Google to remove I'm Feeling Lucky Button?

Google is testing few new changes in its new interface for the search engine. Inspired by Bing, Google is now removing "I'm feeling Lucky" button from the home page. Many users these days do not use "I'm feeling lucky" button. Considering that this is no longer used by many users, Google is considering removing the button. Another change according to various search engine news is that Google is making is to making prominent its search button, however most users might not find it useful in Instant mode.

The cached and similar buttons are also not used by many users. Therefore Google is planning to put these buttons in the Instant Preview box, so they are more difficult to find. These changes are been tested on Google Finland and if Google find interesting results from this test, Google might roll it out on global scale.

Google's New Page Design - Google Test

Google always try to give newer and better ways to search for users. There is a new test that is been carried out by Google. This Google test is available only to selected people. The test they are running is to improve the user interface and to improve the user experience.

The above screenshot shows the new look of the search result 'Twitter'. Each search results are separated and more distinguished. Google is also trying to refine your search results as much as possible to give you a better experience.

If you are looking for a job in certain area, you can refine your search for a particular location as well as for a function.
One more addition to this new interface will be addition of 'Remove Result'. If you like to omit a particular result from the list, you can choose 'Remove Result' so that you don’t need to see that result again in search result. This feature is already available if you are signed in, but Google is trying to make it better.

There are mixed views about this new change in the world of search engine news. One of the drawbacks of this new look is that it gives less information on the screen and this might bring in a need of more scrolling. These new changes in Google are only under test phase and hence there is no scheduled date when they'll be rolling out these changes globally.

Bing vs Google: Anticipation for 2012

Bing has seen a tremendous growth rate in its market share as compared to the giant Google, at least in US. This is seen as emerging of new search engine giant in coming years. The projection done by Mashable suggests that Bing might take over Google in 2012, at least in United States.

Google is still leading the market with more than 60% of market share. Bing, has however seen a rapid growth in these few months. Bing has captured about 30% of market share. In September, Google had controlled about 72% of US market and Bing represented about 10% of market share. In March 2011, Bing’s share rose to 14.3%.

Google has seen a drop in market share of about 3% each month, while Bing has seen a rise in market share of 5% each month. If the constant trajectory is plotted, it is assumed that in January 2012, Bing will overtake Google.

If this happens, there will be all new era in search engine news and updates because users, experts and companies will be looking out for Bing as a benchmark in terms of rankings and advertisings. This can be seen happening since Bing has a real momentum in gain in market share and people will soon see a new search engine giant!

Kayak Introduces Hotel Booking

Kayak launches a new and interesting feature for the customers to carry out their hotel bookings. They can now book their hotels directly on the website.

Kayak.com is a travel search site. They provide help to the customers all over the world to find the best travel choices easily by searching the information from hundreds of travel sites at once.

Kayak is now partnering with Travelocity to add a new feature of hotel booking on its website. It gives a direct option to book the hotels of your choice. It provides the customers a perfect comparison of various hotels at the destination of their choice with some basic information like check-in and out date along with rooms to be booked and number of people. This new feature saves time and provides all information at one particular site.

Earlier you had to search for particular hotels in required destination and then go through the website of that hotel for your bookings. But now Kayak search engine has made it much easier. Kayak's also adding the feature to its mobile applications for iPhone, iPad, Android, and BlackBerry and thus is getting flashed in search engine news.

Our users value that we give them choices on where to book, though some people would prefer to complete their purchases without leaving Kayak," CEO Steve Hafner said in a statement.

Blekko Changes Algorithm for its Search Engine Results

The upcoming search engine, Blekko is a better way to search the web by using slashtags. A slashtag is a tool to filter search results, rather than searching the entire web, a slashtag allows you to search just the sites you want searched.

As Google changed its algorithm for Content Farms which was emphasized in search engine news, similarly Blekko is changing its algorithm for low quality sites. Earlier they had banned about 20 websites but now they are banning 1.1 million websites from its search engines. They are blocking those particular websites which have less content and overflooded with ads.

“Google didn’t actually take anyone out, they just reshuffled the deck,” said Rich Skrenta, chief executive of Blekko. “Instead of demoting these sites to No. 5 or No. 7, we’re just throwing them out.”

Search engines have variety of ways to decide which sites are high-quality and which are low-quality. Google does it algorithmically whereas Blekko uses more involvement of peoples. Examples of the sites Blekko now bans: cheap-refrigerators.net, best-weddinggifts and Boston.diningguide.com.

Blekko is trying its best to debar those websites, which comprise keywords often used by the users so that the websites rank higher, in order to gain income when some user clicks on the ads present on the website.

Google Recipe Search Results

Today’s generation has the ability and interest in cooking variety of dishes. But a proper source was not available yet. But now Google has introduced a new feature for all food lovers. Google Recipe View helps you to find various recipes worldwide.

Earlier the various spices and ingredients were added according to their own judgment but it’s difficult for a new learner. But Google recipe view helps to solve this problem out. To get to Recipe View, click on the “Recipes” link on the left hand side of the page when searching for a recipe. You can constrict your search results and can find only recipes instead of other web results. Google recipe view guides you with exact quantity of ingredients, ratings and even displays with delicious recipe pictures. One can modify the search results to show recipes with your ingredients, cooking time and calorie count.

You can search of specific vegetarian recipes like Pulao, stuffing’s as well as non vegetarian recipes like Chicken Chilly or Chicken Roast and other dishes like Pizza, Pasta, soups etc.

Google Recipe View 

Thus the cooking lovers are very happy with the new features. They are now able to experiment with new recipes. They can invent new dishes and can find new updates on the latest search engine news.

Bing Bar for Internet Browsers

Recently Bing has introduced its new Bing bar for Internet Explorer 7 and higher versions. Bing bar runs on Windows XP SP3 and higher versions. Because of various options and user friendly interface it offers, Bing Bar is hot topic in search engine news and social media updates. Here are some of the features of this new Bing Bar.

 Bing News: Bing news to keep you updated with all the latest happening across the globe. This includes news from entertainment, business, politics, international and other streams.

Bing Maps: Helps you to get road maps from your location. YOu can also set a default start location for the map.

Bing Weather: Bing weather is a compact weather forecaster for your location. You can get weather map for your nearby locations, hourly weahter forecast for your location and if you want, you can also add multiple locations for Bing weather map.

Bing Mail: You can access multiple mails through this single tab. You can access gmail, hotmail and yahoo mail all through single bar.

  

Bing Search: A search bar helps to search whatever you want. it also keeps a track of your searches to optimise your search.

You can also stay updated with Facbook account. You can post comments, make 'likes', comment and do other various activities right from the Bing Bar.

With all these features, users may find this Bing toolbar very friendly. You can also download Bing bar for free. Bing's navigation through arrow keys, reduced number of clicks, user friendly interface are some of the features users may find useful.

Google Social Search Update

Recently Google announced an update for Google social search. This new update needs the user to get logged on to Google before he/she searches a term. Google has started making and is supposed to appear in the coming week.

When you search a term in Google, search results will also show content that are shared by your friends. For example, if you search the term 'climbing Kilimanjaro' and your friend has a blog about the same, then the search results will show the blogpost results from that friend.

This also includes updated from sites like Twitter and other social sites. Google will include all those updates that are public and are easy to crawl. However, this update excludes the sites like Facebook because status updates and other posts are not public.

This search engine news have however created some concern about publicising some content on these social sites. Many people would not like everybody to know what they have posted publicly. Google has however enabled an option for user. This will help user to control their Google profile and allow them to connect or disconnect the accounts that they want.

Bing Introduces Games in Search Results

Recently Bing has announced that ‘games search’ is available in Bing UK Search Engines. According to news Bing introduced nearly 46 games that are available to play. People are taking this search engine news on both positive and negative notes.

If you try to search a result in Bing Search for games like Klondike Solitaire, Carniball, Slingo, Solitaire, Bubble Town, Zuma's Revenge etc, an option of 'Play Now' is available along with other search results, so that you can play these games directly on Bing itself.

You can also sign in with your Windows Live or Facebook account to put up your scores and share it with others. You can thus start sharing your high score with other players or see your friends' game feeds. There are nearly 50 games that you can play online for now. However while playing a game, after a level or two; there are advertisement pop-ups, just like the ones that you can see on many online-streaming video sites.

Bing is expecting to wrest some market share from Google with this new option. Bing spokesperson, Tamsin Todd commented on this new feature saying that since Bing's inception, games had been their popular search term with users. Even though some people might not be very happy with this new gaming concept of Bing, finding it as a distraction for user, many young and old users will certainly find a reason to move toward Bing.

Google Accuses Bing for Cheap Imitations

                Google after its sting operation claims that Bing is cheating and copying its search results. Bing keeps an eye on what people search for on Google, and then they select the sites from Google’s results, and then use that information to improve Bing’s own search listings.

                 Apparently, Google’s engineers set up random results for certain terms like‘hiybprqag’‘mbzrxpgjys’ ‘indoswiftjobinproduction’. Among them was ‘hiybprqag’, a gibberish word pointing to a Los Angeles theater seating plan. Google then observed that their results started appearing in Bing within few weeks.

            Approximately at the end of May, Google observed that Bing was performing quite good returning the identical sites that Google would list, when someone would enter unusual misspellings. Google observed it in some cases like ‘torsoraphy’.

             As Google claims all this charges on Bing, Bing doesn't deny this.

The Bing engineering team has been working hard over the past few years to give the best search results which are relevant as well as of good quality for the users. They even add that this is their chief objective which they look in on daily basis.

             Bing uses over 1,000 different signals and features in the ranking algorithm. A small piece of that is click stream data which they collect from some of their customers, who keep on sharing mysterious data as they follow the web in order to help us show improvements in our search results.

              Although Google and Bing have been in cold war for so many years, by making claims in its blog Google is now in a war front with Bing. Due to this war Google and Bing are the highlights of search engine news.

Foodly: A Search Engine and Social Network for Food Lovers

Foodly  is a search engine and a social network for recipes lovers. Foodly stands for Food I Love You and was launched by two Yahoo! alums - Andrea Cutright and Hillary Mickell. Foodly shortly after its launched, were in discussions all over the search engine news and stories. According to LA Times, Foodly has also picked $5 million of investments from Index venture.

Foodly boasts to be the most advanced recipe search engine in the world. The unique feature of searching a recipe without particular ingredients makes it stand aprat from other websites like Allrecipes.com or Yelp. Moreover, it is added with heavy social network aspect like Facebook. Users can like recipes of Foodly and check out with their friends and their dishes. Also a user can plan a menu and invite their friends for their recipe. You can do this by creating an event on the Facebook page.

The interface of Foodly is beautiful. When you search a recipe, it gives options to save and like that recipe. You can also see various other details like cooking time, ingredients and the source of the recipe. You also have an option to rate a recipe you like.

Andrea Cutright and Hillary Mickell are happy and are looking forward for this site. Andrea says in Foodly Blog - We are extremely proud to bring this social aspect of cooking to our online lives. Because food — like life — is even better when shared.