Google’s Plan to Leave China Attracts Bootleggers
Posted by Elmer in Geek on February 07, 2010
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In the web, those who gets first gets rewarded. The first website that breaks the news probably gets the lion’s share of visitor traffic. The first (and only) person or corporation who registered a popular domain name potentially deserves a cash windfall at some point. The first blogger who writes about a sensational and juicy post gets his or her share of fame.

In the case of Google, its plan to possibly pull out of China has generated mixed feelings: sadness for people who wish Google would continue to serve the Chinese community with more relevant search results (as opposed to Baidu’s), and opportunity for others who see themselves benefit from the possible Google demise in the mainland.

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Google Guru: Reincarnation of Google Answers?
Posted by Elmer in Geek on December 18, 2009
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The online community has been monitoring any movement by Google, from the typical and obvious product launches to the more intimate ones like the playground inside Googleplex or massage. So every news (including hints and rumors) about the search engine giant generates interest to many people, me included. One interesting development in Google's ever growing list of products and acquisitions isn't necessarily a new feature, but perhaps a reincarnation of a useful service that was unceremoniously two years ago.

Google Blogoscoped reported the existence of Google Guru on some countries notably Thailand (see below)

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4 Benefits and Risks of Google's Real-Time Search
Posted by Elmer in Geek on December 10, 2009
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A few days ago, Google launched its real-time search feature. This means Google will now be able to display search results of web content that has just been published. Think of it as like adding a Twitter search form that spits out what people are talking about at this very moment. Traditionally, Google displays search results only after a page has been crawled and indexed. With the popular presence of social media tools, it is hard to ignore featuring real-time search. This feature is clearly screaming to be added when Twitter added this feature into its homepage.

So that explains the existence of Google's real-time search capability.

Real-time search enables us to discover late breaking news the moment they happen. That's even before editors get hold of the news for fact checking and publishing. When you use Google to search for something, you may find results from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and a few other partners on search results. But it should be understood that not all terms will yield results of these search partners, as Google only focuses on "hot topics".

Certainly sounds good but what benefits and risks do we expect from this latest Google feature?

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First Click Free: Understanding Google's News Display Options
Posted by Elmer in Geek on December 03, 2009
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In light of the move by News Corporation's Rupert Murdoch to make news a commodity online -- making readers pay to access accurate and timely news reports on the web -- Google also made an adjustment by offering a new feature called First Click Free.

As the name implies, Google allows web and news publishers to set up a facility to show content preview free but subsequent access to pages may need login access. This application tries to help achieve these two goals:

a) Include highly relevant content into Google's search index

b) Provide opportunities for publishers to promote pages with restricted content

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Understanding Rupert Murdoch's Google News Blockade Plans
Posted by Elmer in Geek on November 25, 2009
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Not too long ago, news was accessible via the morning paper, prime-time newscast or radio. But the Internet changed the way we get updates on local and international news. No need to wait the next morning paper, nor watch the news broadcast later tonight if you want to know more details about breaking news that happened now.

The good news is that websites, social media and search engines connived to provide Internet users better access to news and information. The bad news is that news sources are unable to make money out of these conveniences they provided. The sagging subscription numbers and dwindling advertising earnings have prompted layoffs and magazine closures (see Bloomberg, Time Inc and PCMag. Print magazines and newspapers have folded for good (Time, CosmoGirl and Seattle Post-Intelligencer as examples. Focus has now been towards their online presence and now, Rupert Murdoch, the media magnate who heads the News Corporation, is out to change the business model and make visitors pay as they access content.

A possible impediment? News content is freely searchable through search engines, notably Google News. By virtue as the most popular search engine worldwide, Google is now the target of Mr Murdoch as he wants all news content of his web-based media property websites delisted from Google search results. He can then promptly ask readers to pay to access content.

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Intelligence Reports from Google Analytics
Posted by Elmer in Geek on November 06, 2009
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Google Analytics reports just got a little more flexible! If you look into your Google Analytics reports, you'll see a new beta feature just added. It's the Intelligence menu, the latest major category added since Goals was introduced a few years ago.

Just like an intelligence network in the military, this report tries to interpret what a certain deviation of report metrics and dimensions over daily, weekly, and monthly reports. Typically if we notice a surge in traffic on a fine Tuesday morning, we initially investigate what must have influenced such irregular traffic pattern. We look at traffic sources and ask questions such as:

1. Was our email marketing campaign with over 75,000 recipients launched on that day?

2. Was our blog posted on that day made its way to Digg headlines?

3. Was our article cited by a big-name company and linked to it?

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13 Reasons Why Gmail is Better Than Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail
Posted by Elmer in Geek on October 23, 2009
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Still haven't jumped into the Gmail bandwagon? Maybe you need more reasons to figure out why it works well over Yahoo! Mail or Windows Live Hotmail. Here are some of them (in no particular order of importance):
 

1 Anti-spam feature is just amazing

I've been using Gmail as primary email client, while not entirely abandoning my Hotmail and Yahoo! accounts. When it comes to spam protection, Gmail does it best; I hardly see a spam message in my inbox. Yahoo! tells me by clicking a spam message it didn't detect, I am helping SpamGuard perform better.


2 Firefox extensions

If you use Firefox browser, Gmail allows you to take advantage of its productivity features. Change your Gmail skins, use spare Gmail storage for files and photos, manage tasks, manage multiple Gmail accounts and more.


3 Less distractions

Hotmail displays lots of colorful ads that distract me while reading or typing emails. Worse, Yahoo! forces me to view the ads by disguising as "introducing a new feature of chatting with friends". After login, both Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail display intermediate pages which contain boatloads of ads, news feeds even if it's obvious that the reason I logged in is I want to check my mail. Gmail is more straightforward, requires less clicks and gets the job done quickly. And its text ads don't steal my attention.

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Another Reason You Should Ignore Google PageRank
Posted by beansbox in Geek on October 16, 2009
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I wrote recently that Google Webmaster tools added two features in its fold. Googlebot simulation and malware reports are now available for webmasters to use. However, in a rather unceremonious move, Google decided to pull the plug on PageRank report on Google Webmaster tool.

This can be interpreted in various ways, depending on who you ask. But it appears that most industry experts agree that this is something Google had been harping for a long time. Google has just been more consistent of what it says in the past; to say 'don't spend a lot of time' on PageRank and at the same time display PageRank in the Webmaster Tools smacks of hypocrisy. Thus the removal of this irrelevant report in Google Webmaster tool sets the tone clearer.

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Google Updates: Quick View, Local Search, AJAX Crawl
Posted by Elmer in Geek on October 12, 2009
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There are small but significant updates Google did over the past weekend. The primary aim of these updates is to improve overall user experience.

Quick Browsing of Google Docs

Previously, PDF, Word or Excel documents displayed on search results have the "View as HTML" link to facilitate preview of these documents. However, sometimes these previews are not readable (especially PDFs). Not anymore, as Quick View is now introduced as a replacement. With this new change it is now possible to see a graphic preview of these documents as if we screen captured them.

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How To Check If You Have Google Penalty
Posted by Elmer in Geek on October 06, 2009
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In most cases, it is easy to detect if Google issues a penalty to our website. But in other cases it's difficult to detect. Hopefully the few hints below tell us that our site might be getting that dreaded penalty from Google.


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