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Google has launched a new way to personalise Google internet searches - Google SearchWiki. Google SearchWiki allows users to promote results they like and delete search results they do not like. Results can be promoted to the top of the listing and allow users to comment on them.
This is a fundamental change which the Lonodon Times is reporting will be rolled out in the next few hours, and the biggest update to Google’s massively popular search engine for more than a year. And a change which Google is calling it the next step in the evolution of online search.
Google has released an iphone app to allow iPhone users to search without having to type.
Google said “Google Mobile App helps you find the information you need quickly and easily with instant access to Google Search.”
Features include
Voice Search
Search with My Location
Local search suggestions on a map
Instant access to search
Google Suggest
URL suggestions
Contact search
Search history
Easy access to other Google products
Google has presented to Ad Agencies new options to show different ads in response to searches made from iPhones. The change will allow advertisers will be able to create an iPhone ad group as part of their existing campaign.
Adweek has more
Microsoft have announced that it has won a key distribution deal with HP, the world’s largest PC manufacturer, to install a Live Search-enabled toolbar on all HP consumer PCs planned to ship in the United States and Canada, beginning in January 2009.
As part of this deal, the default search engine setting in the browser on all HP consumer PCs will also be set to Microsoft Live Search.
Microsoft Press Release here
Google Maps has been given the universal search treatment with different kinds of content being embedded into the search results
For example
nottingham info
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=nottingham&ie=UTF8&layer=x&ll=52.96477,-1.149445&spn=0.206371,0.455933&z=11
If you click on the map area and drag the map in any direction or rescale the map the pictures change to the new area which is pretty cool.
SearchMe has a new visual search in beta. If this can deliver the right results ie if their algorithm is as good as the the big 3 engines this is really going to change the way people search.
Introduction to searchme
Demo video
With 45% growth in 2007, following 80% growth in 2006, Google’s revenues probably already make it the largest ad revenue generating company in the UK. Google UK’s $2,53billion (£1.3bn) revenue for 2007 bring it very close to the UK’s leading commercial TV (ITV) and previous number one UK ad revenue generating company’s predicted £1.32bn ad revenue + £100 million sponsorship.
The UK Guardian has more.
The Guardian is reporting Google and Publicis Groupe, the owner of ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi, are working together on new advertising technology. The Google chief executive, Eric Shmidt, and the Publicis Groupe chief executive, Maurice Levy, announced limited details of the collaboration in a meeting in Paris ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, which begins today and both are attending.
“Internet advertising will also come close to overtaking television advertising in 2008, emphasising how fast the new medium has become a mainstream means of promotion. This year internet spending is predicted to hit £3.4 billion, up from £2.6 billion in 2007, on GroupM’s estimates.
More details in the London Times.
The UK is not the only country in 2008 where Internet advertising is expected to exceed television advertising for the first time, Sweeden and Denmark will probably pass this landmark slightly before the UK, earlier in 2008.
“Google’s quest to be everywhere continues to grow with news that the
Mountain View search giant will today announce a new deal that will see motorists in the United States hooking up to Google at the gas station.
Full story at TechCrunch
ComScore have just released anaylsys of the Worldwide Search market
Searchers (August 2007)
754,459,000 Worldwide Total
257,952,000 Asia Pacfic
209,678,000 Europe
206,278,000 North America
49,995,000 Latin America
30,556,000 Middle East & Africa
And they searched from the following search biz’s
Searches (August 2007)
61,036,000,000 World Wide Total
37,094,000,000 Google
8,549,000,000 Yahoo!
3,253,000,000 Baidu
2,166,000,000 Microsoft
2,044,000,000 NHN
1,319,000,000 Ebay
1,212,000,000 Time Warner
743,000,000 Ask
683,000,000 Fox
441,000,000 Lycos
The new Microsoft live video search takes the video searches.biz to a new level.
thefind.com the shopping search engine has entered the verticalsearch.biz with a new engine built specifically to enable customers to browse products from merchants who accept Paypal payments: paypal.thefind.com
Press-release here
In a huge study Efficient Frontier has looked at PPC advertising for their automotive clients and found their clients receive twice the conversion rates from domains at a comparable cost per click as search.
“The benefits of separate content bidding are apparent in the results. When Efficient Frontier started implementing content bids for their clients, they observed an average 250 percent lift in conversion rates on the content network, including on domain park sites. In addition, Efficient Frontier utilized site exclusion to refine targeting and boost conversion rates further. “We try to educate our clients on the positive ROI impact of content bids and site exclusion,” states Hanson. “Sometimes excluding even a single site, which isn’t performing well, can have a drastic positive impact on conversion rates.”
In a rare interview Google Search Quality team talks to the NewYork Times.
TED is hosting an excellent Microsoft presentation of how images may be searched for and presented in the future. A demonstration of some of the technology is already available at Microsoft Labs.
This could revolutionise the way users search as this technology can be used to search huge and diverse collections of data, while at the same time automatically associating items and establishing relationships between them that only specialists in a given field could hope to know.
From next month, Google will no longer take adverts from companies which sell essays and dissertations - and the internet company has written to advertisers to tell them about the policy.
BBC has more here.
The London Times has an interesting article on Omid Kordestani Google’s 12th employee.
Yahoo! has just announced an agreement to acquire Right media, Largest Emerging Online Advertising Exchange for approximately $680 million
“The acquisition of Right Media will further Yahoo!’s goal to create the industry’s most open, accessible and vibrant advertising marketplace, which will help democratize the buying and selling of digitally enabled advertising,” said Terry Semel, chairman and CEO of Yahoo!.
The Right Media Exchange is the industry’s largest emerging online advertising exchange, and as publishers increasingly turn to exchanges to monetize their ad inventory, this acquisition will help Yahoo! establish a leading position in this large, attractive and fast growing segment of the online ad market.
Google Web History allows you to
“View and manage your web activity
Get the search results most relevant to you
Follow interesting trends in your web activity”
Google Blog has more details
Now you can specify the location of your sitemaps within your robot.txt file and Ask, Google, Microsoft & Yahoo will all locate your sitemaps file. Ask has details here.
Specifications here www.sitemaps.org
Ars technica has taken a look at a recently awarded Xerox Patent
“Companies may eventually be able to tell who we are, demographically, based on our Internet usage patterns alone. Xerox has come up with a method by which they can analyze a series of visited web pages in order to determine (at least) a user’s gender and age based off of a cache of test cases, as outlined in a recently-awarded patent entitled
“User Profile Classification By Web Usage Analysis.”
Abstract
Demographic information of an Internet user is predicted based on an analysis of accessed web pages. Web pages accessed by the Internet user are detected and mapped to a user path vector which is converted to a normalized weighted user path vector. A centroid vector identifies web page access patterns of users with a shared user profile attribute. The user profile attribute is assigned to the Internet user based on a comparison of the vectors. Bias values are also assigned to a set of web pages and a user profile attribute can be predicted for an Internet user based on the bias values of web pages accessed by the user. User attributes can also be predicted based on the results of an expectation maximization process. Demographic information can be predicted based on the combined results of a vector comparison, bias determination, or expectation maximization process.
On Monday AOL will produce their customised “white label” version of Adwords using Google technology.
Dariusz Paczuski, vice president of search products at AOL said “With the introduction of Search Marketplace, we’re bringing a full suite of solutions to our advertisers to help them maximize and manage campaigns across the AOL network,” including banner ads, search ads and other cost-per-click advertising.
The Washington Post has more details here.
Google has jsut announced an early trial of TV ads.
From the press release…
”With Google TV ads, the entire process is automated – from planning the campaign to uploading and serving the ad to reporting on its effectiveness. Like our AdWords advertising program, Google TV ads are bought using an auction model…
“Advertisers can target by demographic, daypart and channel and pay only for actual impressions delivered. Pricing is on a CPM basis.
“Because the entire process is automated and online, advertisers can plan their TV ad campaigns efficiently all year long.
Reuters is reporting Microsoft is to buy privately held Tellme Networks Inc., a speech technology company, to bolster its communications push and enhance searches over mobile phones.
Terms were not disclosed but undisclosed sources valued the Tellme at over $800m
“Mobile search is going to be a huge market,” said Morningstar analyst Toan Tran. “Search on mobile phones is still up for grabs and Microsoft is a big believer in voice being an interface for mobile phones.”
Google has added a Traffic button to Google Maps (next to the Maps, Satellite & Hybrid buttons). Routes with traffic flow show red, yellow or green, for stop-go travel, heavy traffic and for light or no traffic.
… with the purchase of a vertical search engine company Medstory, a privately held California company with a health information search site, for its newly formed Health Solutions Group. (Vertical search engines return results relevant only to select topics like health care, finance, programming or law.)
Merchants who accept payments from Google Checkout now get a new shopping cart logo in their ads. More details at Google Checkout Blog
Google has started integrating local search into the main results when searching for a local business for example
Cities Car Hire Edinburgh
Small towns Agents Ayr
Zips /Postcodes w2 Estate Agents
More details at the Google Blog
Google has just turned in a record 4th quarter profit.
$3.21B Total Revenue (+19.3%)
$976M Traffic Acquisition Costs (+18.3%)
$1.03B Net income
$3.29 EPS (+39.4%)
Google.com = $1.98B ( 62%) (+22%)
Partner Network = $1.2B (37%) (+16%)
Clicks +22% on previous quarter
Wikiseek has just launched. It’s a really neat vertical search tool. for searching Wikipedia. (A vertical search is one which only searches a specific niche, business area, topic etc.
Wikiseek only spiders Wikipedia, this means Wikiseek only lists 3 kinds of pages - Ones from Wikipedia, ones which are linked to from a Wikipedia page and Sponsored pages adverts.
The Online Historical Populations Reports (OHPR) website was launched on 9 January 2007.
A fascinating resource with over 200,000 pages of digitised reports and data showing detailed changes in population between 1800 and 1940.
