According to comScore Media Metrix numbers cited by the San Francisco Chronicle Google Blog Search had 94,000 unique visitors in May versus 3.3 million unique visitors for Technorati in the same period. Google Blog Search has less than 3% of the number of users as Technorati under those metrics. Either that’s a typo or Google is not very competitive in both blog search or shopping comparison verticals….
Category Archives: Search
Google Sitemaps and Atom 1.0
If your site currently generates an Atom feed for use as a Google Sitemap you may want to hold back upgrading your feed to Atom 1.0. Google Sitemaps currently accepts Atom 0.3 only and will throw errors when it encounters the Atom 1.0 feed….
Google workplace design
I’ve always wondered why the offices of Google employees are fabric tents. Metropolis Magazine recently published an in-depth look at the design of the Google headquarters and the use of colors, lighting, and shared room locations to encourage focused creativity and interaction. (via 37signals) Wilkinson’s group designed an ingenious system of tented glass offices that allows daylight to stream through the window-side offices and into the center of the floor while preserving acoustic integrity. The white canopies are made of an acrylic-coated polyester, quilted together with polyester-fiber fill. They help reflect light into the rest of the office and…
Vic Gundotra leaves Microsoft
Vic Gundotra, Scoble’s (former) boss’ boss, is leaving Microsoft to join Google. Vic is taking a year off to allow his non-compete to elapse without legal issue. Vic is a general manager for platform evangelism and helped build Channel 9, 10, and other general developer evangelism efforts within Microsoft….
Google WiFi requires Google account in Mountain View
Access to Mountain View’s upcoming Google-powered WiFi network will require a Google account when it launches later this year. Users of the public WiFi network will land on a specially configured Google homepage for the city of Mountain View upon successful login with local modules such as weather, news, Chamber of Commerce, and school information. Requiring an account for every user means almost every person in Mountain View will have a GTalk account. Not only will you be able to likely connect instantly to people you know, but it will also be possible to browse users on nearby nodes if…
Yahoo! Local adds microformats
Yahoo! Local has added microformats support — including hCard, hReview, and hCal markup — to almost all of its business listings, search results, events, and reviews. The new markup allows parsers of Yahoo! Local pages such as web browsers and search engine to automatically recognize the structured contact, review, and calendar data present on Yahoo! Local pages. Yahoo! Local is an entry point for small businesses on the web. The new markup should help Yahoo! market its listing services as optimized for machines and humans, giving businesses optimal exposure for their extended listings. The new microformats markup on Yahoo!…
Live.com has a new look, new config options
Live.com is sporting a new look tonight and I like it. The new header graphic draws attention to the search box and login, two services that help drive revenue. The Live.com homepage now has five different groups of preselected gadgets for users to fill up their homepage quickly. You can choose a basic set (news, weather, stocks), a news set, sports set, entertainment set, or all of the above. There is even a set of World Cup gadgets to help you track the latest soccer information on every visit. The soccer page includes videos tagged “worldcup” on YouTube, image…
Japanese government funding home-grown search product
The Japanese government is subsidizing a new search engine effort by 30 Japanese companies including Hitachi, Fujitsu, and NTT. Yahoo! currently dominates the Japanese market through its partnership with Softbank. Yahoo’s search engine was powered by NTT’s goo from 1998 until 2001 but Yahoo has been using its own search technology in Japan since October of last year. The new Japanese search engine will feature better interactions on TV screens and through multimodal inputs such as voice. The domestic research institute for new search technologies opens this Friday. (via Search Engine Watch)…
PubSub has about three days to live
Some infighting at PubSub is driving the company into the ground. PubSub founder and CTO Bob Wyman has posted a note on his blog letting us know the company will be in bankruptcy within days. The company is struggling to keep its head above the water and has recently seen a merger and a financing round fall through. Bob’s blog is a bit too accusatory for a man looking to make sure his 39% stake of PubSub is worth something in a week. It’s possible employee shareholder agreements are tying up new funding or acquisitions, but now is the…
Measuring the Google Grid
The New York Times estimates Google currently has over 450,000 servers spread over at least 25 locations around the world.