Jun 22, 2011

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.

Jun 6, 2011

Schema.org - Google, Bing & Yahoo Joins for Content Markup

Schema.org is a joint effort taken by search engine giants Google, Bing and Yahoo! to improve search results. Many sites about search engine news and updates are talking about this hot topic trending in. The main reason for the rivals joining hands is to create a common set of HTML tags so that search engines can identify, crawl and index websites in same way.
Schema.org provides set of collection from different streams so that webmasters can use to mark their pages in such a way that it can be understood by these search engines. The complete hierarchy for various Schema items contains different categories in which you can add different tags of the website according to relevance (like book, movie, author, person, place etc.)
Marking up the content of the website as much as possible can help search engines to use your information and to present your page to users in most useful way. It is stated in Schema FAQs that one should markup the content which is visible to visitors of the website.

You can learn more about Schema by checking Schema Getting Started Guide or check the FAQs for more information.

Jun 2, 2011

Google Architecture

Google Search Engine works upon its own algorithm to present the results for every search query. The algorithms are kept secret but there are certain rules which are followed and need to be understood keeping the website optimization in view. Following is a generalized working of Google’s search engine.


Google Architecture: Web crawling is carried out by several distributed crawlers.




Indexing is done in three fundamental steps.

1. Parsing
2. Indexing documents into Barrels
3. Sorting

Then the ranking system comes into play. Google maintains much more information than any other typical search engines like Yahoo & Bing. Every hit list contains position, font and capitalization info. Google’s ranking system is designed such that no particular factor is given too much focus. For a single word query google will look at the hit list for that keyword. The hits are considered as different types (title, anchor, URL, plain text large font, plain text small font….) where each has its own type-weight.

Google is successful in giving the most relevant results for different search queries because of such control measures and filter processes. So according to Google search engine news, keep it simple and original to rank better in their search results.


May 24, 2011

Google Buys Sparkbuy

Google has recently made an acquisition recently with a shopping website Sparkbuy. Sparkbuy is a product comparison and shopping search engine. Even though there is no such official announcements from Google, Sparkbuy have updated this acquisition on their website. They have also twitted about this.


It is said that Google will use the expertise and technology to make Google shopping results more efficient and user friendly. The Sparkbuy team will be joining Google’s Kirkland, WA office.
Sparkbuy was founded by Dan Shapiro in 2010 and the company successfully raised about 1 million USD for their development and comparison software. Any search engine news has not yet disclosed the amount of this deal still now.

The service of Sparkbuy is now closed, as a result of acquisition.

May 10, 2011

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.

Apr 18, 2011

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!


Apr 15, 2011

Google Introduces +1 Button


Well we all know about what the like option means. This like option can be viewed from various sites like twitter, youtube videos, blogs etc. Whichever post or any kind of stuff if you like it then you can go the like option. So now all search engines news have emphasized in their blogs about his latest news of +1 button.

Google has updates its Google Social Search so that you can get the most relevant answers to your search queries. You can also get even more information from the people that matter to you more, whether they’re publishing on YouTube, Flickr or their own blog or website. You will get all mixed results based on their relevance. So that is why Google introduced +1 button so you can get to know the recommendations from your friends and from other contacts related to your search.

But this +1 option can be used only if you have a Google profile. You can view all your +1's at one particular place when you use your profile, and delete some which you no longer want to recommend. To see +1’s in your Google search results you’ll need to be logged into your Google Account.

This +1 option has increased the traffic to a particular website both quality and quantity wise. But Google hasn't stopped only on this. They are working on the button so that you can recommend a particular page. We just hope that Google very soon makes search results more personal, interesting and relevant using such +1 option.