Search engine Yahoo has released its results for the top 10 search terms of 2011.

Image via CrunchBase

This year, the most popular search were dominated by the usual news stories, celebrities and natural disasters, but there was also one big surprise. A gadget (see slideshow) topped Yahoo’s list of the top ten most-searched terms, a rare occurrence, according to Yahoo.

“In the 11 years that Yahoo! has compiled its annual list of top searches, PlayStation 2 (2001 and 2002) is the only other device to have captured the top slot,” Yahoo wrote in a post accompanying the list. “This year, [a gadget again] led the queries, bypassing a reality TV divorcee and America’s most wanted terrorist.”

Rival search engine Bing, which is owned by Microsoft, recently released its own year-end recap of the most-searched gadgets. Interestingly, the gadget that lords over Yahoo’s list appears in fourth place on Bing’s list.

As part of the company’s 2011 year in review, Yahoo has also put together a compilation video of the year’s most inspiring moments, a list of the 10 worst trends of the past 12 months, and much more. Visit Yahoo to see all these year-end goodies.

• iPhone

• Casey Anthony

• Kim Kardashian

• Katy Perry

• Jennifer Lopez

• Lindsay Lohan

• American Idol

• Jennifer Aniston

• Japan Earthquake

• Osama Bin Laden

Related articles

• iPhone more searched than Kardashian on Yahoo in 2011 (news.cnet.com)

Image via CrunchBase

Microsoft and Mozilla have teamed up to create a new browsing option: A version of the popular Firefox browser will be available for download with Bing as the integrated search engine.

Mozilla announced the partnership in a blog post, describing the new browser as “a customized version of Firefox that sets Bing as the default search engine in the search box and AwesomeBar and makes Bing.com the default home page.”

The Bing team, in a blog post, said they are “excited to make it even easier for members of the Mozilla Firefox community to use Bing.” Members of the Mozilla Firefox community who do wish to use Bing can download it here, at firefoxwithbing.com

This isn’t the first collaboration between Microsoft and Mozilla. In October 2010 Firefox 4 launched with new search bar options for users who preferred to search the web using an engine other than Google; Microsoft’s Bing, a little over a year old at that point, was one of those options, along with Yahoo’s search, Amazon product search, Wikipedia and eBay.

Though Bing-loving Firefox users had been able to download a Bing Add-On for Firefox to make the Microsoft product their default search engine, or reconfigure the default search engine via Firefox’s configuration settings, this new, separate browser makes it much, much easier to use Bing as the default search on Firefox.

Bing was introduced by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in July 2009, and ever since it has done nothing but lose $5.5 billion for the company, with some reports showing Bing now losing one billion dollars per quarter. Though Bing is the default search engine on BlackBerry phones, Windows Phones and on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (still the most used browser in the world by a huge margin even as its market share falls to competitors like Firefox and Google Chrome), it has still yet to make a dent in the search engine market; it sits at about 4 percent global usage, trailing behind Google, Yahoo and China’s Baidu.

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Related articles

• Offering a Customized Firefox Experience for Bing Users (mozilla.com)
• That’s just wrong: Mozilla releases Firefox with Bing (slashgear.com)

Image via CrunchBase

Google announced on Friday that Google+ users will soon begin to see Google+ posts in their Google Search results.

This feature is activated only when you’re signed in to your Google Account, according Product Manager Sagar Kamdar, who posted the announcement on the Google Search Blog.

When you’re searching Google for, say, a restaurant, you might see that some results include content shared publicly by members of your Google+ Circles.

Kamdar detailed the new tool thus:

Let’s say I’m logged into my Google Account, and I search on Google for [uncle zhou queens]. I’ve heard a lot of great things about this restaurant, and we’re visiting NYC soon, so we want to figure out all the best eats in town. I also happen to have Andrew Hyatt in one of my Google+ circles. Oh, and it turns out he just made a public post on his Google+ account about Uncle Zhou in Queens [...] Now not only do I get some great reviews on the web, I get a review from a friend about a restaurant with recommendations about what dishes to order.

Check out an example of what Google+ content looks like when attached to a Google Search result:

This new feature will roll out to Google+ users “over the coming days,” wrote Kamdar, noting also that private Google+ posts will not appear in Google Search.

Google plans to further integrate its social network into search results by reintroducing Realtime Search, a recently axed feature that drew heavily from posts on Twitter. “Our vision is to have google.com/realtime include Google+ information along with other realtime data from a variety of sources,” a Google rep said in July, shortly after the search tool disappeared.

Back in February, Google updated its Social Search feature to enrich Search results with content from Google Account users’ friends on Blogger, YouTube, Quora, Flickr, Google Reader, Twitter and others social sites. This was prior to the launch of Google+, and some wondered at the time about the usefulness of placing content from social networks into search results.

The recent addition of Google+ content won’t fundamentally change Social Search. As explained by Search Engine Land:

Google Social Search continues to operate as before. Things shared socially at places like Twitter and Facebook by those you’re connected with may appear with annotations and rank better in results. [...] The main difference is, as Google’s post says, is that things you share on Google+ itself are now part of the mix.

Google+ has grown at an astonishing rate since its launch in late June. An August study released by comScore found Google+ to be the fastest-growing social network ever. Indeed, at the time of the study, Google+ had amassed 25 million members.

And Google isn’t resting on its laurels when it comes to growing the site. Thursday saw the launch of Google+ Games, a social gaming network that includes titles like ‘Angry Birds‘ and ‘Bejeweled.’ Among the list of developers jumping on board with Google+Games was Zynga, Facebook’s gaming cash cow.

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Google+ added to Google Social Search (onecoolsitebloggingtips.com)
• Google Adds Google+ Posts to Social Search (siliconfilter.com)
• Google+ Public Posts Now Appear In Social Search (slashgear.com)
• Google+ Public Posts Coming To Google’s Social Search Results (searchengineland.com)

Image via CrunchBase

Google Inc. has bought about 1,000 pending and issued patents from IBM Corp. in its quest to shore up its defenses against suits by other technology companies, according to documents filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Google and IBM spokesmen wouldn’t comment Friday on the purchase.

The patent transfers were recorded two weeks ago and cover a range of technologies, many of which have little to do with Google’s Internet search and advertising business. One covers ways of automatically adjusting a clock, another deals with surface treatments for electrical contacts.

But even patents that have little do with Google’s business can be useful ammunition in the hyper-litigious technology world.

If it’s sued over patents by a company whose business relies on technologies covered by Google’s patents, Google can file a retaliatory lawsuit.

Phone makers that use Google Inc.’s Android software are being sued by Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. As a young company, Google has few patents of its own to counter with.

Kent Walker, Google’s general counsel, wrote in a blog post in April that the explosion in patent litigation threatens to stifle innovation.

“But as things stand today, one of a company’s best defenses against this kind of litigation is (ironically) to have a formidable patent portfolio, as this helps maintain your freedom to develop new products and services,” Walker wrote.

Earlier this month, Google participated in an auction for a collection of 6,000 patents from Nortel, a bankrupt Canadian maker of telecommunications equipment. It was outbid by a consortium including Apple that paid $4.5 billion.

In the past year, Google has also bought patents from Verizon Communications Inc. and Motorola Inc.

The patent sale was first reported by the blog SEO by the Sea, which follows Google.

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Related articles

• IBM Sells 1,000+ Patents to Google (nyconvergence.com)
• Google buys about 1,000 IBM patents (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Patents: Google buys 1,000 of them from IBM (csmonitor.com)
• Google buys about 1,000 IBM patents (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Google buys about 1,000 IBM patents (seattlepi.com)
• Google buys about 1,000 IBM patents (sfgate.com)

It’s only been a few weeks since the world’s web users woke up to discover a big black bar at the top of their Google search results (introduced when Google+ was launched).

Now, some users of Google search might start seeing something else close to the top of the world’s most famous home page.

The warning message reads:

Your computer appears to be infected.
It appears that your computer is infected with software that intercepts your connection to Google and other sites. Learn how to fix this.

At first glance, you might be worried when you see this message and think you could be on the receiving end of a fake anti-virus attack.

After all, haven’t you been warned hundreds of times in the past to trust the anti-virus software you installed on your computer, not unexpected messages that pop up on websites you visit?

All is explained in a Google blog post, however.

Damian Menscher, a security engineer at Google, describes how he identified that infected computers were sending search traffic through proxies to the search engine. The intention of the cybercriminals behind the scheme was to modify the search results served up by Google to point to money-making pay-per-click sites instead.

In all, Google estimates that a couple of million Windows PCs may be affected around the world by the strain of malware they are hoping to warn users about. The firm says that it’s already been able to successfully warn “hundreds of thousands of users”.

Fortunately, although Google does not scan your hard drive when you search for things via google.com, it can detect the unique traffic signature from visiting infected PCs and make a pretty informed guess about your computer’s health in regard to this malware strain.

Google is hoping that the warning message will encourage users to update their anti-virus software, scan their computers and become more conscious of security issues.

I think what Google is doing should be applauded – anything which warns computer users about genuine malware threats has to be a good thing.

But, sadly and inevitably, there is the potential for cybercriminals to mimic the Google warning and direct users to dangerous downloads and scams. Of course, that isn’t a reason why Google shouldn’t warn their users, when it believes it has identified a security problem.

The danger is that many people may know what their own anti-virus software looks like when it displays a warning, but may be less familiar with how the Google warning presents itself, and where it links to.

Furthermore, Google points users to visit one of its webpages for further advice on how to fix the problem.

So, always be careful about what you search for, and the links you click on when trying to find anti-virus software.

No-one should be fooled into believing that Google’s initiative is any substitute for regular anti-virus software and sensible security practices. Google is attempting to alleviate a very specific malware issue that communicates with its infrastructure.

Google, you get my thumbs up for an imaginative idea that could help with a small part of the malware problem.

Source :- http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com

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• Google: ‘Your computer appears to be infected’ (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)
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• Google Warns Searchers Of Windows Malware Infection (informationweek.com)
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Image via CrunchBase

Google has taken down over 11 million sites it has deemed “spammy.”

According to The Register, the .co.cc subdomain, owned independently by a Korean company, is not an authorized second-level domain (such as .co.uk). Google classified it as a “freehost,” meaning that it allows users to register single sites for free.

Oliver Fisher, a member of the Google Anti-Malware Team, wrote a post on the search engine‘s Online Security Blog to explain the massive take-down.

“Google’s automated malware scanning systems detect sites that distribute malware,” said Fisher. “To help protect users we recently modified those systems to identify bulk subdomain services which are being abused. In some severe cases our systems may now flag the whole bulk domain.”

The Register notes that a recent report showed that .cc had twice as many phishing attacks as any other domain extension, especially because of the .co.cc subdomain. The company that owns .co.cc says it has 11,383,746 registered domains.

As Search Engine Land points out, Google wiped out content from a freehost before. For example, the search engine banned a Polish freehost due to a large volume of spam.

Google’s been vigilant about cutting down on spam since its early days, when employees had to manually search for porn sites to filter them out of results. Recently, the site introduced a series of changes to further cut down on spam and content farms.

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Google Search police strike again, send ‘cc.co’ domains into oblivion (digitaltrends.com)
• Google dumps all 11+ million .co.cc sites from its results (go.theregister.com)
• Google Delists All CO.CC Domains From Index (searchengineland.com)
• Google blocks .co.cc, attackers are now using .co.tv (sucuri.net)
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Image via CrunchBase

Google has released a feature that is supposed to help users manage the information that shows up about them on the web.

Called “Me on the Web,” the tool is available on the Google Dashboard.

“Your online identity is determined not only by what you post, but also by what others post about you — whether a mention in a blog post, a photo tag or a reply to a public status update,” Google explained in a blog post. “When someone searches for your name on a search engine like Google, the results that appear are a combination of information you’ve posted and information published by others.”

Only users with a Google Profile can use this tool, which displays links from a user’s profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It also let users set up search alerts for themselves, though the section seems to offer only links to how-to articles about steps you can take to control third-party information about you. The tool won’t, for example, actually let you remove an embarrassing article about yourself that appears in your search results.

Google writes of the Google profile:

With a Google profile, you can manage the information–such as your bio, contact details, and other information about you–that people see. You can also link to other sites about you or created by you. For example, you can link to your blog, online photos in Picasa, and other profiles such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

At this point, however, Google’s tool seems more a push for the site to get in on the social game by helping the company manage what it knows about your online connections, rather than letting you actually control your online identity.

See the feature below:

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Google’s “Me On The Web” Pushes Google Profiles – Take That, Facebook? (searchengineland.com)
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• Google Launches “Me on the Web” to Help You Manage Your Online Identity (readwriteweb.com)
• Google launches Me On The Web, to help monitor online identity (textually.org)
• Google helps you manage your online identity, justify those vanity Alerts (engadget.com)
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Image via CrunchBase

In a media event in San Francisco, Google announced new features including Voice Search, Search by Image, and Instant Pages. Interestingly, these features will only be available through the Chrome or Firefox browsers by using the appropriate plugin.

Voice Search
This feature, quite popular on mobile phones, has finally hit the desktop version. Currently, it is only supported by Google Chrome 11 or higher for obvious reason. Initially, it will only support the English language. Oh yes, it does require a mic.

Apart from the endless fun of throwing any weird question at your computer, this feature can actually be useful. Not just useful, but very useful – if you are not comfortable with hard-to-spell words (like me). It will also come handy when you can’t type a query because your hands are full, say while having lunch. All this hinges on the assumption that it will actually understand what you’re trying to say.

Search by Image
Google has been providing image results on text queries, but now it also supports the converse. If you are curious about an image you happen to have on the computer, just drag it into the search box on (http://images.google.com Alt text: Search by Image) images.google.com. Google’s computer vision techniques will then match your image to other images in the index and provide a “best guess” text description of the query, as well as similar images. This can also be done by pasting the image URL in the search box.

Instant Pages
This feature will help users get to their desired search results faster. According to Google, when you perform a search, it will pre-render certain web pages in the search result that are most likely to be visited by you. The company is currently building this feature into Chrome. Instant Pages is expected to go beta later this week.

These added features are promising and look likely to be embraced by users in short order. However, Google has turned a blind eye to other popular browsers. Is it possible that these features have more to do with Chrome’s market share than to providing more convenience to users?

Source :- http://www.techtree.com

Related articles

• Google Unveils Instant Pages, More (seochat.com)
• Google Adds Voice Search, Visual Search and Results Prerendering (mt-soft.com.ar)
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Original Post at mashable . Author – Jason Taylor

Jason Taylor is the vice president of platform strategy at Usablenet. Usablenet’s platform powers the mobile sites of 20% of the Fortune 1000, including Estée Lauder, Hilton, Delta, Victoria’s Secret, FedEx, ASOS and others. Follow @Usablenet on Twitter.

Google’s Eric Schmidt recently noted that mobile search is growing much faster than desktop search. As mobile increasingly becomes a primary gateway to the Internet, it is crucial for companies to incorporate forward-thinking SEO practices into their mobile strategies to ensure their mobile sites are easily detected by search engines and found by consumers.

More than 60% of consumers search for brands from mobile devices before purchasing, and another 49% of mobile searchers made a mobile purchase in the past six months. Businesses must view mobile as a significant piece of their overall marketing campaigns that can drive substantial traffic and increase revenue.

Here are some high level SEO strategies that brands can implement into their overall mobile efforts to ensure they are getting maximum visibility.

1. Develop a Device Agnostic Approach

Search engines incorporate various criteria in mobile browsers to determine page rank. These factors include overall site performance, usability, download speed and screen rendering. A fully optimized mobile site that extends all functionality and key content from a website will rank higher in search results than a website that has simply been reformatted for a smaller screen.

For example, simply transcoding a webpage through the use of a cookie-cutter template will strip it of key content, leading to incomplete pages and decreased overall usability. Difficult navigation and broken pages will result in a lower page rank and a negative user experience that discourages repeat visits.

The type of devices that consumers use to search the mobile web also factors into site ranking. Different mobile web browsers render pages in different ways, which is why it is essential for brands to develop a device agnostic mobile strategy that supports the wide variety of available mobile operating systems.

For example, Staples’ mobile site was developed to support all web-enabled devices. To decrease bounce rate (when a user views only one page on a site, but then leaves), brands’ mobile sites must automatically recognize the consumer’s device as it loads, and render the page accordingly to ensure a view that is best optimized for the user’s particular screen.

2. Leverage Traditional SEO Practices on a New Platform

Brands will ensure that their site stands out in a crowded market by translating traditional web SEO practices to mobile. Common SEO tactics that should be incorporated into all mobile sites include:

• Appropriate Keywords in Headlines and Text: Consumers use mobile for more focused and task-oriented searches (i.e. for a specific location or product). This is different from how most people search from a desktop computer. By understanding consumer behavior, brands can anticipate queries and incorporate key search terms into page text, increasing detection from search engines.
• Relevant Page Titles and Accurate Page Descriptions: Page titles are one of the first factors mobile browsers use to determine where a page will show in results. Similar to traditional SEO, it is important that these titles reflect the terms that people use to search, increasing the likelihood that the site will appear relevant and receive better page rankings.
• Outbound Links: Despite less real estate associated with mobile screens, incorporating outbound links to relevant sources provides a more complete user experience and associates the mobile site with other trusted brands.
• Standard Coding: The wide variety of operating systems supported by mobile makes it extremely important for brands to follow valid HTML coding. Browsers parse through HTML code to determine search relevance. Any errors or invalid coding will result in broken pages and a lower ranking. Sites built in accordance to standards will ensure a consistent experience across all devices.

3. Incorporate Linking and Digital Newsletters

More than 20% of email marketing is read from mobile phones, which is why it is crucial for companies to test and support all incoming links from digital newsletters and other promotional materials. But how can brands make sure that their linking practices translate to mobile? In practical terms, these links provide one fully integrated experience while also allowing brands to cast a wider net by creating a connected presence across the mobile web.

Further, effective traffic driving tools such as email newsletters and social media allow consumers to share links faster than ever before. Links that are not tested or properly maintained will lead to a loss of traffic from redirects to the mobile site. Additionally, these links are important for a mobile site because they can be used by all Internet-enabled phones, including those with limited or no JavaScript support.

For example, Staples incorporates multiple links in its digital newsletters that lead consumers to different product pages or special offers on its mobile site. Consumers who click on “Hot Deals” are directed to the Staples homepage, which is different from users who click links for product promotions which lead directly to the specific product pages.

The Future of Mobile Search

The rapid consumer adoption rate of smartphones, coupled with increasing advancements in mobile technology, means that mobile SEO is a powerful tool to move the needle on mobile traffic. Next-generation coding languages like HTML5 can be incorporated into mobile SEO practices to enhance a mobile site’s usability and performance, resulting in higher page rankings in search engines.

Advancements in location-based search results and integrated real-time social search results will further impact how consumers use mobile search and how browsers position results. In order to increase traffic to mobile pages and drive revenue, it is essential for brands to think strategically about how to leverage common mobile SEO practices in order to increase brand loyalty and maximize traffic.

Disclosure: Staples is a client of the author’s company.

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Social Search a feature provided by Google combines regular search results with publicly available data of friends- friends would generally mean Google contacts, Google talk and other networks from Google account.        

This feature was recently subjected to lot of controversy when Facebook a stiff competitor used a PR firm to release negative stories about Social Search to the press. Facebook claims that Google has been using Facebook data to run its service without Facebook’s permission.

Google has chosen to remain quiet on this issue and has mentioned only about Twitter in its blog post. Social Search shall be available in 19 more languages from next week, with more languages on the way. Google may probably not be allowed to enter facebook users communication as Facebook’s internal search engine Bing , from Microsoft, is the rival to Google search engine.

While the web is growing fast as a tool to search information about anything, Google will definitely grab its share from other companies. As Google is the search engine powerhouse and as people trust Google’s results this is definitely a smart move from Google’s perspective.

Source :- http://www.clickindia.com

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