One of the best parts about Chrome has always been the omnibox, and the ease with which searching the web is compared to browsers that came before it (though some have caught up in this regard now). Google has made additional search-related improvements to Chrome over the years – most notably the addition of Google Instant. But more search-friendliness is on the way.
Google announced today that it is going to begin testing variations of Chrome’s New Tab Page in which the user’s default search provider will be able to add a search box or “otherwise customize” the page.
“While you can search straight from the omnibox in Chrome, we’ve found that many people still navigate to their search engine’s home page to initiate a search instead,” says software engineer David Holloway on the Chromium blog. “The goal is to save people time by helping them search and navigate the web faster.”
“We’ll also allow search engines to display the user’s search terms right in the omnibox, which avoids the need for a second search box on the results page,” adds Holloway. “This new capability, along with other ways to improve search suggestions, are exposed in a new Embedded Search API, an extension of the existing SearchBox API. Search engines can implement any part of the specification if they’d like their users to experience a customized variation of the NTP experience.”
A small set of users on the Dev channel on Windows and Chrome OS how have Google selected as their default search provider will start seeing test variations starting today. Halloway says Mac will be coming soon.
Google put out a new Webmaster Help video today. This time Matt Cutts talks about what to include in a reconsideration request, which you may have to submit if Google has caught you violating its quality guidelines.
“The goal of your reconsideration request is to, number one, to tell Google you’ve stopped whatever violations of the quality guidelines were happening – paid links, cloaking, scraping, you know, doorways – whatever it was, you need to make a clear and compelling case that that has actually stopped,” says Cutts. “That behavior is no longer going on, and that you’ve cured that as much as possible. So, if you were doing paid links, you’ve gotten as many of those paid links pulled down as you possibly can.”
“The second aspect of a reconsideration request is to basically give us a good faith assurance that it won’t happen again,” he continues. “You don’t want to say, ‘Oh, well this site looks like it’s reformed, okay, we’re going to lift this manual action,’ and then they immediately go back to spamming or doing their old tricks. So, what you want to do is step into Google’s shoes, and say, ‘Okay, what would best convince Google that we’ve turned the corner, and this behavior has stopped, and that we’ve cured whatever was going on, and it’s not going to happen again.’”
“Great things to include: things like details of the sorts of sites that you were contacting if you were removing links, for example, if you used an SEO, and they really just shot you in the foot because they were doing all sorts of unethical things…that’s the sort of thing where I would give us details about that,” he says. “Tell us about the link network or the SEO.”
The more stuff you can include to make your case, the better chance you have of success.
In another recent video, he talked about how quickly you should hear back about the requests. In another one, he noted that Google is experimenting with ways to make reconsideration requests better.
Facebook is announcing a handful of privacy-related changes today; a couple that make it simpler for users to access and change their personal settings and another that may make a small percentage of the user base upset (what’s new, right?).
First up, Facebook is adding a privacy shortcut tab that follows users around as they explore the site. The new privacy shortcut will appear on the right of the top header, next to your name, profile picture, “home” button and settings button. The shortcuts menu will feature things like “who can see my stuff,” and “who can contact me.” The shortcut will make is easier for users to quickly choose who gets to see their content.
Facebook is also improving the Activity Log to make it easier for users to interact with all the information that is being shared and what is showing up on their Timelines and friends’ news feeds.
“The updated Activity Log has new navigation, so you can easily review your own activity on Facebook, such as your likes and comments, photos of you, and posts you’ve been tagged in. It also has new ways to sort information, for example: Now you can quickly see public photos you’re tagged in and have hidden from your timeline, but which still appear in other places on Facebook,” says Facebook.
Users also have the ability to manage photo removal requests for large sets of photos they are taged in. The new tool within the Activity Log also lets users untag multiple photos at the same time.
Another big change involves third-party apps. Facebook is turning the single permission into two separate permissions. Now apps must ask users for the ability to grab their personal info separately from asking them to be allowed to post on their behalf. This will go into effect for most apps – but some like games apps on Facebook.com will not require the two-stage app permission.
There’s also been a little bit of a language shift within the permissions. Instead of asking to access a user’s “basic info,” it now asks to access their “public profile and friend list.”
All of these changes will go into effect by year’s end, according to Facebook. Since all of them improve the visibility of privacy controls, most users will probably be ok with them. One change that users may not initially warm to is this: Facebook is getting rid of the ability for users to disallow their name from appearing when users searched it in the serach bar. Here’s what they have to say:
Facebook started as a directory service for college students, and today we offer a whole variety of services, such as news feed, photo uploads and mobile messaging. As our services have evolved, our settings have, too.
Everyone used to have a setting called “Who can look up my timeline by name,” which controlled if someone could be found when other people typed their name into the Facebook search bar. The setting was very limited in scope, and didn’t prevent people from finding others in many other ways across the site.
Because of the limited nature of the setting, we removed it for people who weren’t using it, and have built new, contextual tools, along with education about how to use them. In the coming weeks, we’ll be retiring this setting for the small percentage of people who still have it.
Although Facebook says that they’re nixing this feature because nobody really used it, you can’t help but think about the possibility of Facebook search whenever the company does something to improve their own search results.
This is a pretty significant stir to Facebook’s privacy stew. This big announcement comes on the heels of Facebook’s latest (and last) Site Governance vote, in which the company adopted new proposed policy changes involving the sharing of info with affiliates, as well as the ability for users to vote on future site changes.
Google is shutting down its shopping search offering in China, effective today. The announcement came in a blog post from the company.
Here’s the post (via TechCrunch) from Google vice president of product Sameer Samat (as translated by Google Translate):
We are committed to developing excellent products to help businesses make better use of Internet technology to grow and be successful. To achieve this goal, we need to be more focused on those who really give the online marketing of Chinese enterprises to bring about change more influential products – this means that we must carefully assess existing projects to ensure that the products we are developing and technology can bring real change to the customer’s business and life in China.
In order to better optimize resources, we have decided to close the shopping search service in China. Shopping search the original intention of the development of this product is to set up a bridge between consumers and retailers and traders. Influence after the release of this product, however, did not meet our expectations, we will close this service in China. But we remained unchanged commitment to export goods to other countries around the world and help the Chinese businessmen, Chinese traders can still use Google Shopping to reach consumers in other markets. Accordingly, the future we will focus on mobile advertising AdMob application products, mobile and desktop display advertising products, export-oriented search advertising products. The closure of the shopping search service will be effective on December 12, 2012. We never afraid to try bold, brave innovative ideas, and will continue to do so in the future. Focus resources on core mobile, display and export advertising products, we will be better able to help Chinese enterprises to thrive on the Internet.
Google and China have had an interesting relationship for years. Google first threatened to pull out of the country back in 2010, before ultimately redirecting Google.cn to its Hong Kong site. Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google had “softened” its tone on China, but a spokesperson told WebProNews at the time, “Our position on China remains unchanged,” and that the redirect would remain in place.Last month, reports came out that China was blocking certain Google products.
Last month, reports came out that certain services were being blocked in China while the Communist party selected leaders.
Google has still maintained a presence in China, and has continued to operate other parts of its business (like Android) there.
Google put out a new Webmaster Help video responding to a user-submitted question about Google’s estimated numbers for results on queries. The specific question was:
How reliable is the site: query and why does the total count sometimes change from page 1 to page 2?
“I wouldn’t really put it in terms of the “site:’ query,” responds Google’s Matt Cutts. “Instead, I would pivot, and narrow, and focus down on the results estimates. So there’s a few things to note. If you haven’t noticed, you should notice that results estimates are only accurate to about three significant digits. So, they are estimates. As we’re looking for queries, at some point, we say we have enough to constitute the first page, and we see how far we’ve gone through our posting list – the amount of data we have. Therefore, we can estimate, there’s about this many results left.”
“Now, when you click from page one to page two, suddenly you’re going deeper so you have a better estimate or you have a slightly different estimate because you’re starting to look not just a little bit of the way through all those documents,” Cutts continues. “You’re actually starting to go deeper and deeper. So, it’s relatively common for our results estimates to change, going from our page one to page two, typically becoming more accurate. So it’s not usually a factor of the ‘site:’ query. It’s usually a factor us digging deeper through our data, and as a result, we have a better, or at least a different estimate for how many results there are.”
Google has just launched an update for iPad users that makes places searches more “interactive.” Mainly, Google has added a new scrolling results bar that when clicked, displays expandable place cards for whatever location you’re interested in – restaurants, bars, shops, and more.
“Starting today, English-speaking iPad users in the U.S. will see a new, interactive experience when they search for restaurants, bars or other local places on Google. In addition to the regular web results, a horizontal “carousel” of local results will appear at the top of the page.
For example, say you’re located in New York City and you search for [ramen shops]. On the carousel, you can quickly and easily see a place’s overall review-based score, address and a picture related to the location. A quick swipe displays additional results. If you find a place you’re interested in, simply click on its image to get a card that can be expanded to show more detailed information, reviews, and more,” says Google.
That expandable “card” includes Zagat ratings and more. It also features the familiar map which can be expanded if needed.
As the month of December rolls along, you can expect more and more of these types of lists to pop up. It’s that time of the year for the year-in-review wrap-ups, and today it’s Yahoo that’s giving us some insight on top searches in 2012.
The top three Yahoo searches in 2012 come from three different realms: politics, tech, and pop culture. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Yahoo users were most interested in the Elections, the iPhone 5, and Kim Kardashian (in that order). Yahoo says that in the 12 years that they’ve been doing the year-in-search list, this is only the third time that a “news” event has claimed the number one search volume slot. The other two were recent events, Michael Jackson’s death in 2009 and the BP oil spill in 2010.
Here’s the complete top ten list of 2012 Yahoo searches:
Elections
iPhone 5
Kim Kardashian
Kate Upton
Kate Middleton
Whitney Houston
Olympics
Political Polls
Lindsay Lohan
Jennifer Lopez
Bing recently unveiled their 2012 search stats and there’s quite a bit of similarity among the two lists. Over on Bing, Kim Kardashian was the most-searched person of the year, beating out Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus. In the news stories category, the iPhone 5 took the crown beating out the 2012 Elections and the 2012 Olympics.
When you just look at gadget searches, it’s Apple all the way. In that category the iPhone 5 finished ahead of “iPad 3” and the “iPad mini.” The rest of the top ten gadget searches were the Samsung Galaxy S3, Kindle Fire, iPhone 4, Nook, iPod Touch, Samsung Galaxy Tab, and Samsung Galaxy Note.
Is Google a publisher? Or is Google simply a displayer of links? Are these two things the same?
Those questions are at the heart of a Australian case that just tipped against Google, and are likely at the heart of many cases to come. An Australian high court has found Google liable for libelous content tying a man to organized crime. Of course, Google didn’t create the article that made the references, it simply provided a link to it within its search results.
The man’s name is Milorad Trkulja, and he claimed that Google defamed him by associating his name and image with (untrue) claims of ties to organized crime, both in regular search results and in Google Image search. The jury in the case found Google guilty and therefore responsible for the content that they link to. They’ve been fined $200,000, but are in the process of appealing the ruling (as you would expect).
Is Google responsible for the content that is found using their search engine? Or is this a ridiculous claim to make?Let us know in the comments.
The question of whether or not Google Inc was a publisher is a matter of mixed fact and law. In my view, it was open to the jury to find the facts in this proceeding in such a way as to entitle the jury to conclude that Google Inc was a publisher even before it had any notice from anybody acting on behalf of the plaintiff. The jury were entitled to conclude that Google Inc intended to publish the material that its automated systems produced, because that was what they were designed to do upon a search request being typed into one of Google Inc’s search products. In that sense, Google Inc is like the newsagent that sells a newspaper containing a defamatory article. While there might be no specific intention to publish defamatory material, there is a relevant intention by the newsagent to publish the newspaper for the purposes of the law of defamation.
Basically, Google may not want to publish it, but they are publishing the publishers. And since Google’s algorithms are tooled to find said content, they are responsible. Or at least it is plausible that a jury could see it that way. The Judge is clearly unconvinced that this stance is set in stone.
The Judge also differentiated search results pages from Google Image searches. The plaintiff also complained of images tying him to crime figures. The Judge notes that a Google Image search is a more-sophisticated version of cut-and-paste from magazines, and importantly a Google-created page:
As was pointed out by counsel for the plaintiff in his address to the jury, the first page of the images matter (containing the photographs I have referred to and each named “Michael Trkulja” and each with a caption “melbournecrime”) was a page not published by any person other than Google Inc. It was a page of Google Inc’s creation – put together as a result of the Google Inc search engine working as it was intended to work by those who wrote the relevant computer programs. It was a cut and paste creation (if somewhat more sophisticated than one involving cutting word or phrases from a newspaper and gluing them onto a piece of paper). If Google Inc’s submission was to be accepted then, while this page might on one view be the natural and probable consequence of the material published on the source page from which it is derived, there would be no actual original publisher of this page.
You can see just how much of a charlie-foxtrot this is. Which pages are Google’s creation, and which are simply the “consequence of the material published on the source page from which it is derived?”
The jury concluded that Google was a publisher, and was liable for the defamatory content even if they weren’t notified of it yet. Although Google contended that it doesn’t matter if they were notified of the content of not – they’re not responsible – the Judge rejected that notion as well.
It follows that, in my view, it was open to the jury to conclude that Google Inc was a publisher – even if it did not have notice of the content of the material about which complaint was made. Google Inc’s submission to the contrary must be rejected. However, Google Inc goes further and asserts that even with notice, it is not capable of being liable as a publisher “because no proper inference about Google Inc adopting or accepting responsibility complained of can ever be drawn from Google Inc’s conduct in operating a search engine”.
This submission must also be rejected. The question is whether, after relevant notice, the failure of an entity with the power to stop publication and which fails to stop publication after a reasonable time, is capable of leading to an inference that that entity consents to the publication. Such an inference is clearly capable of being drawn in the right circumstances (including the circumstances of this case). Further, if that inference is drawn then the trier of fact is entitled (but not bound) to conclude that the relevant entity is a publisher.[42] Google Inc’s submission on this issue must be rejected for a number of reasons, the least of which is that it understates the ways in which a person may be held liable as a publisher.
Of course, $200,000 to Google is basically nothing. The appeal really has nothing to do with the monetary damages. Google knows that this kind of decision sets an unsettling precedent for their future defenses in similar cases. Google as “automated news agent that’s responsible for what their algorithms pull out of the depths” is a view of Google that the company can’t afford to have stick.
We’ve seen this story play out numerous times over the past couple of years with Google’s autocomplete feature. In August of 2011, Google lost a case in Italy and was forced to remove autocomplete suggestion in its search box that tied a man to the word “truffatore,” meaning con man. A few month later, Google was fined $65,000 because one of its autocomplete suggestions labeled a French man “esroc,” meaning crook.
And this year, Google made an out-of-court settlement with French anti-discrimination groups over a “Jewish” autocomplete suggestion.
Google’s argument in these cases is similar to the argument in the Australian case. We’re not suggesting anything. We’re not defaming anyone. Google’s autocomplete suggestions are based on popularity of terms. That means that if anything, Google users are the ones linking people’s names with unsavory terms. Google’s search results are also based on an algorithm. Just ask Rick Santorum about how much responsibility Google claims in what people find using its search engine.
So, is Google a publisher? If not, what are they, exactly? How much responsibility do you think Google has for what people find using their search engine?Tell us what you think in the comments.
Google announced today that it will start showing information for medications with the Knowledge Graph. Specifically, results may include “key facts — side effects, related medications, links to in-depth resources, and more”. Obviously, this will be info presented right on the search results page.
It would be interesting to see what kind of effect this has on users clicking through to other sites like WebMD.
“This data comes from the U.S. FDA, the National Library of Medicine, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, among others,” says Google Search Senior Product Manager Aaron Brown. “It’s part of the Knowledge Graph — our project to map out billions of real-world things, from famous artists to roller coasters to planets (and now medications). We hope you find this useful, but remember that these results do not act as medical advice.”
When you’re talking about something like medicine, the nature of the info users are pointed to is of higher importance than something like that of celebrities. Now, you’re talking about information that can directly influence decisions related to people’s heath and well-being.
Google did not specify the roll-out timeframe. We’re not seeing the results yet, but presumably, users in the U.S. will start seeing them soon.
Do you think Google’s Knowledge Graph and these particular sources have what it takes to provide the best results for queries about medications?
Google has been working on expanding its click-to-call ad feature in a few different ways. Today in a blog post, Google provided an update about what it’s been doing.
The company recently introduced a click-to-call button for ads using Call Extensions. Google says early results indicate that the new design has positively impacted advertiser click-through rates and call volume.
Google is expanding the availability of call forwarding numbers. The feature has been available in the United Staes and in the United Kingdom, but it’s now being expanded into Germany, and to more countries in the coming months.
Google has also expanded Call Extensions for ads showing in apps on the Google Display Network.
“Mobile technology is making it easier than ever for people to research products and connect with businesses while they’re on the go,” says Google Mobile Search Ads product manager Anurag Agrawal. “But we all know that sometimes it helps to speak to a real person before making a purchase decision. In fact, research shows that 52% of smartphone users have called a business after looking for local information on their mobile devices. Calls are key in helping consumers connect with businesses in the digital age, so incorporating a click-to-call strategy on mobile is crucial for any company that does business over the phone.”
“Companies big and small have put click-to-call functionality front and center in their mobile ads to reach customers on the go, and have seen impressive results,” says Agrawal. “For instance, Comcast incorporated click-to-call ads into their mobile strategy, and now find mobile drives more than 10% of online sales. Esurance also reduced their cost per acquisition by 20-30% compared to other channels by using Google mobile ads with click-to-call. With more than 20 million calls made through Google click-to-call ads each month, it’s clear that mobile works when driving calls to businesses. In fact, our studies have shown that adding Call Extensions to mobile ad campaigns have improved advertisers’ average click-through rates by about 6-8%.”
Google says advertisers using call forwarding numbers see calls last over six minutes on average.
Google is pinging people at random times, and asking them what they want to know at that moment, in an effort to uncover new types of information that it can potentially provide to users. This is a research strategy that Google is conducting, as it looks to shape the future of how people consume information.
The project is described by Tom Simonite at MIT Technology Review. He claims to be a participant in a group of about 150 people Google has chosen to help it conduct its research. According to Simonite, Google “buzzed” at eight randomly chosen times a day for three days last month, and asked “What did you want to know recently?” He says Google is looking for the types of information that people are looking somewhere other than Google for, or perhaps things that the user wanted to know, but simply didn’t attempt to search Google for.
What Google finds from its research could be crucial to how it approaches future features of Google Now and Google Glass, or perhaps something even beyond these. The research effort is being called the Daily Information Needs Study, according to Simonite, who has spoken with Google Search lead user experience designer Jon Wiley about the project:
If Google is to achieve its stated mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible,” says Wiley, it must find out about those hidden needs and learn how to serve them. And he says experience sampling—bugging people to share what they want to know right now, whether they took action on it or not—is the best way to do it. “Doing that on a mobile device is a relatively new technology, and it’s getting us better information that we really haven’t had in the past,” he says.
If we’re being honest about Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible, Google is far from accomplishing it. As many strides as Google has made over the years, and as better as it gets in some areas, we’ve also been exposed to major obstacles in this goal – increased resistance from other keepers of information. How can Google really accomplish this goal, for example, without access to our Facebook accounts? How can it accomplish this without providing tweets in real time as news breaks on Twitter in the moment?
That said, as such an ambitious goal may not be possible to achieve completely, Google can still find ways to make our lives easier, and maintain an edge over its various competitors. If people have information needs that aren’t being met, it’s in Google’s best interest to meet them, and this particular “study” may be a surprisingly simple way of sparking some ideas for innovation in information consumption.
Google Now, while in its infancy, already shows tremendous potential in this area. If Google Glass manages to become even close to what Google presented in its initial concept video, things are going to get very interesting very fast. If the device is useful enough, could that outweigh the vanity factor? In other words, if you can do amazing things with Glass, would you wear the device all the time, regardless of how ridiculous you might look? Of course, there’s a very real possibility that this could evolve past the Glass stage and directly into the contact lens stage. Then, all of a sudden, vanity is no longer even an issue.
Brace yourselves: the year-end lists are coming. As 2012 comes to close, it’s vital that we all take a step back and review all of the inane crap we seek out on search engines. First up, it’s Bing with a nice comprehensive 2012 search overview.
Congratulations, Kim Kardashian. You’re the most-searched person of the year.
According to Bing, she beat out Justin Bieber, who held the title for 2011. The Biebs holds strong this year, coming in at #2. The rest of the top ten is as follows, in order: Miley Cyrus, Rihanna, Lindsay Lohan, Katy Perry, Selena Gomez, Jennifer Aniston, Nicki Minaj, and Taylor Swift. You may notice a few glaring omissions from that lists – notably Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, who happened to be running for the nation’s highest office this year. In our celeb-crazed culture, the President and his challenger only managed to break the top 50, coming in at 46th and 43rd, respectively.
As far as the most-searched news stories of the year, the iPhone 5 takes it down. The rest of the top ten looks like this: 2012 Elections, 2012 Olympics, Hurricane Sandy, Honey Boo Boo, Gangnam Style Dance, KONY 2012, Academy Awards, Kindle Fire HD, and Facebook IPO.
And when you look at social networks and apps, Facebook was the most popular search followed closely by Twitter. MySpace, which is soon launching a big redesign, came in third. Three of the top five app searches involved streaming music (Pandora, I Heart Radio, and Spotify).
When it comes to culture, there are no big surprises. PSY’s “Gangnam Style” was the most-searched song of 2012, followed by Carly Rae Jespen’s “Call Me Maybe” and Justin Bieber’s “Boyfriend.” The Avengers was the most-searched movie, followed by The Dark Knight Rises and Titanic.
Bing has a pretty substantial breakdown across many categories, including fashion, holiday icons, celeb couples, and more. You can check out their full report here.
Twitter has been working to make the tweet a self-contained entity for some time now. They want the tweet to contain all of the media that a user needs to get the full experience – with no need to click away to access photos, videos, or even article content. These fuller tweets have existed on desktop for some time, and today Twitter’s bringing that rich experience to mobile, inside the discover tab.
The mobile discover tab now features media-rich tweets that allows users to preview photos and article summaries without ever tapping on the tweet.
“Using Twitter cards, you’ll now see Tweets in Discover with links to news and photos rather than the former story previews which were not interactive. And supporting Twitter cards on the backend means we can more directly improve the user experience in our native apps, too. You’ll see content from cards partners display as a preview in the stream, so that you’ll get headlines and publication names for story summaries and photo previews rather than shortened URLs,” says Twitter engineering manager Daniel Loreto.
The mobile Discover tab has also become more like the desktop Discover section. Now you can “view all tweets” to see relevant content from users in your network.
“We want Discover to be the place where you find the best of that content relevant to you, even if you don’t necessarily know everyone involved,” says Loreto.
Twitter has also improved on their search function, for both the desktop and mobile experience. Photos and videos are now front and center, as Twitter has placed them above the tweet stream in search results for people, events, and hashtags.
Twitter has also added the ability for users to see the context behind the tailored ranking of search results.
“About a year ago we launched tailored ranking of your search results, but until now you couldn’t see why a specific Tweet might matter more to you. Now you can see context like who favorited or retweeted right there in the Tweet,” says Twitter.
You can download the new version of both the iOS and Android apps today.
Google announced today that you can now search for emails by file size in Gmail. To do so, you would enter queries in formats such as: “size:5m” or “larger:5m”.
Gmail will also let you search for emails, based on when they were sent, in more flexible ways. You can do so by searching something like: “older_than:1y”. Or you can do combinations:
“These changes go hand in hand with other recent enhancements to search such as the improved autocomplete predictions and a field trial for instant results from Gmail, Google Drive and more as you type,” Google says in a blog post.
You can see a complete list of all Gmail search operators here.
Google Searchbox – Type your search right from the app home screen, so you can find the answers you need more quickly.
Voice Search – Use your microphone to ask Google anything and see the answer instantly.
Image Search – Watch images load into a beautiful full-screen grid. Select images you like or swipe through to see more results.
Search Charm – By installing the Google Search app, you can easily access Google from the Search Charm.
Instant Previews mode – Browse search results without having to visit each page.
View Your Searches – Swipe from the top to see the sites you visited most recently, categorized by keyword.
Google Apps page – Access all your favorite Google products from within the app with just the tap of an icon.
Google Instant – No need to press Enter – see results instantly as you type.
The app can be downloaded from the store, or from Google’s GetYourGoogleBack site.
In October, Google completed its transition from the old Google Product Search to the new Google Shopping experience. This was a move to an all paid-inclusion model tied in to Google’s Product Listing ads, which show up in regular search results. The move has been somewhat controversial, but Google maintains that it’s the best strategy for both users and sellers.
Since then (and with the holidays approaching), Google has been busy adding features that could benefit both users and businesses. This week, Google revealed a bunch of them.
On Monday, Google announced some new social features – the ability to read reviews from people you know and the ability to share your reviews with your friends on Google+.
“Now you can now easily see if someone you’ve connected with on Google has reviewed a product that is in your Google Shopping search results,” says product manager Karen Corby. “When you click on a particular product and scroll down to the ‘Reviews’ section, reviews from your friends and contacts will appear at the top of the list.”
“We’ve also made it easy to write your own product reviews on Google Shopping. To write a review, login with your Google+ account, click on the product you’d like to review, then click the ‘write a review’ button at the top of the page,” says Corby. “Once you submit your review, it will be publicly available to anyone who views that product on Google Shopping. You can also choose to post your review to your Google+ stream.”
These features make the all important reviews even more important, because when they’re being shared among friends, they’re much more meaningful. Most people are likely to trust the words of their friends more than those from some random stranger from the Internet. That means this can very well have an impact on your business if you’re listed in Google Shopping. It also means you should be paying plenty of attention to the conversation around your products and your store on Google+ itself.
Tuesday, Google announced some additional tools for Google Shopping users – 360-degree product images, shortlists, and discounts/promotions displayed on products.
Users can look for the “3D” swivel icon on a product image to see a product in 360-degrees (on HTML5-enabled browsers). You should provide these images if your’e a retailer. Google has a form here that you can fill out. Google says it will contact you in the coming weeks with more details if you do.
With shortlists, users can research products and plan purchases with their friends and family. “Instead of using bookmarked websites and docs containing long lists of URLs, or back-and-forth emails with friends, you can now consolidate all your shopping research in one place,” explains Google Shopping group product manager Vineet Buch.
Users can use Shortlists to keep track of products they like from Google Shopping (as well as the rest of the web), view product photos, prices and specs side by side, and share their shortlists with friends, who can add to them. And guess what – they even look a little like Pinterest:
Shortlists can be created from here, or by clicking “Add to Shortlist” from products on Google Shopping.
“To help you make the most of your holiday budget, Google Shopping nows shows discounts or promotions on the products you’re viewing,” says Buch. “If discounts or promotions are available, you can click on the link and visit the retailer’s site to redeem the offer.”
Remember, Google ranks product results based on relevance, with bidding as “an additional factor”.
There has been a lot of talk that the whole thing is better for big businesses. At least smaller businesses won’t have Amazon to contend with, as the company has so far not participated in the program.
“Since the bids a retailer can afford are dependent primarily on a retailer’s ability to convert buyers (conversion rate) and maximize cart value (average order values), the best retailers will continue to dominate. Important to note, we are in a period where competition is low and CPCs are somewhat depressed,” Michael Griffin, founder of Adlucent, which exclusively managed Amazon’s paid search until Amazon took it in-house in 2009, recently told us. “Right now, PLA [product listing ad] CPCs are about 20% lower than paid search CPCs. Eventually, we expect CPCs to be 15-20% higher than paid search CPCs. Retailers moving quickly are being rewarded with the opportunity to test and gain market share at a lower cost.”
When asked whether retailer size matters, he said, “I think conversion rate, average order value, technology aptitude, lifetime value, and retailer margins matter. Large retailers tend to be good in all of these areas, but there are exceptions. The winners will excel in all of these areas.”
Now that it’s been live for a while, what do you think about Google Shopping and product listing ads? Do you think any of the new features will help your business? Let us know in the comments.
Google has been shutting down services like crazy since Larry Page took the reins as CEO last year. Some are killed with little noise. Others are killed with a great deal of backlash. Remember Super Poke Pets?
People using background images on their Google homepages are about to experience a big loss, and some are going so far as to say they’ll be changing their homepages or even changing their primary search engines. Did you use background images on your Google homepage? How will you proceed? Let us know in the comments.
Google announced in September that users would soon no longer be able to upload pictures with Classic Plus, which had let them upload or select images to use as a background on Google.com. The company said at the time that this would begin on October 16, and that the service would be completely turned off in November.
Now, people using background images have been getting the following message, with an exact date:
Background images are going away on November 16, 2012
Thank you for using background images. As we build a more streamlined Google Search page for everyone, we’ll no longer be able to support customization with background images. So you will no longer be able to see your background pictures starting November 16, 2012.
Click Remove to stop using a background image now. Your current background image and Picasa web albums will still be available to you.
So, next week, these users will be faced with new choices to make. Do they still want to use Google as their homepage? Do they want to use another search engine altogether? It just so happens that Google’s competitors are making some other new homepage-oriented changes. Bing, for example, launched a new download feature for their daily homepage images (which were arguably already one of the best parts about Bing):
This all comes at a time, mind you, that Bing is making significant moves to increase its share of the search market anyway. In the UK, Google has already fallen to its smallest market share in years.
The Google search page is discontinuing support for background images. I use a black background, because I hate being assaulted by a bright screen. So, I’m gonna use this instead. …easier than a greasemonkey script. (ca.blackle.com)
Another reddit user commented, “As you may or may not know, Google is set to drop background personalization on the main search page for people with Google accounts. I can’t figure out why (although I would like to know), but I can say that the personalization was a bit more than having a cool/cute picture when I googled. While I like the Google branding, my eyes just can’t stand the bright white page. The personalization allowed me to put a very simple black picture, and thus saving my eyes. What are your opinions on the subject?”
Another user responded, suggesting Stylish (Chrome / Firefox which lets you install themes and skins for Google and Facebook.
Earlier this year, Google also upset a number of users when it announced that it would shut down iGoogle, its personalized homepage product.
Pissing off users by shutting down products is something that Google seems to be doing more and more of in recent years. Why is that? Well, we’ve heard Page’s spiel about corporate focus in the past. This past week, Google’s Matt Cutts took a shot at explaining it himself. While he was not talking about the Google homepage, specifically, his comments were interesting (though unofficial).
“In my experience, Google is pretty good about trying to explore the space. We want to try out new things. Unless you’re trying things out – like if you’re trying to ski, and you never fall – then you’re not really pushing yourself hard enough,” says Cutts. “So we do try out a bunch of different ideas. At the same time, some of those ideas are not going to work out.”
When you can see that a particular project is “not going to succeed,” he says, it might be time to put those resources (machines or engineers) into a different project. Sometimes, he says, something just doesn’t get enough traction over time.
“It can also be the case that maybe you build a product, and then the internal infrastructure that we use changes over time…evolves,” he says. “I like to joke that the half life of code at Google is about six months. If you wait six months and go back to a particular section of code, like half of it will have changed. So there’s a lot of stuff going on internally under the hood to make our systems better at Google, but if you happen to fork off, and you’re on a strange little evolutionary path, so to speak, and then after a while people are like, ‘Oh, that is three generations behind our current technology, and we don’t even know how to get back to where we were before,’ then sometimes it’s easier to think about shutting down that project or rewriting it with newer technology or folding that functionality into a different thing.”
“It’s not malice,” Cutts says.
I don’t know if the explanation will make users feel any better about not being able to use Google they way they want to anymore, but at least it’s something.
Do you care about Google homepage background images? Are you satisfied with Matt’s explanation about why Google shuts down products? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Bing is known for its cool photos that serve as the backdrop for the homepage. They change every day, and are mostly unrelated to any current news, anniversary, or holiday (with some exceptions). For the most part, they’re simply cool images that spruce up the search box. Bing says that users have been asking for a quick, easy way to download the images so they can use them for their personal wallpaper.
Now, that’s a reality. Starting today (in the U.S.), users can click on a download icon at the bottom right-hand side of the image and a high-res version of the image will now be theirs to use in whatever way they please. Although the downloaded image removes the Bing search box and other noise, a Bing watermark is still present at the bottom right corner.
In order to download the image, Bing says that you have to connect with Facebook. Other than pushing the Bing/Facebook partnership, there’s really no other reason for this. It’s not pushing the activity to your Timeline or anything.
Bing has also put another button in that bottom right-hand corner, an intersecting arrows icon that lets you take the image fullscreen (which gets rid of everything except for the actual search bar).
Google updates toolbar PageRank about four times a year. They updated it in August, and now they’ve updated it again. As you would expect, some sites are going up, and some are going down, but in both cases, webmasters are noticing.
As usual, people are taking to Twitter to voice their “excitement”.
Toolbar PageRank doesn’t mean a lot, but people still like to monitor it. Here’s the obligatory Matt Cutts video in which he talks about toolbar PageRank:
As previously reported, more and more people have started to see the new look for Google’s search results pages. Essentially, Google has moved the search filtering options from the left-hand side of the screen to above the search results, freeing up more white space (both to the left and to the right of the main search results) in the process.
At first, it was unclear whether Google had just expanded its test of this interface, which had been going on for some time (apparently since June), or if it was actually rolling out to all users. Now, Google has confirmed that it is indeed rolling out.
Before:
After:
In a blog post, Google Search Lead Designer Jon Wiley said, “You’ll notice a new simpler, cleaner design on the search results page — we’ve been working on ways to create a consistent search experience across the wide variety of devices and screen sizes people use today. We started with tablets last year, got it to mobile phones a few weeks ago, and are now rolling out to the desktop.”
“With the new design, there’s a bit more breathing room, and more focus on the answers you’re looking for, whether from web results or from a feature like the Knowledge Graph,” he added.
It also, as Wordstream Founder Larry Kim points out, makes more room for ads, like those pretty product listing ads for Google Shopping results. He points to an example for dishwashers:
It does sure seem like there are a lot of ads “above the fold“.
In fact, you can see how Google squeezes in the product ads (even pushing the Knowledge Graph results down) in the search results from today’s Bram Stoker doodle:
“Even though Google’s stated goal of the new SERP layout is to improve usability (which i believe to be true), we should ask ourselves what additional motivations they might have, and why Google making the change to the SERP layout right now?” Kim tells WebProNews. “After all, the previous SERP layout was in place for many years.”
Kim thinks that the new SERP changes make ads more prominent than ever, and cannibalize organic search for informational queries. “The New Google SERP layout makes the Knowledge Graph listings more prominent,” he writes in a blot post. “The knowledge graph cannibalizes organic search clicks (which were already on the decline) on informational queries because user queries are often answered directly in the SERP – a user doesn’t even have to click on an organic listing to get basic information about their query.”
Here, we talked about how Google is already showing less organic results for a growing number of queries, though this is typically on results in which the first result has a group of sitelinks.
Google frequently gets better at not having to send users to other sites, and Kim may be exactly right in that this design aids the search engine in this very concept. Just look at the above Bram Stoker books results, which Google is linking to from its homepage today.
The change is first rolling out to Google.com users in the U.S. Google says it will get it to other regions and languages as soon as they can.
What do you think of the new look? We’re seeing a fair amount of negative reaction in early comments. Share your opinion here.
Yahoo put out a blog post outlining the various things it is doing with its search results for election-related queries.
If you search “2012 Presidential Polls,” Yahoo will show you the latest national poll numbers at any given time:
If you search for “swing state polls” specifically, you can see how the swing states are trending at that moment. You can also search for state senate races and see related polls (for example: “Kentucky Senate Race 2012”).
“You’ll also be able to get details on key propositions, issues, and referenda using the Propositions Direct Display,” Yahoo explains. “Search for the state proposition number.” For example, you could search for “Colorado Amendment 64”. and see information about that.
Users can also get results for all of the races as they come in, by searching for your state’s specific races. “For instance, you can search for your state’s local U.S. House of Representatives results by searching for [New York U.S. House Results] and get results in real-time,” says Yahoo.
Currently, the Yahoo homepage is showing “The Obama Message,” “The Romney Message,” the “Election Control Room,” a Flickr Election 2012 photo gallery, and a link to polls with closing times.
