Posts Tagged ‘google’

As of Monday 21^st November 2011 Yahoo Site Explorer has been shut down.  Yahoo made their offical announcement on 18^th November on their blog. This marks the loss of a vital tool to the SEO industry.

Yahoo site explorer was an incredibly valuable tool as it allowed users to perform searches and explore the link profiles of any website. This allowed users to evaluate their competitor’s incoming links and devise strategies to gain the same or similar links to boost their own rankings. Similarly SEO consultants were able to view the highest performing sites in a particular industry, analyse their incoming link portfolio and strategize with their client in methods of gaining similar links.

Since the move to Bing webmaster tools most of this functionality has been lost. Both Bing and Google Webmaster tools only provide link data about a site that has been claimed within their systems. Therefore neither provides information about a site that is not owned by the user.

Google has deliberately suppressed link information and does not condone the reporting of link data through any of their services, therefore loss of Yahoo site explorer equates to the loss of all free comprehensive link reporting tools.

Third party tools such as SEOMoz Open Site Explorer and Majestic Site Explorer are available; however, they are subscription based and their resources are not exhaustive. Blekko, is a search engine that offers link data reporting tools, although it is much smaller than search engines giants Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

As of November 22^nd Google will no longer offer their Gmail app on BlackBerry smart phones. They are also removing the application from the Blackberry app world marketplace so it is no longer available to be downloaded.

For those who already have the app, it will not disappear or stop wording and users can continue to use the service as usual, there will just be no Google customer support team to assist with issues.

Google claim these changes are being implemented to provide a great Gmail experience in the smart phone browser.

BlackBerry users are currently accessing their emails is through the BlackBerry application software and the improvement lies in Google being able to deliver updates through their own platform straight to users.

As the new BlackBerry 6 and BlackBerry 7OS systems use webkit browsers this provides a better experience than previous models and allows Google to update their system more directly instead of relying on the BlackBerry application standards.

This comes after a three day outage last month that left millions of BlackBerry users across Europe, North and South America.

What do you think? Should Google allow users to choose between a browser or an app, or is it okay for them to make this change because they know best?

With systems such as PayPal and internet banking we are all used to being able to shop online without a physical credit card in hand. But imagine walking into your local convenience store, petrol station, or even department store without your wallet, or even credit card in sight and paying with your smart phone.

Through use of near field communication (NFC) technology this is exactly what Google have envisioned and created. The Google wallet.

NCF simplifies transactions and data exchanges through a wireless technology that allows information to be passed between two devices, typically a smart phone and payment terminal, in close proximity.

Google has harnessed the power of near field communication and partnered with US bank Citi to enable customers to make payments in store by tapping their smart phones against terminals. Customers are required to register their Citi credit card details with their smart phone, or opt to create a Google prepaid account and register other credit cards to top up their ‘card’.  Once account details have been registered and confirmed customers are able to start shopping at PayPass affiliated stores – wallet-less.

The search engine giant has released Google wallet in the US with companies such as Coca Cola, Foot Locker, and Radio Shack to name a few, who offer support for the services.  The vision for Google wallet is that it will eventually be available in all stores worldwide and will be able to store loyalty cards, gift cards, receipts, boarding passes, tickets and even your keys! – it will ultimately replace your entire wallet

There is, however, a down side: this technology is not yet available in Australia.

But we are not far behind. We currently use ‘tap and go’ payment terminals which allow certain credit cards to make payments under $100 without the need to swipe and verify – simply by tapping them against a terminal.

This technology has paved the way for Google wallet to be easily introduced into the Australian market. Although at this stage Google has no official time frame for introducing the product into the country.

Google Instant, a new method by the search giant delivering search results to its users, is being rolled out to the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia over the next several days.  Search results automatically appear on screen as you type the words into Google allowing users to redefine their search queries as they are being typed.

Google likes to think of it as being “search before you type” rather than “search as you type” functionality.

Google claims that Google Instant will not have an impact on the ranking of search results.  However Google Instant really is a fundamental shift in search due to results being localized.  Google identifies where the user is located and as terms are being typed, it will display predicted results relevant to the local area first.

Google Instant can be accessed by logging into your Google Account and by using specific browsers including Chrome V5/6, Firefox v3, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8.  This means that web history and personalized results will influence what websites are returned within predicted search results.  So websites that have been searched upon and visited previously are more likely to appear within the new search results.

Even though there may not be a change in Google’s algorithm to determine relevant results, search user behavior is likely to change as search terms can be adapted on the fly.  This will reduce the “search buying cycle” time as any irrelevant results can be weeded out quickly.

The upside is that websites that normally do not appear within search results may actually be displayed earlier in the keyword query stem, enabling the user to stop or go back to results that catch their eye.  Impulse clicking may encourage users to visit websites that they may not have found normally.

The downside, which is also a benefit (depending how you look at it) is that users are more likely to click on results that are even more relevant to their search queries.  Even though some websites may not generate as much traffic from search engines because the initial results are irrelevant, this may help to generate better quality traffic because the visits will be even more qualified.  The challenge for site owners is creating content pages that are highly relevant to search users’ needs.

Google Instant will be rolled out to other countries including Australia and New Zealand over the next several months.