresses completely and started offering secure searching via the https protocol, which further enhanced the search engine's leadership in privacy. Big three search engines- Google, Yahoo and Microsoft/Bing still keep user data for nine months, three months and eighteen months respectively.

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IxQuick Now Becomes Startpage

Yahoo! has announced the launch of its new note-taking research tool, named Search Pad. With the new feature, Yahoo! intends to help users organize their research on the Web! The feature was first announced in February this year.

Search Pad aims at providing users with a simple tool to remember and organize their specific searches, so that they can go back to the data whenever they want. This helps save users any research they have done and they do not need to do the same searches again.

“Search Pad helps you track sites and make notes by intelligently detecting user research intent and automatically collecting sites the user visits. Search Pad turns on automatically when you’re doing research, tracking sites to make document authoring a snap. You can then quickly edit and organize your notes with the Search Pad interface, which includes drag-and-drop functionality and auto-attributed pasting.”- Yahoo!

Whenever you search anything using Yahoo! Search, Search Pad detects your research intent and asks if you would like to take notes. Then, it saves your research and lets you take note on the information you have gone through. You can save the notes using your Yahoo! ID, which means you can access your documents from anywhere on the Web.

“Search Pad can help you save your work across an entire session or even multiple sessions. Our intent detection allows us to offer Search Pad during sessions where it is most needed, and stay out of the way when it’s not. Of course, you can also opt to use Search Pad directly at any point during your research.”- Yahoo!

You can publish Search Pad document to a permanent URL to share with family and friends. It can also be shared on Facebook, Twitter, or Delicious. Yahoo! Search Pad has been rolled out in:

• United States
• Canada
• Australia
• New Zealand
• Singapore
• Malaysia
• Philippines
• United Kingdom
• France
• Spain
• Italy
• Germany
• Brazil
• Mexico
• Argentina

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Yahoo! Search Pad Launched

Google image search has made it easier for users to toggle the SafeSearch by including settings switch menu on the results page. Earlier, instead of directly linking to the settings page, users were supposed to toggle a radio button option and then hit a save button.

SafeSearch, the adult image filter of Google prevents adult content from showing up in the image results. With the new toggle switch, you can click on the filter type, make it moderate, strict or turn it off by selecting an option from the contextual drop down menu.

The news was first disclosed on Google Blogoscoped yesterday.

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Google Image Changes SafeSearch Switch

There are reports that Google has made changes to the way it uses to display search results. Since there is no official announcement for the same, it can be said that the search giant is still experimenting with the latest enhancement.

Talking about the changes, these are actually changes that would often get unnoticed with birds-eye view. First, the Google logo at the top of the page is now smaller. The second change that would catch the eyes of readers is the broaden space in between the search box and the first row of the search results page.

Google's search results are now indented and the page size indicator has been removed which gives an idea how long the page would take to load. Google removed the word “pages” from the previous “similar pages” link as well.

With the latest enhancement, it would be interesting to notice if there is any improvement in the speed of loading the search results! It is yet to know the reasons behind as to why Google made the changes. Let the time come and find out if the giant has done it for aesthetic purposes or revenue generation!

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Google Shrunk Its Search Results Page- Gets A Smaller Logo

Recently, Google has rolled out some of the most requested features at its Google Blog Search homepage, which was launched last year.

RSS feed and Atom feed are two of the new tools, that locate in the left-hand column of the Blog Search front page. Readers can now click on the links under “Subscribe” to subscribe any topic or story in any feed reader, such as Google Reader.

Visitors who do not have a feed reader can use the iGoogle gadget that lets them embed the Blog Search front page inside their iGoogle page or any other page that accepts iGoogle gadgets. With this, readers can browse topics and drill into stories from within the widget. They can also customize the gadget as to select which topics they intend to follow.

Besides, RSS and Atom feeds, the Blog Search homepage gets two more features- Hot Queries and Latest Posts. These two features help readers in keeping up with the talks that have been doing the round at the moment. Hot Queries basically features the searches currently popular in Blog Search, while Latest Posts' focus is on the new posts from popular blogs.

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Google Launches New Blog Search Tools!

The latest addition in Google Labs is the City Tours, which will give Google an entry in the tourism business. If you write a city name, Google will not only suggest sites to see but also give a map of the multi-day itinerary and propose you minute-by-minute travel schedule to follow.

The most impressive thing about City Tours is that it doesn't only cover major travel destinations like Las Vegas, Sydney or New York, but you will also find details about spots like KeyWest, Kennewick that you would not have heard of before. Remember that Google will provide information keeping a three-day tour in mind.

More about City Tours

In reality, Google is experimenting and the City Tours is still a lab project that has plenty of scope for improvement and growth. If you keep the “wow” things aside, you will see that Kennewick tour will suggest you a walk from sight to sight. In reality, the walks will be of estimated 83 and 88 minutes. Such a walking tour will be great for New York or San Francisco, but not for small towns.

Still, City Tours is a fun tool. You can add or remove sights by giving specific dates. Google is pulling in public transit information or even listings like sports and concerts. It would be great to find local businesses writing their own suggested city tours, the location of the shop and thus embedding the tour maps on their websites.

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Google Trying Hands on Tourism with City Tours

You will find Matt Cutts of Google producing videos and answering questions from the SEO community daily. Most of these videos provide useful information for all the levels of SEO. Here's one more recent video of Matt:

This video is on “over optimization” where Matt is answering the question “Is over optimization bad for a website”?

If you want to see all the Webmaster Central team videos, go to YouTube. You will surely find wealth of information there.

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Matt Cutts On “Over Optimization”

It was mentioned in the Google Grants Blog that they have given a presentation on Search Engine Optimization in their D.C. Office. The main motive of the presentation was educate a group of “issue campaign managers” about the principles of SEO.

Galen Panger from the Google for Non-Profits team has also posted the 31 slides used in the presentation by the group. Here they are:

Galen also said that you can learn more about search engine optimization directly from Google by going through the Google's SEO Guide and watching the video of Matt for other methods.

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Google Team Gives Presentation on SEO

The web is flooded with reports of a Google PageRank update. What is most interesting about the PageRank update is that it has come in less than a month's time, when the last PageRank update was released.

Google last updated PageRank on May 27th/ 28th, 2009 and this one is released on 23June night.

Normally a toolbar PageRank update happens after every three months but such an early release is interesting.

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PR Update June 2009: An Early Release of Google PageRank Update!

Smartphones are revolutionizing our daily lives. With lower prices, unlimited data plans and faster network speeds, people are now reaching more for their cell phones than their computer for extracting information. This has made mobile applications more popular.

Google has contributed to the growth of mobile applications with the beta launch of AdSense for Mobile Applications. If you are an advertiser who is looking for ways to reach mobile users, then it is the perfect application for you. Google has already tried the service with its partners before offering the solution on a bigger platform.

In its official blog, Google said that developers can earn revenue by displaying text and image ads on iPhone and Android applications with the new AdSense for Mobile Applications. Google has also created a site where developers can get more details about the new applications programs, see answers to queries and sign up to participate in beta. You will also get to know about the benefits of advertising in mobile applications.

Google is looking forward to offer more features for mobile advertisers and publishers in the upcoming releases.

Check out the video of Howard Steinberg, Director, Business Development, Urbanspoon on his experience with AdSense for Mobile Applications.

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Google Announces the AdSense for Mobile Applications beta

Have you ever thought how a duplicate content is handled or how can you report about a hacked site? If you are a webmaster beginner or owner of a small business and want it to get online, the interview of Adam Lasnik, Google Search Evangelist will help you in getting answers to many questions.

Adam has also given top ten tips to webmasters in India. Here they are:

• You should always maintain a focus on original and compelling content as it is the foundation of the site.
• You should always maintain a focus on original and compelling content as it is the foundation of the site.
• Putting the core content and navigation on the site in text rather than Flash or graphics work better.
• Below is a small video of the interview.
• Check the site on multiple browsers and mobile phones.
• You can also take the help of free online resources at Google Webmaster Central.
• Don't pay for guaranteed Google rankings service providers.
• Participate in online communities to get attention and respect for the site.
• Protect the site and the visitors by updating a software to prevent hacking.
• Your first focus should always be on users and passion, traffic and revenue come after that.
• In order to help the users in understanding the site content, use succinct and distinct image “alt attributes” & title tags. This will help users in understanding the content of your type.

These simple tips will surely help you in a long run.

Here is an excerpt from the video

You can watch the complete interview by seeing the playlist on the Youtube Webmaster channel

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Top 10 Tips for Beginner Webmasters From Google!

You can now get details about your favorite author/journalist by searching their name on Google News There are three different methods of doing this:

• Type “author” followed by the name.

• Use advanced search option on Google News.

• You can also click the link associated with the name featured on the Google News search results.

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Google News Now with New Author Search Feature!

SEOmoz has recently released their SEO best practices guide.This is for the first time, they used the actual data to back up the best practices. Some of the previous best practices based on the data have also been changed.

The guide covers following SEO elements:

• Title Tag Format
• The Usefulness of H1 Tags
• The Usefulness of Nofollow
• The Usefulness of the Canonical Tag
• The Use of Alt text with Images
• The Use of the Meta Keywords tag
• The Use of Parameter Driven URLs
• The Usefulness of Footer Links
• The Use of Javascript and Flash on Websites
• The Use of 301 Redirects
• Blocking pages from Search Engines
• Google Search Wiki's Affect on Rankings
• The Affect of Negative Links from "Bad Link Neighborhoods"
• The Importance of Traffic on Rankings

Like other SEO guides, it also covers most of the topics, but there is always a room for debate.

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“SEO Best Practices” Guide Released by SEOmoz

The self-serve display ad marketplace “Yahoo My Display Ads" has been launched by Yahoo. The marketplace is meant for ads on Yahoo sites and the other partner sites.

AdReady, a Seattle-based technology provider has taken the responsibility of ad customization part of the program. The ad inventory for Yahoo and partner network sites is managed by Yahoo's Right Media exchange.

With the Yahoo My Display Ads, advertisers can now create and customize their campaigns by using more than 800 display templates, selecting between Cost-Per-Thousand Impressions or Cost-Per-Click pricing. All the ads will be targeted on the basis of geography, audience demographics and channel.

It is said that the Yahoo My Display Ads is an extension of a limited program Yahoo and AdReady that was offered to large number of Yahoo Small Business Customer in the year 2008.

Joanne Bradford, Senior VP, North America Revenue and Market Development, Yahoo said, “This is an affordable and easily accessible option for the businesses to run their brand and performance campaigns. In this way, they can reach local customers who matter to them the most”.

Just like Google, Yahoo is also looking to convert its search ad business to more lucrative display ads. Although Yahoo has been offering display ads since its inception, but Yahoo My Display Ads will provide a wider opportunity to create ads and make it easier for smaller businesses to display themselves.

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Yahoo My Display Ads Launched for Ad Marketplace

Google after releasing the guide to getting listed in news, has now released a much needed Google News Publisher FAQ for those who want to get included in the Google News. The FAQ will provide answers to the commons questions of publishers. Few days ago, Google also came up with a guide to get listed on business listings.

The FAQ is targeting publishers who want to get into Google News by helping them with certain issues and technical requirements. You will break up of details in following categories:

• Sitemaps questions.
• Getting accepted in Google News.
• Help! Something's broken!
• Including my content in Google News.

Know more information and get into forum discussion at Google News Help.

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Google's News Release Publisher FAQ!

Google has added an external resource loading feature to its Flash indexing capabilities. It means whenever an SWF file loads the content from any other text, HTML, XML or SWF file, the content would be indexed too and would be associated with the parent SWF file or other documents present in it.

By introducing the new capability, Google has improved the search quality as the relevant content contained in the external resources will now appear as response to the user's queries.

Janis Stipins, Software Engineer, Google told about what all Google can do when it encounters SWF files:

• It can index the text content displayed as user interacts along with the file. Buttons are clicked and input is entered just like a user would do.
• Discover links in the flash files.
• External resources are loaded and associated with the content in parent file.
• Support common JavaScript techniques for embedding Flash.
• Index sites scripted with AS1, AS2, and AS3. This is done even if the ActionScript is obfuscated.

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Google Introduces Flash Indexing with External Resource Loading

Ask.com has come up with a positive news that would be great for the search world. It has recently unveiled the proprietary database of 300 million Q&A pairs for the users in the United Kingdom and United States.

Ask.com has used the proprietary core search technology that was launched in the end of 2008 for achieving 300 million high-quality Q&A pairs. The entire work was done by crawling and indexing questions and answers from different sources across the web. Later, the semantic search technology advancements were applied by ask.com in rephrasing, clustering and filtering about insignificant or less meaningful answer formats.

It is made sure that the result in Q&A database is fine-tuned to give the best answer to customers on the very first time. For example, if your question is “How do I change a guitar chord?”, Ask.com will give answers with step-by-step instructions from different authoritative sources. Thus, you will get more options to select from and to get the most relevant answer. The unique Q&A results are also blended in the standard web search results of Ask.com

Scott Kim, EVP of Technology, Ask.com said, “Search industry is heading towards delivering the best answers through semantic search technology and ask is the best place to lead the industry. There are countless answers on net that make it difficult for the consumers to get what they are looking for. Our Q&A channel aims at giving the exact answers to the searchers through an advanced search technology”.

comScore in a research said that visitors enter search queries on Ask.com in the form of question, which is three times more than the queries entered on any other major search engine. It is also said that the user frequency, loyalty and retention is more within Ask.com Q&A channel.

If you will click on the “Lots of Answers” link on the homepage of Ask.com, you will find Q&A pairing database of 300 million. To get more information about Q&A database, visit the blog post of Ask.com

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Ask.com Introduces High Quality 300 Million Q&A Database

Microsoft has now added Explore Pane, a new feature in the search engine Bing. The feature is one of the ways to improve the pattern in which search result pages are organized. It will bring more order to the pages by providing helpful tools in consistent location across the Bing. With Explore Pane, you will be able to navigate different results for categories like web, video, news, local, image and more.

Extensive research was done by experts for planning Bing. It was found that 66% users make search more frequently to take a decision about a particular thing, community or service. They spend more time reading the decision oriented sessions with an average time of 9 minutes per session. Thus, it was concluded that an improved page organization will help users in quickly getting what they are looking for and it will have a big impact.

Explore Pane

It contains three set of tools:

Quick Tabs

These provide a set of 1-click links and narrow down the search results into specific sub-categories for initial search term. The sub-categories are a set of most likely next steps involved in the search process. Quick Tabs are made with algorithms within the sub-categories for a topic area that could range from cars to homes. The selection of Quick Tabs will different for every category.

Related Searches

You will get a list of other related and exploratory searches through this tool. The related searches can sometimes be helpful for finding related topics. While the Quick Tabs help in narrowing a search results and exploring tangential topics of interest.

Search History

You will get a direct access to the searches performed in a particular search session with this tool. It will help you in revisiting the earlier queries and sharing search results through IM or Facebook.

There are chances of you not finding Quick Tabs and Related Searches tools for specific and “tail” queries. However, “head” queries will always be shown with all the three tools.

Finding Explore Pane

You will see the tools present in the left hand pane of the page while using Bing. The experts did extensive user testing and concluded two things:

The Explore Pane feature was helpful and should be marked as a permanent feature on the page.

The left pane was an ideal location for the tools as this is highly accessible from main results without causing much distraction.

The Dynamics of Explore Pane

All the three tools of Explore Pane are unique in their own. The content of Related Searches and Quick Tabs vary for every type of query and the Search History tool is unique for users.

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More Organized Search Results on Bing with Explore Pane

The Google Analytics Blog has mad a recent announcement about Importing goals into AdWords. The advertisers can now import the Google Analytics Goals and Transactions into AdWords for CPA bidding, conversion and tracking purposes.

Apart from CPA bidding, the benefit of Import feature is that it will let you track the ROI of the campaign and optimize the account for direct conversions inside the AdWords interface. This single move will however simplify the overall conversion tracking process.

Here are the details on how you can set up Goals and import them into AdWords from the AdWords blog.

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Conversion Tracking Now Easier with Goals Being Imported into AdWords