February search results show that Bing continues to grow as Yahoo sags.
Comscore reported that usage of Bing went up from 11.3% in January to 11.5% in February, while Yahoo’s stats during the same period dropped to 16.8% from 17%. Google’s stats remained essentially unchanged …
In a move that might rewrite the entire search market, Google is rumored to be creating a system that will let allow web publishers to submit content to Google for search indexing in real-time.
This of course follows the introduction of PubSubHubBub by Google, a tool to move syndicated content in real-time to aggregators. PubSubHubBub has become a hit among publishers looking to get their information into the market as quickly as possible …
MySpace and Google just announced that starting today, status updates from MySpace users will appear in Google’s real-time search. MySpace announced its real-time Stream API in December and Google launched its real-time search feature just a day before the MySpace announcement. While Google was one of MySpace’s launch partners (together with OneRiot), it took Google until today to include MySpace updates in its real-time search.
Currently, Twitter dominates Google’s real-time search results, though Google also plans to include updates from FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca in its search results in the future. Google also has a deal with Facebook to show status updates from groups, companies and celebrities in its real-time search results …
Google and the Associated Press haven’t exactly been on good terms for the last few months. Due to fundamental disagreements over copyright and payments between the companies, Google stopped hosting AP content on its site in December after the existing contract between the AP and Google expired. Yahoo, however, is a step ahead of Google and just announced a new deal with the AP. The details about the contract between Yahoo and the AP weren’t disclosed, but chances are that Yahoo agreed to pay higher licensing fees in return for the right to host AP stories on its properties …
A few months ago Google rolled out Place Pages with the lofty vision of creating a webpage for every place in the world. In addition to a map-view of local businesses, users can access hours, transit stops, reviews and geo-tagged photos. As of today the company is offering a color-coded ranking system for specific aspects of a businesses’ services. The question is, does the new feature mark the beginning of the end for restaurant review sites?
While Yelp gives reviewers a chance to rank a business on a scale of 1-5 stars and Foodspotting ranks individual dishes, Google’s new ranking system aggregates comments from across the web based on specific keywords. At a moments glance, users can quickly view a restaurant’s food and service in relation to its ambiance and atmosphere. Even the smallest business with little to no web presence can produce useful results. For example, the comments at San Francisco’s El Metate Taqueria was enough to produce a ranking on salsa alone …
According to Webpronews, google is spotted to be testing breadcrumbs in some search results, at least some areas. Several bloggers have noticed google displaying breadcrumbs in various places. It seems appear on random results of some query. Here is screen captured showing some breadcrumbs in google SERP …
In the world of search engines, there are some things that have remained constant and one of them is Google. From the unforgettable choice of branding, Google has become a household name and it is no surprise to find Google as the homepage of choice for most PC owners. What Google has done is that it has stolen some of the popularity from Microsoft especially with all the new features that they have been introducing in the recent times as far as documentation is concerned. Live Search from Microsoft has always been around but most people have not been too eager to try it out. But now the gloves are off and it is a head to head battle …
