Legal Search Marketing

Archive for the ‘Google Search Engine’ Category

It’s Pac Man’s 30th Anniversary and Google is celebrating by putting a free version of the  console classic on their homepage.

Instead of search, hit the “Insert Coin” button and drive everyone in the office nuts, with the clanging bells of 1980′s synth yore.

Pac Man was originally built by Japanese firm Namco and spawned the unauthorized spin off, Ms. Pac Man, a licensed television show and countless items of branded paraphernalia.

Pac Man was the start of everything and I was 12 when it came out and I still like it! Im glad Google honored it.

Google has updated the search engine and they now have the search tools on the left side, making it easier to refine your search. You can do a search and then switch to the News or Image category.  Then you can also refine your search to see results for different time periods, like you can only see results for the past 24 hours.  Take a look at the video below for more info.

FROM GOOGLE BLOG

Using Google today, you may have noticed that something feels slightly different — the look and feel of our search results have changed! Today’s metamorphosis responds to the increasing richness of the web and the increasing power of search — revealing search tools on the left and updating the visual look and feel throughout. While we are constantly rolling out small changes and updates, today’s changes showcase the latest evolutions in our search technology, making it easier than ever to find exactly what you’re looking for.

What’s new and what’s changed?
We’ve added contextually relevant, left-hand navigation to the page. This new side panel highlights the most relevant search tools and refinements for your query. Over the past three years, we’ve launched Universal Search, the Search Options panel and Google Squared, and it’s those three technologies that power the left-hand panel.

Universal Search helps you find the most relevant types of results for your search. The top section of the new left-hand panel builds on Universal Search by suggesting the most relevant genres of results for your query and letting you seamlessly switch to these different types of results. The “Everything” option remains our essential search experience with different types of results integrated into the main results, but now you can also easily switch to just the particular type of results you are looking for.

Our expandable Search Options panel launched last spring brought many rich slice-and-dice tools to search. The new left-hand navigation showcases these tools and enables you to get a different view of your results. Perhaps you’d like to see images from each of the results or just the newest information? These options are all on the left, and our technology will suggest the tools that are most relevant and helpful to your query.

Google Squared (available on Google Labs) helps you find and compare entities. Our “Something different” feature builds on the technology in Google Squared to find other entities that are related to your query, so you can easily explore not only the results for your current query but other related topics.

In addition to the left-hand side changes, we’ve updated our look and feel in terms of our color palette and our logo. These changes are slight, keeping our page minimalist and whimsical, but make our overall look more modern.

The new design refreshes and streamlines the look, feel and functionality of Google, making it easier to pinpoint what you’re looking for. It’s powerful, yet simple. Today’s changes are the latest in our continuing efforts to evolve and improve Google. We’ve been testing these changes with users over the past few months, and what we’re launching today reflects the feedback we’ve received.. We want to ensure that the Google you use today is better than the one you used yesterday, and these latest changes open up many possibilities for future features and enhancements.

VIDEO FROM GOOGLE:

Google’s Matt Cutts just posted a video on YouTube answering the question, “how many search algorithm changes were made in 2009?” In response to that question, Matt said Google likely makes a change per day to the search algorithm. They don’t necessarily release those changes each day, but they will release them in batches. But overall, he hopes to average at least one change per day to the algorithm. He said in 2009, they probably had between 350 to 400 or so changed to the search algorithm.

I’m sure many of these are minor tweaks but it shows that the Google search algorithm is ever changing.

Google launched a new social effort today called Google Buzz.
If you're immediate reaction is, "Wait, doesn't Yahoo! already have a
product named Buzz?" Then you'd be correct. But Google didn't acquire Yahoo! Buzz. Nor has Yahoo! Buzz gone defunct and Google felt ok about picking it up as a name.

The two products are alike in name and the fact that they're social. But that's about it.

Google Buzz lets you be social from Gmail. You can update your
status there and share photos. (Yahoo! Buzz is more akin to social
bookmarking and trending topics.)

Who do you share Google Buzz with? Gmail contacts, for one, but you
can also send your updates to Twitter as well. Your Gmail contacts can
respond to your updates, using the @ symbol much like Twitter and now
Facebook use. Your Gmail inbox will be used to push notifications to
Buzz users.

Buzz is rolling out, so it may take a few days before you get access. In the meantime, check out this vid to see how it works:

Google posted a very strong Q4, given the recession, with $6.67
billion in revenues. This beats financial analyst general consensus
estimates. Here are some top-level highlights from the earnings release:

Revenues – Google reported revenues of
$6.67 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009, representing a 17%
increase over fourth quarter 2008 revenues of $5.70 billion.

Google Sites Revenues – Google-owned sites
generated revenues of $4.42 billion, or 66% of total revenues, in the
fourth quarter of 2009. This represents a 16% increase over fourth
quarter 2008 revenues of $3.81 billion.

Google Network Revenues – Google’s
partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $2.04
billion, or 31% of total revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2009. This
represents a 21% increase from fourth quarter 2008 network revenues of
$1.69 billion.

International Revenues – Revenues from outside of
the United States totaled $3.52 billion, representing 53% of total
revenues in the fourth quarter of 2009, compared to 53% in the third
quarter of 2009 and 50% in the fourth quarter of 2008 . . .

• Revenues from the United Kingdom totaled $772 million, representing
  12% of revenues in the fourth quarter of 2009, compared to 12% in the
  fourth quarter of 2008.

Paid Clicks – Aggregate paid clicks, which include
clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our
AdSense partners, increased approximately 13% over the fourth quarter
of 2008 and increased approximately 9% over the third quarter of 2009.

Big surprise Google kicks ass per usual!

Read Full Story

Many in the West reacted negatively when Google kowtowed to the
Chinese government's demands to censor its Chinese search engine Google.cn. At the time Google said that it would monitor conditions in the country and make adjustments in policy as necessary.

Looks like that time has come.

Agents who may have been working on behalf of the the Chinese
government have apparently attempted a coordinated hacking attack
against Google and over a dozen other major corporations. In Google's
case it seems like the purpose was to access email accounts of
suspected anti-government activists.

In light of this situation Google has chosen to stop self-censoring
its search engine results, and may very well have to shut down it's
China operations.

Read the official Google press release here.

Google has indeed removed the PageRank statistics from Google Webmaster Tools.

Susan Moskwa from the Google Webmaster Central team explained it was
removed because Google keeps telling webmasters “that they shouldn’t
focus on PageRank so much.” They felt it was “silly” to keep telling
webmasters that, and at the same time show it in Webmaster Tools. So
Google removed it from Webmaster Tools.

This is a good thing and a lot of people do seem to focus on the sites pagerank score but its been obvious for awhile that the pagerank score is misleading and not that important.  Your better off worrying about your sites content and the number of links you have from other well establish legal related sites.

Expectations were high for Google’s Q3 given some of the positive
reports coming out about clicks and search volumes from third parties
such as Efficient Frontier and comScore. Even though Google performed
solidly (almost $6 billion in a still-bad economy) there may be some
disappointment on Wall Street (apparently not). Google’s Eric Schmidt
said “The worst of the recession is behind us.” He added, “We’re very
pleased with the third quarter.”

Most metrics were flat. Here are the earnings release and associated highlights:

Google reported revenues of $5.94 billion for the
quarter ended September 30, 2009, an increase of 7% compared to the
third quarter of 2008. Google reports its revenues, consistent with
GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting traffic acquisition costs
(TAC). In the third quarter of 2009, TAC totaled $1.56 billion, or 27%
of advertising revenues . . .

• GAAP operating income in the third quarter of 2009 was $2.07
  billion, or 35% of revenues. This compares to GAAP operating income of
  $1.65 billion, or 30% of revenues, in the third quarter of 2008.
  Non-GAAP operating income in the third quarter of 2009 was $2.39
  billion, or 40% of revenues. This compares to non-GAAP operating income
  of $2.02 billion, or 37% of revenues, in the third quarter of 2008.

• GAAP net income in the third quarter of 2009 was $1.64 billion,
  compared to $1.29 billion in the third quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP net
  income in the third quarter of 2009 was $1.88 billion, compared to
  $1.56 billion in the third quarter of 2008 . . .

Google Sites Revenues – Google-owned
sites generated revenues of $3.96 billion, or 67% of total revenues, in
the third quarter of 2009. This represents an 8% increase over third
quarter 2008 revenues of $3.67 billion.

Google Network Revenues – Google’s partner sites
generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $1.80 billion, or 30%
of total revenues, in the third quarter of 2009. This represents a 7%
increase from third quarter 2008 network revenues of $1.68 billion.

Read more….

Google continues to dominate even in a horrible economy, this is one solid company.

The official Google blog posted about the new website translator gadget which once installed allows your site to be translated instantly in any of 51 languages.

*****************

How long would it take to translate all the world's web content into 50
languages? Even if all of the translators in the world worked around
the clock, with the current growth rate of content being created online
and the sheer amount of data on the web, it would take hundreds of
years to make even a small dent.

Today, we're happy to announce a new website translator gadget
powered by Google Translate that enables you to make your site's
content available in 51 languages. Now, when people visit your page, if
their language (as determined by their browser settings) is different
than the language of your page, they'll be prompted to automatically
translate the page into their own language. If the visitor's language
is the same as the language of your page, no translation banner will
appear.

Automatic translation is convenient and helps people get a quick gist
of the page. However, it's not a perfect substitute for the art of
professional translation. Today happens to be International Translation
Day, and we'd like to take the opportunity to celebrate the
contributions of translators all over the world. These translators play
an essential role in enabling global communication, and with the rapid
growth and ease of access to digital content, the need for them is
greater than ever. We hope that professional translators, along with
translation tools such as Google Translator Toolkit and this Translate gadget, will continue to help make the world's content more accessible to everyone.

source: Google Blog