Category Archives: Google

Google display ads on image search

Accordign to a Bloomberg interview with Marissa Mayer, Google is considering running display ads on image searches. They tried txt ads with little success but images seems an obvious move.
With Google universal on natural listings, recent tests on video adwords, and hte introduction of display into image search the days of the text link may [...]

SEO is Dead again

One of my favourite search people ShoeMoney says SEO has no future and once again the SEO crowd goes wild. The last time this happened was when Jason Calacanis announced the death of Google – with the emergence of social search engines.
When you listen to Shoe’s argument, I think it’s a strong one and [...]

Did the Holiday Inn just get lucky?

On a search for ‘Holiday in Paris’ I got this map box filled entirely with links to various Holiday Inn local listings.

Previous Query refinement coming to natural results

Somehow managed to miss this when Danny Sullivan mentioned it a few days ago. But the rumour is Google is going to start personalising results based on the previous query. This is something that’s been going on in paid for many months, but I think the implications are much greater for natural search.
With personalised [...]

Google to provide opt-out options for secondary search box

According to a Google representative in the UK, they plan to allow an option in your webmaster tools which will give you control over the secondary search box.
This has been debated to death ever since it appeared with little consensus. So, an opt out seems to be the best option

Google testing in-site search box on brand searches: leaves a funny smell

If you haven’t seen it then it looks like this

At first glance seems like another useful addition by Google. Except on closer inspection this is not a search box for products or holidays in this case provided by Virgin, but a search box for other pages on the site. Same as the one in the [...]

Google video ads on search results

On Thursday Google started testing video ads on some search results pages.

Marissa Mayer explained this was in response to the impact of blended results. When video, news and images are included in regular results, the eye scans to the images first and ignores the ads.
“With universal search, something is getting shaken up a bit [...]

Just another node in the graph

On Friday, Google announced the launch of their Social graph API , which promises to take us another step closer to portability. They plan to crawl our connections across social networks where profiles are public. This data can then be ported by social application developers to provide users with the choice of picking their friends [...]

Is Google worried about the Microsoft takeover of Yahoo?

I really wasn’t expecting this post on the official Google blog by David Drummond. He’s certainly not a fan of the deal and points out in no uncertain terms the need for openness and Microsoft’s dodgy past on the subject. I thought at least some of his comments could be considered a little over the [...]

I’m loving lijit – lovin it!

Last week a friend asked me about lijit – a kind of social search engine based on Google custom. So, I started reading about it and the next thing I know I’d installed it on my sidebar. Wow! It was like a spiritual experience in user experience. I was reading one minute bought into the [...]