Search

Google Release Version 4 of Toolbar to Boost User Loyalty
Google have released version 4 of their popular toolbar for Web browsers, with groovy new features to lure more visitors to their sites.
The new toolbar comes with an enhanced search box offering a dynamic list of suggestions based on popular Google searches, spelling corrections and the user’s Toolbar search history/bookmarks.
A new Custom Buttons feature lets users create their own buttons to search chosen Web sites or display RSS feeds from selected sites.
Clicking the ‘G’ icon in the search box also lets users search different Google sites, the current site, or their Custom Button sites.
The Bookmarks functionality has also been enhanced to allow users to create and label bookmarks that can be accessed from any computer – something noticeable missing from arch-rival Internet Explorer.
Users will need a Google account for this to work, but once signed in they’ll be able to access their Bookmarks menu on any computer with the new Google Toolbar installed.
Google’s new ‘Send To’ feature lets users share Web pages via email, text message (SMS), or blog.
An entire page can be sent by selecting the Toolbar’s “Send To” menu, whereas snippets can be conveniently sent by simply selecting the content you want before clicking “Send To.”
Although sending text messages via the Google Toolbar is free, charges may be slapped on by mobile networks, and we’re not sure if this feature will work in the UK as yet.
The new gizmos add more power to the Google toolbar which already offers useful functions like word translation, spell checking, auto-fill, pop-up blocking (IE only) and page rank display.
By ramping up the feature set Google is hoping to grab a larger share of Web users (and thus more advertisers) and steal a march on Yahoo and Microsoft who both offer their own toolbars.
[The toolbar] “promotes loyalty and repeat usage,” said Greg Sterling, an analyst at market researcher Kelsey Group Inc. in San Francisco.
“Over time everyone expects the number of searches initiated in the toolbar to grow,” he added.
The new Google toolbar is available from its website and as part of the recently announced Google Pack.
Google Toolbar 4
30 January, 2006
Yahoo! Launches Go Services
Yahoo is launching a new service aimed at making it easier for users to connect to Yahoo Internet-based services through multiple Web-connected devices, including mobiles and TVs.
Announced by Yahoo chief executive Terry Semel at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the new Yahoo Go service consists of the Yahoo Go Desktop, Yahoo Go Mobile and Yahoo Go TV interfaces,
Each of the interfaces is optimised for the screen of the specific device, with Yahoo Go automatically serving up the appropriate interface.
So long as the device is connected to the Internet, users will be able to access their personal Yahoo content such as photos, email and address books.
Stating the flaming obvious, Semel commented: “We think the Internet is not a Web page or desktop, [but] an infrastructure and delivery vehicle for communication, experiences, entertainment and any kind of data you use on the Internet.”
“The next generation is about ease of use and open platforms that connect the Internet to any device that you all will be manufacturing. Yahoo is in the perfect position to be a great partner to all of you who are working on devices in the future,” he added.
Yahoo! will be rolling out their Go TV service in the next few months, with the service enabling users to access various other Web based services for TVs, including local movie listing search and personalised MyYahoo! functions.
If you’re a heavy Yahoo! user, we can see the attraction of the new Go services, with the universal internet database ensuring that personal info is synchronised across all your devices.
Even better, the remote storage concept means that your data will be safe if a device is misplaced or stolen.
Yahoo! Go.
10 January, 2006
Search Engines Challenge Email As Most Popular Web Activity
Using search engines has become the second most popular activity for Web users, according to new research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
The figures put search engines second only to email as the numero uno Net application, with reading the news registering as the third most popular Web activity.
The research reveals that an average 41 per cent of Web-connected Americans use search engines on a typical day, a sharp 55 percent rise from the middle of 2004.
In numbers, this equates to a jump from 38 million daily search engine users in June 2004 to around 59 million users in September, 2005.
As expected, email remains the Web’s major attraction, with 52 per cent of Americans checking mail on any given day, up 45 per cent from June last year.
The Pew project looked into the demographics of Web users and discovered that those spending the most time on search engines tended to be in their 30s and well-off.
‘Gen X’ surfers (29-40 year olds, not the Billy Idol-fronted band) were online the most (51 per cent), followed by ‘Gen Y’ users (18-28 year olds), ‘Older Baby Boomers’ (51-59 yrs old), ‘Younger Baby Boomers’ (41-50), ‘Matures’ (60-69) and, finally ‘After work’ (70+). We wonder who makes up these daft categories?
The report commented, “Those who use search engines on an average day tend to be heavy Internet users. They are much more likely to have broadband connections than dial-up connections; to log on to the Internet several times a day; and to have spent considerable time online during the day.”
With Google recently claiming to have trebled its index of 8bn pages and Yahoo! claiming 19.2bn pages, it’s not surprising that the search engines are getting a hammering.
What is interesting, however, is the rise in people searching using ‘local’ qualifiers, like postcodes or addresses, to narrow down their search results.
Google still rules supreme as the king of the Web search tools, registering 43.7 per cent of local searches, with Yahoo! lording it over Internet Yellow Page search sites (where users type in data such as location and business type) with 27.6 per cent of searches.
Pew Internet & American Life Project report [PDF]
22 November, 2005
Search Safe: UK Gov Advises Parents
The Home Office’s Internet Task Force yesterday published guidance aimed at advising parents on how to keep children safe when using the Internet, mobile phones or other means.
The simple document covers:
- What an Internet search actually is, why users sees the results they do and how search is generally made available on the internet
- Advice for parents and carers on safe searching
- Guidance for service providers and what they can do to make searching on the internet as safe as possible for children
The document discusses the variety of searches you can make and how this affects the results you get.
It also provides practical guidance on how to use search effectively but safely, for example, by monitoring or filtering your search results.
Home Office Task Force on Child Protection on the Internet: Good practice guidance for search service providers and advice to the public on how to search safely (PDF)
16 November, 2005
Google Analytics: Where’s The Data Google?
CRASH! Did you hear that? Any idea what it was? That was the sound of the Web traffic analysis market crashing to the floor following the no-charge release of Google Analytics.
Well it was until today, when a number of people were finding that the data that should have been collected on site for over 24 hours hasn’t appeared for analysis. Google quote that data should be available after only 12 hours.
The delay in reporting will give some thin hope to charge-for analysis service. We’d imagine that it will be short lived as we’re pretty certain that Google will get the service pumping out the stats soon and suspect that the delay has been due to a huge demand.
How much? Free
The service is generally, of course, available at no charge as it is, as with everything that Google does, designed to drive additional sales for Google’s advertising.
Always remember, Goggle may look like a search engine company, but it is, in fact, an advertising company.
The only exception to free usage of the service is sites with over 5m page views per month. Hey guess what? If you have an active Google AdWords account, you’re given unlimited page view tracking. There is no mention of how much it might cost if you don’t have an active AdWords account. Do you see a pattern here?
It looks like the service is comprehensive both in the breadth of reports available and in its thoroughness of reporting. Examples are that Google enable the tracking of external links, something of great use to many media companies, by simply adding some JavaScript to the link. It even easily tracks events within Flash files.
The history
Google bought Urchin Web Analytics for an undisclosed amount back in March this year. At the time, many in the online reporting world started to tremble.
They already had a number of big name customers like GE, NBC, Procter & Gamble, NASA and AT&T. Prices they charged varied from $495 (only covering 100,000 pageviews/month) to $4,995 for their Profit Suite. Prices increased depending on the number of Websites that were monitored.
Google’s free offering is based on Urchins online reporting offering.
Pressure on reporting companies is coming from other directions like, Microsoft with their AdCenter and eBay which has just launched a subscription-based service.
Google Analytics
15 November, 2005
Google Maps-Based Toys, Distractions And Timewasters
Oh we like this!
Seeing as we’re nowhere near New York right now, it’s of absolutely no practical use to us whatsoever, but – hey! – that’s no reason to stop us wasting precious time playing about with this brilliant implementation of Google Maps.
NYSee – a Web project by developers alkemis – uses Google’s mapping system to provide up to date traffic news and display traffic cam feeds from in and around Manhattan.
The information is presented via the familiar system of different coloured pins stuck on the map, and clicking on a green pin will bring up a live video feed for the traffic cam at that particular location – great fun!
The locations of the cams can be viewed via the Google maps interface as a map, satellite view or hybrid.
Live cams that aren’t working are – appropriately enough – shown as black pins while gray pins seemed to indicate cams on the blink.
The NYSee map also offers regularly updated traffic news (sourced from Google rivals traffic.yahoo.com) displayed as yellow pins on the map.
If clicking on Web cams in foreign countries doesn’t take your fancy, you can always waste away a few more idle minutes calculating national and international areas using the Google Planimeter.
Google Sightseeing, another Google maps-based site, asks, “why bother seeing the world for real?”, inviting surfers to visit the “best tourist spots in the world via satellite images from Google Maps & Google Earth.”
ViaVirtualEarth uses the MSN map interface to graphically show the location of MSNBC news stories on a world map, while ChicagoCrime lets surfers view the locations of specific crimes from the database of crimes reported in Chicago.
Finally, we took a shine to Found City, a community-generated map of interesting places in New York City, with growing resources for Brooklyn, San Francisco, LA, London, Boston, Chicago and Portland.
4 October, 2005
Truveo Claims Best Video Search
They may be a start up that no one’s heard of, but Truveo are making a big noise about their beta video search engine, claiming that it’s more up-to-date than either Yahoo or Google and produces higher quality results.
The company says that it has cooked up a unique technology which lets its crawlers reach video content that other search engines can’t reach.
Like most video search engines, Truveo locates and indexes video content by mining closed-caption transcripts and importing RSS feeds, but the vast majority of video clips on the web don’t provide any closed-caption or RSS metadata.
Their boffins have got around this restriction by employing visual crawlers which can “visually” examine the context of the surrounding web application, a process which apparently reveals “a bounty of rich and detailed metadata related to every video.”
Truveo claims that this technology lets them access material that cannot be found through other search engines.
“For search to reach the next level and become truly ubiquitous, a fundamentally new approach is required to rapidly find and organize the vast amounts of television, movie and video content created every minute.” said the fabulously named Tim Tuttle, co-founder and CEO of Truveo.
Despite the growth in video search engines and the recent involvement of big boys like Google and Yahoo, widespread consumer adoption of video search still seems a bit of a way off – we’ve certainly never found the need to regularly use one yet.
Bandwidth issues would have put off a lot of punters, although the growth of broadband connectivity should see more people downloading video off the web.
The real problem may be providing content that’s actually worth watching, with complicated legal tangles over copyright and digital rights management issues keeping a lot of the good stuff in the domain of the file-swappers.
And if any further proof of the problem were needed, Truveo’s entertainment homepage tells its own story, when we looked it was featuring a “Farting Preacher” clip in its top five links.
Quality!
Truveo
15 September, 2005
Google Blog Search Launches
Google’s virtual world domination plans continue afoot with the beta launch of their new blog search service, making the company the first major search engine to offer comprehensive blog and feed search capabilities.
After snapping up Pyra Labs – the folks behind the hugely popular Blogging publishing service – over two years ago, bloggers have been waiting patiently for Google to implement their promised blog search.
Although Google’s current Web search lets users rummage around blog formats such as RSS and XML, the new search facility aims to include all blogs that publish a site feed (either RSS or Atom).
According to Jason Goldman, Google product manager for blog search, their shiny new search engine scans content posted to blogs and feeds in virtually real-time.
“We look for sites that update pinging services, and then we crawl in real-time so that we can serve up search results that are as fresh as we can,” said Goldman.
Google’s new service (sporting its trademark, no-frills interface) can be found at google.com/blogsearch and at www.search.blogger.com with a Blogger branded design.
How the searching works
The Google Blog Search works exactly the same as the regular Google search with results being sorted by date and recent posts appearing at the top of the list.
Results can also be searched by relevance, using a technology based on Google’s Web search ranking algorithms.
An advanced search interface is available with options to specify titles, authors, languages and more.
The Blogger version comes with a branded interface with an extra “use search options” link giving access to most common search advanced options, like searching in specific posts, entire blogs or specifying a date range to search within.
Results can also be limited to a specific language, with the option to apply the Safe Search filter to results.
You can discover who’s linking to a post or blog using the link: command, and blog searches can be saved as an alert that gets updated any time new content is posted matching you query.
Getting your blog listed
You can’t manually submit your site at present, but Google say that they’ll be introducing the feature shortly.
Currently, Blogs that publish a site feed in any format which automatically pings an updating service (such as Weblogs.com), should be picked up.
Google Blog Search is available in English as well as Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Korean, Russian, and Spanish, with additional languages on the way.
google.com/blogsearch
www.search.blogger.com
Google Blog Search FAQ
14 September, 2005
Google Launches Online IM And Voice Chat Service
Thanks to Mathew for corrections to this piece
Google has slapped down a big leathery gauntlet to the communications industry with the beta launch of its instant messaging service with voice-over-IP capabilities today.
Currently in beta, the Google Talk program will link its instant-messaging service to its e-mail service, Gmail, letting users contact each other over email, IM or a VoIP call.
The program, Google Talk, is based on the open source Jabber protocol and competes directly with the three major providers of instant messaging – AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo.
With the company trumpeting the service’s integration with GMail, Google Talk will use the same log-in information as their email account, with users able to access their inbox from within the Google Talk interface and send e-mails from there too.
Interestingly Google appears to refer to the accounts as a Google User Account – an interesting shift, pointing to the continued rise of additional Google services.
Users will be able to chat via IM and then talk to contacts on Google Talk by clicking on a “call” button in an open chat window or by clicking on the phone icon next to names on the contact list.
The software will let users have multiple voice sessions open at the same time, but only one can be active at any given time.
Gmail contacts will be loaded automatically into the Google Talk interface, letting users exchange instant messages with those who have downloaded the IM software.
Jabber is an open standard messaging protocol called eXtensible Message and Presence Protocol, or XMPP, and Google have stated that the company hoped to use the standard to interconnect the messaging industry. Many feel XMPP have advantages over SIP (Session Initiation Protocol, commonly used for VoIP) for voice communications.
Currently, the three major messaging services are closed shops that generally don’t permit users to send messages to and from competing services – a source of continuing frustration for many IM users.
Jabber have been reported as preparing to interconnect with AOL, whose AOL Instant Messenger system is the largest provider of messaging.
“We are going to start working to federate all the other networks,” said Georges Harik, a Google director of product management who is responsible for Google Talk and several other services.
According to figures from comScore Media Metrix, more than 80 million Americans chattered on instant-messaging services in July, with 30.9 million using AIM, 23.3 million chatting on MSN Messenger and 23.2 million connecting via Yahoo Insider.
Peter Saint-Andre, executive director of the Jabber Software Foundation, estimated that 13.5 million use the Jabber standard, based on figures from Osterman Research.
The company is yet to announce how the new service may earn its keep, but Google has stated that it intends to look for revenue opportunities in the future.
Google Talk reveals the company’s continuing ambitions provide to extend beyond Web searching, with some analysts predicting that Google will soon be taking on voice-over-Internet phone services like Vonage and Skype as well as the communication industry big boys.
How the industry reacts to this onslaught should be entertaining.
Google Talk
24 August, 2005
Google Desktop Search 2 Beta Released
Many who used the original of Google Desktop Search loved it. If you had a mention of the word you’d searched for, whether it be in a word document, an email or even in a IM session, up would come the list of mentions.
The new version of Google Desktop Search (or GDS2 as it’s bound to become) builds on its past strengths and adds to it.
Beyond an enhanced search facility, which now searches network drives too, the big addition is the Sidebar feature. An aggressive move, that will unsettle Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL as it’s moving into their territory.
When in this mode, a configurable selection of information is displayed down the height of the screen either on the right or the left of the screen. You don’t have to go to your Web browser to find the information you’re interested in, it comes to you.
Standard setup comes with email to your gmail account (a new feature), news headlines, stock prices, weather and interestingly Web Clips. Web Clips are RSS feeds – and will come with some controversy attached to them.
Last week a lot of fuss was generated in the blogging world when Microsoft decided to refer to RSS as Web Feeds in their upcoming updated browser, Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1. It will be interesting to see if equal vitriol will be reserved for Google as they ‘rename’ RSS to Web Clips.
We think the interesting boost is the API (Application Programming Interface) and SDK (Software Development Kit) for Sidebar, which enables developers to write plugin to display in Sidebar, but also embed Google Desktop Search into their own applications, bringing fast, convenient search to their users.
There are already some interesting new plugins at the site, such as gdTunes which lets you control iTunes from Sidebar, without having to actually go to iTunes.
Ever mindful of income, Google also are offering an AdSense Status plugin that offers information about your earnings through AdSense.
After a brief look at it, we found that it appears to have rectified one of the problems with the old version – primarily that it slowed your machine down when it was loaded. This slow down often was so significant that it caused those with slower/older machines, or those who actually needed the power of their processors, to remove it – despite its benefits.
As before, there is a long list of software that Desktop won’t work with – the majority of it being anti-virus and anti-spam.
There will be many software and services organisations that will be looking at GDS2 with more than a little concern – they’re starting to tread on a few toes.
At a time when there’s much talk about how there may be a lot of selling of Google shares (the tax paid on selling shares that have been held for more than a year is considerably reduced), and the drop in share price that might bring, isn’t it fortunate timing that this, and the full release of Google Earth is coming on the first day of trading after the one year period is up.
Google Desktop Search 2
22 August, 2005