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[Exclusive] Google: Our position on China remains unchanged

A Google spokesperson tells WebProNews, “Our position on China remains unchanged.”

That’s just in case there was any confusion from the Wall Street Journal report “Google Softens Tone on China”.

It’s hard to believe it’s been two years since Google threatened to pull out of China, before ultimately redirecting Google.cn to its Hong Kong site. Google assures us the redirect will remain in place.

It’s not as if Google has completely abandoned China. The company reportedly has over 500 employees there (though it was closer to 700 before Google pulled search out). According to the Wall Street Journal now, however, Google is looking to ramp up its presence in the country, focusing on products that don’t bring censorship from the Chinese government – especially Android. The report says Google is hiring more engineers, salespeople and product managers in the country.

The publication interviewed Google’s top exec in Asia, Daniel Alegre, who reportedly says one of the company’s goals is to introduce the Android Market to the Chinese market, in addition to beefing up its product search service.

Google has been pretty up front about the need to remain in China since pulling the search engine out of the country. Alan Eustace, Google’s SVP of Engineering Research called China the “heart” of the future of the Internet in late 2010.

It does appear that Google considers China to be an incredibly important market, and the search censorship issue is an unfortunate obstacle, particularly as Google integrates its products with one another. The more Google expands in China, the greater this problem could become.

January 12, 2012
Google Talks About Why It Changes Your TItles In Search Results

Google changes the titles of search results sometimes. This is nothing new, but the company is shedding a bit of light on the process, saying their alternative titles usually improve clickthrough rate.

Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Pierre Far writes on the Google Webmaster Central Blog, “Page titles are an important part of our search results: they’re the first line of each result and they’re the actual links our searchers click to reach websites. Our advice to webmasters has always been to write unique, descriptive page titles (and meta descriptions for the snippets) to describe to searchers what the page is about.”

“We use many signals to decide which title to show to users, primarily the <title> tag if the webmaster specified one,” he continues. “But for some pages, a single title might not be the best one to show for all queries, and so we have algorithms that generate alternative titles to make it easier for our users to recognize relevant pages. Our testing has shown that these alternative titles are generally more relevant to the query and can substantially improve the clickthrough rate to the result, helping both our searchers and webmasters. About half of the time, this is the reason we show an alternative title.”

“Other times, alternative titles are displayed for pages that have no title or a non-descriptive title specified by the webmaster in the HTML,” he adds. “For example, a title using simply the word “Home” is not really indicative of what the page is about. Another common issue we see is when a webmaster uses the same title on almost all of a website’s pages, sometimes exactly duplicating it and sometimes using only minor variations. Lastly, we also try to replace unnecessarily long or hard-to-read titles with more concise and descriptive alternatives.”

Far refers readers to a Google Help Center article about site titles and descriptions, which includes this video from Matt Cutts talking about titles and snippets:

In the help center article, Google says to make sure very page on your stie has a title tag, that they’re descriptive and concise, to avoid keyword stuffing and repeated or boilerplate titles, an to brand your titles (concisely).

“If we’ve detected that a particular result has one of the above issues with its title, we may try to generate an improved title from anchors, on-page text, or other sources,” Google says. “However, sometimes even pages with well-formulated, concise, descriptive titles will end up with different titles in our search results to better indicate their relevance to the query. There’s a simple reason for this: the title tag as specified by a webmaster is limited to being static, fixed regardless of the query. Once we know the user’s query, we can often find alternative text from a page that better explains why that result is relevant. Using this alternative text as a title helps the user, and it also can help your site. Users are scanning for their query terms or other signs of relevance in the results, and a title that is tailored for the query can increase the chances that they will click through.”

If you don’t like the way Google has re-titled your pages, you can let them know in the Webmaster Help Forum.

Google+” src=”http://cdn.ientry.com/sites/webpronews/article_pics/pierre-far-gplus.jpg” title=”Pierre Far on Google+” class=”aligncenter” width=”616″ height=”263″ />

On Google+, Far highlighted two main takeaways for webmasters from all of this:

1. Our algorithms generate thee alternative titles so that your page is no longer constrained with having just the one title for all the different queries your page ranks for. This has the nice side effect of making the result look more relevant to our searchers and…

2. … On average, the alternative titles increase the clickthrough rate on the results, i.e. more traffic for you.

“The <title> tag is still a primary source for titles we show so all our advice about make them concise and useful and enticing still very much apply,” he says. “Keep an eye on the HTML Suggestions page in the Diagnostics section in Webmaster Tools for title suggestions.”

Have you noticed Google changing your titles? Are they being improved?

January 12, 2012
Google Search For Android Gets Updated

Google just announced a new version of Google Search for Android 2.2 and higher. Google touts it as faster and easier to use. Go figure.

Specifically, Google lists the following as the differences:
Faster, smoother performance, with an updated and simplified user interface.
Suggestions for your search grouped by type, with web suggestions at the top.
Country-specific suggestions and search results for all countries with Google domains.
Long press to remove history items.

You can tap the arrow to the right of a search suggestion or history item to add it to your search term before you actually search. You can get suggestions from other apps on your phone, and you can long press on home screen to add the Google Search widget.

Twitter: Google Should Be Ranking Us Better For @username

Twitter made it clear that it was not thrilled with Google’s new “Search Plus Your World” set of personalization features very shortly after it was announced.

Twitter General Counsel Alex Macgillivray tweeted:

@amac
Alex MacgillivrayBad day for the Internet. http://t.co/Az4rdNVQ Having been there, I can imagine the dissension @Google to search being warped this way. 1 day ago via web · powered by @socialditto

And the company emailed around a statement saying:

For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results anytime they wanted to find something on the Internet.

Often, they want to know more about world events and breaking news. Twitter has emerged as a vital source of this real-time information, with more than 100 million users sending 250 million Tweets every day on virtually every topic. As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter; as a result, Twitter accounts and Tweets are often the most relevant results.

We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.

Google responded (via Google+ of course):

“We are a bit surprised by Twitter’s comments about Search plus Your World, because they chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer (http://goo.gl/chKwi), and since then we have observed their rel=nofollow instructions.”

Twitter hasn’t responded to that, exactly (at least to my knowledge), but Macgillivray did tweet on the subject again, this time pointing to a specific example of where Twitter is taking a backseat to Google+ for the query “@WWE”:

Folks asked for examples. Here’s what a user searching for “@wwe” will be shown on the new @Google. twitter.com/amac/status/15…

— Alex Macgillivray (@amac) January 11, 2012

In case you can’t see it well, the organic rankings are as follows: Official WWE site, WWE Google+ account and YouTube videos. The screen cap cuts of there, but after that comes WWE on Wikipedia, then WWE on Twitter.

Interestingly, when you hit the toggle button to display the results without Search Plus Your World, it makes no difference. I’m not sure if Twitter was ranking better for this prior to the rollout (my guess is not), but the fact that WWE on Google+ is ranking over WWE on Twitter in organic search seems like a separate issue (anti-competitive or not). Granted, Google+ does get the added boost from the prominent “People and Pages on Google+” section on the right-hand side, which is where much of the controversy lies.

Perhaps another question we should be asking is: does Twitter own the “@” symbol? When you search for @username, yes you are most likely looking for a Twitter account. Google knows this, I’m quite sure. It’s a valid point. But, on the other hand, the symbol has been adopted throughout social media, blog comments and forums simply as a way to address someone specific. Kind of like the hashtag has also been adopted by…Google+.

Danny Sullivan points out that Twitter still gets better placement for this query on Google than it does on Bing.

We’ll see if Google responds to this too.

By the way, it’s really easy to find WWE on Twitter. Even from Google. Type “WWE on Twitter” and boom. Top result.

More on Search Plus Your World:

Google Search Plus Your World May Draw FTC Complaint
Google’s Matt Cutts: “Search, Plus Your World” Returns More Than Just Google Content
Google “Search, Plus Your World” Makes Google More Personal Than Ever

January 11, 2012

Google Search Plus Your World May Draw FTC Complaint

EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, is reportedly considering filing a complaint with the United States Federal Trade Commission over Google’s new “Search Plus Your World” features.

In an interview with the LA Times, EPIC’s executive director Marc Rotenberg said the group may file a complaint. The group has done so in the past, with regards to Google’s inclusion of YouTube videos in search results.

EPIC has put up the following statement on its site, citing concerns over Search Plus Your World:

Google is changing the results displayed by its search engine to include data from its social network, such as photos or blog posts made by Google+ users, as well as the public Internet. Although data from a user’s Google+ contacts is not displayed publicly, Google’s changes make the personal data of users more accessible. Users can opt out of seeing personalized search results, but cannot opt out of having their information found through Google search. Also, Google’s changes come at a time when the company is facing increased scrutiny over whether it distorts search results by giving preference to its own content. Recently, the Senate held a hearing on Google’s use of its dominance in the search market to suppress competition, and EPIC urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google’s use of Youtube search rankings to give preferential treatment to its own video content over non-Google content. Google has also acknowledged that the FTC is investigating whether Google uses its dominance in the search field to inhibit competition in other areas.

There has been a lot debate around the new features, which make Google+ much more a part of Google Search. You can read more about Twitter’s public opposition to the features here. In a nutshell, Twitter thinks the changes make Twitter content less accessible to users. I don’t really see how this changes things in that regard. Twitter content has been less accessible since Twitter and Google failed to renew their realtime search/Twitter firehose deal last year (which I do also see as a negative thing).

Twitter and Facebook are both keeping Google from certain data, which Google would be able to use to improve as a search engine. Some argue, however that Google can get enough public data from Twitter and Facebook to work into the new offerings, at least to some extent. All of this is true.

On the one hand, Google could, for example recommend Twitter accounts and Facebook pages for celebrities, the way it is doing with Google+ profiles. On the other hand, Google doesn’t have the data from Twitter and Facebook to deliver the kind of personalized results it can offer via Google+. It’s easier for Google to improve the user experience, at least in theory, when they can give you any data that that is available (personalized data). Google+, which is really just an extension of the Google account itself, is Google’s way of trying to deliver this stuff, supplemented with other public data from places like Flickr, Quora, WordPress, etc.

Danny Sullivan posted this video of Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt talking about the lack of Facebook and Twitter data:

Part of Search Plus Your World is the addition of a special section for “People and Pages on Google+”. When I search for “music” I see profiles for Britney Spears, Mariah Carey and Busta Rhymes – Google profiles. Nothing but Google profiles in that section. However, the top organic result I get is for Yahoo Music. Not even Google Music.

I see the new features as more of a relevancy problem than an antitrust problem. If Google is taking what it knows about me, to personalize my search results, it should recognize that I use Google Music (I don’t use Yahoo Music), and that I don’t give a crap about Britney Spears, Mariah Carey or Busta Rhymes) – at least not as much of a crap as it would take to deem them worthy of that kind of placement for such a broad term. In fact, I would argue that my results would be much better for the user (me) if Google actually tapped its own Google Music property to understand the music I like. I don’t need Facebook pages or Twitter accounts for Britney, Mariah or Busta either.

Part of the reason I use multiple products from Google is because I expect there to be integration. It’s often disappointing when that integration is lacking. It makes things less usable. If I’m signed in to my Google account, I want easy access to content that’s related to my Google account. If I want things from Facebook or Twitter, I know where to look.

If you are signed into Google, you are signed into your Google account. You are signed into Google+. When you’re not signed in, well, that’s a different ballgame. One thing that is a bit iffy here, is that Google said in is announcement that Search Plus Your World would be for users that are signed in. The personal stuff is, but the People and Places stuff that highlights Google+ accounts still appears when the user is signed out.

That could be an issue.

January 11, 2012

Nicolas Steno Celebrated With Google Doodle

Google has a doodle up today, celebrating the 374th birthday of geologist Nicolas Steno.

Though he is known as one of the founders of both modern stratigraphy and modern geology, his scientific contributions have also lent themselves to paleontology, crystallography and even anatomy (he is credited with the discovery of the duct of the parotid salivary gland) in the heads of dogs, rabbits and sheep.

In stratigraphy, he’s credited with the law of superposition, the principle of original horizontality and the principle of lateral continuity.

He is perhaps known best for his work with fossils and figuring out that rocks that were shaped like shark teeth were actually fossilized shark teeth.

By the way, Google is also advertising “Search plus Your World” on Google.com, as you can see in the lead image.

January 11, 2012

Google’s Matt Cutts: “Search, Plus Your World” Returns More Than Just Google Content

On Tuesday, Google announced the launch of “Search, Plus Your World,” which is a set of new personalized search features. For a longer explanation, you can read here, but basically, it involves Google suggesting Google+ content and profiles based on what it knows about you from your own Google account. You might see profiles appear in autocomplete suggestions or search results, and there’s a section where you will see suggested Google+ profiles for topical searches. For example, if you search “music” you might see Britney Spears’ Google+ profile in that section.

It didn’t take long at all for critics to cry “antitrust”. Google forcing more of its own properties down users’ throats? Gasp!

Surprisingly, even Twitter spoke out against the features, implying that it would somehow reduce access to tweets. I’m still trying to figure out how it would do so, as nothing about Google’s announcement indicates this would be the case. This would apply more to Twitter and Google failing to reach an agreement over realtime search last year, but for some reason, Twitter chose this announcement to be the time to bring this up.

Google responded to Twitter, by saying: “We are a bit surprised by Twitter’s comments about Search plus Your World, because they chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer (http://goo.gl/chKwi), and since then we have observed their rel=nofollow instructions.”

Twitter content does still appear in some search results, by the way.

Google’s Matt Cutts has since taken to his personal blog to write about “Search, Plus Your World”. By the way, “Search plus Your World does surface public content from the open web, not just content from Google+,” he says.

The “open web” would be the web that does not block access to its data, like Twitter and Facebook. As Google Fellow Amit Singhal told Danny Sullivan, “Facebook and Twitter and other services, basically, their terms of service don’t allow us to crawl them deeply and store things. Google+ is the only [network] that provides such a persistent service. Of course, going forward, if others were willing to change, we’d look at designing things to see how it would work.”

Cutts shares some examples of content Search Plus Your World returns. It manages to return a picture of Cutts playing “Werewolf” as the first image result for the query “werewolf” (personalized for him of course). It is able to do this, he explains, because his friend tagged him in the picture, which was in an album of “25 Werewolf photos”.

Cutts says the features are able to draw from sites across the web “such as” Flickr, Quora, FriendFeed, LiveJournal and WordPress.

January 11, 2012

Google “Search, Plus Your World” Makes Google More Personal Than Ever

Google just announced some new elements it is bringing to Google Search: personal results, profiles in search, and people and pages. They’re billing the changes collectively as “Search, Plus Your World”.

Should Google be getting more personalized? Let us know what you think.

Now, Google has been doing personalized search to some extent for quite a while. Likewise, profiles have appeared in search results for quite some time. The new features are different in that the personal results will let users find info specifically for them. This may include Google+ photos and posts of their own and things that have been shared with them. Profiles will appear in both autocomplete and results. The “people and pages” feature comes in to enable users to find people profiles and Google+ pages related to topic areas of interest, and make it easy for users to follow these people.

“Search is pretty amazing at finding that one needle in a haystack of billions of webpages, images, videos, news and much more,” says Google Fellow Amit Singhal. “But clearly, that isn’t enough. You should also be able to find your own stuff on the web, the people you know and things they’ve shared with you, as well as the people you don’t know but might want to… all from one search box.”

Here’s a video Google put together showcasing the “search, plus your world” concept:

“As a child, my favorite fruit was Chikoo, which is exceptionally sweet and tasty,” says Singhal, sharing an example of where the new features may prove useful. “A few years back when getting a family dog, we decided to name our sweet little puppy after my favorite fruit. Over the years we have privately shared many pictures of Chikoo (our dog) with our family. To me, the query [chikoo] means two very sweet and different things, and today’s improvements give me the magical experience of finding both the Chikoos I love, right in the results page.”

Google+ Clearly Now More Important To Search

In terms of Profiles appearing in search, Google is demonstrating why it can pay off in search visibility to be active on Google+ and develop a substantial following. Before it was clear that this was beneficial, but now, you can see directly where this will help you. Not only will Google show people you are friends with, but it will show people it thinks you would be interested in.

Google says it will show autocomplete predictions for “various prominent people from Google+, such as high-quality authors from our authorship pilot program”. You can see this in action here:

Clearly, this is also another reason to use authorship markup.

People can click on these results and easily add the person to their circles on Google+.

It doesn’t look like brand pages will be showing up as autocomplete predictions. When asked about this, a Google spokesperson told WebProNews, “For profiles in search, you will see an autocomplete prediction for people who have Google+ profiles. These are people you’re connected to or popular people related to the query. For Google+ Pages, there’s Direct Connect (launched back in Nov).”

Google’s Latest Algorithm Changes (They Don’t Include Panda)

As you may know, Google has been putting out a monthly list of algorithm changes it has been making, as part of the company’s initiative to be “more transparent”. Google will never put out the entire secret sauce of its algorithm (without a court order, at least), so webmasters can at least be thankful that they’re being thrown a handful of bones in the form of a monthly list.

Have you seen effects from Google’s most recent algorithm changes? Let us know in the comments.

Some have apparently already been feeling the effects of Google’s algorithmic early this year. Webmasters were quick to point the finger at the old panda, but Google assures us that this is not the case. A spokesperson for the company told WebProNews there have been no Panda updates in 2012 so far (though I’d expect one to launch before too long).

By the way, now that 2011 is over, do you think Panda has done a good job at cleaning up search results?

In the latest edition of the series, on the company’s Inside Search Blog, they highlight 21 changes made in the month of December. The list goes as follows:

Image Search landing page quality signals. [launch codename “simple”] This is an improvement that analyzes various landing page signals for Image Search. We want to make sure that not only are we showing you the most relevant images, but we are also linking to the highest quality source pages.
More relevant sitelinks. [launch codename “concepts”, project codename “Megasitelinks”] We improved our algorithm for picking sitelinks. The result is more relevant sitelinks; for example, we may show sitelinks specific to your metropolitan region, which you can control with your location setting.
Soft 404 Detection. Web servers generally return the 404 status code when someone requests a page that doesn’t exist. However, some sites are configured to return other status codes, even though the page content might explain that the page was not found. We call these soft 404s (or “crypto” 404s) and they can be problematic for search engines because we aren’t sure if we should ignore the pages. This change is an improvement to how we detect soft 404s, especially in Russian, German and Spanish. For all you webmasters out there, the best practice is still to always use the correct response code.
More accurate country-restricted searches. [launch codename “greencr”] On domains other than .com, users have the option to see only results from their particular country. This is a new algorithm that uses several signals to better determine where web documents are from, improving the accuracy of this feature.
More rich snippets. We improved our process for detecting sites that qualify for shopping, recipe and review rich snippets. As a result, you should start seeing more sites with rich snippets in search results.
Better infrastructure for autocomplete. This is an infrastructure change to improve how our autocomplete algorithm handles spelling corrections for query prefixes (the beginning part of a search).
Better spam detection in Image Search. [launch codename “leaf”] This change improves our spam detection in Image Search by extending algorithms we already use for our main search results.
Google Instant enhancements for Japanese. For languages that use non-Latin characters, many users use a special IME (Input Method Editor) to enter queries. This change works with browsers that are IME-aware to better handle Japanese queries in Google Instant.
More accurate byline dates. [launch codename “foby”] We made a few improvements to how we determine what date to associate with a document. As a result, you’ll see more accurate dates annotating search results.
Live results for NFL and college football. [project codename “Live Results”] We’ve added new live results for NFL.com and ESPN’s NCAA Football results. These results now provide the latest scores, schedules and standings for your favorite football teams.
Improved dataset for related queries. We are now using an improved dataset on term relationships to find related queries. We sometimes include results for queries that are related to your original search, and this improvement leads to results from more relevant related queries.
Related query improvements. [launch codename “lyndsy”] Sometimes we fetch results for queries that are related to the original query but have fewer words. We made several changes to our algorithms to make them more conservative and less likely to introduce results without query words.
Better lyrics results. [launch codename “baschi”, project codename “Contra”] This change improves our result quality for lyrics searches.
Tweak to +1 button on results page. As part of our continued effort to deliver a beautifully simple user experience across Google products, we’ve made a subtle tweak to how the +1 button appears on the results page. Now the +1 button will only appear when you hover over a result or when the result has already been +1’d.
Better spell correction in Vietnamese. [project codename “Pho Viet”] We launched a new Vietnamese spelling model. This will help give more accurate spelling predictions for Vietnamese queries.
Upcoming events at venues. We’ve improved the recently released places panel for event venues. For major venues, we now show up to three upcoming events on the right of the page. Try it for [staples center los angeles] or [paradise rock club boston].
Improvements to image size signal. [launch codename “matter”] This is an improvement to how we use the size of images as a ranking signal in Image Search. With this change, you’ll tend to see images with larger full-size versions.
Improved Hebrew synonyms. [launch codename “SweatNovember”, project codename “Synonyms”] This update refines how we handle Hebrew synonyms across multiple languages. Context matters a lot for translation, so this change prevents us from using translated synonyms that are not actually relevant to the query context.
Safer searching. [launch codename “Hoengg”, project codename “SafeSearch”] We updated our SafeSearch tool to provide better filtering for certain queries when strict SafeSearch is enabled.
Encrypted search available on new regional domains. Google now offers encrypted search by default on google.com for signed-in users, but it’s not the default on our other regional domains (eg: google.fr for France). Now users in the UK, Germany and France can opt in to encrypted search by navigating directly to an SSL version of Google Search on their respective regional domains: https://www.google.co.uk, https://www.google.de andhttps://www.google.fr.
Faster mobile browsing. [launch codename “old possum”, project codename “Skip Redirect”] Many websites redirect smartphone users to another page that is optimized for smartphone browsers. This change uses the final smartphone destination url in our mobile search results, so you can bypass all the redirects and load the target page faster.

The image search landing page quality signal change is quite interesting. We ran a great article on optimizing for image search by Michael Gray last year, and that’s full of tips to consider for this less talked about element of SEO, but the adjustments, as unspecific as they may be, reflect Google’s Panda-style focus on quality in search results. This, to me, is saying they’re applying same kind of thinking they do with regular web search to other parts of Google, more than ever before.

Here’s the list of questions Google has presented in the past to consider asking yourself, when evaluating quality.

Note that “better spam detection for image search” is also on the list.

Also note the codenames used throughout the list. Most you probably won’t have to remember like Panda and Caffeine, but it’s still nice to have something to reference for the future.

With regards to the “more rich snippets” item on the list, you may want to check out the series of videos Google recently put out on how to do rich snippets.

Which changes do you think are the most significant? Is your site being helped or hurt by changes? Let us know in the comments.

January 7, 2012

Google Panda Update: Not In 2012 To Date [Exclusive]

Google was nice enough to let the world know in early December that there would be no Panda updates for the rest of 2011.

Having faced backlash from webmasters over previous pre-holiday algorithm changes, namely the Florida update, Google has been pretty good in recent years not to launch major updates that could impact holiday sales for e-commerce sites relying on Google for traffic.

But the holidays are over, and we’re probably due for a new Panda update soon. Google has said when there will be another one, but a spokesperson for the company tells WebProNews that there has not been one in 2012 so far.

Rumors have been going around that there may have been one, but according to Google, that is not the case.

So, if you’re experiencing some trouble with your Google rankings, its likely more due to another recent algorithm change. As you may know, Google makes nearly 500 changes a year – sometimes more than one in a day. Most don’t have as big of an impact as Panda, but there is always the possibility that one will impact your site.

This week, Google revealed 21 previously unannounced changes that were made in December. Take a look at those if you haven’t yet.

January 6, 2012

Bing Maps Getting Deep Into Route Planning

Bing has implemented a whole new routing engine on Bing Maps with a new route calculation algorithm.

The new algorithm changes how driving directions queries are computed.

Algorithms behind routes on search engines’ maps probably aren’t something that most of us give a whole lot of that, but Bing clearly wants us to know how proud they are of this, having devoted not only a blog post about it, but an entire research paper.

“It started when I took over as PM of backend services for Bing Maps,” says Chris Pendleton. “The Microsoft Research team presented this crazy new idea to replace our modified Dijkstra’s algorithm with the blandly named ‘Customizable Route Planning’ algo. We’ve been using our own modified Dijkstra for years, it’s done a great job and it’s flexible – so, why would we change that? Once we saw the calculation numbers it was a no brainer to begin implementation immediately. For any of our route calculations we’re now processing requests twice as fast as we ever have. Oh, snaps! Now, if only CRP could double the speed limit. Future enhancement!”

The “special sauce” of the routing engine, Pendleton says, is a feature in the API for altenate routes. Applications can request up to 3 separate routes in one request, which can be displayed on the map. Here’s what Pendleton has to say about the basic algorithm:

Our metric-independent preprocessing stage partitions the graph into connected cells with at most U (an input parameter) vertices each, with as few boundary arcs (arcs with endpoints in di erent cells) as possible. The metric customization stage builds a graph H containing all boundary vertices (those with at least one neighbor in another cell) and boundary arcs of G. It also contains a clique for each cell C: for every pair (v;w) of boundary vertices in C, we create an arc (v;w) whose cost is the same as the shortest path (restricted to C) between v and w (or in nite if w is not reachable from v). We do so by running Dijkstra from each boundary vertex. Note that H is an overlay [24]: the distance between any two vertices in H is the same as in G. Finally, to perform a query between s and t, we run a bidirectional version of Dijkstra’s algorithm on the graph consisting of the union of H, Cs, and Ct. (Here Cv denotes the subgraph of G induced by the vertices in the cell containing v.) As already mentioned, this is the basic strategy of separator-based methods. In particular, HiTi [19] uses edge-based separators and cliques to represent each cell. Unfortunately, HiTi has not been tested on large road networks; experiments were limited to small grids, and the original proof of concept does not appear to have been optimized using modern algorithm engineering techniques. Our rst improvement over HiTi and similar algorithms is to use PUNCH [5] to partition the graph. Recently developed to deal with road networks, it routinely nds solutions with half as many boundary edges (or fewer), compared to the general-purpose partitioners (such as METIS [20]) commonly used by previous algorithms. Better partitions reduce customization time and space, leading to faster queries. For our experiments, we used relatively long runs of PUNCH, taking about an hour. Our results would not change much if we used the basic version of PUNCH, which is only about 5% worse but runs in mere minutes. We use parallelism: queries run forward and reverse searches on two CPU cores, and customization uses all four (each cell is processed independently).

The research paper can be found here, in PDF form.

January 5, 2012

New Year’s Resolutions Heavy Among Search Trends, According to Yahoo

New Year’s has come and gone, and it’s got to be close to time to stop talking about it, but Yahoo has put out some info about search trends related to the ever-popular resolution of losing weight, so allow me to share.

According to Yahoo, its top searched diets of the past week are:

1. Atkins diet
2. HCG diet
3. Paleo diet
4. Low Carb diet
5. Pink Method diet
6. 17 day diet
7. Dukan diet
8. Cabbage Soup diet
9. Vegan diet
10. Dr. Oz diet

Other popular diet search trends Yahoo lists include:

Google Correlate Expands to 50 Countries

Back in May, Google launched Google Correlate, which is sort of like Google Trends in reverse. It looks at search trends, and attempts to apply them to real-world situations.

Google described it as an experimental tool enabling the user to find queries with a similar pattern to a target data series.

Users can upload data sets (by state or time series, and Google Correlate will compute the “Pearson Correlation Coefficient” between your time series and the frequency time series for every query in its database.

Previously only available in the U.S., Google announced today that the service is being extended into 49 new countries.

“Since our initial launch, we’ve graduated to Google Trends and we’ve seen a number of great applications of Correlate in several domains, including economics (consumer spending, unemployment rate and housing inventory), sociology and meteorology,” says Google software engineer Matt Mohebbi. “The correspondence of gas prices and search activity for fuel efficient cars was even briefly discussed in a Fox News presidential debate and NPR recently covered correlations related to political commentators.”

“Health has always been an area of particular interest to our team (Matt Mohebbi, Julia Kodysh, Rob Schonberger and Dan Vanderkam),” says Mohebbi. “Correlate was inspired by Google Flu Trends and many of us worked on both systems. So we were very excited when the BioSense division at the CDC published a page which shows correlations between some of their national trends in patient diagnosis activity and Google search activity. With just three years of weekly data, relevant search terms are surfaced. For example, the time series for bloody nose surfaces ‘bloody snot’ and ‘blood in snot’.”

“While these terms shouldn’t come as a surprise, there are others which are more interesting, including searches related to static electricity, dry skin, and red cheeks,” says Mohebbi. “Of course, correlation is not causation but we hope that Correlate can be used as a method for researchers to generate new hypotheses with their data.”

For more on Google Correlate, check out this FAQ page.

January 3, 2012

Google Promotes Chrome At Cost Of Search Quality

Google is the subject of some controversy related to sponsored links. They involve posts promoting Google Chrome for small businesses.

Are you OK with Google’s Chrome promotion strategy? Let us know in the comments.

As you may know, Google has strict guidelines against paid links that don’t carry the nofollow link attribute. They have been known to ban sites for the practice, and now it has been discovered that Google has been participating in a bit of this itself, at least indirectly.

Peter Kafka at AllThingsD discovered that it was not actually Google handling the campaign itself, but rather, while the company dominates online advertising, it hired Unruly Media to do so. Either way, it’s still Google’s campaign.

The whole thing was brought to light when SEOBook’s Aaron Wall discovered some paid blog posts showing up in search results. Some posts, he said, are paid and have live links in them to Google Chrome without using nofollow, and talk about SEO in the same post. He notes that all of the posts are “buying YouTube video views”. They feature this video:

The video actually links to the Chrome download page though:

“You can say they didn’t require the links, that the links were incidental, that leaving nofollow off was an accident, etc. … but does Google presume the same level of innocence when torching webmasters?” asks Wall.

Kafka shared a response from Unruly Media after failing to get any direct response from Google itself (he cites the holidays as a reason for this). In the response, Unruly Media CEO Scott Button says:

…we don’t ask bloggers to link to the advertiser’s site. It’s just not part of our business model. We help advertisers distribute video content and that’s what we get paid for. All links from the video player itself are wrapped in Javascript, so although Google can follow them, they don’t influence search engine rankings. Even though we don’t ask bloggers to link, we do advise them to use nofollow if they do link to the advertiser’s site. This is really important and they should do it to protect themselves as much as the advertiser.

As far as I’m aware, there was one link in one post that was not marked nofollow. This was corrected as soon as we became aware of it…

Former Googler Vanessa Fox said, “JavaScript links do in fact pass PageRank, although Google does try to detect when the links are ads and doesn’t pass PageRank when it detects that.”

Google’s Matt Cutts picked a great time to take a “digital break”:

@mattcutts
Matt CuttsI’m thinking about doing a “digital break” where I don’t tweet for a week. So if you see me not tweeting, that’s why. 3 days ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Here’s a sample of what Cutts has had to say on sponsored links in the past:

Clear disclosure of sponsorship is critical, and that includes disclosure for search engines. If link in a paid post would affect search engines, that link should not pass PageRank (e.g. by using the nofollow attribute). Google — and other search engines — do take action which can include demoting sites that sell links that pass PageRank, for example.

Tom Warren at The Verge reports: “Google says it is now looking at what changes we need to make to ensure that this never happens again,’ but no word on whether the company plans to penalize its own Chrome download page, a process Google follows for guideline violations.
It’s unclear if there really was only a single link that was wasn’t nofollowed, as there are hundreds of pages of results that feature the “articles” in question. But even if that is the case, and Google is not treating these results any differently than it would any other sites, there is a whole other issue.

As Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land points out, many of these posts appear to be the kind of thing Google’s Panda update was designed to eliminate – thin, low quality content. But here we see, not only these results flooding Google’s SERPs (again, there are hundreds of pages of results), but Google actually sponsoring these results.

Look at this page, for example, which ranks right at the top for “chrome small business benefits”. This is the entirety of the text, which is followed by the above video:

Many of you Moms who follow the blog here are not only working work-at-home jobs but also involved in work-at-home businesses or even a traditional brick and mortar small business. I love supporting women in small business because to me the benefits of working from home or running your own business are the same- having a flexible schedule and allowing more time to spend with your family. I know from experience, however, that starting up a business is not an easy feat, especially in today’s economy. Many years ago I started up my side business, Sign & Play, where I offer parent and child sign language classes. I had no idea where to start with getting the word out about my business and wasted a lot of money on advertising that did not work. I know all of my Telecommuting Moms out there are like me in thinking that wasting money is never a good thing. We all love saving money for our families and since the internet arrived, it sure has made that easier. Finding deals, coupons and ways to save is a whole new world now. As a small business owner, you always want to look for ways to save and wasting money can be painful. You have to prioritize spending and ensure that every dollar is spent wisely. These days, having an online presence is an essential step in starting a business, no matter how small it is. Ensuring that potential customers can find your business online is vital and a first step in establishing your web presence. This is where Google Chrome comes in, they offer a way for small businesses to get started easily and get their business name in to the online and social media world without spending a fortune.

Google Chrome helped this small business in Vermont go global. What can Google Chrome do for your future?

I’m guessing that’s not really the best result for finding out about the benefits to small businesses of using Google’s Chrome browser. In fact, I would think Google would have some content of its own, which would be much more helpful.

There is no link in the article at least, other than the YouTube video linking to the download page.

The quality problem is really more concerning than the sponsored link issue, though, if you ask me – in terms of general user experience. I’d rather have sponsored content that is actually useful than content that isn’t helpful at all appearing at the top of my search results.

We are probably about due for another Panda update though. We’ll see what happens.

What is your take on Google’s Chrome campaign here? Let us know in the comments.

January 3, 2012

Greplin Search Now Indexes Google Chat

Greplin, the personalized search tool that lets you add data from your personal sources, has a new feature.

Now, Greplin indexes Google chats. The company said in a blog post:

Now you can search for your chats the same way you search for a Gmail Message. You’ll see results mixed in with the “Messages” results.

This won’t happen automatically. To enable this feature you must make sure “Show in IMAP” is enabled for Chats in your Gmail settings.

To add Google chats, just login to Gmail, click the gear icon, click mail settings, select labels, and next to chats, click show in IMAP.

Greplin says your chats should start showing up in Greplin searches within 24 hours.

January 2, 2012

I’m not going to rehash the entire year of events and web happenings. That would be a massive book, and there is just simply too much to recount. I’m not even going to focus on major events so much, but there have been so many year-end round-ups that I feel they yield their own round-up of sorts, allowing us to take a quick glimpse of the year that’s now behind us. Happy New Year.

What was the most memorable part of 2011 to you? Let us know in the comments.

According to Nielsen, the top web brands in 2011 (in the U.S.) were:

1. Google
2. Facebook
3. Yahoo
4. MSN/WindowsLive/Bing
5. YouTube
6. Microsoft
7. AOL Media Network
8. Wikipedia
9. Apple
10. Ask

For social networks and blogs (again, in the U.S.) the list was:

1. Facebook
2. Blogger
3. Twitter
4. WordPress
5. MySpace
6. LinkedIn
7. Tumblr
8. Google+
9. Yahoo Pulse
10. Six Apart TypePad

The Top online destinations for video (in the U.S.) were:

1. YouTube
2. VEVO
3. Facebook
4. Yahoo
5. MSN/WindowsLive/Bing
6. AOL Media Network
7. Hulu
8. The CollegeHumor Network
9. CNN Digital Network
10. Netflix

Twitter

Twitter’s most tweeted events (in terms of tweets per second):

6,939 – JAN 1 – New Years
4,064 – FEB 6 – Super Bowl
5,530 – MAR 11 – Japanese earthquake and tsunami
3,966 – APR 29 – UK Royal Wedding
5,106 – MAY 2 – Raid on Osama bin Laden
6,303 – MAY 28 – UEFA Champions League
5,531 – JUN 13- NBA Finals
6,436 – JUN 27 – BET Awards
4,995 – JUL 11 – Home Run Derby
7,166 – JUL 17 – Brazil eliminated from the Copa America
7,196 – JUL 17 – End of FIFA Women’s World Cup
5,449 – AUG 23 – East Coast earthquake
7,064 – AUG 25 – Steve Jobs resigns
8,868 – AUG 28 – MTV Video Music Awards
7,671 – SEP 20 – Troy Davis executed
6,049 – OCT 6 – Steve Jobs passes away

The top hashtags of the year were:

1. #egypt
2. #tigerblood
3. #threewordstoliveby
4. #idontunderstandwhy
5. #japan
6. #improudtosay
7. #superbowl
8. #jan25

The top topics were broken down by category:

TV:

1. Pretty Little Liars
2. Two and a Half Men
3. The Craigslist Killer
4. Golden Globe Awards
5. People’s Choice Awards

Movies:

1. Thor
2. The Dark Knight Rises
3. X-Men: First Class
4. Fast Five
5. Green Hornet

Music:

1. Rebecca Black and Friday
2. Nate Dogg
3. FEMME FATALE
4. Gerry Rafferty
5. Gil Scott-Heron

Actresses:

1. Elizabeth Taylor
2. Mila Kunis
3. Anne Hathaway
4. Raven Symone
5. Natalie Portman
6. Elisabeth Sladen
7. Jennifer Lopez
8. Nina Dobrev
9. Emma Watson
10. Fernanda Vasconcellos

Actors:

1. Charlie Sheen
2. Macaulay Culkin
3. Ryan Dunn
4. Ricky Gervais
5. Pete Postlethwaite
6. Tracy Morgan
7. Jake Gyllenhaal
8. Ashton Kutcher
9. Colin Firth
10. James Franco

Soccer:

1. Wayne Rooney
2. Fernando Torres
3. Howard Webb
4. Wembley Stadium
5. Colo Colo

Football:

1. Dallas
2. Green & Yellow
3. Superbowl MMXI
4. Jim Harbaugh
5. Pittsburgh Steelers

NBA:

1. Rashard Lewis
2. Ray Allen
3. Derrick Rose
4. Jason Terry
5. Dallas Mavericks

Baseball:

1. Texas Rangers
2. Bert Blyleven
3. Roberto Alomar
4. Vernon Wells
5. Justin Verlander

Food and drink:

1. McLobster
2. Fried Kool-Aid
3. Starbucks Trenta
4. Devassa Beer
5. Guinness
6. BBQ
7. Mac & Cheese

World News

1. Mubarak’s resignation
2. Raid on Osama bin Laden
3. Japanese earthquake and Fukushima nuclear disaster
4. Shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
5. Gaddafi’s death
6. Swine Flu outbreak
7. WoW Gold Guide

Cities and countries:

1. Cairo
2. Egypt
3. Japan
4. Libya
5. Tokyo
6. Dallas
7. Vancouver
8. Hawaii
9. Joplin
10. Austin

Tech:

1. Mac App Store
2. Sony NGP
3. Guitar Hero
4. Mozilla Firefox
5. Duke Nukem Forever
6. iPad
7. iPhone
8. Nintendo 3DS
9. Mortal Kombat
10. iPod

Facebook

Facebook’s top games:

Gardens of Time (Playdom)
The Sims Social (EA)
Cityville (Zynga)
DoubleDown Casino (DoubleDown Interactive)
Indiana Jones Adventure World (Zynga)
Words With Friends (Zynga)
Bingo Blitz (Buffalo Studios)
Empires & Allies (Zynga)
Slotomania-Slot Machines (Playtika)
Diamond Dash (wooga)

Facebook also shared the following topic lists for 2011:

US Top 10 status trends

1. lms (like my status)
2. tbh (to be honest)
3. Death of Osama bin Laden
4. Charlie Sheen
5. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
6. Casey Anthony found not guilty
7. Packers win the Super Bowl
8. Hurricane Irene
9. Insidious (movie)
10. Death of Amy Winehouse

Fastest growing areas of interest on Facebook globally:

Entertainment:

Actors and TV Personalities

1. Megan Fox
2. Vin Diesel
3. Adam Sandler
4. Selena Gomez
5. Will Smith
6. Taylor Lautner
7. Jackie Chan
8. Ashley Tisdale
9. DJ Pauly D
10. Kim Kardashian

Movies

1. Harry Potter
2. The Twilight Saga
3. Toy Story
4. Avatar
5. Jackass
6. Shrek
7. Saw
8. Pirates of the Caribbean
9. Fast &Furious
10. Titanic

TV Shows

1. House
2. Two and a Half Men
3. The Simpsons
4. Family Guy
5. South Park
6. Grey’s Anatomy
7. SpongeBob SquarePants
8. CSI: Miami
9. iCarly
10. The Big Bang Theory

Fictional Characters

1. Dr. House
2. Dory
3. Patrick Star
4. Mr. Bean
5. Upin & Ipin
6. Bob Esponja
7. Mario
8. Doraemon
9. Ari Gold
10. Sue Sylvester (GLEE)

Music:

Musicians

1. Rihanna
2. Bob Marley
3. Avril Lavigne
4. David Guetta
5. Enrique Iglesias
6. Usher
7. Lady Gaga
8. Metallica
9. Green Day
10. Black Eyed Peas

Most Listened To Songs

1. We Found Love – Rihanna and Calvin Harris
2. Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.) – Katy Perry
3. Sexy And I Know It – LMFAO
4. Titanium – David Guetta and Sia
5. First of the Year – Skrillex
6. Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites – Skrillex
7. Without You – David Guetta and Usher
8. Stereo Hearts – Gym Class Heroes featuring Adam Levine
9. Pumped Up Kicks – Foster the People
10. Someone Like You – Adele

Sports:

Athletes

1. Leo Messi
2. Cristiano Ronaldo
3. John Cena
4. Ricardo Kaka
5. David Beckham
6. Michael Jordan
7. Sachin Tendulkar
8. Andres Iniesta
9. Kobe Bryant
10. Cesc Fàbregas

Sports Teams

1. FC Barcelona
2. Real Madrid C.F.
3. Manchester United
4. LA Lakers
5. Chelsea Football Club
6. Liverpool FC
7. A.C. Milan
8. Arsenal
9. Galatasaray
10. Fenerbahce

News:

News Outlets

1. CNN
2. Fox News
3. NPR
4. The Onion
5. The New York Times
6. Al Jazeera Channel
7. Yahoo! News
8. The Times of India
9. BBC World News
10. PBS

Get Email Subscribers From Google Search Results

Email marketers might be very happy to know that Google is testing an AdWords format that will allow Google searchers to subscribe to their emails directly from search results pages.

Would you take advantage of this ad style from Google? Let us know in the comments.

It’s not set in stone yet. This may or may not become widely available to all advertisers, but I’d be surprised if it didn’t open up to a wider set. Here’s what the ads look like:

Notice the “privacy” link. If you click that, it says, “When you submit this form, your email address will be sent to the advertiser.”

The testing has been going on for a little while, but from the sound of it, it’s expanded a bit. Alexia Tsotsis at TechCrunch shared the following statement from a Google spokesperson:

“We’re currently running a small experiment of a new ad format that helps users sign up more easily for email subscriptions or other free newsletters. This new ad format contains a box within the ad that displays a user’s Google email address (if logged in). If a user chooses to click ‘Subscribe to newsletter’ then the email address is sent to the advertiser directly, which is clearly disclosed within the ad itself.”

Some email marketing firms like VerticalResponse, Constant Contact and AWeber are already using the ads.

While social networking continues to rise, email and search are still the most popular online activities, and these new ads take advantage of both. Look at this graph Pew put out a few months back. You can see how social media is growing, but look at how search and email are doing.

Social is not killing email, by any means.

But, interestingly enough, there is still a social element to these ads as well – the +1 button. Really, you’re getting the best of all three worlds (OK, maybe not the “best”. it would probably be better if they also had Facebook like buttons, retweet buttons, and StumbleUpon butons alongside the +1, but Google+ is growing like a weed, and the +1 has ramifications for organic search ranking).

These ads could be the best search-driven tool for driving email sign-ups ever available. We’re talking prime real estate on Google SERPs to drive an opt-in path directly to people’s inboxes.

This will no doubt be an incredibly popular ad format for Google, and I can’t imagine them not making it widely available.

Really, it should be a great thing for the entire email marketing industry. It may never even occur to people searching for various topics that there are even email newsletters related to what they’re looking for. They simply may never have thought to look for one. These ads will put them directly in front of users’ faces. This could very well lead to a lot more content being consumed by email at a time when many have suggested that social networks would all but kill the channel (clearly this is not happening).

Think about it. Let’s say you are a huge fan of the Detroit Lions (full disclosure: this applies to me). What if you were searching for Lions-related content on Google, only to discover that there is an amazing newsletter about the team that you had no idea existed. You might want to sign up for that.

Do you use email marketing? Would you purchase these ads on Google? Let us know.

December 30, 2011

BuySafe Sues Google, Claiming Patent Violation, Favoritism in Search & More

Update: A Google spokesperson gave us the following statement: “We believe this suit is without merit, and will defend vigorously against it.”

Google is being sued by a company called BuySafe, which basically claims Google is ripping off its business, hurting its ability to compete, violating its patent, and is giving special treatment to certain brands in search ranking.

In the complaint (via Robin Wauters), BuySafe claims to be the “first company to address the concerns of online shoppers by providing third-party certification and transactional guarantees for Internet retailers.”

“Because there is significant consumer demand for such certification and guarantees, numerous Internet retailers have purchased BuySafe’s services and offer BuySafe’s transactional guarantees without cost to the consumers who make purchases on their websites,” the complaint goes on to say. “It is well-known within the Internet retailer community that BuySafe’s transaction guarantee services are patented.”

In October, Google launched a pilot program for Google Trusted Stores, providing a similar service.

“The Google Trusted Store badge is awarded to e-commerce sites that demonstrate a track record of on-time shipping and excellent customer service,” said Tom Fallows, a Group Product Manager on Google’s Commerce team. “When visiting a qualifying store, shoppers can hover over the Google Trusted Store badge and see metrics on the store’s shipping and customer service performance.”

Fallows happens to be a former executive for a BuySafe customer, which BuySafe alleges had “extensive discussions” with a few of BuySafe’s execs and learned “a great deal” about BuySafe’s business. Not only did Google recruit Fallows in 2010, but according to the complaint, Google has sought a joint venture or partnership with BuySafe as far back as 2006. The complaint alleges that “google exploited those discussions to learn about BuySafe’s business.”

On top of all of that, the complaint says, Google had employees visit BuySafe.com on numerous occasions to investigate its business, methods and systems, claiming to have discovered a “tremdenous amount of visits to buysafe.com from Google IP addresses since at least 2009.

BuySafe says the launch of Google’s Trusted Stores has already “drastically” slowed its annual growth rate. It also says:

In or around October 2011, Google told at least two customers of BuySafe that participants in Google’s Trusted Stores program will have an advantage with respect to the order in which Google’s search results are displayed and promoted within Google search results. Indeed, that advantage is so significant that few, if any, online merchants will have any choice but to use Google’s Trusted Stores program. Upon information and belief, Google has made the same representations to other BuySafe customers and potential customers.

BuySafe also says Google timed the launch of the Trusted Stores Pilot to “impede BuySafe’s effort to raise additional capital,” which it needs to expand its business.

This, of course, comes at a time when Google is drawing the watchful government eye with regards to its competitive practices.

We’ve reached out to Google for comment, and will update accordingly.

December 30, 2011

MySpace Tom: Google Doesn’t Want Google+ To Become A Cesspool Like MySpace

Tom Anderson, the guy who was everybody’s friend on MySpace (by default), has weighed in on the whole Google censoring profile photos discussion. He’s never had any trouble with his iconic profile pic.

Said discussion began this week when tech writer MG Siegler put up a blog post discussing Google deleting his photo (of himself flipping off the camera). We wrote about this, talking about the broader reasoning for Google doing this, which is search.).

Anderson, with his experience at MySpace has a perspective about the whole thing that those of us who have not worked for popular social networking services just don’t have, and he clearly thinks Google+ is succeeding where MySpace failed. Here’s an excerpt from his post (where he calls MySpace a cesspool):

All Google+ has done here is execute on its stated plan: removing offensive photos. This is Facebook’s plan, Twitter’s plan and MySpace’s before it. When you’re processing hundreds of thousands of photos a day (and in Facebook’s case, millions a day), it’s not easy to spot such material (even with algorithms). It’s not that Google+ has decided to do things differently, it’s just that they’re ahead of the game and doing things better. (As they are also doing with their spam detection and removal algorithms. I don’t know what you’re seeing, but they catch and hide 95% of the spam comments that appear on my posts.)

In any case, I would respectfully submit that we, the users of Google+ (and Facebook or Twitter) don’t need to see you flipping us off, nor do we need to see you naked, or displaying something else generally considered offensive. When a social network let’s that stuff slide, it turns into a cesspool that no one wants to visit… sorta like MySpace was.

It was very difficult @ MySpace to keep up with the “offensive” photos, and we had decent technology and many warm bodies on the case. (In fact, I’d guess the average person would be shocked how much time and resources we had to put into trying to stop that.) Your suggestion that you should get “warned” is too time-consuming. You want someone to check up on you and make sure you complied with the warning? The limited resources Google could use for something like that would be better spent giving human interaction to questions on how to use the service, technical troubles, etc. Things that seem simple are not as soon as you have 10s of millions of users.

And Google+’s user base is growing rapidly if reports and estimates are to be believed. In fact, Google says some upcoming announcements about user growth will shock people.

By the way, I’m glad to see Tom still capitalizing the S in MySpace.

December 29, 2011

Google Fined $65K For Defaming Search Suggestion

It would appear that France isn’t a big fan of Google’s automated search suggestions. The company has lost lawsuits related to the feature in that country on more than one occasion.

Now, a court has ordered Google France to pay €50,000 (about $65,000) over a search suggestion for a query for an insurance company called Lyonnaise de Garantie. Google apparently suggested the word “escroc” as an addition to the query. The word means crook. French news site The Local reports:

A Paris court held that the addition of the offending word “was offensive towards the company.” The court said that Google should be able to exercise “human control” over the functioning of words suggested by its search engine.

Google said the auto-complete functionality was not the “expression of a human thought”, an “opinion” or a “value judgement or criticism” but was the result of its automatic algorithm.

Google explains how the feature works in a help center article:

As you type, Google’s algorithm predicts and displays search queries based on other users’ search activities. In addition, if you’re signed in to your Google Account and have Web History enabled, you may see search queries from relevant searches that you’ve done in the past. All of the predicted queries that are shown in the drop-down list have been typed previously by Google users.

For certain queries, Google will show separate predictions for just the last few words. Below the word that you’re typing in the search box, you’ll see a smaller drop-down list containing predictions based only on the last words of your query. While each prediction shown in the drop-down list has been typed before by Google users, the combination of your primary text along with the completion may be unique.

Predicted queries are algorithmically determined based on a number of purely objective factors (including popularity of search terms) without human intervention. The autocomplete data is updated frequently to offer fresh and rising search queries.

Google does have what it refers to as a “narrow set of removal policies” in place for porn, violence, hate speech, and terms that are frequently used to find content that infringes upon copyrights.

The suggestion appears to have been removed.

December 29, 2011

Holiday Clicks, Revenue From Online Retail Search Ads Up 24% In The U.S.

We keep hearing about how huge online shopping has been in the U.S. this year. Earlier, we looked at a report from comScore indicating that online holiday spending is up to $35.billion in the U.S. for this holiday season (up to 12/25), 15% higher than the same period last year.

Apparently alcohol has played some role.

According to the Kenshoo U.S. retail index, U.S. retailers saw total clicks and online revenue generated by search advertising increase 24% year-over-year.

“These findings focus on the week before Christmas, a critical period for last minute shopping, as well as updated information for the entire holiday season to date,” a representative for Kenshoo tells WebProNews. “The dataset examined by Kenshoo represents more than 25 billion total search advertising impressions, nearly 300 million clicks and over 7 million online sales transactions.”

Online retail search advertising spend increased 39% year-over-year, according to Kenshoo’s findings.

For the holiday season to date, online retail revenue driven by search advertising increased 22% year-over-year. Online retail search advertising spend increased 30% year-over-year and online retail search advertising click-through-rate increased 28%.

“The pace of online shopping in the U.S. continued to surge all the way through Christmas this year,” said Kenshoo CMO Aaron Goldman. “By and large, retailers anticipated the demand and increased paid search budgets while consumers responded in kind with their clicks and their cash.”

Clearly digital is making a huge impact on multiple sides of the commerce cycle through the holidays. The comScore report found that purchases of digital content (music, movies, TV shows, apps, ebooks) was up significantly on Christmas Day, compared to years past.

December 28, 2011

Tag: Search