Search | SocialWayne.com by Wayne Sutton

Posts Tagged ‘search’

Posted on June 8, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

Google ask are you ready for some Caffeine with new search index, plus how search works video

Today @Google announced their new update to the search index code name Caffeine. How does Caffeine work? Here’s an excerpt from the Google post;

With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.

Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

What does Caffeine mean for SEO experts, bloggers, social media types and content creators? If means your inbound links are even more important along with what you post on your site can be found even faster with the new search index. It also means Google search results is closer to real time updated content and ranks it high in search results. I think …. Note I’m no SEO expert! Regardless it’s an important day for Google and only time will tell how the new search index will impact the search industry and the millions of search results.

Also check out the video from Matt Cutts @mattcutts on How Search Works:

What are your thoughts on Google’s new search index caffeine?

Posted on May 5, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

Google News: 7 recent updates made by Google to make the web a better place for you & me…

Over the past few months a lot of news about how the social web is growing up / changing right before our computer screens has been about social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and the online video war between HTML 5 vs Flash vs Apple vs Adobe as a video experience for users. Not to be left out in the cold earlier this year Google launched Google Buzz with somewhat of a warm yet controversial welcome due to email privacy and public contacts concerns. Since then the little search engine giant that could, Google has announced a few updates for their line of products. In case you missed any of the Google news, here’s a list of recent announcements made by Google not in any particular order.

1. Google launches Google Analytics Application Gallery, “Google Analytics releases 38 features…”

It’s only been a year since we launched the Google Analytics Data Export API and developer programs. To celebrate we are highlighting some of the exciting solutions that extend Google Analytics in our new Google Analytics Application Gallery!

http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/05/google-analytics-releases-38-features.html

2. Google launches “New Place Pages for mobile phones”

Last fall, we launched Place Pages which organize relevant and useful information about places on Google Maps. Since then we’ve been developing a version, available now, which gives you access to the same useful information optimized for your mobile phone.

3. Google updates search page and results for mobile phones “Google’s new look for mobile”

When it comes to mobile search, we strive to not only give you the same comprehensiveness and relevance as when searching with Google on your computer, but also a consistent look, feel, and overall user experience. So today, as we roll out a new look for Google Search results on your computer, we are happy to announce similar changes to Google Search results for mobile.

http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/05/googles-new-look-for-mobile.html

4. Google launches, Google Reader Play: “And now for something completely different”

In Google Reader Play, items are presented one at a time, and each item is big and full-screen. After you’ve read an item, just click the next arrow to move to the next one, or click any item on the filmstrip below to fast-forward. Of course, you can click the title or image of any item to go to the original version. And since so much of the good stuff online is visual, we automatically enlarge images and auto-play videos full-screen.

http://google.com/reader/play

5. Google Wave updates: “Embed sites in waves with the Iframe Gadget”

Right now, there are a handful of Google Wave gadgets designed to help you bring information from other sites into a wave and interact with that content collaboratively. It will be a wonderful day when every website can be wave-ified inside a Google Wave gadget, but until then, I want to share a simple method for embedding arbitrary webpages inside a wave- a new third party extension called the Iframe Gadget. When you insert this gadget, you (and anyone else in the wave) can specify the URL of a webpage, and the gadget will render that site right inside the wave. It works best with webpages that provide an embed code, like Google Maps, and fill all the available screen space.

6. Google launches Google Dashboard, “Happy half-birthday Dashboard! Six months in and 100,000 users a day”

Since we’re celebrating our very first half-birthday, we thought it was the ideal time to update you on how things are going. On average, around 100,000 unique visitors a day check out their Dashboard, 85 percent for the first time. Since launch, we’ve worked to grow Dashboard, adding a number of other Google products including Sites, Maps, Books, Webmaster Tools, Buzz, Goggles, Sidewiki and Analytics. We’re still working on adding other products to the tool and are talking with users about new ways to improve the functionality moving forward.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/happy-half-birthday-dashboard-six.html

7. Google search updates: “A spring metamorphosis — Google’s new look”

We’ve added contextually relevant, left-hand navigation to the page. This new side panel highlights the most relevant search tools and refinements for your query. Over the past three years, we’ve launched Universal Search, the Search Options panel and Google Squared, and it’s those three technologies that power the left-hand panel.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/spring-metamorphosis-googles-new-look.html

Any other news recent news from Google I miss?

Posted on October 21, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

Updated: Google, Bing and Twitter: Searching Tweets in Real-Time. The official announcements

If you haven’t heard the news already, Bing is now a real-time Twitter search client. The announcment was made today from both Twitter and Microsoft’s new search saver Bing. An excerpt from Twitter:
Bing Goes The Dynamite!
We have a team focused on delivering value from a search and discovery perspective at Twitter and they’re just getting started. Twitter is earning a reputation for delivering real-time results to queries about things that are happening right now. Moreover, there are already tens of thousands of Twitter apps and more to come because people want the choice to consume and create tweets wherever and whenever they prefer. The folks over at Bing took a keen interest in Twitter and worked fast to establish a working relationship with us in line with our open approach.

An excerpt from Bing’s blog: bing is bringing twitter search to you
Search needs to keep up. Shortly after we launched Bing, we did an experiment with the team at Twitter, where we took a fairly small number of “celebrities” from Twitter and provided access to their tweets as part of the search result. Here is a great example.

We’re glad you asked that. Because today at Web 2.0 we announced that working with those clever birds over at Twitter, we now have access to the entire public Twitter feed and have a beta of Bing Twitter search for you to play with (in the US, for now).

Update Google joins the party
An excerpt Google’s blog: RT @google: Tweets and updates and search, oh my!
Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.

To test out the new Bing Twitter search go here: http://www.bing.com/twitter

What are your thoughts on the new Bing/Twitter search deal? Will you actually go to bing.com/twitter to search for tweets?

Posted on July 21, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

3 ways to showcase your social media profiles: Card.ly, DandyiD & Google profiles

Yesterday TechCrunch posted about Card.ly a new website that allows anyone to create a simple clean website with an about area, profile picture, contact information and a list of their social media profiles. Card.ly does take a few minutes to setup but after adding your profiles you’ll have the option to select from a few clean designs and then you’re all set with a short url to share with friends and promote your social media presence. It also creates a VCard for others to download and add to their address book. You can see my Card.ly website here: http://card.ly/waynesutton

Card.ly has a good list of social networks to add to your profile but if you’re looking to create a url to show your complete social media presence take a look at DandyiD. “DandyID lets you easily collect all of your online profiles in one convenient place and allows people to discover the real verified you across the web.” Example, see my DandyiD profile: http://www.dandyid.org/id/waynesutton

Also don’t forget about your Google profile. Google automatically adds social networking profiles to you account. Your Google profile is easy to mange so you can have the sites you want people to friend you on. You can also have your Google profile verified, see: http://www.google.com/profiles/waynesutton

I recommend you setup if not all three but at least your Google profile because the last thing you want in this day in time is go apply for a social media job and no one can find you on the web or they find profiles or content you wish to keep hidden.

Also see: FriendsCall.Me and namechk.com if you’re just getting started building your social networking profiles to make sure your username is available.

The main point is you want manage your social media presence, your content and search results when someone “Google” your name.

Posted on June 6, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

Friday Fix: Using Charts to explain Social Media via flickr search

To some Social Media is easy to explain and you “get it”; to some if you hear the words “social media” one more time you’re going to explode but for others not only don’t you get it or see why the world is a buzz about social media but you may even need a chart or graph to understand social media, how it works and what sites are social media/networking sites. If that’s you just do a quick search for social media on flickr and you’ll find a few charts that may help you out. Here’s three that may be useful to you.

Uploaded on June 9, 2008 - by fredcavazza