February 24, 2006

Google Mac Widgets for Blogger, Gmail and Search History

Yesterday the Google Blog informed us that three new Google Widgets for the Apple Macintosh's OS X Tiger have been released. Widgets on a Mac come by way of Apple Dashboard that basically allows you to press a key on your keyboard, and these widgets begin to hover over your desktop and applications. Widgets allow you to perform routine tasks quickly but I have disabled dashboard on my computer due to performance issues (that is an other story). The three widgets released are for;

Posting Quick Blogger Entries
Checking your Gmail Account
Viewing Your Past Search History at Google

You can download these widgets to your Apple computer by visiting http://www.google.com/macwidgets/.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:47 AM | Permalink

May 18, 2005

Google My Search History Spam

Using the Google My Search History feature? Make sure you're logged in, then visit Google Blogoscope's Planting My Search History Entries page. Now go look at your search history. You will likely see a link saying:

Google Blogoscoped sneaked in through the backdoor

Click on it, and it takes you to the "search" you never did for those words on Google.

What happened? The comments to Google Blogoscoped's post explain how clever Philip Lenssen put this in a hidden iframe on that page:

That means by visiting the page, you also generated a query sent to Google. And if you are reading this article, the same thing was done to also put this in your history:

Search Engine Watch snuck in as well, right behind Google Blogoscoped

Now to see if Google has a way to block such spamming of search history. Hopefully it will.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:25 PM | Permalink

April 21, 2005

Comparing Search History Features

With Google having released its new Google My Search History feature yesterday, I wanted to spin back around and look at where we stand in terms of search history offerings across a number of major search engines. I've done so in chart format below.

Before diving into the chart, let me stress that this isn't a "have the most features and win" contest. Some features you might not ever use. What search history features seems to work best, like the search engines themselves, may fall to your own personal decision.

Even among the editors here at Search Engine Watch, we all love different things. Personally, I find the A9 and Google tools the most compelling, because they automatically save what I'm looking for. I think it's cool that Ask, Yahoo, and A9 have categorization and annotation features in various manners, but those aren't something I expect to use myself. Others may -- and that's why it's great that they are offered.

Chris and Gary are very much into tools that save the full-text of documents and let you search against them. I'm leaving it to them to them to do a separate recap on how tools stand on that front. Gary's also playing with the Filangy, which is a closed beta, and reviewed it yesterday here. It's not on the chart below because being a closed beta, it's not something everyone can use yet.

Personally, I've loved the Google Desktop as a way to keep track of everything I've seen exactly as I saw it when visiting pages across the web. It's largely solved my own search history desires at Google, as I've written before. But the additional features from Google are definitely welcomed.

On to the chart! A guide to categories follow it below.

Feature

Ask

Eurek ster

Find ory

Furl

Google

Yahoo

Auto Save

Yes

Pause

n/a

Yes

n/a

History Search

Yes

Date Sort

Yes

Term Sort

Yes

Site Sort

Yes

Notes

Yes

April 20, 2005

Google's My Search History Remembers Your Searches

Moments ago, Google launched a new feature called My Search History that automatically remembers every query and search result page you viewed, making everything searchable. In my opinion, it's the strongest personalization offering from a major search engine to date. See my SearchDay article, Google Personalizes the Web, for a detailed run-down of the new service.

Search Engine Watch members will also want to read Danny's article, Search Personalization: A Marketer's Perspective which offers tips for search marketers on preparing for the coming of personalized search results. Click here to learn more about becoming a member.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 3:29 PM | Permalink

Google Opens My Search History Feature Please see Google now Remembers your Search History.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:24 PM | Permalink

October 18, 2004

Brin on Personal Search and SEO

Sergey Brin let's us know that Google is working on a personal search application similar to My Jeeves and My Yahoo Search.

"We'll keep on developing new kinds of applications but we are fighting against limitations in mail and the OS. But we'll be expanding in all those areas," Brin said.

The comments were made during a visit to Japan where the company is setting-up an R&D center.

On the Google browser, Larry Page repeated what he said last week about Google not intending to "reinvent the wheel."

Brin also made a brief comment about seo.

"There are many SEOs that are trying to manipulate Google. Our biggest message is that by our products we always want to promote a better and healthier service," said Brin.

More in the article: Google tests personal search service.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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