The announcement appeared today in the Official Google Blog: Google Suggest is now rolling out as the default behavior for all searches on the main Google Search pages.
Fortunately, Google has added an option on the Preferences page to turn it off. I did. Yes, I’m a curmudgeon on this one. “I don’t need no stinking suggestions.” But it might be a somewhat interesting bit of research to turn it on from time to time and see what pops up.
Hackers May Be Targeting Google Gadgets
One of the biggest problems with the so-called Web 2.0 movement has been its encouragement of oversharing ?which often means underestimating security risks. Adding doodads of varying quality to a home page can add a lot of pizazz, but can also be fraught with danger, since they can open a door for hackers.
It’s a threat even for the biggest Web companies, including Google Inc., whose “gadgets” ?little programs like calendars or daily photo feeds that users can implant onto their personalized Google home pages ?are increasingly juicy targets for hackers, two security researchers said Wednesday.It’s not that Google is designing insecure programs.
The issue is that users building their own customized applications, and distributing them through Google, might have evil intentions and try to exploit those programs once they’re installed on users’ pages. Many users are inclined to inherently trust what they download from Google.
I just noticed that my searches are coming up with links to related terms under the search results. Not all the listings had it, but it does have these same listings appearing at the top of the page. They seem to be very targeted to the content of our site and others. The related links for the site above ours are totally different, but definitely targeted to their topic.
Forgive me is this has already been discussed, but I didn’t see a notation anywhere. How new is this?
If I’m understanding your question correctly (and I may not be), you’re talking about two different uses that Google makes of the word “related.”
|
Searches related to:, which appears at the top or bottom of some serps pages, is Google’s attempt to help searchers find more precise results. These appear at the top or bottom of some serps pages, and are suggestions for more precise searches. They’re most probably based on Google’s historical data of query refinements that searchers have made.
|
I’m assuming you see these when click the “Similar pages” links underneath each result on a serps page. These links bring up the related:domain operator results for the domain displayed. The last time I checked carefully, the related:domain results were domains that shared common inbound linking sources with the domain queried.
Also see…
Baidu Inc., China’s most-used Internet search engine, posted an 87 percent jump in second- quarter profit, beating analysts’ estimates and sending the shares up 13 percent.
Net income increased to 265 million yuan ($38.8 million), or 7.62 yuan per share, from 142 million yuan, or 4.09 yuan, a year earlier, the Beijing-based company said today in a statement. Sales doubled to 802.6 million yuan. The company also forecast sales that may beat analysts’ estimates.
Chief Executive Officer Robin Li added to Baidu’s lead over Google Inc. in China by introducing services such as online games from Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd. and anti-virus software from Kingsoft Corp. Baidu has almost two-thirds of the search market in China, the world’s biggest Web market.
And,I have a domain:
http://www.baiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidu.com/
| When we showed up in the index again |
Netmeg - What type of issues were they ? It sounds like this was a filter issue with regards to meta titles, in which case I wouldn’t call it a penalty.
Sorry for splitting hairs - it’s just i see “remedial” works differently from things like cleaning up non compliant “link building practices” - if you get my drift.
|
Tedster - Do you mean consistantly ?
For what it’s worth, we have fallen into some difficult periods in the past. I remember we were pursuaded to engage in a ” same theme ” link swap network and within 2 weeks the experimental sites went quickly south - pretty much out of the index. Fortunately we recognised the error and reversed those links out. Within another 2-4 weeks our sites were back flying again [ but not as high as we were tempted to before ].
For years we grappled with duplicate content - it gave the appearance of a penalty. Eventually we understood how to manage it and the sites responded to top positions with 2-3 weeks.
|
I don’t believe in this for the majority of sites. Google’s guidelines are so full of interpretation with anomalies in the SERP’s , plus a competitive landscape nobody could claim to walk in a straight line of knowledge, let alone implementation.
And last of all , for that reason I have no idea if Google really forgives, particularily if you file the confession in the “reinclusion request”.
Who on earth can be fully confident and know for sure what might happen here - even inside the human reviewer’s head. Please tell me I’m wrong … i want to hear it
In the clearest sign yet that online ad sales growth cannot outrun a global economic slowdown, Google reported the first-ever sequential quarterly revenue decline in its U.K. business. The dip, as reported in the company’s second-quarter earnings Thursday, cut into Google’s overall international growth, bringing it down to 52% from 55% in the first quarter.
That’s unsettling news for Google and the search sector, since overseas growth has previously been the crucial area that has helped Google strongly offset the ongoing U.S. slump.
Microsoft didn’t help lift any of the gloom in the online advertising picture. The software giant saw online ad sales grow 18% over year-ago levels, a big drop from the 39% growth rate it had in the prior quarter. Microsoft also stretched its marketshare losing streak to “four straight months,” according to Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Holt.
Google has been the beneficiary of Microsoft’s lost business, but it has not been enough to balance the declining industry growth. Overall, Google’s ad sales growth has slowed by half in less than two years, and with international ad sales, its strongest growth engine, starting to ease, the trend is likely to steepen.
Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) shares fell 9% Friday after the company missed Wall Street’s profit targets. And Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) was down 8% with a miss of its own coupled with lowered guidance for the current quarter. And also on Thursday, another online advertising player pulled up lame. Net bargain finder ValueClick (VCLK) cut its 2008 sales target 10%, blaming a weakening economy.
Analysts were quick to point out some of the key factors that tainted Google’s results. For example, a big portion of Google’s profit shortfall in the quarter came from a 57% drop in interest income. Google used $3.2 billion of its invested cash to buy DoubleClick in March, bringing its interest income down to $58 million from $137 million in the year-ago quarter.
But the sales performance revealed new pockets of weakness. In the U.K., where mortgage woes have started to pull down the economy, revenue growth was 29%, down from the 39% pace in the first quarter and well off the 44% growth from the fourth quarter, Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney noted in a research note Friday. The U.K. makes up about 14% of Google’s international sales.
On a conference call with analysts Thursday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that while prospects may be dimming he liked Google’s chances.
“There is obviously evidence of a slowdown in the U.S. and Europe; you read it in the paper every day. We continue to believe that we are very, very well-positioned in such a slowdown and especially if it gets worse,” Schmidt said, according to a transcript published by SeekingAlpha.com.
Google also blamed some of the problem on its own efforts to try and charge more for fewer, though more targeted ads. Pointing out that the number of Google search ads is “pretty much at an all-time low relative to the last few quarters,” Google product manager Jonathan Rosenberg said, “that’s basically our continued focus on quality. I don’t really see that changing significantly.”
Google president Sergey Brin added that the company pulled back a little too far. “There was some evidence internally that perhaps we were a little overly aggressive in decreasing coverage in this past quarter,” Brin said on the call.
Looking ahead to Yahoo’s scheduled earnings report Tuesday, some analysts have recently lowered their expectations for the No. 2 search shop. Citing slowing U.S. searches, and declining marketshare in “an increasingly difficult advertising market,” Soleil analyst Laura Martin cut her Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) second quarter sales estimate to $1.37 billion.
The analysts’ consensus estimates for Yahoo’s second quarter calls for adjusted profit of 12 cents a share on $1.37 billion in revenue. That compares with 11 cents on $1.24 billion in sales in the year-ago period.
In the clearest sign yet that online ad sales growth cannot outrun a global economic slowdown, Google reported the first-ever sequential quarterly revenue decline in its U.K. business. The dip, as reported in the company’s second-quarter earnings Thursday, cut into Google’s overall international growth, bringing it down to 52% from 55% in the first quarter.
That’s unsettling news for Google and the search sector, since overseas growth has previously been the crucial area that has helped Google strongly offset the ongoing U.S. slump.
incredibly good posting today - among other things about synonyms.I’m amazed that no one else saw this - hopefully my posting this is within TOS. It should be.
There’s so much of interest in the article and other posters have homed in on a few. This paragraph grabs my attention:
“Someone searching for [bangalore] not only gets the important web pages, they also get a map, a video showing street life, traffic, etc. in Bangalore — watching this video I almost feel I am there — and at the time of writing there is relevant news and relevant blogs about Bangalore.”
When I did the suggested search on Bangalore, video aside, it was all there as the article mentions. Unfortunately the general information is supplied by Wikipedia amd the travel / tourist side by Wikitravel, but let’s not go down that alley!
For me this has serious implications. For example, if my widget site is third “best” in the world for widget information, I would guess that it will appear well out of the top ten results? Because Google will probably present in the top ten, one or maybe two informational sites, a site that has videos of widgets, another that has lots of widget pictures, a couple of blogs on widgets, a site or two containing recent widget news etc.
This may only apply to single word searches though, because a search for “bangalore travel” brings up a very different set of results (wikipedia aside!).
Recently we had a Google site link change for our home page and we noticed a big dip in the serps. Google did not properly title the site link as it did in the past, so I went into webmaster tools and blocked the site link. When it asked me for a reason, I simply put that the page had the wrong title and put the correct title in.
Example: The Page is about “Widgets that are Green”
Google gave the site link as “Are Green”
Now, when I made this change, Google said the site link would be blocked until October 2nd. Anyone experiment with this feature yet and how did Google react in the Serps?
1. A computer-implemented method for displaying advertisements to members of a network, the method comprising:identifying one or more communities within a network, wherein the community comprises a plurality of members of the network;identifying one or more influencers in the one or more communities; andplacing one or more advertisements at the profiles of one or more members in the one or more communities.
2. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving information pertaining to a plurality of members belonging to the network, wherein the information comprises content of profiles of the plurality of members and links between the plurality of members.
3. The method of claim 2, wherein identifying the one or more communities comprises grouping members based on the links established between the members of the network.
4. The method of claim 3, wherein the link connects a first member with one or more members of the network.
5. The method of claim 3, wherein each link has a weight.
6. The method of claim 2, further comprising identifying one or more common interests of the plurality of members of a community based on the content of the profiles of the plurality of members.
7. The method of claim 2, further comprising ranking the plurality of members belonging to each of the one or more communities based on the links between the members of each community.
8. The method of claim 7, wherein the influencer is the member with the highest rank.
9. The method of claim 2, wherein the network comprises an online social network.
10. The method of claim 9, wherein the profile comprises one or more web pages stored on a server hosting the online social network.
11. The method of claim 1, wherein a member of the network belongs to one or more of the plurality of communities.
12. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more advertisements are placed solely on the profiles of the one or more influencers.
13. An advertisement server for displaying advertisements to members of a network, the advertisement server comprising:a community identifier configured toidentify one or more communities, andidentify one or more influencers in the one or more communities;andan advertisement inventory configured to store advertisements to be displayed on the profiles of one or more members of the identified communities.
14. The advertisement server of claim 13, further comprising a network inventory configured to store the information pertaining to the plurality of members belonging to the network, wherein the information comprises content of profiles of the plurality of members and links between the plurality of members.
15. The advertisement server of claim 14, wherein the community identifier is further configured to group members based on the links established between the members of the network.
16. The advertisement server of claim 15, wherein the link connects a first member with one or more members of the network.
17. The advertisement server of claim 15, wherein each link has a weight.
18. The advertisement server of claim 14, wherein the community identifier is further configured to identify one or more common interests of the plurality of members of a community based on the content of the profiles of the plurality of members.
19. The advertisement server of claim 14, wherein the community identifier is further configured to rank the plurality of members belonging to each of the one or more communities based on the links between the members of each community.
20. The advertisement server of claim 19, wherein the influencer is the member with the highest rank.
21. The advertisement server of claim 14, wherein the network comprises an online social network.
22. The advertisement server of claim 21, wherein the profile comprises one or more web pages stored on a server hosting the online social network.
23. The advertisement server of claim 13, wherein a member of the network belongs to one or more of the plurality of communities.
24. The advertisement server of claim 13, wherein the one or more advertisements are placed solely on the profiles of the one or more influencers.
25. An advertisement server for displaying advertisements to members of a network, the advertisement server comprising:a means foridentifying one or more communities, andidentifying one or more influencers in the one or more communities; anda means for storing advertisements to be displayed on the profiles of one or more members of the identified communities.
26. The advertisement server of claim 25, further comprising a means for storing the information pertaining to the plurality of members belonging to the network, wherein the information comprises content of profiles of the plurality of members and links between the plurality of members.
27. The advertisement server of claim 26, wherein the means for identifying one or more communities and identifying one or more influencers in the one or more communities is further configured to group members based on the links established between the members of the network.
28. The advertisement server of claim 27, wherein the link connects a first member with one or more members of the network.
29. The advertisement server of claim 27, wherein each link has a weight.
30. The advertisement server of claim 26, wherein the means for identifying one or more communities and identifying one or more influencers in the one or more communities is further configured to identify one or more common interests of the plurality of members of a community based on the content of the profiles of the plurality of members.
31. The advertisement server of claim 26, wherein the means for identifying one or more communities and identifying one or more influencers in the one or more communities is further configured to rank the plurality of members belonging to each of the one or more communities based on the links between the members of each community.
32. The advertisement server of claim 31, wherein the influencer is the member with the highest rank.
33. The advertisement server of claim 26, wherein the network comprises an online social network.
34. The advertisement server of claim 33, wherein the profile comprises one or more web pages stored on a server hosting the online social network.
35. The advertisement server of claim 25, wherein a member of the network belongs to one or more of the plurality of communities.
36. The advertisement server of claim 25, wherein the one or more advertisements are placed solely on the profiles of the one or more influencers.
Various punctuation characters have a noticeable impact on search results - mostly from a searcher perspective. As a webmaster, you may find that your users include punctuation in some keywords, and so it can be of use to know what the effect on the results they see is. And besides, knowing how to search Google is one step towards understanding how Google works. This is a spot check of the current handling of punctuation by Google.
Indexed punctuation
Key_word
Underscores are treated as a letter of the alphabet, which is why you can search for an underscore directly. Use underscores in content if your visitors include an underscore when searching (e.g. if you had a programming site).
Key&word
Ampersands or ‘and symbols’ have fairly unique handling. They’re both indexed and also treated as the equivalent of word “and”. If there are no spaces separating the symbol and the adjacent letters, the search results are an approximate equivalent of combining results for ["key and word"] and ["key & word"] (note the phrase matching). Use ampersands in copy as is natural for your target audience.
Explicit search operators
Many punctuation characters are explicit search operators, with a documented effect on results. Search operators are not indexed (or at least, they can’t be searched for) and so are usually treated as word separators when found within website copy:
Keyord
An (unbroken) pipe character is the equivalent of boolean OR: a search for [key OR word]. It can be a handy shortcut when conducting complex queries.
Key”word
A double quote triggers an exact or phrase search for the proceeding words (whether you include a closing double quote or not). So in this instance, it’s the equivalent of a search for [key word] since a single word can’t be a phrase. ["key word] is the same as searching for ["key word"].
Key*word
An asterisk is a wildcard search for zero or more words: [key ... word]. Putting numbers on both sides will trigger the calculator. Occasionally, Google delivers (strange!) results if you search for an asterisk directly.
Key~word
A tilde triggers Google’s related word operator - in this instance, a search for both ‘key’ and ‘word’, as well as other words related to ‘word’ - like ‘Microsoft’, ‘dictionary’ and others.
Search operator oddities
Key-word
A hyphen (as is probably consistent with language use) returns a mix of results for the words both used separately, and joined together - somewhere between [key word] and [keyword]. It’s the preferred word separator within website URLs, since other punctuation characters that are treated as a word-separator have specific functions within a URL.
Others
A few punctuation characters have a strange impact on results - returning far fewer results than for either separated or concatenated words. They are neither known search operators, or indexed characters. These are . / \ @ = :
As far as I’m, aware, all other punctuation characters are treated as simply a space or word separator.
So, do I have too much time on my hands? Probably. But why not confuse whoever looks at Google’s search logs by
trying a few punctuation searches yourself? 
Do you know any punctuation with an effect on results not discussed here, or more about the effect on results of the punctuation above?
