Google Now Indexing Audio Files
Google announced Wednesday the 17th that their Audio Indexing service, “GAudi” is now available for public beta in Google labs. As of now the results are limited to political speeches on YouTube, but soon their results set will be expanded.For such a long time video itself has been considered outside the bounds of search engine optimization, but now Google is attempting to break through this ceiling.
This presents an entire new landscape of opportunities for search engine marketers.
Get the entire scoop straight from Google.
Google Steals Chrome Logo From Pokemon
As I live and breath, Google stole the idea for the Chrome logo right from Pokemon! Ok, maybe I don’t have my facts straight, but you can’t deny there are some major similarities.
Actually, I jk about the Pokemon inspiration, but in all honesty, the Google Chrome logo is taken from an open source browser project called “Chromium”. It even says on the Chromium website, “Google Chrome is built with open source code from Chromium.”
Now Google took more then just Chromium’s source code, they snagged their logo as well. They just added their wack Google colors. Below is Chromium’s logo.
Chromium
Google Knols - Open to the Public
Today Google opened to the public a Wikipedia like service called Google Knols.
Google Knols is an online, collaborative authoriship platform (much like Wikipedia), but with a social side. The idea is to encourage people to write authoriative articles about topics they know about, while the Knols community comments, rates, reviews and in come cases, adds to the article.
The Difference Between Knolls and Wikipedia?
Wikipedia is setup like an encyclopedia. The content is trustworth, and tries to rely on facts - not opinions or viewpoints. Google Knols is exactly the opposite. Knols encourages multiple articles on the same topic, and embraces different viewpoints and opinions. Therefore the structure of these two web sites is remarkably different. Wikipedia collects and consolidates the authority of the Read the rest of this entry »
Google Announces they Crawl Flash
A few days ago, Google officially announced they can crawl flash files. Here’s is what they said,
“Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. Recently, we’ve improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe’s Flash Player technology.
In the past, web designers faced challenges if they chose to develop a site in Flash because the content they included was not indexable by search engines. They needed to make extra effort to ensure that their content was also presented in another way that search engines could find.
Now that we’ve launched our Flash indexing algorithm, web designers can expect improved visibility of their published Flash content, and you can expect to see better search results and snippets. There’s more info on the Webmaster Central blog about the Searchable SWF integration.”
Now this revelation is something I already posted about back in may (see post), but I suspect the general public wasn’t catching on. So Google now makes an official announcement. I guess the days of “flash web sites can’t be crawled” are gone. I guess that’s a good thing. Now be prepared for spammy .SWF’s in the results pages for a while.
Social Media in SERPS Thanks to Universal Search?
I’m making a prediction. I’m predicting that Google has developed their “Friends Connect” service with the intention of using social media to change the search engine results pages (SERPS) as we know it!
I’m seeing at least two major changes.
1) Universal Search meets Social Media
The idea of universal search (the inclusion of different forms of media to Google’s search engine results pages) will soon include product recommendations based on what your friends think of the product. For example, say you’re searching for “coffee pots”, and a friend on Facebook purchased a coffee pot recently and wrote a review on telling how much they loved it. This review shows up in the SERPS with a little blurb like, “See what your friends had to say about ‘coffee pots’” and right there on the results page is your friends review.
2) Personalized Search will change.
Google is already tracking most peoples web history. It influences the way results are displayed for individuals based on past searching/surfing habits. Now image that your searching on a search term like, “king”… Google doesn’t know if you’re looking for a definition of the word, a list of past kings, the king of the jungle, “king of queens” television show, etc. Now if you’ve never searched for a term like this, Google can’t use your web history to help determine results. BUT what if Google knew who your friends were? What if Google could use social data to determine that you have 8 friends who are major Elvis lovers? Google would then assume that when you search for “king”, you might actually be looking for information about Elvis, and tailor your search results accordingly.
So there you have it. Two ways I predict social media will change the face of search results and in term search engine marketing.
Local Results Search Forms in SERPS
Sometimes I feel that Google is doing everything they can to fill their SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) with everything BUT natural search results.
I’ve been watching with concern as Google’ s Universal Search Results continues to bury the natural listings under paid listings, news clips, images, YouTube video’s, local listings, product listings, sitelinks, internal site search and now today I find yet another “feature” sneak out into the wild - Read the rest of this entry »
Facebook Shoots Down Google
I’m sad to say that all the excitement I had built up around Friday’s “Friend Connect” post is pretty much gone. I learned today that Facebook is refusing to let Google access their data for the future Friend Connect service.
“We’re disappointed that Facebook disabled their users’ ability to use Friend Connect with their Facebook friends,” a Google spokesman told Wired.com.
Facebook is citing privacy concerns, but from what I understand it’s simply that Facebook doesn’t want to build the privacy controls into their API. Therefore Google has no way of meeting the privacy “standards” that Facebook requires.
Googles Invention of the First Laser
I think Google is stretching their logo creativity when trying to honor the, “invention of the first laser”. Looks more like a Captcha to me.
