Search Engine Blog

Google Panda Update or Google Panda Subdomain Favour to Blogspot

2011-10-23T07:05:00.000-07:00

Google Panda Update or Just Call It Google Panda Subdomain(Blogspot) Preferences Update

After one week of the last Google Panda Update the results just I saw were astonishing. Google search results for Everything looks like that I am searching for Blogs. Even this results that I saw was on the last page when 100 results were selected for a keyphrase SEO COMPANY INDIA. There are 20 blogspot hosted blogs in the last page of the Google Search.

On the 9th page there is still the dominance of Blogpot blogs, but with a combination of other sub-domains including sub-domains websites, wordpress blogs, webs.com blogs etc. some are:
indiaesolutions.blogs4us.com
business.ezinemark.com
biz.prlog.org
seoindia.softsolutionsindia.net
seocompanyindelhi.weebly.com
mdimran1.wordpress.com
archos.kewego.com
rohit21sharma.articlealley.com
seo-gym.tumlr.com
webwizard-in.yolasite.com
seoserviceindia.webs.com
softwaredevelopmentcompanybis.webpaint.com
webdesignitinformation.wordpress.com
aftereffects.corank.com
seoonlinenews.wordpress.com
www.professionala-seo.webs.com
bptpl.wordpress.com

After 860 position there was the complete list of blogspot blogs till the end(920) and no any other website in between.

Google Redirect to accounts.youtube.com While Signing Out

2011-07-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

Google is Redirecting to accounts.youtube.com when I log out from Google Account.

A sample URL that generate while logging out is:
http://accounts.youtube.com/accounts/Logout2?ilo=1&ils=s.youtube&ilc=1&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&zx=-xxxxxxx

I just notice it today due to some problem in my home Internet connection. Due to slow Internet speed, while signing out, I noticed that Google was redirecting to first Google.co.in then accounts.youtube.com.

A thread for this issue has been raised in the Google Help forum for Gmail:
google redirects to youtube upon log out

Across the world this will create a problem in many users' PC who are using Google account services through office network. As, video websites like Youtube and many social networking sites like Orkut and Facebook are in the blocked list of Office Firewall Software. If a user is redirected to http://accounts.youtube.com/, the firewall will stop the further redirects and Signing Out might not work properly.

Till the time of posting non from the Google Employee or Moderator of the forum has replied to the issue raised in the above forum.

Update: Google top contributor TITO DUTTA referred to another thread http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?hl=en&tid=6f8a66404ae30d1d, where Sarah, a Google Employee replied with the possible solution

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the confusion. When you sign out of your Google Account, we want to make sure we sign you out of all your Google services. We are now checking to make sure you get signed out of YouTube.

Your domain admin can whitelist accounts.youtube.com, which will stop you from seeing the error while allowing your network to continue blocking videos.

Best,
Sarah

Google Home Page New Layout & New Google Search Results Look

2011-06-30T09:28:00.000-07:00

Google has made live it's new layout and look for Google.com home page across the world and has also updated the new look and layout for the Search Result Pages.

Google who has favoured white background for last many years has introduced black top bar while replacing the old white background.

Also, removed Advanced Search and Language tool from the Google Search's home page, which used to be near the search box. In the new Google Layout, they are now placed on the top right hand side, under the Options menu, just near the Sign in link.

The new Google SERP's layout has removed "Similar pages" option that used to be on the right of "Cached" link on Search Result pages. The URLs are moved beneath the title/headline for each search result in the search snippet. Also, the left panel has been changed with introduction of new colors and replacing the old blue color.

They have moved the links on the homepage to the top and bottom of the browser screen which according to Google is making the homepage more cleaner.

According to Google their new design is based on the following three design principles:
Focus
Elasticity
Effortlessness

With this new layout and look, Google is hopping that as a user we will get what we want whether we are using mobile devices, tablets, high-resolution monitors and TVs with the use of latest technologies like HTML5, WebGL and the latest browsers.

Google Art Project - Explore Museums with Street View Technology & High Resolution Artworks

2011-02-02T10:31:00.000-08:00

Google Art Project is a collaboration between 17 of the world’s most renowned art museums and Google. Art Project site enable people to explore museums through Google's Street View Technology and view more than thousand of artworks at an extraordinary high resolution.

At present Google has partner with 17 museums and following are the list of museums included in the Google Art Project:

* Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin - Germany
* Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, Washington DC - USA
* The Frick Collection, NYC - USA
* Gemäldegalerie, Berlin - Germany
* The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC - USA
* MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC - USA
* Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid - Spain
* Museo Thyssen - Bornemisza, Madrid - Spain
* Museum Kampa, Prague - Czech Republic
* National Gallery, London - UK
* Palace of Versailles - France
* Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands
* The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg - Russia
* State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow - Russia
* Tate Britain, London - UK
* Uffizi Gallery, Florence - Italy
* Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands

All the images of the artworks shown in the Google Art Project site are owned by the museums and protected by copyright. Hence, should not be copied from Google Art Project.

You can watch videos related to Google Art Project on its YouTube Channel.

Earthquake of 7.4 on Richter scale Epicenter around the Kharan, Balochistan

2011-01-18T13:00:00.000-08:00

A news off topic to this blog. Soon after Nehra hitting the winning shot, Earthquake of 7.4 magnitudes on Richter scale shatters Northern India around 2.00 am Jan 19, 2011. The epicenter of the earthquake was 65 kilometer North West of the Kharan, Balochistan. Balochistan is in the South Western part of Pakistan. Back in India, those who were awake and/or were watching India-South Africa one day match,including me left their buildings and run for a safer ground. Rajasthan's Jaisalmer had the most of the share of the quake as it share its border with South West Pakistan. People started Twitting and Google is showing their recent tweets regarding the quake in its realtime search results. Hopes so there are no loss to lives either in India or Pakistan.

Culture Tour Via Google Doodle For December 2010 Holiday Season

2010-12-23T06:41:00.000-08:00

World's Cultural Tour Via Google Doodle For December 2010 Holiday Season

The Google Doodle Culture Tour is referring to "Indian dance styles" through a link on fourth image from the lower left corner:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Indian+dance+styles&ct=holiday10-hp&oi=ddle

Other images are linked to the following keywords:

St. Basil's Cathedral

Acropolis

Mt. Fuji

Buche de Noel

pierogi

Great Wall of China

Sahara desert

oud

chili pepper

Sydney Harbour

Nepal

Venice gondolas

Chilean vineyards

African kanga

Up on the housetop

Henna lamp

Google's 12th Birthday Celebration with New Google Doodle/Logo

2010-09-26T11:43:00.000-07:00

Happy 12th Birthday to Google!!!

Google is now celebrating its 12th Birthday with New Google Doodle/Logo.

Google is celebrating its birthday on 27th September instead of 7th September with a new Google Doodle. Following is the new Google Doodle that has been used for its 12th Birthday.

Happy 12th Birthday Google by Wayne Thiebaud. Image used with permission of VAGA NY.
Image used above is a direct link to the server Location of Google's Logo and all rights goes to Vaga NY

As per the Google Tool Tip for the Doodle, the image is used by taking permission from Visual Artists and Galleries Association, Inc. and is designed by Thiebaud, Wayne of VAGA. According to Vaga.org:

VAGA is an artists rights organization and copyright collective representing reproduction rights (copyright) for approximately 500 American artists and, through agreements with affiliated organizations in other countries, thousands of foreign artists worldwide.

This means that the Google's 12th Birthday Doodle is designed outside the boundary of Google Inc. and Google has to use this copyright protected image by taking permission from VAGA.

Well that does not matter to us, we love Google and wish to see it gives the best results in future and should be remain free from any of Board of Directors profit making/financial interests.

Google Instant Fastest Search Display Even Before You Finished Typing

2010-09-08T12:37:00.000-07:00

Instant Coffee, Money & Now Instant Search:Google Instant

Sep 8, 2010: Google has added a new feather to its crown and launched new searching feature: Google Instant. As you start typing a single word on Google, search result page will be served to you instantly. According to GOOGLE:

Google Instant is starting to roll-out to users on Google domains in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia who use the following browsers: Chrome v5/6, Firefox v3, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8. Please note, users on domains other than Google.com can only access Google Instant if they are signed in to a Google Account. We will continue to add new domains and languages over the next several months.

Below is the image of Google Instant Search Text Suggestion, having On/Off link next to it.

Beautiful Google Doodle on India's Independence Day

2010-08-16T09:43:00.000-07:00

आजादी की हार्दिक शुभकामनाए !!!

Beautiful Google Doodle on India's Independence Day

Its work fine on IE8. You can see it working whenever you use F5 key or refresh your IE browser. But on FireFox, Flock and Chrome, this doodle works only the first time the page is loaded. Its weird but I don't know why this gif is not working all time. To view this Google India's 64th Independence Day Doodle, please use CTRL+F5, to clear your browser cache on Mozilla Firefox, Flock and Google Chrome. I use only these 4 browsers so I am able to check these only. Don't know about other browsers.

PAC-MAN 30th Anniversary:Google Celebrate with Interactive Doodle

2010-05-21T21:51:00.000-07:00

PAC-MAN 30th Anniversary:Google Celebrate with Interactive Doodle:

21 May 2010, Google is celebrating the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man with a playable logo on its home page. Google pays tribute to all time world famous game: Pac-Man 30th Anniversary with a free version of the video arcade game on the home page logo. Google make public its first interactive doodle to celebrate PAC-MAN's 30th anniversary. Play the game using your keyboard’s UP, Down, Right and Left keys and enjoy it.

PAC-MAN 30th Anniversary Google Doodle

Update: Play this game whenever you crave for Pac-Man by visiting the following link: http://www.google.com/pacman/
Just click on Insert Coin button once to start the game.

Google Toolbar PageRank Cache Error - 404 Not Found

2010-04-14T09:53:00.000-07:00

Today(Wed, April 14, 2010) after updating Google Toolbar, the cache function of PageRank Tool under Google Toolbar is not working. I am able to check the cache of any page through cache option shown in the Google Search snippet, but when I go for the toolbar cache version I am seeing a 404 Error. Following is the snapshot of the Google Toolbar's cache version of Amazon website:

Google Toolbar Error-404 Not Found Error

Also, the Google cache: command is not working. It too is showing 404 Not Found Error.

If you are seeing t he similar thing, please let me known by inputting your valuable comments...

Google New URL For Web Cache: webcache.googleusercontent.com

2010-04-06T08:02:00.000-07:00

Earlier Google used to show cache for a website abc.com like this:
http://74.125.153.132/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.abc.com%2F

But now it has changed the url to http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/... like this:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5rXV0ZMvlY0J:www.google.com/intl/rm/remove.html+google+cache+urls&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk

There seems to be lot of changes in April month. Earlier a PR and backlink update on 3rd April, 2010. Know change in the url for Google Cache version.

Also, when you search on Google with this webcache.googleusercontent.com, you will find in a search result a link to cache page url i.e: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.leechermods.com.

Or just Google this:
site:webcache.googleusercontent.com webcache.googleusercontent.com

you will find about 1,100 results.

Its interesting to see Google is showing cache version in its search result.

Google Personalization Search Is On Its Way through Google Web History:

2010-01-05T08:31:00.000-08:00

Google Web History to Display Search Results Even when You or I are NOT SIGNED IN:

Before going to discuss on the topic, I will like to let you know what Google Web History is. According to Google:

With Web History, you'll be able to:

* View and manage your web activity.

You know that great web site you saw online and now can't find? From now on, you can. With Web History, you can view and search across the full text of the pages you've visited, including Google searches, web pages, images, videos and news stories. You can also manage your web activity and remove items from your web history at any time.

* Get the search results most relevant to you.

Web History helps deliver more personalized search results based on the things you've searched for on Google and the sites you've visited. You might not notice a big impact on your search results early on, but they should steadily improve over time the more you use Web History.

* Follow interesting trends in your web activity.

Which sites do you visit frequently? How many searches did you do between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.? Web History can tell you about these and other interesting trends in your web activity.

Google Web History to affect search results only when you or I are signed in on Google. But with new Google Web History, you will find personalized search results based on your online behavior even when you are not signed in. Now when you search on Google your will find Web History at top right hand side of the search page near Search Settings and Sign in.

Web History | Search settings | Sign in

When you click on this Web History link, you will find:

Your search results may be customized using search activity from this computer.
Disable customizations based on search activity.

You can click on the above link to Disable customizations or enable it

Customization based on signed-out search activity is disabled.
Enable customizations based on search activity.

Now with this new feature, your search will not only be based on your Geographical Location but also on your online search activities on your computer.

:) Google Caffeine Update After Holidays :(

2009-11-11T02:24:00.000-08:00

Google Search to Go Live with Caffeine Update After Holidays

History is repeating itself with the roll out of Caffeine Update on all Google Data-centers in the winter season of holidays. Time of Florida Update was the peak season of sales for the webmasters. That update hurt lot of webmasters as with the change in Google search algorithm many of them lose huge amount of traffic. This time Google doesn't want the webmaster to loose traffic with the Caffeine roll out. So the Caffeine Update will be roll out on a single data center and after holidays Google will roll out on all the data centers.

Google has also closed the Google Caffeine Sandbox test by giving a 302 redirect .

I have checked the redirect on the Internet Officer tool and got this response:

Checked link: http://www2.sandbox.google.com/

Type of redirect: 302 Found

Redirected to: http://www.google.com/errors/caffeine/unavailable.html

Wait and watch for Google Caffeine Update to go live, after the holidays. There might be many webmasters that are going to enjoy Christmas and New Year but some of them might not with this Google Update.

Is this update going to change the SEO technique?
Will Google be able to maintain the leadership in the Search Market Share with new Update?

Where is Google Preferences on Google.com?

2009-08-28T04:31:00.000-07:00

Google Preferences Goes Missing from Search Page:

Google has removed Preferences link from Google.com. Earlier you would see three links
Advanced Search
Preferences
Language Toolsnext to search box. But now the preferences link is missing from the search page. You will find only
Advanced Search
Language Tools

Apart from latest Search Engine Ranking updation that was done around mid Aug,09 , Caffeine update and now visual display update ; what else is Google Going to change.

Update:
You can find your old Preferences in a new name as Search settings on the upper Right Hand Side with Sign in link as:

Search settings | Sign in

De-Caffeinated Google Search Results vs Caffeinated Google Search Results-SEO Tools

2009-08-25T02:41:00.000-07:00

Current Google Search Results vs Google Search Results on Google Caffeine

I was surfing the net and looking for Google Caffeine update that was recently (August 10, 2009) rolled out by Search Engine Giant. You can search over Google Caffeine at www2.sandbox.google.com.

There are lot of discussion going on over the webmasters. Some are seeing Good Search Result for their websites on Google Caffeine search result some are not.

I have found few SEO tools for comparing the De-Caffeinated Google Search Results with that of Google Search Results.

You can check them at:
Compare Google Caffeine

Google Caffeine Compare

Get Caffeinated

You can give yours comment on this blog regarding Google Caffeine Update

Going Google: Google Billboard Ads Against Microsoft to Promote Google Apps

2009-08-04T00:13:00.000-07:00

Google is using billboard advertising to compete against Microsoft Exchange and to promote Google Apps. Google Apps - a web-based suite of messaging and collaboration applications is Google's package for enterprise solutions. Commuters of US four major cities: Boston, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco are now noticing giant billboards.

GOOGLE BILLBOARD AD

The Google campaign called "Going Google", is used to make use of US long traffic jams. This billboard campaign is catering IT professionals stuck in traffic. With this, Google will have the chance to make Google Apps get noticed by the people struck in long jams in some of the busiest roadways in US. This will benefit Google to capture the eyes of the people that are using Microsoft enterprise based products like MS office or Microsoft Exchange.

Google almost never need to advertise its product. Google Products generally spread by word of mouth and have used sparingly traditional ads. But the current search engine market conditions and collaboration between Yahoo and Microsoft has forced Google to use of billboard for advertising its product. Google and others have to wait and watch to see what and how these billboards are going to affect Google profitability.

Firefox 3.5.2 and 3.0.13 security updates now available for download

2009-08-03T23:37:00.000-07:00

Known Vulnerabilities in Mozilla Products

Mozilla released a security and stability update for Firefox 3.5.x and 3.0.x users on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 3:03 pm PT. Check out the Mozilla Developer News announcement, reposted below, for more details.

As part of Mozilla’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 3.5.2 and Firefox 3.0.13 are now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux as free downloads:

Firefox 3.5.2 is available at http://firefox.com/
Firefox 3.0.13 is available at http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all-older.html

We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3.5 or Firefox 3, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.

For a list of changes and more information, please review the Firefox 3.5.2 Release Notes and the Firefox 3.0.13 Release Notes.

Note: All Firefox 3.0.x users are encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 3.5.2 by downloading it from http://firefox.com/ or by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.
Source: mozilla.org

DiggBar New Feature of Digg.com and New Destination URL

2009-04-08T06:31:00.000-07:00

You famous or our famous Digg.com has roll out a new DiggBar this April, 2009.

The DiggBar allows you to…
* Digg directly on the destination site: No more awkward toggling between the story page and Digg.
* Easily share stories: You can now create a shortened Digg URL to share on Twitter, Facebook or via email. You can also type digg.com/ before the URL of any page you’re on to create a short URL.
* Access additional analytics: See how many times a story has been viewed.
* View comments while on the story page: Clicking the ‘Comments’ button expands the DiggBar to show the top comment, latest comment, and most controversial without leaving the page.
* Discover related stories: Clicking the ‘Related’ button expands the DiggBar to highlight similar stories.
* See more stories from the same source: Clicking the ‘Source’ button expands the DiggBar to show you more Digg stories from that source site.
* Discover random stories: Click the ‘Random’ button and you’ll be brought to an entirely new, unexpected story.

Digg New URL Policy:

Digg has also updated its destination URL policy. Earlier we get a direct link to our bookmarked websites, but now you can see the address as: http://digg.com/somenumbers.

Looking closer at the HTML source code of a particular page created by Digg, we can see that it has used:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex"/>
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.originalwebsite.com/"/>

We know that noindex meta prevent all robots from indexing a page on your site. And rel="canonical" doesn't work across the domains. So using rel="canonical" is useless.

Is this is going to be a great loss to SEO?

What you people think about Digg.com changes? Please share your ideas and suggestions via comment box.

Source:http://blog.digg.com/?p=591

Google Sitelinks Update and PR Update-April 2009

2009-04-01T22:17:00.000-07:00

Today morning, while searching on Google for a keyword "cheap cell phones", i have noticed a change in Google' sitelinks display. Earlier it was for the first position or so called the top ranked website, but now you can find a vertical line displaying the top visited pages for a particular site and it need not be the top ranked website.

You can view the layout of the Google's Sitelinks from the given below images:

Also you can differentiate between the updated and old format of Google Sitelink from the below imgaes:

Old Format of Google Sitelinks

Updated Google Sitelinks

Also, its a time for Google PR update for the April, 2009 month. I have started noticing fluctuation in Google PR

November - December 2008 Search Market Share

2009-02-25T21:58:00.000-08:00

November Search Market Share-2008

Reference:http://blog.compete.com/2008/12/23/november-search-share-google-yahoo-msn-live-ask-aol/

December Search Market Share-2008

Reference: http://blog.compete.com/2009/01/16/december-search-market-share-google-yahoo-live-ask-aol/

Google Update - New Favicon for Cached Version of Websites

2009-01-09T21:43:00.000-08:00

Google Favicon

Google is know showing Favicon for the cached version of websites. In my notice, it is visible only in Mozilla Firefox. Tried to see the same in IE7, but couldn't find any. One can see this Favicon only if the visited website doesn't have any its own Favicon. If it does have, then the Full Version of Google Cache will not display any Favicon. To see it, one have to go for Text-Only Version of Google Cache.

Along with cache: command, this new Favicon is viewable when we use the following site:, link:, info: commands.

Update: Now the new favicon for Google is visible in almost all Google's Products. It contains the colours seen in Google Logo, that are RGB (RGB color model) plus Yellow and White(added in the favicon to make g).

India Search Market - Google Search Ranks as Top Indian Search Property in June 2008 - comScore

2008-12-22T00:04:00.000-08:00

According to comScore, Google Sites ranked as the top search property in India with more than 1 billion searches conducted in June, representing 81 percent of the market. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 9.4 percent, followed by Ask Network (1.9 percent) and Microsoft Sites (1.7 percent). Indian Internet portal Rediff.com ranked fifth with 1.5 percent.

Top Search Properties in India June 2008 Total India – Age 15+, Home/Work Locations Source: comScore qSearch
	Searches (MM)	Share of Searches
Total Internet	1,242	100.0
Google Sites	1,011	81.4
Yahoo! Sites	117	9.4
Ask Network	24	1.9
Microsoft Sites	22	1.7
Rediff.com India Ltd	18	1.5
FACEBOOK.COM	10	0.8
People Group	9	0.8
CNET Networks	5	0.4
Wikipedia Sites	5	0.4
AOL LLC	3	0.2

For more information visit: comScore and read its Press Release on India Search Market Led by 1 Billion Searches on Google Sites in June.

New Live Search MSNBot Crawler in Your Logs-msnbot/2.0b

2008-12-18T02:57:00.000-08:00

According to Live Search Webmaster Center Blog, Live Search is testing an update of MSNBot. This may show a new crawler name in your server log report. The new crawler user agent will appear as:

msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)

But msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm) will still be the primary user agent for Live Search and you will see them in your log report as earlier. According to Live Search Webmaster Center Blog, the updated crwaler will also follow the robots exclusion protocol and there is no need to change or update your Robots.txt file.

For more information you can visit: Live Search Webmaster Center Blog

Event Tracking-Google Analytics New Feature Activated

2008-12-17T22:37:00.000-08:00

Google has introduced Event Tracking in Google Analytics. It is like other Google Applications is still in BETA. The following is the snippet of mail that I have received from Google Analytics Team.

"Greetings from Google Analytics,

We are happy to let you know that the Event Tracking feature is now available in all profiles for the following Google Analytics Account ID: *******. Please note that you are receiving this email update because you are an 'Admin' or designated contact for the account listed above.

When you log in to these profiles, you will see a new set of reports called "Event Tracking" under the Content section. As posted on our blog, this is a limited release currently available only to select profiles.

Event Tracking allows you to track interactions with Web 2.0 style content such as Flash, AJAX, Silverlight, social networking apps, etc. We recently made tracking Adobe Flash even easier with the release of a new Flash Tracking client library. It allows for much simpler tracking of Flash content with drag and drop functionality and an open source framework.

To use Event Tracking, you will need to upgrade your site to use the new ga.js javascript. Detailed instructions on how to set up Event Tracking on your site are available on our CodeSite.
To find your ga.js code snippet, edit the settings for your profile and click the "Check Status" link on the upper right corner of the page. You can now track interactions beyond just pageviews.

Sincerely,
The Google Analytics Team "