Technknowledge

Google is turning its sights squarely on the local ad market, with plans to promote its local business listings in storefronts around the U.S.

Stickers bearing Google's logo and a QR code have been distributed to 100,000 of the most popular businesses in Google's Local Business Center database, and starting this week consumers will be able to use code-scanning applications on modern phones to look up the Google listing for that particular restaurant, store, or dry cleaner. The stickers will be prominently displayed in store windows of participating businesses, and represent a shot across the bow of companies like Yelp which offer similar branded services.

Google's Local Business Center allows pizza joints and dress boutiques to place listings on Google Maps with basic information such as hours and location and also get access to data about how Web searchers are hitting their profile, such as the ZIP code from which searches originate, said Michaela Prescott, head of geomarketing at Google. Over 1 million businesses in the U.S. have listed themselves with Google, she said.

Much has been made of Google's interest in courting the big-name advertisers of the corporate world, but the company is also very interested in the mom-and-pop stores of the world, which fit nicely into its strategy of delivering targeted advertising to specific niches. Later this week, Google plans to hold an event in San Francisco for small business owners in hopes of educating them about the services that are available on Google.

The company analyzed which local listings were generating the most activity, and declared those to be "Favorite Places on Google," and therefore eligible for the sticker promotion. Shoppers who happen by the store can scan the sticker to bring up the business' Place Page with listing information as well as reviews, photos, and links to sites with more information about the business.

Prescott said those links will include reviews hosted by Yelp, perhaps the most well-known local listing, and reviews on the Internet. Yelp also distributes window decals to local businesses that reassure visitors that "People love us on Yelp!" (whether that's true) in hopes to promoting the site as the place to look for local reviews.

Google has taken the concept a step further, however, in the use of the QR codes to link to the Place Pages. Owners of smartphones with a camera (Google specifically said that iPhone, Android, and most BlackBerry owners would be supported, but others may work as well) and QR code scanning applications will be able to launch this information in their phone's browser.

So why is Google getting into the decal business? "I think it comes down to (the fact that) mobile is fundamentally different; it is about connecting the person to the physical place," Prescott said.

Obviously, lots of people search for local information on Google, but this program gives Google a way to capture eyeballs that aren't sitting in front of a desktop or laptop PC, promoting its mobile sites and therefore driving additional traffic to ad-supported sites. Expanding its local presence also allows Google to sell even-more targeted ads to other companies, since they know they'll be advertising to people in a position to take advantage of their services.

Google has been ramping up its local presence for quite some time, but seems to be experimenting with different strategies these days. It recently suspended a trial of a program called "Local Listing Ads," which was designed as a simple entry into Google that didn't require the business to manage a regular AdWords campaign.

And it also recently introduced a service that lets businesses put coupons in the Local Business Center that smartphone owners can redeem from the screen of their device, rather than having to clip them out of a newspaper circular.

Unlike when you stand over your coworker's desk, Microsoft's Bing search engine actually works better when you hover.

One of the key features of the would-be rival to Google is that when you hover to the right of a result, you can get a preview of what to expect. As part of an update this week, Bing's hover result will now feature more information including a thumbnail preview of the site in question.

Bing taps Wolfram Alpha

Microsoft is using Wolfram Alpha to help power certain results, such as this search for the fat content of french fries.
(Credit: CNET News)

One of the ongoing challenges for Bing, besides just getting more people to use the site, is letting them know that the hover feature is there. Microsoft's research has shown it gets high usage from those who know about it, but also finds that lots of people don't know the feature is there. Microsoft has been experimenting with some different visual cues that might make it easier to stumble upon the previews.

The hover feature was developed by the San Francisco-based team that Microsoft acquired as part of last year's acquisition of Powerset. Powerset, which developed a semantic search technology, also powers Bing's index of Wikipedia.

Bing's fall update update also includes the first fruits of a deal with Wolfram Alpha. As part of that arrangement, certain health related searches, such as "how many calories in a hamburger" will now feature information from Alpha. Bing will also rely on Alpha for some math calculations, Microsoft said in a blog posting on Wednesday. Wolfram noted that Microsoft is one of the first customers for a commercial licensing program that was formally announced several weeks ago.

Other changes to Bing include improved local results for topics such as weather and events.

It's all part of a wave of updates Microsoft is making to Bing this week. On Tuesday, Microsoft said it is moving its MSN Video site under the Bing umbrella, with a new video page that can be used to watch videos from places like Hulu and elsewhere.

The company also announced some enhancements to Bing Maps, including the ability to use the mouse to alter a suggested route and have one's directions re-calculated.

The improvements come as Microsoft is looking for ways to stand out from Google as it tries to wrest share from its much larger rival. The software maker has seen a modest uptick but faces steep hurdles in trying to make more significant gains.

Experian Hitwise said Wednesday that Bing's share reached 9.57 percent in October. That's up from 8.96 percent in September, but still well behind Google, which had more than 70 percent and Yahoo, with 16 percent of the U.S. search query market.

While adding features is clearly important, trying to stay ahead in the search game can be quite a challenge. Just hours after Microsoft announced a deal last month to index real-time tweets from Twitter, Google announced plans to do the same.

Microsoft has also gotten some unwanted attention for one of its features--the Bing Cashback program--where users can get a portion of their online transactions rebated by starting off on Bing. A blog posting outlined a flaw in the mechanism that could allow people to get cash back without ever spending money via Bing.

That posting was pulled after a demand from Microsoft's lawyers.

Google.com won't show any of the links in the image on the right until a home page visitor moves his or her mouse.
(Credit: Google)

After testing a new-look home page for several weeks, Google is ready to roll it out to the masses.

Google announced the new "fade-in" look for its home page Wednesday, combining its goal of minimalism and its desire to promote Google products beyond search. Starting Monday, visitors to Google.com will be greeted by a page totally devoid of anything but the Google logo, the search bar, and the search buttons. Google tends to roll out these types of changes gradually, so you may not see it at first.

That is, until they move their mouse. That will bring up the regular links at the top of the page to image search, news, settings, and the various other links off the home page that Google has added over the years.

Google ran about 10 different versions of the change before settling on this one, said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products, in a blog post. The company is famously exacting about the changes to what could be considered the Web's most valuable piece of real estate.

The new look doesn't seem to be affiliated with the search user interface changes that Google is also testing, although the company plans to hold a search event on Monday that could reveal more details around that design.

The death of Michael Jackson in June launched a frenzy of Web activity and propelled the late pop star to the top of the search charts for 2009.

That's the word from Google, Yahoo, and Bing, all of which have revealed their popular search terms for the past year.

It's not too shocking to see Jackson leading the searches for the year. Following the pop star's death in June, Akamai found that worldwide Web traffic had surged 11 percent over normal levels. Even Google--which in the initial going thought the Jackson-related traffic was an attack of some sort--was briefly sent staggering.

Google Michael Jackson chart

Searches for Michael Jackson songs spiked in late June when news broke about the pop star's death.
(Credit: Google)

According to Google's Zeitgeist findings, "Michael Jackson" was the "fastest rising" worldwide search term of 2009. In the U.S., "Michael Jackson" placed second behind "Twitter." Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, in a blog post also pointed to an up-and-coming music sensation:

As millions of fans said goodbye to the King of Pop, Michael Jackson led the list of our top 10 fastest rising queries across the globe. And a new star was born, too--quirky pop singer Lady Gaga became a search sensation the world over. In addition to appearing on many regional fastest-rising search term lists, from the Czech Republic to Switzerland and Kenya to the United Kingdom, Lady Gaga also landed in the #9 spot on the global fastest rising list.

On the social side, Google monitored whose Twitter accounts were the most searched for. According to the company, Miley Cyrus' Twitter account was the most sought after, followed by those of Lance Armstrong and Taylor Swift. Khloe Kardashian's marriage to basketball player Lamar Odom was the most-Googled wedding of the year.

"Michael Jackson" was the top Yahoo search term for the year. He was followed by a who's who (and a what's what) of the U.S. entertainment scene. "Twilight" was the second most-popular search term, followed by wrestling organization "WWE," starlet "Megan Fox," singer "Britney Spears," and manga series "Naruto." Filling out the top 10 were "American Idol," "Kim Kardashian," "Nascar," and "Runescape."

Microsoft's Bing, which debuted in late May, had similar results. Once again, "Michael Jackson" was the top "trending topic," followed by "Twitter" and "swine flu." "Stock market" and "Farrah Fawcett" rounded out Bing's top five.

Of course, 2009 was also marked by continued concern over the state of the economy. According to Yahoo, "coupons," "unemployment," and "stimulus plan" were the most-numerous queries related to the economy. By contrast, Google's most-searched economy-related terms were "crisis," "cash for clunkers," and "Iceland."

Google also followed queries related to celebrity deaths in 2009. Users searched for "Michael Jackson" the most, followed by "Billy Mays" and "Steve McNair." Yahoo's data revealed that Michael Jackson's death was the most-searched term, but unlike Google's data, the pop star was followed by "Farrah Fawcett" and "Patrick Swayze.

To show support for the global fight against AIDS, both Google and Twitter changed up their sites a bit Tuesday.

If you go to Google.com, you'll find a link under the search box that leads to several resources where you can learn more about AIDS, volunteer to fight the disease, and donate money to fight AIDS. It's no small contribution to the cause--Google's home page is undoubtedly driving considerable traffic to all the organizations the company lists.
Twitter red

Twitter has turned red for World AIDS Day.

Twitter has introduced a more obvious change to its site. Whenever a user adds the hashtag #red to their tweets, the message they update their status page with will be displayed in red to followers. Users can also add the hashtag #laceupsavelives to turn their tweets red. The change is part of the Turn Red initiative, which aims at battling AIDS in Africa.

You can learn more about Join Red and the fight against AIDS on the organization's Twitter page.

Reading The Wall Street Journal articles for free through Google News will get harder if the paper decides to embrace Google's new changes to its "First Click Free" policy.

(Credit: Screenshot technknowledge)

As the journalism industry gathers once again to wring its hands about the future, Google has thrown it a bone with new limitations on its "First Click Free" policy for news stories shown on Google News.

Companies that operate subscription-based Web sites--such as The Wall Street Journal--don't want to expose the full text of their articles to Google. But despite what WSJ owner Rupert Murdoch says, most of them also want their articles and sites discoverable through Google and Google News. As a compromise, Google has allowed those publishers to participate in what it calls a "First Click Free" program, where articles accessed through Google News links can be seen in their entirety, but if the user attempts to click anywhere else on that story page, they are directed to a sign-up page.

The problem is that Web users quickly figured out that you can access almost any Wall Street Journal article for free simply by cutting and pasting the headline into Google News, which generates a "free" link that isn't available if a publisher such as CNET links to a Wall Street Journal article. "While we're happy to see that a number of publishers are already using First Click Free, we've found that some who might try it are worried about people abusing the spirit of First Click Free to access almost all of their content," wrote John Mueller, Webmaster trends analyst for Google, in a blog post.

As a result, Google is now putting limits on the First Click Free usage. Web publishers can now decide to limit use of the First Click Free rule to five times per person per day through both Google News and regular Google search results. It's not clear whether readers could get around this issue by clearing cookies from their browser or enabling private browsing, but a Google representative said it will be up to Web publishers to decide how they want to track visitors through some combination of cookies or IP addresses.

Google is one of many companies and organizations participating in a day-long discussion about the future of journalism at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington. The topic has pitted Google against the publishing industry all year, with Google insisting it's a friend of journalism by sending traffic toward media companies, and media companies accusing Google of siphoning their potential traffic by showing headlines and snippets on Google News.

Originally posted at Relevant Results

Word from the LA Times is that Google plans to phase out its Gears plug-in in favor of HTML5 when it comes to augmenting browser abilities. The precise details of its enthusiasm for the plug-in aren't clear yet, but the general trajectory is no surprise.

Google, along with Mozilla, Opera, Apple, and some other allies, has been agitating for features that can make browsers and the Web into a more powerful foundation for Web sites and Web applications. Gears was an early Google effort in this area.

But Gears emerged in 2007--back before Google released a browser of its own, before the World Wide Web Consortium had put its full weight behind HTML5, before HTML5 had gotten the traction it now enjoys as an official standard in the making, and before Microsoft took interest in contributing to that standard.

It's clear things are different now, and HTML5 is solving the same problems Gears set out to fix, and a healthy cooperation is under way for future Web standards work.

Linus Upson, Google's engineering director for the Chrome browser and Chrome OS, confirmed Tuesday that Gears will be supported but isn't an active area of development.

"This isn't an area we've been investing a lot in the last year since we launched Chrome. We're very focused on making HTML5 as successful a standard as possible," Upson said. "Gears applications will run well for the foreseeable future," though, he added.

Browsers including Safari and Chrome are picking up HTML5 versions of Gears features now, he said, and Web applications will follow suit. "I would think over course of next year or so you'll see many more applications take advantage of those abilities," he said.

Perhaps the most notable Gears feature is the ability to store data on a PC so a Web application could work even when disconnected from the network--Gmail and Google Docs being the biggest examples. But that's solved by the local database work in HTML5 that's now arriving in browsers. HTML5 also provides for interfaces with files for better uploading geolocation to let a Web site make use of a person's location.

Various HTML5 elements are just beginning to arrive in Web browsers, and widely used browsers such as Internet Explorer 6 don't have any support at all. But the difficulties of getting people to install Gears or other plug-ins means that built-in browser support probably will reach more people sooner than Gears.

Google has given plenty of signals it's happy to direct Gears energy into HTML5. It proudly demonstrated offline Gmail using HTML5 storage last May at its Google I/O conference, for example. And regarding its O3D and Native Client plug-ins, which accelerate 3D and regular computing processes in a browser, Google developers have argued such technology should be built into the browser, not handled as a separate plug-in.

Google's official position, quoted in the LA Times, is as follows: "We are excited that much of the technology in Gears, including offline support and geolocation APIs, are being incorporated into the HTML5 spec as an open standard supported across browsers, and see that as the logical next step for developers looking to include these features in their Web sites...We're continuing to support Gears so that nothing breaks for sites that use it. But we expect developers to use HTML5 for these features moving forward as it's a standards-based approach that will be available across all browsers."

It was clear from talks at Google I/O that Google sees as a proving ground to try to advance Web technologies and counts it as a victory when Gears technology arrives in HTML5. Now the only real question in my mind is whether the pace of HTML5 development in the standards world will satisfy Google.

Upson said Google will continue adding features into Chrome and its Chrome OS, even if that means deviating from standards at times.

"Ideally for all these things (such as Native Client and O3D) we'd like to get them into standards," Upson said. "At the end of the day, we can't control the pace of the Internet Explorer developer team at Microsoft (or developer teams) at Mozilla and Apple. We all have a shared incentive to not fragment the Web, but there always will be seams that aren't smooth."

Updated at 5:14 p.m. PST with comment from Google.
Originally posted at Deep Tech

Google has entered into an agreement to acquire online ad-optimization firm Teracent, the search giant announced in a blog post on Monday. The transaction is subject to several closing conditions, but is expected to close by the end of the quarter.

Google said it has been "busy releasing new features and products to help improve display advertising on the Web," according to the blog post. After examining Teracent's technology, the company felt that it fit "neatly" into its display-advertising goals, the blog said.

Teracent certainly brings something new to Google's advertising efforts. The company's technology tweaks images, products, messages, or colors to optimize ad units based on the viewer's location, what language they speak, the kind of content they're viewing, the local time, and how well particular units have performed in the past. It does all that work in real time as the algorithm examines the ad's environment.

"This technology can help advertisers get better results from their display ad campaigns," Google wrote in a blog post. "In turn, this enables publishers to make more money from their ad space and delivers Web users better ads and more ad-funded web content."

Teracent should be integrated into Google's advertising efforts by the end of the quarter. Neither company divulged how much Teracent was acquired for.
Originally posted at Digital Media

Google has reserved one of its valuable ad spaces on Google Image Search to explain why an offensive image of Michelle Obama appears as the first result for searches on her name.

Search Engine Land noted that last week, Google had removed the image after claiming the site hosting it was spreading malware, but it's back with the ad featured prominently above the image results. "Sometimes our search results can be offensive," Google said in the ad copy. "We agree. Read more."

Clicking on the ad takes you to a special page on Google's site where the company explains "sometimes Google search results from the Internet can include disturbing content, even from innocuous queries. We assure you that the views expressed by such sites are not in any way endorsed by Google." Google said its policy in matters like this is to only remove content from its site if that content is illegal, violates Google's Webmaster guidelines in some way, or if the site owner requests the content be removed.

What's not clear, however, is what triggers the company to take out an ad explaining the search results: after all, there's no shortage of things on the Internet that would offend the average person. Google did not immediately respond to a request for more information about how those decisions are made.

Search Engine Land notes Google has also taken out explanation ads against search queries such as "jew" and "miserable failure," the search query that introduced much of the world to the concept of the Google bomb when searches for those keywords were orchestrated to point to the official Web site of former President George W. Bush by taking advantage of Google's PageRank formula.
Originally posted at Relevant Results

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google's dual-pronged operating-system strategy will likely produce a single OS down the road, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

Many Google observers were puzzled when the company announced plans for Chrome OS in July, coming amid growing acceptance of the company's Android operating-system project as a smartphone and Netbook OS. After all, why design an open-source operating system with the goal of reinventing the personal computing experience when you're currently developing another open-source operating system with the goal of reinventing the mobile computing experience?

Google executives, including CEO Eric Schmidt, have downplayed the conflict ever since, asking for time to let the projects evolve. And a few days after Chrome OS was revealed, Android chief Andy Rubin said device makers "need different technology for different products," explaining that Android has a lot of unique code that makes it suitable for use in a phone and Chrome has unique benefits of its own.

But Brin, speaking informally to reporters after the company's Chrome OS presentation on Thursday, said "Android and Chrome will likely converge over time," citing among other things the common Linux and Webkit code base present in both projects.

It's not clear when Google thinks it might want to merge the projects, but it seems to be eyeing a future in which the smartphones currently served by Android meld into the Netbooks Google has in mind for Chrome OS. Of course, Brin's vision might not necessarily be shared by all members of the Google management team.

"As Sundar [Pichai, Google's vice president of product management] said in his presentation, we're reaching a perfect storm of converging trends where computers are behaving more like mobile devices, and phones are behaving more like small computers," Google said in a statement in response to questions about how and when the two projects would merge. "Having two open source operating systems from Google provides both users and device manufacturers with more choice and helps contribute a wealth of new code to the open source community."

This also allows Google to pick and choose the best ideas to emerge from each project, setting up a bit of friendly internal competition to develop new operating-system technologies. The main difference is that while Android is a shipping product, Chrome OS is still very much in the research stage, with devices not expected until late 2010.

It's way too early to know how that pending convergence will affect development for the different operating systems, as it seems pretty clear Google is spending most of its time at the moment building out each one separately.

But Brin--no idle bystander--believes at some point, Google will emerge with one next-generation operating system.
Originally posted at Relevant Results