Google recently launched Search Globe, a visual account of daily searches around the world using a new technology only available for certain JavaScript-enabled browsers, like Chrome. Search Globe visualizes searches from one day, and shows the language of the majority of queries in an area in different colors. Due to internet availability and world economies, some areas are more densely lit than others.
Search Globe is made possible by a new browser technology, WebGL, which is a cross-platform, royalty-free web standard that works with your computer’s hardware to produce fast graphics in 3D.
All over the US, kids from Kindergarten to 12th grade are participating in the contest Doodle 4 Google. These talented youngsters are redesigning Google’s homepage logo to encompass the theme “What I’d Like to do someday…”
One lucky artist will win a $15,000 college scholarship, along with a $25,000 grant for their current school.
My favorite, “Jungle Art” was designed by 9 year-old Katie Stephenson from Stilwell, Oklahoma. Be sure to vote, your last chance is May 13,2011.
Over the past week, Google execs and Sales representatives alike have been speaking agency to agency touting their most recent SEM development, the +1. Google is finally taking a leap into the “socialsphere” and a shot at taking share away from Facebook. Ultimately, the +1 is Google’s version of a “like” button on Facebook. If you click the +1 and are linked to your friends via the Google Profile network, then your friends will see your Search Results recommendations, or your +1’s.
By introducing this type of technology, advertisers question what impact this will have on targetability – can I now target ads on the Google Display Network to those that +1 a certain topic? How about deliver keyword to those that have a +1 threshold? Lot’s of questions.
Think of it this way- does getting a +1 on your listing drive up your organic ranking? If so, will there be a click fraud issue?
I’m curious to see how this plays out in the future, but I applaud Google’s new addition…for now.
comScore recently released its overview of February US search engine share of searches. Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in February with 65.4 percent market share, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 16.1 percent and Microsoft sites with 13.6 percent (up 0.5 percentage points). Ask Network accounted for 3.2 percent of explicit core searches.
ComScore recently released its monthly analysis of the U.S. search marketplace.
Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in January with 65.6 percent market share, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 16.1 percent and Microsoft Sites with 13.1 percent (up 1.1 percentage points). Ask Network accounted for 3.4 percent of explicit core searches.
Google recently announced it will be rolling out modifications to its headline character limitations over the next several days.
In short, Adwords will be juxtaposing the position of the first description line for “certain” ads that appear above the search results on Google landing pages. “Certain” is defined as “ads where each line appears to be a distinct sentence and ends in the proper punctuation”. Ads which meet this criteria will have their description line 1 moved adjacent to the headline and separated by a hyphen (as depicted above), resulting in a longer, captivating headline.
Google has noted higher ad interaction rates in its beta tests for this new format.
ComScore released its December installment of the US search engine market share report, with Google Sites leading the U.S. explicit core search market with 66.6 percent market share (up 0.4 percentage points), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 16.0 percent and Microsoft sites with 12.0 percent (up 0.2 percentage points). Ask Network accounted for 3.5 percent of explicit core searches.
Google and Microsoft sites noticed a slight bump over November in their share of US searches, while Yahoo seems to have absorbed these respective increases, by dipping .4% compared to last month.
In a move rarely seen in Silicon Valley, Google’s CEO since 2001, Eric Schmidt, will hand back the reins of the chairmanship to Larry Page. Page ran the company prior to Schmidt’s arrival in 2001, and noted that “One of the primary goals [he has] is to get Google to be a big company that has the nimbleness and soul and passion and speed of a start-up.”
Schmidt will remain executive chairman of Google, valued at $200 billion as of Thursday’s market close. The company is considered by many to have lost “its entrepreneurial culture and [has] become a slower-moving bureaucracy” says nytimes.com. It is also no longer considered the Holy Grail and destination for top engineers and business professionals. This recent shake-up at the Google helm is intended to bring back some of that pre-IPO magic that has made Google the biggest destination on the internet.
Insiders note that Schmidt may have been “nudged”, but was not necessarily asked to step down. This combined with Page’s enthusiasm to regain the top position seems to have put the wheels in motion. Schmidt, quoted as saying “…a decade is a long time to be a C.E.O., and Larry will discover this”, may have simply tired of the management responsibilities.
Google Adwords recently announced a surprising change to their existing policy on the appearance of display URLs in text ads on the search results page.
Previously, capitalization within the domain name was acceptable. “Following the change, the domain portion of [the] display URL will always be shown in lowercase letters. For example, if [the] display URL is: Subdomain.Example.com/Subdirectory, it will appear as: subdomain.example.com/Subdirectory.” Roll-out of this is expected to take place over the “next week or so”.
It will be interesting to see how this policy update unfolds, considering that capitalization within the display URL has often been used as a tactic by advertisers to gain added brand exposure and recognition, especially advertisers within the pharmaceutical space (who often employ all caps in the domain portion).
ComScore recently released the latest US search engine statistics for the month of November. “Google Sites led the U.S. explicit* core search market with 66.2 percent market share, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 16.4 percent and Microsoft sites with 11.8 percent (up 0.3 percentage points). Ask Network accounted for 3.6 percent of explicit core searches.”
*Explicit searches refer to searches conducted by users who explicitly intend to interact with their search results, as opposed to contextually driven searches.
