fidzu : search engine

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Bing Ads Is Getting A Slick New Look That Will Feel Familiar Bing is unveiling a new look that will start showing up in the web interface next week. The new...

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

29 Jul 2014 9:03pm GMT

Join us Tuesday, August 5th at 1:00 EDT (10:00 PDT) to hear Jon Ball, Page One Power's co-founder and CEO, discuss content marketing and its impact on link building. Attendees will learn why links are still relevant and how link building and content marketing work together. You'll also learn...

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

29 Jul 2014 7:00pm GMT

Bing is unveiling a new look that will start showing up in the web interface next week. The new design makes trend graphs immediately visible, has simplified navigation and generally looks a lot like Google AdWords. That's by design, of course. The Bing Ads team has been making a point of...

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

29 Jul 2014 4:18pm GMT

A new survey shows that our industry continues to improve, and links continue to matter. Link building is getting harder, so implementing diverse tactics is extremely important. And link building works best with other online marketing activities.

29 Jul 2014 1:30pm GMT

While social PPC won't replace Google Adwords any time soon, it's become an effective source of incremental leads and sales for savvy businesses. Next time you launch and run a paid social campaign, use these 17 tips for success.

29 Jul 2014 11:30am GMT

Twitter cards are one social media marketing tool you can't afford to ignore. By going beyond basic tweets to include videos, pictures, and other information, your business can integarate a transactional message into the conversation.

28 Jul 2014 1:30pm GMT

If you go to docs.google.com, you might see this message: "Soon, docs.google.com will start taking you to the Google Docs application, not Google Drive. You can always get to Google Drive by using drive.google.com." Until now, docs.google.com redirected to drive.google.com without displaying this message.

"You may be using docs.google.com to access Google Drive. With the launch of the new Google Docs editors home screens, docs.google.com will redirect to the Docs home screen, where you'll find all of your Google Docs and Word files," explains Google.

Some useful URLs:

* docs.google.com, google.com/docs - Google Docs (the first URL still redirects to Drive for now)
* sheets.google.com, google.com/sheets - Google Sheets
* slides.google.com, google.com/slides - Google Slides

27 Jul 2014 9:32pm GMT

Google tests a timeline view for Knowledge Graph cards. For a query like [World War I], Google's experimental interface displays a chronological list of important events obtained from Wikipedia articles.

Mouse over an event and Google shows more information, including images, relevant dates and snippets from Wikipedia articles. Click the event to perform a Google search.

By default, Google only highlights some of the most important events, but you can zoom in to explore to see even more events. Google uses colors and parallel axis to distinguish between different types of information.

Here's a video that shows this feature in action. Right now, the timeline view looks like a tool for power users and Google will have to create a simplified interface when this feature is publicly released.

Back in 2007, Google Labs added a timeline view for Google Search. Google News Archive also had a timeline view. These features displayed relevant search results about important events related to your query.

{ via Florian Kiersch - translation }

27 Jul 2014 9:12pm GMT

YouTube now lets you upload animated GIFs for channel art. The maximum file size is 2MB and the minimum dimension is 2048 x 1152. "For optimal results on all devices we recommend uploading a single 2560 X 1440 px image," informs YouTube.

Here's an example of channel that uses animated GIFs and a video that explains how to create animated channel art using Photoshop:


{ Thanks, Sterling. }

27 Jul 2014 8:24pm GMT

Based on search, it seems like a lot of you spent the last seven days slurping ice cream cones, jamming to pop parodies and starting the countdown to a certain February flick. Could be worse. Here's a look at what people were searching for last week:

Fifty shades of search
Searchers were "Crazy in Love" with the new trailer for Fifty Shades of Grey, set to a special Beyonce recording of her 2003 hit. There were more than a million searches this week for the ….ahem… hotly anticipated movie, which comes out next Valentine's Day. In addition to the trailer, people were also looking for information on stars [jamie dornan] and [dakota johnson]. Beyonce was in the spotlight for other reasons too, following rumors that her marriage to Jay-Z was on the rocks.

"Mandatory" and musical marriages
After three decades in the biz, Weird Al has finally made his way into the Billboard No. 1 spot with his latest album, "Mandatory Fun." Though his shtick hasn't changed, when it comes to promoting his parodies, the artist has adapted to the Internet era, releasing eight new videos in as many days to generate buzz-and more search volume than at any other point in the past five years. As an editor, of course, I'm partial to "Word Crimes" (which has more than 10 million views on YouTube), but it's just one of the many "breakout" titles searchers are looking for, along with [tacky], [foil] and [first world problems].

In other musical news, Adam Levine's bride [behati prinsloo] was trending this week after the two got married in Cabo San Lucas. And another Mexico wedding had people searching for information on [ryan dorsey], the new husband (after a surprise ceremony) of Glee star Naya Rivera.

Foodie ups and downs
A national fruit recall at stores like Costco and Whole Foods led people to the web to learn more about [listeria]. For many, the possible contamination may have been an extra incentive to celebrate several less than healthful food holidays: Last Sunday (or should we say sundae?) marked National Ice Cream Day, and people were searching for their favorite flavor. National Hot Dog Day took place just a few days later, though sausage searches paled in comparison. And just in case all that junk food made you thirsty, yesterday's National Tequila Day had searchers looking for the perfect margarita recipe.

Tip of the week
Overindulged on ice cream last weekend? It's easy to get back on the healthy eating train with a quick search. Just ask Google "how many calories in hummus?" or "compare coleslaw and potato salad" to get nutrition info on your favorite summer foods.

Posted by Emily Wood, Google Blog Editor, who searched this week for [coming of age in samoa] and [how old is weird al]

25 Jul 2014 9:59pm GMT

These days, if you're an engineer, inventor or just a tinkerer with a garage, you don't have to look far for a juicy opportunity: there are cash prize challenges dedicated to landing on the moon, building a self-driving car, cleaning the oceans, or inventing an extra-clever robot. Today, together with the IEEE, we're adding one more: shrinking a big box into a little box.

Seriously.

Of course, there's more to it than that. Especially when the big box is a power inverter, a picnic cooler-sized device used to convert the energy that comes from solar, electric vehicles & wind (DC power) into something you can use in your home (AC power). We want to shrink it down to the size of a small laptop, roughly 1/10th of its current size. Put a little more technically, we're looking for someone to build a kW-scale inverter with a power density greater than 50W per cubic inch. Do it best and we'll give you a million bucks.

There will be obstacles to overcome (like the conventional wisdom of engineering). But whoever gets it done will help change the future of electricity. A smaller inverter could help create low-cost microgrids in remote parts of the world. Or allow you to keep the lights on during a blackout via your electric car's battery. Or enable advances we haven't even thought of yet.

Either way, we think it's time to shine a light on the humble inverter, and the potential that lies in making it much, much smaller. Enter at littleboxchallenge.com-we want to know how small you can go.

Posted by Eric Raymond, Google Green Team

22 Jul 2014 2:00pm GMT

The World Cup is over and order has finally been restored to the universe. Now that football mania is behind us, searchers are getting the latest info about the world off the pitch. From Tesla announcing their cheapest car ever, the $35,000 Model 3 (OK, so "cheap" is relative) to the tragic events surrounding Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, read on to see what trended this week.

Cutting the cord … but not really
Netflix binge-watchers had a near-panic attack when rumors swirled that beloved show Orange is the New Black was getting the axe. But have no fear, friends-the show lives to see another 13 episodes and quite humorously reassured us of its existence. On the other side of the entertainment galaxy, comic book fans were shocked to learn that Marvel's Thor is now a woman-and a rather ripped one at that! "Thorita" won't be taking up her hammer against Ultron, the new villain in the upcoming Avengers movie-that role will still be held by Chris Hemsworth. Still, if producers do decide to change it up, we're pretty sure Kacy Catanzaro deserves the role after her performance on American Ninja Warrior left searchers pumped for more.

The sports stars are out tonight
Athletes put on their best three-piece suits and gowns for the ESPYs on Wednesday, and people turned to search to see which of their favorite stars took home the honors. (FYI OKC Thunder star Russell Westbrook, as usual, won the red carpet battle for fashion supremacy, hands down.) While Olympic swimmer Ian Thorpe couldn't make it to the awards show, he still managed to make a splash on the trends charts when he came out as gay. Back on the field, it was the end of an era in baseball as New York Yankees legend Derek (er, Michael?) Jeter played in his last all-star game.

Seeing double
It was a tale of two Brookses this week as searchers were surprised to find out Brooks Wheelan got the boot from Saturday Night Live after just one season-tough crowd. Garth Brooks, on the other hand, had a great week when he announced his upcoming fall tour to much fanfare ("searchfare"?). In the reality TV scene, Claire Leeson from England spent more than $30,000 (so, basically a Tesla Model 3) to look like her celebrity idol Kim Kardashian. And another Kardashian lookalike made it to the trends charts when Lilit Avagyan married Kim's ex-boyfriend Reggie Bush-six degrees of Kim Kardashian anyone?

Tip of the week
Didn't catch the ESPYs? Just ask Google, "who won best male athlete?" to see who took the crown this year and find a list of past winners.

Posted by Jenise Araujo, Communications Associate, who's [on the run] and searching for [crazy eyes] and [dandelions]

18 Jul 2014 10:00pm GMT

I wanted to let folks know that I'm about to take a few months of leave. When I joined Google, my wife and I agreed that I would work for 4-5 years, and then she'd get to see more of me. I talked about this as recently as last month and as early as 2006. […]

03 Jul 2014 8:15pm GMT

Hey everybody, I'm looking for some fun books (mostly fiction) to read this summer. What would you recommend? One book I recently enjoyed was The Martian, a novel about an astronaut stranded on Mars who needs to figure out how to survive and get home with minimal supplies. It was a little heavy on the […]

09 Jun 2014 7:30pm GMT

Okay, it's been a while since I've blogged. Let me tell you about the 30 day challenges I've been doing and what I learned: - March 2014: I went back to doing no external email, and I learned this one weird, simple trick that helped. In previous "no email" challenges, I relied on sheer force […]

02 Jun 2014 6:40am GMT

The Emperor instructed the gardener to set up the new court's garden. "I want you to plant five trees growing the Crataan fruit," the Emperor said, "Because we asked people what fruit they like best, and most named the Crataan fruit!" The gardener replied, "Emperor, that is excellent thinking! But let me make some suggestions: First, how about we make one of the five trees bear the Muran fruit. Only one out of ten citizens loves it, but those peculiar citizens tend to love multiple times as much!" "Second," the gardener continued, "How about we make one of the five trees bear the Dratean fruit. No one loves it, but that's because no one knows it yet!" "Third," the gardener said, "How about we leave one spot in the garden empty. Who knows what new type of tree we'll discover that we can put there in the fut ...

26 Aug 2011 12:12pm GMT

For those of you who've been wondering whether I had turned to stone, fallen into a bottomless pit, or been climbing the Himalaya... no, none of that is true, even though you probably did notice I'm not actively blogging about Google here anymore*! Just now, a new iPad app I've been working on called Color Sound Machine went live, and this -- and all the other apps and games at Versus Pad** -- are actually what I am doing while not blogoscoping. *I've drafted unpublished posts explaining much more about past, present and future of Blogoscoped, and the history of Google news reporting, but ... oh, for now le ...

15 Aug 2011 4:00pm GMT

One of the earliest specialist services provided by Google was reverse phone number lookup. If you used the "phonebook:" or "rphonebook:" operators together with a 10-digit US phone number, Google would show you the owner of that phone number, unless the number was unlisted. Google no longer provides that service. Not surprisingly, there was no press release marking the closure, but Google employee Daniel Russell has acknowledged the closure of the service in his blog. He hints at the possible pressures leading to the shuttering of the service: "As you can imagine, this was an endless source of hassles for people (who were surprised to see themselves searchable on Google) and for Google (who had to constantly de ...

25 Feb 2011 11:23am GMT