June 27, 2009

China Blocks Google, YouTube This Week, Could It Become Permanent

Seems the Chinese government used the "Great Firewall" to block Google, YouTube and Gmail for a couple of days this week, Fox News reported.

Seems access to Google both in English and Chinese was blocked for part of Wednesday and Thursday in parts of China. Fox News stated, "The outages occurred after China accused the Internet behemoth of spreading pornography among its citizens. Google was said to be investigating the service disruptions."

Given China has its own internal search engines and the government has strict control, Google has acknowledged it is censoring search results in the country.

Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang said Google China "is a company operating within China to provide Internet search services, and it should strictly abide by Chinese laws and regulations," Fox News reported.

As Britain's Telegraph reports, Google established the localized search engine Google.cn four years ago, agreeing to filter results based on government censorship restrictions and content requirements, but Chinese officials say that has not been the case due to its links with Google.com.

"Google China's website has not installed filters to block pornography in accordance with the laws and regulations of our nation," said the CIIRC - the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Centre, according to the U.K. Guardian. "A lot of overseas Internet pornographic information has spread into our nation by way of this website."

Given nearly half the world's population lives in China Google could be losing a major market which is just now starting to become an active consumer online. Google had said they would address China's requests but with the 60th anniversary of the Communisy regime coming, it seems they did not do it quickly enough.

TechCrunch asked commenters in one of their blog posts to help clarify what was happening in China and received information from "a person seemingly located in Xiamen, China" that , "says Google Books, Google Talk and Image Search have also been blocked in the comment section of this post. Other services like Blog Search, Translate, Maps and Analytics are reportedly borked as well. YouTube has been blocked in the country for quite some time already".

Posted by Frank Watson at 2:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

February 9, 2009

Google Launches Official Social Media Blog

Pushing Friend Connect and Open Social, Google launched its 80th official blog today - Social Web Blog. The blog will cover "News and updates about Google products that are helping to make the world more social.

"We are launching this blog for anyone interested or involved in helping to make the web more social. Whether you own a site and want to add social features to increase community engagement, or you're developing a great social application, this blog is for you," the site stated.

While both Open Social and Google Friend Connect have been slow to take off, social media is the next "hot thing" and Google is wise to get involved more than just through their own products - which seem to be taking the backseat these days.

Posted by Frank Watson at 10:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

January 21, 2009

Even Google Can't Save Print Media

Google announced it is discontinuing its print advertising program February 28 and stop running ads March 31. Seems even Google cannot help the slow demise of print media.

Started in 2006, Google added the ability to place classified ads in over 50 newspapers throughout the United States and had reached over 800. As their Traditional Media blog notes "We will continue to devote a team of people to look at how we can help newspaper companies. It is clear that the current Print Ads product is not the right solution."

Google sees itself as a global media company encompassing all media forms. This bump in the road must be annoying.

"It's always difficult to say goodbye to products. Lots of people at Google have worked hard on Google Print Ads.... But as we grow, it is important that we focus on products that can benefit the most people and solve the most important problems."

In the newly developed Google speak I think that means they just could not make money doing it.

Posted by Frank Watson at 6:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 20, 2008

Google Website Optimizer Offers Flexible Service Plans

Google Website Optimizer has announced three flexible service plans that will be offered through their Authorized Consultants. The plans can help users with the design, implementation, training and analysis of Website Optimizer tests. Here are the details of the three plans:

• $250 for 1 hour: For specific questions and quick answers. Maximum 1 call per hour. No commitment, no obligation.
• $600 for 3 hours (in increments of 30 min): For more complex issues at discounted hourly rates. The three hours must be used within 6 months after first hour of service is used.
• $1,200 for 8 hours (in increments of 30 min): The 8 hours must be used within 12 months after first hour of service is used.

Earlier this week, I spoke with Tom Leung, Senior Product Manager of Website Optimizer. He told me that some companies paid upwards of $10,000 a month for testing. He also said that if your competitors are doing testing and analytics and you're not, that it's like going into a gunfight with a knife.

The new service plans are certainly more affordable and accessible to small businesses and startups, and can help you be more competitive in your industry or niche.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

June 3, 2008

Will Google Merchant Search ‘Set the Cat amongst the Pigeons'?

Last week, Google launched Google Merchant Search. This week, Edward Cowell, Director of digital marketing agency Guava; says, ““Google Merchant Search will truly put the cat amongst pigeons for some of Google's biggest search advertisers, the financial services comparison websites.”

Price comparison websites are big business in the UK and all the major industry players advertise heavily on Google. Research by Resolution Foundation shows that 45% of UK adults used a comparison site to help them make a financial decision in the last year and that the price-comparison market is estimated to be growing at 30% a year.

That's why the launch of the new service comes at a critical time for Google and its financial services advertisers. Says Cowell, “Most big financial services websites are just coming to terms with a marked increase in their paid search advertising budgets due to the recent changes in Google's trademark bidding policies, so Merchant Search could be rubbing salt into the wound.”

Sites such as Ebay have boycotted Google Adwords by withdrawing its adverting when Google attempted to encroach on PayPal's territory. So, uprisings are not unheard of in the search arena.

That's why Cowell and the rest of the industry is waiting to see how the price comparisons companies react to the launch of Merchant Search.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 9:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

December 14, 2007

'Knol' - Google Unit of Knowledge - Expert Authors Gathering

Seems Google has turned its eyes on the Wikipedia space and has a spin that may get a lot of attention from knowledgeable authors.

They just announced a beta project called "Knol" - a unit of knowledge - that gets experts in various field to write for an aggregated collection of knowledge. Why sign on for this project as opposed to Wikipedia etc.? Well Google has smartly added bylines - their articles will reference the author which could have all sorts of future implications.

Who wouldn't want to be listed as an expert on a topic by Google?

"Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But we wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project," the Google Blog explained.

I have already had people ask me if I can get them on the beta - this one is going to be hot. GMail hot I am starting to think.... remember when people were selling gmail accounts on EBay!

"The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors -- but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word "knol" as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we'll do the rest.

A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read. The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions. Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors. We hope that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing' the blog explained.

Posted by Frank Watson at 10:43 AM | Permalink

September 5, 2007

Google Files GPay Patent - Mobile Payment Method

Seems Google is getting ready to launch another of their G ideas. This time it is GPay - a mobile payment method that seems similar to that used in Europe and Asia already.

The patent outlines "a computer-implemented method of effectuating a payment, comprising: receiving at a computer server system a text message from a payor containing a payment request comprising a payment amount sent by a payor device operating independently of the computer server system; debiting a payor account for an amount corresponding to the amount of the payment request; and crediting a payee account that is independent of the computer server system," according to PC World.

Using a mobile device to make payments has been around Europe and Asia for some time. If the other people who started this have not filed a patent in the US it will be interesting to see if Google gets it by just being the first to register it here.

Philipp Lenssen does a great job with diagrams at BlogoScoped.

Posted by Frank Watson at 3:58 PM | Permalink

May 14, 2007

Forget Demographics Google May Soon Offer Psychological Profiling

Okay this is just getting more and more science fiction like. Google has submitted a patent for psychological profiling of users. The patent outlines the ability to profile game users by their chat conversations and other text based interaction with the games.

"The company thinks it can glean information about an individual's preferences and personality type by tracking their online behaviour, which could then be sold to advertisers. Details such as whether a person is more likely to be aggressive, hostile or dishonest could be obtained and stored for future use," The Age reported earlier today.

The patent says user dialogue may be used to characterise the user as, for example, profane, blunt, polite, cautious, aggressive, non-confrontational, stealthy, honest, cooperative or uncooperative.

The information could be used to make ads that appear inside the game more "relevant to the user", the patent stated.

I guess we can gather whatever information we want all for the good of better marketing. We joke about this quite a bit, but Google is fast changing into Big Brother. When our screens record what we are doing I think it will be all over - hey it does that now.......

Posted by Frank Watson at 3:56 PM | Permalink

April 4, 2007

Google Website Optimizer Now Widely Available

Google Website Optimizer, which was launched in beta in October, is now being made widely available. The A/B and multivariate page testing tool is being billed by Google as the "third leg" of a "three-legged stool" that is comprised of AdWords to drive traffic, Google Analytics to measure that traffic, and Website Optimizer to convert that traffic into customers.

Zachary Rodgers has the details in his ClickZ News story, Google Unwraps Multi-Variate Site Testing, Anoints Partners: "The main problem we're trying to solve is to get people out of the dark ages in terms of how they develop pages," Tom Leung, Google's product manager for Website Optimizer, told ClickZ News. "All too often, they'll just put a page together and maybe the designer will do a few mock-ups, and they'll point to the one they feel is going to be the best one."

Google has also teamed with five consulting firms that specialize in conversion marketing to provide options for users that would rather not do it themselves, or who want additional professional services layered in. Those partners are FutureNow, Optimost, EpikOne, ROI Revolution, and SiteTuners.com.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 8:01 AM | Permalink

March 29, 2007

NYT Reviews Google's Offline Media Efforts

The New York Times had a great piece on how Google is doing in their efforts in the offline media world, newspapers, radio etc.

Seems the bigger publishers like NYT are pleased with the efforts to date, while Google is pleased as they are nearly double what they expected, the article stated.

Google is building a TV ad sales team, have radio and print in beta, and their recent purchases for video game advertising, YouTube and other buys show they are building a company that really wants to be an all-emcompassing media company.

Posted by Frank Watson at 4:47 PM | Permalink

February 23, 2007

Is Google Gearing Up For Assault On Traditional Media?

Okay I was asked to fill out a survey from Google today. We all get them from various places, sometimes we fill them out other times we hit delete...

Today I thought okay I have a few minutes and I am glad I did. It was for a study of advertising across traditional media and hints at the tools and methods Google may be unvieling.

They gathered info on radio, tv and print ad costs, design costs, regularity of use and other fun things.

They obviously have named some of these areas and are using the survey to further develop features. The Creative Market Place seems to concentrate on design costs and ask if you would use a bid system to outsource design work to creative agencies.

The Online Ad-Creative Tool "let's you create and customize your ads yourself".

All areas surveyed asked about usage if integrated with AdWords. The pricing feelers covered creating, running and managing traditional media.

Guess Google is gearing up to really take on traditional media.

Posted by Frank Watson at 1:16 PM | Permalink

October 4, 2006

Put Google Gadgets & No Clickthrough Needed Google Search On Your Site

Niall Kennedy has a good summary of Google's Universal Gadgets that can now be put on the Google Personalized Homepage, Google Desktop, Google Pages or your own web site using the Google Gadgets For Your Webpage collection of applets. The Google announcement on this is here and tells you how you can even have your own pony. Google also announced the release of Google AJAX Search API that enables you to place a Google search box on your site. Google's allowed this for ages, but with AJAX, people can search without having to leave your web site.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:43 AM | Permalink

September 26, 2006

Google's Index Bench: Build Your Own Google Search Engine?

Gary Price reported that Google registered a few new interesting domain names including bench-index.com, benchindex.com, index-bench.com and indexbench.com. Since then Garett Rogers speculated that this may mean Google is building a product to allow users to build their own flavor of the Google search engine, much like how Rollyo does. Philipp Lenssen guesses that Google may be releasing some sort of Alexa engine. Some folks at Philipp's forum suggest that "IndexBench could be tools that measure the quality of an index." Loren Baker leans to siding with Garett Rogers's guess. Me? I have no better guess at this time.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:23 AM | Permalink

September 5, 2006

Google Opens Tesseract OCR Software

The Google Code Blog announced that Google has "re-released" the Tesseract OCR software to the open source community. OCR, optical character recognition, is the technology for converting text on a physical paper into computer based text. So if you have a ton of papers you typed up in your college days and you want them stored in digital format, you can use OCR to translate those documents for you.

Tesseract was originally developed by HP between the years of 1985 and 1995. In 2005 HP and University of Nevada in Las Vegas opened it to the community. Google claims that Tesseract OCR is "far more accurate than any other Open Source OCR package out there." Some more detail at Computing.co.uk.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:26 AM | Permalink

August 17, 2006

Google Talk Gains Voicemail, Music Status, Photo & File Sharing Features

Google has announced that its Google Talk instant messaging platform now allows you to share files with other Google Talk users by dropping files or entire folders into the client. Photo files get special treatment, showing up in your client so you can talk about them with someone else, as covered more here. Listening to music? Another new feature, music status, allows other Google Talkers to see what hip (or embarrassing) song you're listening to, if you use one of these supported players. Along with music status comes a new Google Music Trends feature we mentioned earlier, which allows you to see what music is most popular across the entire Google Talk network of users. Finally, want to talk by voice using Google Talk but your contact isn't around? Now you can leave them up to 10 minutes of voicemail, through that new feature. Note that some Google Talk users already got these new features a few weeks ago. Now they are rolling out to everyone.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:05 AM | Permalink

July 28, 2006

Google Guess, Google Real Estate - New Google Coming Services Found?

Via Google Blogoscoped, What's in Google's Sandbox? from Tony Ruscoe has him stumbling upon new services that Google may plan to release such as Google Events, Google Real Estate Search and "Google Guess."

Want to try it out yourself? Go to https://sandbox.google.com/. It looks like Google Checkout, but ignore that. Don't try to sign in with an existing Google Account that you have. You need to create a new one just for this sandbox service, Ruscoe says. And that seems to involve registering your credit card, so I gave it a pass.

Postscript: Tony contacted me to say there's a way to register via the sandbox area and not have to enter credit card details. He emailed:

This isn't the case. All you need to do is remove everything after the "service=sierra" parameter from the URL you're directed to (which is for the Google Checkout service) and you'll be able to register an account without entering your credit card details... or just follow this link:

https://sandbox.google.com/accounts/NewAccount

You'll then be able to append "?service=codename" to that URL to add each of the services I included in my post.

I went to https://sandbox.google.com/accounts/NewAccount, opened a new account, then went back and did this:

https://sandbox.google.com/accounts/NewAccount?service=re

See the part in bold? The re part? That's the codename for one of these Google services, which Tony has listed in his post. Doing that let me sign up for Google Real Estate Search. After the screen to enroll came up, I got an error message and kicked back out into a personalized Google home page.

That's OK. Now go to https://sandbox.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount and sign back in. The next screen will show your account, and you'll see that Google Real Estate Search is now one of your subscribed services. Clicking on the link doesn't do anything, but at least you can make cool screenshots like everyone else :)

To add more services, keep going back as above and use different code names.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:24 AM | Permalink

July 17, 2006

Problems Connecting To Google From The UK

Barry noted on Search Engine Roundtable that some people in the UK are having problems connecting to Google. I'm one of those unlucky ones, and so far, it remains a mystery to Google about what's going on.

I've talked with a Google engineer this evening for about a half hour, trying various things to figure out what's wrong. Google still isn't certain. For me, it means that I cannot connect to:

• Google
• Gmail's web site
• Google Analytics
• AdSense
• AdWords
• Google Accounts

I can reach things like Blogger or Google UK, rather than Google.com. I can also receive Gmail via POP, but I can't send.

Oddly, if I shift over to Internet Explorer rather than Firefox, I can reach Google Analytics except that the log-in window, which comes off a secure server, fails to load.

I access Google through BT Broadband, and a few others using BT seem to be having similar problems. So far, it's not a ton of people -- but enough that if you're having problems, it's not just your imagination. Short answer is, Google's aware of the issue and looking into it. For myself, I'm calling it a night and figuring that when I wake up, things will likely have cleared up.

Problems Reaching Google From The UK is a thread I've started over in our Search Engine Watch Forums on the issue. If anyone else is having problems, feel free to contribute what your situation is, in hopes that might help get things resolved.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:18 PM | Permalink

June 19, 2006

New Search Patent Applications: June 19, 2006 - Autolinking, and Better Advertising through Deletion Predictions

Four patent applications from Google describe fighting spam in emails, providing product review searches, moving large amounts of data, and autolinking. Yahoo matches, and raises with five patent filings. One on watching deletions to choose better ads, another on serving dynamic information through a additional browser interface, and three more on multimedia and RSS.

Microsoft goes TV 2.0 with an electronic program guide, and describes a way of matching advertising content with certain search queries before those searches are made. IBM comes up with a unique way of presenting the results of a search from more than one search engine, and a way of reducing the amount of irrelevant results in a search by analyzing an initial set of results, identifying an appropriate additional query term from those results, and searching the original results again but with the additional query term included in the search.

Go Daddy describes a way of fighting spam in emails. Xerox employs collaborative filtering from previous users' searches to predict search results. Apostolos Gerasoulis, from Ask.com, with a couple of co-inventors, ranks and displays pages (objects) based upon linkage and textual data, and then defines a way to identifiy and assign topics to them.

Google

Email Spam

Emails with links in them could be considered spam if the links point to pages that are in a conceptual category considered spammy. This patent application really doesn't describe the concept categorization part of the process. That's done in a related patent application mentioned within this document, and the related document lists Georges Harik as one inventor. Dr. Harik's name is on a very large percentage of the patent applications involving Gmail-type processes.

Method and system to detect e-mail spam using concept categorization of linked content Invented by Johnny Chen US Patent Application 20060122957 Published June 8, 2006 Filed December 3, 2004

Abstract

A system and method for detecting undesired electronic messages (e.g., spam) using concept categorization of hyperlinks is disclosed. A server receives an electronic message and retrieves web pages that correspond to hyperlinks in the message. The server performs concept categorization on the retrieved web pages based on semantic relationships in the received information to determine whether the electronic message meets predefined criteria associated with undesired messages.

Searching and Aggregating Product Reviews

If Google wanted to get into the product or services review business, the next patent filing describes a blue print for the process that might make an effective and innovative system.

Method and system for finding and aggregating reviews for a product Invented by Jan Matthias Ruhl and Mayur D. Datar US Patent Application 20060129446 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 14, 2004

Abstract

The embodiments disclosed herein include new, more efficient ways to collect product reviews from the Internet, aggregate reviews for the same product, and provide an aggregated review to end users in a searchable format. One aspect of the invention is a graphical user interface on a computer that includes a plurality of portions of reviews for a product and a search input area for entering search terms to search for reviews of the product that contain the search terms.

Scaling and Distributing Data

Arvind Jain is the head of Research and Development in Google's Bangalore office, and has spoken at a number of conferences on infrastructure projects and issues involving such things as Google's crawl and indexing system, distributed file replication system, and compression techniques for large scale storage systems. He's listed as the inventor for this next Google filing.

System and method for scalable data distribution Invented by Arvind Jain US Patent Application 20060126201 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 10, 2004

Abstract

A system having a resource manager, a plurality of masters, and a plurality of slaves, interconnected by a communications network. To distribute data, a master determined that a destination slave of the plurality slaves requires data. The master then generates a list of slaves from which to transfer the data to the destination slave. The master transmits the list to the resource manager. The resource manager is configured to select a source slave from the list based on available system resources. Once a source is selected by the resource manager, the master receives an instruction from the resource manager to initiate a transfer of the data from the source slave to the destination slave. The master then transmits an instruction to commence the transfer.

Autolinking

Google's Autolink raised a lot of eyebrows, and brought some negative reactions. A Search Engine Watch Blog post from Danny Sullivan, Google Toolbar's AutoLink & The Need For Opt-Out defined many of the issues around the toolbar feature. The following patent application explains how such a system might work from the search engine's perspective.

Providing useful information associated with an item in a document Invented by Gueorgui Djabarov US Patent Application 20060129910 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 14, 2004

Abstract

A method includes recognizing an item within a first document based on a pattern associated with the item but not the exact content of the item. The method further includes identifying a link for the item and providing a second document that includes information associated with the item when the link for the item is selected.

Yahoo

Choosing Better Ads through User Behavior

Some queries involve the use of concepts and units, as described in at least five Yahoo patent filings (see previous patent posts in the Yahoo sections from Yahoo Units and Microsoft Redundancy Filters and More Yahoo Concepts and Google Predictive Searches.)

But sometimes a two term query isn't a concept as much as it is a couple of keywords that someone may use to search for something. If that person performs a second search after deleting one of the words, then the record of that deletion and second search might help Yahoo calculate "deletion probability scores" for words being used in these kind of two term queries.

This can be helpful when there isn't a good keyword based advertising match for that query, but there might be a good match individually for each of the terms that make up the query. The "deletion probability scores" can help determine which of the two terms to show keyword-based advertising for in search results.

System and methods for ranking the relative value of terms in a multi-term search query using deletion prediction Invented by Rosemary Jones and Daniel C. Fain US Patent Application 20060129534 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 14, 2004

Abstract

The likely relevance of each term of a search-engine query of two or more terms is determined by their deletion probability scores. If the deletion probability scores are significantly different, the deletion probability score can be used to return targeted ads related to the more relevant term or terms along with the search results. Deletion probability scores are determined by first gathering historical records of search queries of two or more terms in which a subsequent query was submitted by the same user after one or more of the terms had been deleted. The deletion probability score for a particular term of a search query is calculated as the ratio of the number of times that particular term was itself deleted prior to a subsequent search by the same user divided by the number of times there were subsequent search queries by the same user in which any term or terms including that given term was deleted by the same user prior to the subsequent search. Terms are not limited to individual alphabetic words.

Browser Interface Helpers

This next document describes some ways to provide additional dynamic information to someone via a toolbar styled interface, while they are browsing pages on the web.

Method of controlling an Internet browser interface and a controllable browser interface Invented by Thomas J. Shafron Assigned to Yahoo US Patent Application 20060129937 Published June 15, 2006 Filed February 2, 2006

Abstract

The present invention is directed to a method of dynamically controlling and displaying an Internet browser interface, and to a dynamically controllable Internet browser interface. In accordance with the present invention, a browser interface may be customized using a controlling software program that may be provided by an Internet content provider, an ISP, or that may reside on an Internet user's computer. The controlling software program enables the Internet user, the content provider, or the ISP to customize and control the information and/or functionality of a user's browser and browser interface.

RSS Enhancements

The following three Yahoo filings all list the same inventors, including John Thrall who is the head of media search engineering, for Yahoo Search. They provide different aspects of using RSS with multimedia files.

Syndicating multiple media objects with RSS Invented by Andrew R. Volk, David D. Hall, and John J. Thrall US Patent Application 20060129917 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 1, 2005

Abstract

System and method for syndicating more than one media object in an element using Real Simple Syndication (RSS). In one embodiment, multiple media objects with at least one shared characteristic are syndicated under the same element. For example, a single media object can come in multiple formats and/or compression rates.

Syndicating multimedia information with RSS Invented by Andrew R. Volk, David D. Hall, John J. Thrall US Patent Application 20060129907 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 1, 2005

Abstract

System and method for adding descriptive information to a Real Simple Syndication (RSS) document. The descriptive information describes the content of media objects syndicated through the document. The descriptive information can be used to provided additional information to a subscriber, and can be used in searching for syndicated media content.

RSS rendering via a media player Invented by Andrew R. Volk, David D. Hall, John J. Thrall US Patent Application 20060129916 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 1, 2005

Abstract

System and method for syndicating media objects through a link to a media player using Real Simple Syndication (RSS). A content provider may not want to give direct access to a media object to a subscriber. Instead a content provider can give the subscriber a link to a media player that can access the media object.

Microsoft

Searching electronic program guide data Invented by Pradhan S. Rao, David Hendler Sloo, Daniel Danker, and George K. Nyako Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060130098 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 15, 2004

Abstract

Searching electronic program guide (EPG) data is described. The EPG data may be compartmentalized into channel metadata that describes characteristics of one or more channels and content metadata that describes characteristics of one or more content items. In a implementation, a method includes searching channel metadata and content metadata. A result of the searching is formed for output in conjunction with an electronic program guide (EPG).

System and method for indexing and prefiltering Invented by Brian Burdick, Joshua J. Forman, Kevin P. Kornelson, Murali Vajjiravel, and Rajeev Prasad Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060129555 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 9, 2004

Abstract

A method and system are provided for selecting advertisements for presentation to a user in response to a user search query. The system may include a keyword server for parsing the user search query and an index server for receiving the parsed search query. The index server may include an index of advertising phrases and pre-filtering components for comparing index entries to the parsed user search query in order to discard non-matching index entries and locate matching entries. The pre-filtering components may include either a phrase length pre-filtering component or a word hash pre-filtering component. The system may additionally include a listing server for sorting through the matching entries located by the index server and further filtering the matching entries for retrieval and presentation to the user.

IBM

Ring method, apparatus, and computer program product for managing federated search results in a heterogeneous environment Invented by Wade Shelby Beavers and David Joseph Borrillo Assigned to IBM US Patent Application 20060129530 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 9, 2004

Abstract

A method, apparatus and computer program product are provided for managing federated search results in a heterogeneous environment. A user enters a search term and the search term is submitted to multiple selected search engines. Search results are gathered from each selected search engine. A search ring is generated including a ring section to represent each of the selected search engines for enabling the user to view search results from one or more of the selected search engines.

Method and system for suggesting search engine keywords Invented by Cary Lee Bates Assigned to IBM US Patent Application 20060129531 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 9, 2004

Abstract

A search engine receives a search query having one or more keywords. The documents in the result set from that search query are analyzed to identify one or more additional keywords that further segment, or separate, the initial result set. These additional keywords are presented to the user who then selects whether to include or exclude documents matching the additional keywords. In this way, the number of documents in the initial result set is reduced in a relatively quick and effortless manner.

Go Daddy

Email filtering system and method Invented by Brad Owen and Jason Steiner US Patent Application 20060129644 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 14, 2004

Abstract

Systems and methods of the present invention allow filtering out spam and phishing email messages based on the links embedded into the email messages. In a preferred embodiment, an Email Filter extracts links from the email message and obtains desirability values for the links. The Email Filter may route the email message based on desirability values. Such routing includes delivering the email message to a Recipient, delivering the message to a Quarantine Mailbox, or deleting the message.

Xerox

Personalized web search method Invented by Lisa S. Purvis Assigned to Xerox Corporation US Patent Application 20060129533 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 15, 2004

Abstract

A method for contextualizing search results is disclosed. The method includes performing a traditional web query that returns a set of result pages, using collaborative filtering techniques to generate a set of predicted pages, comparing the set of predicted pages with the set of result pages, and ranking the set of result pages so that result pages that are also included in the set of predicted pages are ranked higher than those that are not. Methods herein also contemplate using the search history of the user or others to refine the results of searches.

Ask.com

Relevancy-based database retrieval and display techniques Invented by Tao Yang, Wei Wang, and Apostolos Gerasoulis US Patent Application 20060129552 Published June 15, 2006 Filed February 2, 2006

Abstract

Techniques to retrieve, rank and display data objects retrieved form a database are described. In particular, methods to assign a global ranking value to a data object based on a combination of that object's link-based (e.g., vector-space cluster analysis) and text-based (e.g., word frequency) ranks are described. Additional techniques to determine a set of concepts, topics or key words associated with each retrieved data objects are described.

My usual reminder about patents: Some of the processes and technology described in patents are created in house, and some are developed with the assistance of contractors and partners. A percentage are never developed in a tangible manner, but may serve as a way to attempt to exclude others from using the technology, or even to possibly mislead competitors into exploring an area that they might not have an interest in (sometimes skepticism is good.)

There are times when a Google or Yahoo acquires a company to gain access to the intellectual property of that company, or the intellectual prowess and expertise of that company's employees. And sometimes patents are just purchased.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 8:42 PM | Permalink

June 14, 2006

Google's Complete Plays Of Shakespeare Less Than Compleat

The Google blog 'Inside Google Book Search' announced in No holds bard that it is now possible to explore Shakespeare with Google - The complete plays of Shakespeare now at your fingertips. Well no, not exactly. I've spent some time playing around with this resource and it's less than impressive for a number of reasons.

I decided to take a look at the full text of a couple of plays, but in common with Philipp Lenssen found that I couldn't actually see the full text. All that I got was a fairly brief page with some bibliographic data, an opportunity to buy the book and links to related information. I went through each section in turn and found that in total I could read 13 of the plays Google listed, but was unable to do so for another 24. This may be in part due to the fact that I'm in the UK, and as the Google blog comments in an update some versions of the plays are not in the public domain everywhere in the world, so we can only see snippets.

I simply do not believe that Google could not have found versions of the plays that are out of copyright, particularly as they are keen for us to have the complete plays at our fingertips. However, I'll let that pass. What I really find unforgivable is their section 'Other ways to explore Shakespeare'. This gives me options to look for more resources, take a scholarly perspective, connect with enthusiasts and so on. Clicking on any of these links runs a default search for 'shakespeare'. Consequently with most of these options I get a huge number of results, many of them inappropriate. A search just on 'shakespeare' is the kind of basic search that I'd expect a school child to do once. I find it amazing that someone at Google could not have come up with rather more interesting and complex searches to fully utilise the power of the search engine, not only to give us a good search result, but also to show us just what it can do.

The concept is a great one; full marks to Google for having a go at it. The result is very much less than perfect, and for Google to say that they're making Shakespeare more accessible is in my opinion boardering on disingenuous.

Posted by Phil Bradley at 11:02 PM | Permalink

June 5, 2006

A Current List Of Google's Robots

What Bots Does Google Have These Days? from Ben Pfeiffer on my Search Engine Roundtable blog lists the names of the current spiders/robots/bots Google has roaming the web.

The list includes the classic web spider Googlebot, the AdSense spider MediaBot, Google's image spider ImageBot, the AdWords spider AdsBot, Google's RSS feed spider Feedfetcher-Google, and Googlebot-Mobile for the spiders that go mobile. It's a great short post by Ben while I was away.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 1:38 PM | Permalink

May 19, 2006

Google's Main Search Accounts For 80% of Google's Traffic

Bill Tancer from Hitwise has posted a detailed breakdown of the percentage market share of the top twenty Google properties. Google.com holds almost 80% of the share, followed by Google Image Search with almost 10%, then Gmail with about 5.5%, followed by Google News with 1.5% and the others are all under 1%. Bill also explains the trends show that "some of the latest Google offerings have yet to capture significant market share in their category," such as Google Finance. There are some interesting stats to chew on by Bill Tancer.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:03 AM | Permalink

April 12, 2006

Simply Google Places Most Of Google Services In One Place

So Google has dozens and dozens of services and search features out there. Heck, I forget how to locate some of these services when I need them. Phil Bradley found a new site that places many of Google services all in one spot. The site is named Simply Google. It contains links to Google Sites, "Google Fun", Google Downloads, Google Blogs, other search blogs, and quick access to Google Searches. Danny has this listed as #5 on his 25 Things I Hate About Google, since Google didn't make it easy to find all of their services, this site has taken the initiative.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:48 AM | Permalink

April 5, 2006

Google's Many Vertical Search Products & Other Services

While Google Real Estate might not be a standalone vertical search site for Google, they've got plenty of other ones. Barry pinged me about spotting a new reorganization of the More Google Products page, where you can better see the search range, from Blog Search through Web Search.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:47 AM | Permalink

February 20, 2006

Google's Trusted Tester Program For New Products

Garett Rogers at Googling Google covers Google's "Trusted Tester Program," a preexisting invite-only program that now appears to have gained a formal FAQ left open to public view.

The program lets friends and family of Google employees test new software. The select few login here to access programs. More helpful to anyone is the Google Trusted Tester Program FAQ, which explains the program in more detail. Somewhat amusingly, those in the program aren't even allowed to discuss that it exists despite the fact that the FAQ has been left open to public viewing.

Dirson's blog had mention of this program back last August, but no FAQ was apparently posted then. Google's also long allowed friends and family of Googlers to test beta software. Google Desktop, for example, went out for friends and family testing in February 2004, as covered in the SEW members edition of the Google Desktop launch article:

As for the Google Desktop project, it has been in development for the past year, Google said. The first testing version went out to some within Google in February. Further versions followed, with a release candidate sent to 2,000 Google employees and trusted friends and family.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:30 AM | Permalink

February 7, 2006

Google: Chat a Natural Fit with Email

In its ever expanding push into communications, Google has added chat to Gmail, tightly integrating the new feature with the archiving and search capabilities found in the mail program. More about the new feature in today's SearchDay article, Google Integrates Chat with Gmail.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:01 AM | Permalink

February 1, 2006

Click-to-Call Advertising: VoIP Inc. Announces Deal with Google

The News.com article: Google calls upon VoIP, reports that Google has signed a deal with VoiceOne to provide VoIP services for Google's click-to-call advertising service. Actually, VoiceOne and their parent company, VoIP Inc. have been working with Google since September.

VoIP CTO [Shawn] Lewis said he believes that the contract expires in two years and that he could not provide further details because of a nondisclosure agreement. "We are working with VoIP, Inc. on a click-to-call advertising test which we began late last year," a Google spokeswoman said in an e-mail response to questions. "We have no further details to share at this time."

The article also points out that an SEC document filed on Monday shows that the two companies entered into an agreement on Sept. 1, 2005 and now have a "direct peering" relationship that allows their IP networks (Google and VoIP) to exchange data.

The full text of the SEC document is available here.

Google began testing its click-to-call program in November.

Om Malik has more on the deal and VoIP Inc. in this post.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:15 AM | Permalink

January 31, 2006

A Possible Clue into Google's P2P Future?

The Searchblog post, "Google Going P2P?" points out what might be about a possible clue into what Google's plans in P2P arena. The post mentions that Sharelive was a file sharing service that shutdown in 2005 and documents some other clues. Of course, as a couple of comments on this post note that it could also be a dead end lead. Why? Here's some quick sleuthing that I was able to do.

1) Sharelive.com has pointed to Google.com for some time. I used the WHOIS.sc Historical Database to check this out. 2) As noted in a Searchblog comment, lots of sites web forward/re-direct to Google after they go offline or just because they want to point their IP to Google. Here are two examples: SouthWalesAutoSalvage.com and Support-Reverse-Smileys.com 3) The current domain name registration info been in place since approximately May, 2004 and is registered to WhoisGuard. Interesting, this might be something but it's out of the norm for Google. Why? Google often "holds" domains (before something new is launcehd) with a service named Data Docket and registers the domain through MarkMonitor. This domain was registered by enmom.

Stay tuned.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:37 PM | Permalink

January 26, 2006

Predictions and More Speculation on a Google Music Service

Elinor Mills has a brief post reporting that Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck is predicting that Google will offer a digital music download service in the three to six months. Bear Sterns is using the name the name "Google Tunes" as their "code name" for the service. A Google spokesperson declined to comment on the story.

I've speculated on a couple of occasions that a music download service would be service that Google would eventually offer.

Our May 5, 2005 post titled: Let's Speculate: GoogleMusic.com pointed out that Google has owned this domain since February 2003, after acquiring it from someone in Curacao. Of course a domain name doesn't guarantee or really mean anything only that it's something to think about.

Also, on Jun. 20, 2005, we blogged a Google Blogscoped item that had a few comments from Dave Winer about a Google iTunes clone.

That was then.

Today, Google's payment system is now operating with the Google Video Store and rumors of the "Google Wallet" (whatever it may be) make the possibility even greater IMHO. Even the recently launch of Google Music Search might send a clue or two. Searching might be built right into the Google Desktop. In fact, a popular add-in currently allows you to operate several iTunes functions directly from a sidebar plugin.

Of course, just like with video content, Google would face stiff competition from the likes of iTunes, Yahoo Music, Napster, Rhapsody, and many others. Since money is not a major issue at Google, they could (for a period of time) lower the cost of downloads to help gain market share. Rhapsody offered songs at 49 cents for period of time in 2004.

"Google Tunes" would also give Google another revenue more places to put contextually relevant and keyword ads for related products like MP3 players, concerts, t-shirts, etc. They could also cross-promote Google Tunes with Google Video. Buy a song from a certain artist and get the video OR by the video and get 20% of that artists album. \\

And don't forget the synergy between Google Book Search and an audio/music store as well as an upload program that would allow musicians to sell their music online.

One thing Google's entry into the music marketplace could mean is lower prices for consumers. That's cool.

Another revenue stream might have Google allowing offering a monthly subscriptions of unlimited downloadable content and/or one for those who only want to stream music to their computers. Many services already offer these services. In fact, I'm listening to a playlist of music I created via Rhapsody as I write.

Finally, many music services work with universities offering free or subsidized access for students. This is another market that I'm sure Google would want to play in given their cred on college campuses.

Google's greatest challenge? Quality content and then more qualuty content.

Fast Facts

I checked the USPTO and at this point I didn't see any trademark/service marks from Google relating to music.

As I said earlier, Google owns the domain GoogleMusic.com but not the .org or .net domains. GoogleMusic.info is registered to a NYC company

GoogleTunes.com, .org, .net and others are all registered but not to Google. Of course, acquisition is always a possibility.

GoogleTunes.com is a parked page on by godaddy.com. and owned by a person in California. The registration expires in May.

GTunes.com and other top level "GTunes" domains are all registered. GTunes.com itself is a personal site where a person shares his music.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:36 PM | Permalink

Google Engineering Director Says Google UI Is as Much Science as it is Art

Mickey Alam Khan's story on DMNews.com: Google Expects to Keep Home Page Simple, reports on a keynote address by Jen Fitzpatrick, an engineering director at Google that was given at Shop.org's FirstLook 2006 event.

Fitzpatrick: "Over time, this white empty home page became a symbol of Google's philosophy," she said. "Sergey always says, 'don't put things in people's way.'"

Comment: This is one Google philosophy that has reached the masses and sticks with then. I co-taught a college class during the Fall 2005 semester and pointed out that many other user interfaces are clean and lack clutter. For the most part a search box and a few tabs. MSN Search, Exalead, Yahoo's clutter free interface and even Clusty to name just a few. The students saw and understood what I was talking about but for some reason I got the feeling they thought that the Google page was better. Perhaps it was familiarity coupled with some Google "secret sauce."

On Adding New Tabs to the Home Page If the search engine is going to add another tab on the home page, will it drive at least 20 percent of Google's users to that feature?

Listening to users is critical. Take the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button on Google's home page next to "Google Search." Entering a term takes users directly to the Web page of the first result. It's there because of users studied interacting with the feature. They liked it because they thought Google had a personality -- people behind them," Fitzpatrick said.

On Getting it Right The company combines internal testing, user studies, log analysis and customer feedback to constantly track its user experience. And there is room for mistakes and adjustment. "As we launch products, we expect not to get things right on the first try," Fitzpatrick said.

Comment: Those of us who follow Google closely know that it seems like a day (ok, a week) doesn't go by that we don't learn about a UI test that some user group is seeing and that Google is monitoring with log analysis.

The UI "I think the [user interface] of Google is as much science as art," Fitzpatrick said.

Postscript: If you're interested in seeing Jen Fitzpatrick in action. She hosts this Google recuiting video about life at Google. It's available from Google Video here.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:01 PM | Permalink

December 20, 2005

With One Link, Google Book Search Becomes Google's 5th Most Popular Service

Google Print Is Google's Ninth Most Popular Service here on the blog last month covered how according to Hitwise, Google Print -- since renamed Google Book Search -- made the top ten of most used Google services, though usage was only by a tiny 0.4 percent of Google visitors. Since then, a small change by Google has dramatically increased the visits to Google Book search and pushed it into being the fifth most popular service it offers.

Bill Tancer of Hitwise, who loves nothing more than to play with the stats his competitive analysis service has on user behavior, dropped me an update yesterday showing how the Google top ten line up had changed from the last time I wrote about it. Here's the rundown:

Service

Week Ending Nov. 5

Week Ending Dec. 10

Point Change

Percent Change Google Web Search

79.9%

79.1%

-0.9%

-1.1% Google Image Search

9.2%

9.3%

0.1%

1.2% Google Mail/Gmail

5.6%

5.4%

-0.3%

-4.5% Google News

1.6%

1.5%

-0.1%

-4.4% Google Book Search

0.4%

1.5%

1.1%

322.9% Froogle

0.7%

0.9%

0.2%

33.3% Google Maps

0.8%

0.7%

-0.1%

-13.3% Google Earth

0.3%

0.5%

0.2%

69.0% Google Groups/ Groups 2 Beta

0.5%

0.5%

-0.1%

-9.4% Google Directory

0.2%

0.2%

0.0%

6.3%

As you can see, Google Web Search remains the most used service by far. Google Book Search, which had been the ninth most popular service, moved up to position five.

Notice the point change and percent change columns. The first shows the raw percentage point change between the two time periods. Google Web Search had a dip of less than 1 percent, so no major change. Google Book Search had a point change of just over 1 percent. In the case of that service, this was a big deal.

Why? The percentage change column tells the story. That 1 percent point increase for Google Book Search means relatively speaking, it went up over 300 percent in traffic -- more than three times the number that used it a month ago are now turning to the service. In contrast, a 1 percent change either way with Google Web Search is a drop in the bucket.

So what gives? What happened? Cast your mind back to mid-November, when Google started putting at the bottom of regular search results pages this message:

Try your search again on Google Book Search

For more on that change, see Google SERPs pushing Google Books at our SEW Forums, When Will Google Do An Amazon at Smart Keywords and Google Book Search Within SERPs at Search Engine Roundtable.

Was the change responsible for the increase? And what about Google Groups, which has had somewhat similar promotion on the bottom of results? The chart tells the tale:

You can see that just after Google Book Search links were added, traffic to Google Book Search skyrocketed. Being on the first page of search results is clearly powerful, as search marketers obviously know. As for Google Groups, it didn't change. This may be because Google Groups links never always appeared, in contrast to Google Book Search links, which seem to always show up. It could also be that more people find the Google Book Search link more relevant.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:57 AM | Permalink

November 15, 2005

Google Tweaks Robots.txt File

For those of you who track such things, Google made a tweak to its Robots.txt file in the past day or so. They are now disallowing the indexing of the /chart directory. As noted on this blog, it likely has something to do with the release of Google Analytics. Then again? We will be watching.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:42 PM | Permalink

November 9, 2005

Search & Portal Features Charted

Reading the Google Tea Leaves has Tristan Louis doing a nice job charting various search and portal features that the major services offer, reminding me exactly what I used to do back in the late 90s. But maintaining those charts is a nightmare! If you need a quick rundown, definitely check it out. Tristan also uses the charts to speculate on what products Google might offer. No real revelations there, however.

Audio search? Sure, that's kind of obvious without the charts and overdue, especially with Yahoo's continued expansion.

An encyclopedia partnership? Google kind of has that already with the existing Answers.com deal, which sometimes brings up encyclopedia info along with dictionary definitions, including that from Wikipedia. Plus, it's hard to do a search these days it seems and not run into Wikipedia on the first page of Google results.

Google also talked with Wikipedia about a hosting deal, though I don't recall seeing anything further on that. FYI, Yahoo did do a partnership with Wikipedia, but looking today, that seems to have ended, with the Columbia Encyclopedia being used instead.

Clustered results? Google's got the technology already, just not the desire to use it nor really a pressing need since clustering's hardly been a category killer (Ask Jeeves used to offer it. So did FAST. Clusty still does. None of them have seriously rivaled Google for traffic).

Calendar? Again, obvious portal feature, especially for a company with a mission of helping people organize information. So much info is calendar driven that this is a necessity. Jeremy Zawodny asked for one earlier this year, and we've had recent signs one may be coming.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:34 AM | Permalink

October 21, 2005

Ballmer On How They "MSN You" in Holland, Korea & Google Was Curing Cancer

Gary wrote earlier of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently denying any chair throwing at a conference, but Good Morning Silicon Valley highlighted another quote from Ballmer that caught my eye: "People say 'I'm going to MSN you' in Holland and Korea."

Really? I'm still sort of reeling in disbelief from the entire A9d it mention on the OC earlier this year. I thought perhaps Ballmer was referring to MSN Messenger. I can more readily see people in Holland or Korea saying they "MSN you" and meaning sending an instant message. Heck, I could see anyone anywhere saying that. But the News.com story quoting Ballmer makes it clear this was about web search, as I've bolded:

He pointed to the strength of Microsoft's MSN brand outside of the United States as proof that the company is making strides in the Web search market. "People say 'I'm going to MSN you' in Holland and Korea.

I couldn't resist adding to this other comment he made about Google:

If you read the papers today, other than curing cancer, Google will do everything.

Actually, Google WAS curing cancer at one time. Google Compute, launched back in 2002, let Google Toolbar users donate processor time to Folding@home, a Stanford protein research project with cancer cures as one of its goals.

Interestingly, I guess Google stopped providing this support around 2003. That's the copyright at the bottom of the Google Compute page, which says the toolbar no longer can be used to help the project. Hmm -- opportunity perhaps for Microsoft?

Postscript: Reader Dennis Pallet who lives in Holland writes:

I just read your blog entry about how Dutch people say "I'm going to MSN you" when they talking about MSN web search, but this is absolute nonsense.

I live in The Netherlands myself, and most people have never even heard of MSN Search. The phrase refers to MSN Messenger. Almost everyone here seems to think MSN = MSN Messenger, and don't even know about the MSN brand.

Like I said, the News.com story made the quote out as if it was a reference to web search, but perhaps there was some confusion. It certainly makes a lot more sense to hear it being connected to MSN Messenger.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:28 AM | Permalink

October 16, 2005

Is Google Gearing Up for a Mac Software Assault?

One question we often get asked comes from Macintosh users. They ask, "Does Google have any plans to release some/any/all of their desktop client applications (Google Earth, Google Talk, Picasa, etc.) for my system?" It's a great question and while we don't have the answer, two recent job postings have got us thinking that Google is beginning to ramp up development of Macintosh software and services.

A job listing that was posted on an IEEE site last Friday and is for a Macintosh Developer. Another posting, this time directly on the Google job site, includes a listing for a Senior Macintosh Developer. Mac users stay tuned.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:22 PM | Permalink

September 23, 2005

GoogleTV Job Posting is No Longer Online

This morning I wanted to take a closer look at the GoogleTV job listing that was discoverd just two days ago and now has everyone talking. Well, the listing has already been removed from the Google Jobs site. I checked the url and learned the page is "not available." Maybe the listing was moved to a new url? I searched the Google Jobs database for GoogleTV and still came up empty. Lots of interest, I'm sure Google has received plenty of responses but only posting the info for 48 only hours? Well, if nothing else Google did what it does so well, keep people talking and guessing about what they're up to.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:05 AM | Permalink

July 17, 2005

Drive Around Town with Google

Yes, it's another new item from the Google Store. If you're out and about and want to share your admiration for all things Google with others, check out the new Google License Plate Frame. Btw, it also the lowest priced item available from the Google Store, only $1.20.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:10 PM | Permalink

July 7, 2005

Google Joins Jeeves and Yahoo in Providing Currency Conversions

Via Google Blogoscoped, word that Google has joined Ask Jeeves and Yahoo in offering online currency conversion rates posted directly onto web results page.

For example: 1 Australian Dollar in British Pounds. More examples here.

Ask Jeeves has offered a currency converter as part of their Smart Search program for over a year. The same thing is true at Yahoo.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:54 PM | Permalink

May 24, 2005

A Google Ad Exchange Service? Domains Suggest It Might Happen

The Google Exchange from MarketWatch looks at the possibility of Google offering some type of advertising exchange service. In other words, beyond putting its own ads across the web, Google might also serve as an AdBrite-like ad broker for others:

But imagine a more automated world in which online publishers place their inventory on Google's exchange. Online advertisers could choose, in an a la carte format, where they wanted to place their ads -- whether they wanted to buy keywords across a number of sites, or if they wanted to simply choose a specific site. Google would sit in the middle and take a cut of all the transactions.

The article is all pure speculation, of course. A Google rep is quoted, but declined to comment on whether Google would do this. But let me add some fuel to the fire in the way of domain registrations by Google.

About two weeks ago, a holding company that Google has used to register names with in the past before moving the registration over to Google registered the following domains that sound like they have some type of advertising exchange in the works.

Googlebuyers.com also .info, .net, .org

Googlesellers.com also .info, .net, .org

Googlelisting.com also .info, .net, .org

Googlespaces.com also .info, .net, .org (This one seems a bit odd given that MSN's blogging service is named MSN Spaces)

Posted by Gary Price at 11:24 AM | Permalink

May 20, 2005

Google Factory Tour Recap

So Google's first Google Factory Tour has ended. Overall, I'd say it was a great success on the PR front -- at least if you weren't that familiar with Google. One reporter I corresponded with told me that seemed the case for plenty there, many of whom were overseas reporters. For them, Google trotted out real live people doing interesting things. While it was very stage managed, kudos for the plentiful Q&A periods that let some good questions (and sometimes answers) get out.

Gary and I watched and instant messaged each other throughout the night, offering each other commentary on what was being said. If the tour repeats (or when Yahoo and gang inevitably decide to do the same), we might do some live alternative commentary for everyone as a sort of Pop-Up Video or Mystery Science Theater 3000-type of thing.

Most of what was said was old ground for us -- and will be for many of our readers. But here are the highlights I found interesting. Before diving in, a reminder. A webcast of the event is here. You can also view all the slides at once here. Be aware it's a big page, not for the broadband challenged.

• Schmidt & Brin Do Q&A: Near the end was a long period where Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Google cofounder Sergey Brin answered questions. Andy Beal of Search Engine Lowdown diligently blogged live coverage of some of the answers. I think it's worthwhile for anyone interested in Google to watch the webcast of this. I'm also hoping Google will make an actual transcript available.  
• Google: We Are French: I especially liked Eric Schmidt getting a little riled over the suggestion that France and all "continental Europe" are viewing Google as a dark force in the wake of print. He pushed back especially on Google supposedly favoring English language books, asking for proof Google said they would do this or are actually doing so. Sergey Brin scored the real goal, however, pointing out that about half the Google Print team is French.  
• Google Goes Portal: Yes, Google launched a personalized home page, essentially making it official that it is a portal. News from us on that here: Google Launches Personalized Home Page. Reaction from across the web here: Reactions To My Google Personalized Home Page.  
• Google's Master Plan: Google's come under accusations of not having some master plan, which in part it helps to perpetuate. Just see yesterday's post about Google engineers being encouraged to run "rampant" and "wander around," according to Google's Schmidt. Still, Google's been pushing back on the idea that it's not focused enough. One slide was used to illustrated Google's view that all this creative activity happens in the non-core stuff they do. The core search+ads effort still takes up apparently 70 percent of the engineering time. And more to the point, that's work all done according to some master plan, Google says. You see this push back again in today's post from Google on the launch of its new personal home page.

  Does Google have a strategy, or are we just a bunch of mad computer scientists running around building whatever we want? Today this question gets an answer: we've launched our personalized homepage via Google Labs. It's part of a strategic initiative we refer to as 'fusion' to bring together Google functionality, and content from across the web, in useful ways.

• Google & Endless Betas: John Battelle reports on Google repeating what they've been saying recently -- expect products to start coming out of beta and perhaps stop seeming to be endless. He also has Eric Schmidt commenting that the Google mission isn't just web search. It's about organizing information anywhere.  
• Lesson On Web Accelerator: Again from Andy, comments from Google on having learned products perhaps need to be more aggressively tested internally, before releases. However, Google also says that some things you don't find out, until they are released. Oh, and some site owners got blamed again for problems in not knowing how to set up their servers. I hope the fix isn't some idea that everyone will magically solve that problem. Not gonna happen.  
• Click Fraud: From Andy, Google saying it is pro-active in trying and stop click fraud and yes, we will look around to see if a refund given one advertiser means others are entitled to the same.  
• Google Employee Heroes: Frankly, this started off with Gary and I rolling our eyes, a slide on the amount of food eaten by engineers. Sort of funny, but who cares? And why just the engineers? Are they the only people of any import at Google? Do any of those ad people who earn all the money eat? If so, how much chicken? Fortunately from a PR angle, things picked up with a rundown on various people behind the scenes that create and improve Google products. Matt Cutts, who is known to readers for his many comments over the years on webmaster issues, got highlighted as one of the heroes. In the end, it served well to put a human face on an increasingly growing and dominant company. Andy's got a rundown on slides here.  
• Ads, Ads, Ads: A big chunk of time was spent on how wonderful it is that Google has devised a way to monetize the entire web. Seriously. And that organizes the world's information how? OK, I know -- it funds it. But the backslapping of how clever Google was figuring out how to make all the world is its billboard felt, I dunno, a little dirty to my ears. But it was honest, I suppose.  
• Google & Privacy: It was raised, addressed but this new News.com article on the subject also out the same day goes into more depth: Google CEO defends privacy policies. In short, Google doesn't reveal stuff not already public and wants to safeguard information. If I spot something more in depth detailing what else was said, I'll update.  
• Mash Ups With Google Maps: Everyone's mixing everything with Google Maps from crime stats to apartment rentals (hey, put both of those together!). Google said they want to make that easier, so people don't have to hack it. Ah, but what about those who license the maps to Google. Are they cool about that? There wasn't a clear answer -- Google just hopes it won't be an issue. SiliconBeat has comments on that.  
• Google Earth: We already knew earlier that Google's Keyhole software had been given upgrade maps. Soon, the software itself will be upgrade and gain a new name, Google Earth. And better maps will come to Google Maps, as well. Postscript: More from eWeek here.  
• Google Translations: Apparently the company has been greatly increasing its abilities in this area, including having just won what was said to be some important award in the area. Key takeaway was that if it really could do good automatic translations, it makes information even more accessible to everyone, given we all speak different languages. Postscript: Google Blogoscoped has more on this here.

Some Related Material:

• CNET's Charles Cooper in Growing pains at Google? comes away finding the event a pure PR snowjob and thinks Google needs to open up even more to win the hearts and minds of journalists. Cooper also looks at Google's continued success and wonders when it will tumble, like every other tech company does. Oh, it will tumble -- but can we please, please stop having people call it a tech company? Geez, CNET even just had a story out with Schmidt himself saying they're an information company, not a tech company. Google's not a tech company, folks! What's the main product, the breadwinner? It's ads.  
• Google Hones Cutting Edge from The Street is a very nice read and balanced roundup of the day. But another story, A Walk Through the Google Search Factory, by the same author shows where Cooper is wrong about the PR impact. "Others outlined in relatively deeper detail how Google has leveraged its superior search algorithms in ways that are beginning to transform how advertisers connect with customers on the Internet," the story says. Actually, what was outlined was how Google has leveraged WHAT IT BELIEVES is its superior search algorithms. But have enough people tell you something as if it is a fact, rather than their opinion, and slips like this come through, from me, from other experienced journalists and even more likely from those newer to Google.  
• Ten Things I Didn't Know About Google from PC World has Harry McCracken commenting on what his eyes were opened to.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:51 AM | Permalink

March 31, 2005

New From Google Labs: Google Ride Finder

New from Google Labs is Google Ride Finder (GRF). This service uses GPS data to pinpoint and map (using Google Maps) the location of taxis, limos, and shuttle vehicles available for hire in 10 U.S. metro areas.

The 10 areas are: + Baltimore, MD + Chicago, IL + Cleveland, OH + Dallas, TX + Milwaukee, WI + New York, NY + Phoenix, AZ + San Jose, CA + St. Louis, MO + Washington, DC

For example, in the Baltimore/Washington Metro area Google is working with Super Shuttle (a company that takes people to and from the area airports) and just one taxi company in Alexandria, Virginia.

In San Jose, Google maps the whereabouts of taxis from Silicon Valley and Yellow Cab - San Jose and Checker Cab of Silicon Valley.

Remember, just because a taxi or shuttle van is only block or two away from your location doesn't guarantee they're going to come and pick you up but heck, this might help get the taxi/limo there sooner. More importantly, I think this is an interesting beta of location aware services that will soon become part of our daily lives. Google also provides a page where fleet owners can ask for more info about becoming part of the service.

Google also mentions that they're "working closely" with a variety of companies including Mobile Knowledge, Tranware, and Vettro. I wonder if they're also using some of the technology they got with the acquisition of ZipDash that Mike B. blogged about yesterday.

This service would also be useful to mobile web users. I'm guessing that the Google Mobile team has this on their "to do" list.

Google Ride Finder reminds me of another service called NextBus that does the same type of thing with bus and train location info for several U.S. metro locations. They even offer a web alert service.

It also reminds me of several air traffic info services that have been around for years. I'm not talking about the many sites that offer estimated arrival times of when a plane is due to arrive at an airport but the tools that also provide near real-time maps and other data (speed, direction, altitude) of all planes currently in an FAA database. You can see what I mean here and/or here (look for the quick track menu).

Posted by Gary Price at 11:55 PM | Permalink

March 17, 2005

Are You Experiencing Google X Withdrawl?

If you're having Google X withdrawl or never even got to use Google's "homage" to Apple's OS, a mirror of the site and service is available here. I wonder if either Google and/or Apple will have anything to say about it.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:02 PM | Permalink

March 16, 2005

Where Did Google X Go?

Earlier today Danny blogged about the new Google X interface from Google Labs. Now, a day after launching the service, it's already offline. Philipp and News.com report that Google X was taken down sometime this afternoon. Why? Google isn't saying. Earlier, Danny wrote, "Google X comes from apparently similar functionality in the MacOS system." Hmm, perhaps Apple had a few issues with the "look" and "feel" of the service and Google decided to simply kill their "homage" to OS X. According to the News.com article, both Google and Apple were unavailable for comment. As of 9pm EST, the Google X remains unreachable.

Want to discuss? Visit our forum thread, Google X.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:53 PM | Permalink

Google X: Icons Above Search Box For Specialty Search Google X is a nifty new interface for hitting Google's specialized services. Instead of the usual hyperlinks that site above the search box, allowing you to hit things like news or local search, there are little icons that represent various services.

Perhaps these will turn out to be more effective than the current hyperlinks. Like the tabs they replaced, these still seem little used by searchers. If so, they still don't solve the problem that down the line, you can't have a billion icons sitting up above the toolbar. My article Searching With Invisible Tabs article looks at that problem -- and illustrates it -- more.

It would be better in my view if the interface carried through on the results page. I also agree with some of the comments of those discussing the system about wanting to be able to customize what shows up there. FYI, at Yahoo, you can customize the hyperlinks it uses if you make use of the pure search interface and use the edit tabs feature. A9 also allows you to edit the search buttons along the side of its screen. Google offers no customization like this at all on either the Google X site or the main Google site itself. Neither does Ask Jeeves or MSN Search.

The name, by the way, comes from apparently similar functionality in the MacOS system. More about this and the service can be found on the Google Blog from the software engineer behind the interface: Google goes X.

Want to discuss? Visit our forum thread, Google X.

Postscript: See the Where Did Google X Go? post.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:47 AM | Permalink

March 7, 2005

Are VoIP Services on the Horizon for Search Providers?

In January, Danny blogged about speculation (at a fever pitch for a few days) about Google launching a VoIP telephone service. Today, Jim Hu at News.com calmly discusses what Google, Yahoo, and MSN are or are not up to in the article: Search giants hear voices.

+ Google has not announced plans to offer VoIP service, and declined to comment for this story.

+ "We are definitely looking at the space closely," Yahoo spokeswoman Terrell Karlsten said. "We're figuring out how to enhance and expand into the voice space by leveraging those properties." Yahoo has already launched a PC-based voice service in the United Kingdom. Microsoft plans to embed voice calling into its enterprise instant-messaging software.

+ AOL plans to launch an Internet phone service this month.

Postscritpt: See also Google window-shops for VoIP.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:06 AM | Permalink

February 22, 2005

Your Phone Number On Google & Other Search Engines

Yes, Google has (as others do) a phone number search service, as we've written before. Still, it can be a shock to some people if they discover their number is "listed" on Google. Is It Too Easy To Find People On Google? looks at the issues some may have with this type of service at Google and the many other companies that offer it. But in the end, the issue is really with data providers who collect this information from public records, as the story explains.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:26 PM | Permalink

February 11, 2005

Google Local Pulls More Than Froogle

Interesting interview from Fortune, Google: Going Beyond the Web, where Google surprisingly says that its Google Local service was getting more page views than its Froogle shopping search service, even before the recent placement of Google Local on the home page. Also some comments from director of consumer web products Marissa Mayer (who I agree deserves a much better title) on the long-term "moonshot" project of Google Print. Thanks to Search Engine Guide for the tip.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:26 AM | Permalink

February 9, 2005

Google The Registrar

We first blogged about Google becoming an authorized domain registrar about a week ago. Since then, lots of speculation but nothing about Google's exact plans with its new status. Bob Tedeschi offers a review of what we do and don't know about "Google the Registrar" along with comments from people in the domain name business in the article: A New Direction at Google.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:57 AM | Permalink

February 1, 2005

Register with Google

Another new service from Google. Could more "business" services be on the horizon? Word from several sources that Big G is now an ICANN-accredited domain name registrar. Google will be able to register domain names in seven top-level domains (TLDs) including .com, .net, .org, .biz., info, .name and .pro.

Yahoo has offered domain name registration since May 2000 (in conjunction with Network Solutions) and currently charges $4.98/year to register a domain for one year. Yahoo also offers web-site hosting via their Yahoo! Small Business.

The Netcraft article: Google Is Now A Domain Registrar, offers more details and speculates that Google might be considering a domain name registration/web hosting service for Blogger users.

UPDATE: An article from The Register includes a comment from Google as to why they became a registrar.

The reason it paid a $2,500 application fee and $6,500 to cover six top-level domains is that it "wants to get a better understanding of the domain name system [and so] increase the quality of our search results". The email address it gives with relation to its new registrar status is dns-admin@google.com.

The article also mentions that Google has no plans "at the moment" to begin selling domains.

We also have discussion going in our forums here: Google becomes Domain Name Registrar.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:12 AM | Permalink

January 24, 2005

Wild Speculation On Google Internet Phone Service Launch?

The Times Of London is reporting that Google will launch a free internet telephone service: Google gears up for a free-phone challenge to BT. For its part, Google has apparently dismissed the report as "pure speculation."

Source for  The Times? None given. It all seems based on the previously reported job ad that Google was seeking someone to negotiate for use of "dark fiber," fiber optic lines that are in place but not currently used.

The Times is going out on a very shaky branch with speculation of a phone service based on one single job advertisement. You'd think Google might be hiring a few other people to get such a service actually off the ground. We haven't heard of ads for those positions.

In addition, opening such a service would be a very tough sell to explain how offering internet phone service is related to Google's mission of organizing the world's information.

But -- perhaps they've got other sources that will prove them right. So why the job posting. No one really knows, but the idea that they simply want to negotiate for cheaper bandwidth for their own needs sounds best to me.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:09 AM | Permalink

January 18, 2005

Googlefone: Fast Way To Use Google's Phone Book

Google has a phone book search service, but you might not realize it. A new site, spotted via Google Blogoscoped, makes it easier to tap into it Google PhoneBook.

Visit Googlefone, and you can enter a name of a person or business, plus some location data, and you'll be shown any matching publicly-listed numbers that Google knows about.

Tara Calishain has a long-standing interface that works similarly. It will only check business listings, but the drop down box with US states is nice.

Courtesy of Tara, another write-up from her explains how you can also use some power commands or search syntaxes to tap into the phonebook. Do a query like:

phonebook: edwards california

That will show all business or residential listings that match. Use bphonebook to just check for business listings and rphonebook to just check for residential listings.

Meanwhile, Gary reminds that Argali is his current favorite tool for doing phone lookups. You'll find his review here: A Multi-Faceted Phone Directory Lookup Tool.

He also notes that Yahoo provides a way to check its own phone service, Yahoo People Search. Unlike Google, Yahoo conveniently provides its own direct interface right on its site, rather than leaving it for others to create.

The idea that people might find your phone number freak you out? Get an unlisted number, as these services pull from public sources. But you can use special forms at Yahoo and Google to get out of their listings, if you're currently showing.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:44 AM | Permalink

December 7, 2004

The Google Software Downloads Page

The Google web site now includes a page offering one-stop access to all of Google's downloadable software.

On the Google Software Downloads you can page read about and then download each app (five are listed) one at a time or utilize a button which will download all five apps with a single click.

On the page you'll find: + Google Toolbar + Google Desktop Search + Picasa Photo Organizer + Google Deskbar + Gmail Notifier (BETA)

You'll also find a link to the Keyhole site.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:28 PM | Permalink

November 3, 2004

Happy Graduation to the Google Deskbar, Googleviewer.com

Google has just posted an update to the Google Labs page to let us know that the Google Deskbar has graduated from the lab. This tool became available almost one year ago (November 7, 2003) and remains a Windows ONLY product.

The Google Deskbar allows the searcher to search Google and visit a web page without having to use or open a traditional web browser.

So, it's really a customizable search tool and a browser (of sorts). Google calls it a "mini-viewer."

I've been somewhat surprised that during the recent flurry of Google Browser speculation that more attention hasn't been given to the Deskbar since it already offers a tool to view web content. Perhaps it offers a clue or two as to what Google is working on?

I mentioned in a post last week, after Eric Schmidt said they weren't working on a browser, that Google might be developing something that WE would call a browser but they will call by another name.

So, how does GoogleViewer sound?

I ran a WHOIS search and learned hat GoogleViewer.com is a registered domain name. It's owned by Google!

Stay tuned!

Posted by Gary Price at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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