Google is gaining ground in search results queries in USA, survey revealed

Google is gaining more gound in USA in report append below. With this surge, it is normal that many site owners will spend more time to optimize their site for Google. Even with dwindling market share, Yahoo still provide a good share of traffic to my sites. At this point in time, any SEO effort will still have to cover all the top three, namely Google, Yahoo and MSN. Others, to me is no longer significant.

Read more on report on Google gaining strength:-

Web search leader Google’s market share inched up to 64 percent of all queries among U.S. Internet searchers in March, gaining further ground against Yahoo and Microsoft, a survey released on Wednesday by Hitwise found.

The number of search queries on Google rose to 64.1 percent in March, compared with 63.9 percent in February and 58.3 percent a year ago, according to Hitwise, which bases its report on the surfing habits of 10 million U.S. Web users.

A more conservative survey by online measurement firm comScore Networks from February also showed how Google’s U.S. market share grew to 48.1 percent in February from a 47.5 percent share in January. On a global basis, comScore estimates Google held a 65.7 percent share of the Web search market.

Hitwise said Yahoo search queries slipped to about 21.3 percent from close to 21.5 percent in February and 22.3 percent in March 2006, while MSN Search dipped to 9.2 percent from 9.3 percent in February and 13.1 percent a year ago.

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Google is going hard on AdWords clients with less-than-quality landing pages

Google is going hard on AdWords clients with less-than-quality landing pages for their websites, in an attempt to clean up those made-for-AdSense pages found all over the web.

Read more at Inside Adwords

As you may recall, we began incorporating advertiser landing page quality into the Quality Score back in December 2005. Following that change, advertisers who are not providing useful landing pages to our users will have lower Quality Scores that in turn result in higher minimum bid requirements for their keywords. We realize that some minimum bids may be too high to be cost-effective — indeed, these high minimum bids are our way of motivating advertisers to either improve their landing pages or to simply stop using AdWords for those pages, while still giving some control over which keywords to advertise on. Although it is counter-intuitive to some who hear it, we’d rather show one less ad than to show an ad which leads to a poor user experience — since long-term user trust in AdWords is of overarching importance.

From time-to-time, we improve our algorithms for evaluating landing page quality (often based on feedback from our end-users), and next week we’re launching another such improvement. Thus, over the coming days a small number of advertisers who are providing a low quality user experience on their landing pages will see increases in their minimum bids. It is important to note, however, that the vast majority of advertisers will not be affected at all by this change, as they link to quality landing pages.

If you do see an increase in minimum bids and you feel that your landing page is providing a great user experience, please contact AdWords support and we’ll take a look. Also, for useful guidelines which will help to define what users look for in a high quality site, we hope you’ll take a look at the landing page and site quality guidelines, from the AdWords Help Center.

Google Spreadsheets turns up heat on Excel

Google is moving one more step ahead to offer web based spreadsheet service. This is widely expected after Google acquired Writely that offer web based web processing facility. We should see a few years from now, many will subscribe to all these web based service that will run out of your browser and go without the need to continue to upgrade your word processing and spreadsheet software. Best of all, these online documents will be able to be shared among your co workers.

Google is set to launch on Tuesday a Web-based spreadsheet program that will allow people to view and simultaneously edit data while conducting “in-document” chat, a company product manager said Monday.

The launch of Google Spreadsheets puts the search engine in even more heated competition with Microsoft, whose desktop-based Excel spreadsheet program is a standard office tool.

Google, which acquired the Writely Web-based word processor in March, is unleashing Web-based services of programs that propelled Microsoft to dominance on the desktop. Microsoft is responding by revamping its business to focus on Web services under the Windows Live and Office Live monikers.

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Google Spreadsheets, which will go live on Tuesday as part of Google Labs, supports the import and export of documents in the .xls format used in Excel and the .csv (comma-separated values) format, said Jonathan Rochelle, product manager for Google Spreadsheet.

The service provides automatic saving, so once a document is saved for the first time it is saved upon every change, as well as enables easy transfer of data from cell to cell, inserting and deleting of rows and columns and supports multiple sheets or tabs, he said.

Consumers must have a Google account to use the service.

Full Article

Google Launched Video Player

Google has launched Google Video Player 1.0.1.0 which can be downloaded at http://video.google.com/playerdownload.html

Features of the Video Player as below:-

  • Watch videos downloaded from Google Video
  • Browse scenes within a video using thumbnails
  • Skip to anywhere in the video, even if that portion hasn’t downloaded yet
  • Sit back and watch videos in full screen mode
  • Resume video downloads automatically

Google unveils Web page creator

Google launched another service. This time is the web page editor that allow gmail users to create web pages and later web site with multiple pages. This is largely expected as with the launch of gmail for domain, look like Google will allow users to create web site for their domain as well. We shall wait and see 🙂

I have just tried http://pages.google.com and it return an error and was not able to test it out.

Google launched on Thursday a service that lets people create their own Web pages hosted by the Internet giant.

Google Page Creator, which is in beta, has sample layouts and lets people type in content, upload images and publish their pages, without knowing HTML. People can create multiple linked pages and are allowed 100MB of storage on the service.

The free service requires a Gmail account and supports either Internet Explorer 6.0 or Firefox 1.0, or higher.

With Page Creator, the company has drawn a distinction between Web sites and Web pages, saying that a page is a “single document with its own Web address,” whereas a site is a “collection of pages with a common subdomain,” or the “xxxxxxx.com” portion of the URL. “During this initial testing period,” Google said, people can create only pages, not sites.

Google already owns Blogger, a company that enables people to create blogs. The company also recently launched a service offering hosted e-mail accounts with an individual’s chosen domain, instead of Gmail.

Source : News.com

Google Desktop 3 has some security risk for enterprise users

There has been many reports on the security risk of Google Desktop 3 during the past few weeks and finally Google recognised that it is a risk. Read below:-

Businesses have been warned by research company Gartner that the latest Google Desktop Beta has an “unacceptable security risk,” and Google agrees.

On Feb. 9, Google unveiled Google Desktop 3, a free, downloadable program that includes an option to let users search across multiple computers for files. To do that, the application automatically stores copies of files, for up to a month, on Google servers. From there, copies are transferred to the user’s other computers for archiving. The data is encrypted in transmission and while stored on Google servers.

The risk to enterprises, according to Gartner, lies in how this shared information is pooled by Google. The data is transferred to a remote server, where it is stored and can then be shared between users for up to 30 days.

Gartner said in a report on Thursday that the “mere transport (of data) outside the enterprise will represent an unacceptable security risk to many enterprises,” as intellectual property could be transported out of the business.

Full Article at News.com

Google acquires MeasureMap

Google acquire Measure Map, a company that provides free, easy stats for your blog. Hence whether Google will add this new service to be part of the Google Analytics or have the new stats service tie to the blogger services, we will have to wait and see. Surely Measure Map will increase the user’s experience about their blog, understand and appreciate their blogs more.

Google gains ground in search

Google’s share of search traffic rose nearly 6 percent in December from the prior year, giving the company 49 percent share of all U.S. Web searches, according to the latest statistics from Nielsen/NetRatings.

Yahoo and MSN experienced slight declines in their percentage of search share over the last year, although all three search engines had double-digit growth year-over-year. Google grew 75 percent to nearly 2.5 billion searches; Yahoo rose 53 percent to nearly 1.1 billion searches and MSN rose 20 percent to 553 million searches.

Full Article

Yahoo to offer incentives for using search engine

In a time where Google is enjoying a much wider users base for its search engine, Yahoo is working to find way to attract more users to use its search services. Offering incentives to users who use its Yahoo search will be one possible way to increase user base, but not necessary an effective one. Most people have turned to Google for its ease to help users to find their require information and is extremely fast. Nevertheless, offering incentives to gain back some market share will be good move by Yahoo !!

Yahoo confirmed on Wednesday that it’s polling some Yahoo Mail users about what they would want in exchange for making Yahoo their primary search engine. The survey was sent to a random sampling representing about 5 percent of its Yahoo Mail users, a Yahoo representative said.

“Yahoo is considering launching a program to reward people who make Yahoo their primary search engine,” the survey says. “Yahoo Mail users will be given early access to this program. You will receive a monthly reward if you make Yahoo your primary search engine. This means that most of the searching you do each month must be on Yahoo Search.”

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Gmail for Domain

Google officially announced a beta program to offer Gmail for Domain for companies which need the service by filling up the form available at https://www.google.com/hosted/Home. Google is also now an ICANN-accredited registrar of domain names.

Yahoo has been offering the services for quite a long time but I still find that Google Gmail is more easy to use and much faster. Many Internet users has signed up and use Gmail for their personal use. Introducing Gmail for domain will increase the usage of Gmail services and many small and medium firms will surely adopt the Gmail services with Domain.

Google has been offering Gmail Solutions to San Jose City College and their login screen can be viewed HERE

Microsoft has also been offering the same service via Microsoft Live but again the Web Email interface is not as attractive as that of Gmail. As the way it go, Google will likely win the keen competition in this area.

Google Auctioning Print ADs

Google’s test of magazine ads began last summer, and involved two computer-oriented publications. Certain advertisers appeared on ad pages with the words Ads by Google and special phone numbers Google used to track the effectiveness of the test.

Google Print ADs Auction can be read at http://services.google.com/marketing/links/aw-print-pub-ads/

Google is definitley using its technology and wide client base to venture in new print AD territory

Google has blacklisted BMW.de

Google has blacklisted BMW.de after the carmaker violated the search giant’s guidelines by using a technique that could artificially boost its search engine rating, according to a Google engineer.

In a blog, Google software engineer Matt Cutts said that Google had removed BMW’s German site (click here to view site) from its Web index after the site included “doorway pages” that would automatically redirect visitors to a different URL.

Cutts explained that when Google’s crawlers visited a BMW page, it saw blocks of text with repeated key search words such as “neuwagen,” which means “new car” in German. However, when a user visited the listed page they would be automatically redirected to another page with less text and more pictures, which was more attractive than the page the crawler saw, but would have scored lower in Google’s PageRank system.

“This is a violation of our Webmaster quality guidelines, specifically the principle of ‘Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users,'” said Cutts’ blog.

To regain Google listing status, Cutts expects that BMW.de will have to remove the JavaScript that redirects users around the site in this fashion and then send a reinclusion request to Google’s Webspam team, which Cutts leads. BMW.de has already removed some of the redirect pages.

Full Story

AOL to stick with Google

Google may pay $1 billion for a 5 percent stake in America Online as part of an exclusive deal with Time Warner that would strengthen ties with the search giant instead of dumping Google for Microsoft.

As part of the current negotiations with Google, AOL would be able to sell additional ads for its search engine also powered by Google on top of those provided by Google, according to a report Friday in The Wall Street Journal Online. Google also could promote AOL Web sites among sponsored links in search results, according to an unidentified source in the report. The report said the deal would not be finalized until after Time Warner’s board meets on Wednesday.

Read full story at news.com

This is definitely a big deal of the year for Google as AOL is a awesome portal that Google do not want to be left out.

Google Analytics has been such a Hits

I have installed Google Analytics code in several of my sites and found the reports to be fantastic. Since it is a free service, you will expect a lot of webmasters will sign up and install the code.

Google Analytics

Hence demand must be so great that I notice that I am no longer able to add additional profile today. Just checked on new sign up page noticed that Google has also suspended new sign up while they work to increase capacity. Reporting on the newly added sites has been slow due to great demand. No complaint so far as it is really a good service from Google.

Google Analytics has experienced extremely strong demand, and as a result, we have temporarily limited the number of new signups as we increase capacity. In the meantime, please submit your name and email address and we will notify you as soon as we are ready to add new accounts. Thank you for your patience.