Sitelinks got multiplied by 2

Google search search results will now show 8 sitelinks instead of 4. Sitelinks are the set of links below some search results that lets you jump directly to useful pages deeper in the site. Google blog has given this information few days back.

The extra will give users to access to more areas of the website and will also provide a good overview of the website.

Google people are working on bringing sitelinks for many more website with descriptive names. Google aims at providing users with more meaningful improvements so that users can access information quickly.

New Features in Adsense account

Adsense Blog has announced that they have made some updates in Adsense account based on the suggestions received from Adsense account users:

• Now ID number associated with a specific custom channel can be viewed by visiting Channels link under Adsense Tab. This information has been added because many users want channel ID numbers for ad management programs which they are using.
• All ad units generated within last 7 days that haven't yet received any impressions will now be listed as New rather than active in Status column.
• Most recent date will be displayed when ever you will update your ad units. Any ad units generated or edited before this display change will show a last-edited date of November 1st, 2007.
• Google guys are working on the manage ads feature for referral units. They say that soon they will prompt you to enter names for your newly generated referral units.

All the features sound interesting & useful to me. You can also send your suggestions to Google by visiting the following link:

https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py?search_ask=1&subtopic=&contact=suggest_feature&sourceid=aso&subid=ww-en-et-asblog_2007-12-10&medium=link

Important Adsense announcement – Save your top queries data

Adsense Blog has announced that there is an important change coming on December 10th that will affect your top queries data. From December 10th Adsense for Search top query data that's more than a year old will no longer be available.

If you have important top queries data which are older than a year old, please run any appropriate reports and save them before December 10^th.

Gmail Colored Labels

Gmail blog has announced that they have added colors to labels.

Labels in Gmail do all the work of folders. You can add color to labels by clicking the color swatch next to each label to assign a color. The colored labels will help you better organize email with new colored labels.

More Information available at: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/next-evolution-of-labels.html

Google Adwords Template Center

Google Adwords blog has announced that they have launched Adwords Template Center.

This is free tool and it is available via My Client Center (MCC). This will allow My Client Center account managers to create templates for pre-defined Adwords campaigns and share them with their directly linked Adwords accounts. Advertisers with these linked accounts can quickly and easily view and customize the templates to run their own Adwords campaigns. The MCC account managers can create policies to restrict use of certain keywords.

More information available at: https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=13065

New features in Google Reader

Google reader has announced two new features. The new features are recommendations & drag-and-drop capabilities.

Google recommendations can be found on the top right hand side corner of the Google reader home page and on the directory page.

These recommendations are determined by what other feeds you subscribe to, as well as your Web History data.

Another feature which is announced is drag-and-drop support for subscriptions and folders. You can now easily move feeds between folders, as well as reorder things up and down within the list.

More Information available at: http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2007/11/attack-of-interns-recommendations-and.html

Custom Search platform now available in more languages

Since the launch of Custom search engine, Custom Search administration console was only available in English. Google has recently announced that Custom Search platform now supports 40 languages in close to 80 countries worldwide.

Custom Search is available as a free, ads-supported version. Webmasters can use CSE to create tailored search experiences on community web sites; businesses can add hosted site search to their web sites; users can add search to their blogs and web pages; and developers can build search right into their applications with the Custom Search APIs.

Custom search engine doesn't require any software to install. CSE can be easily built and customized according to the look and feel of your web site. With Custom Search Business Edition (CSBE). Further customization of search results is possible using an XML API, and ads are optional. CSBE offers options for email and phone support also.

More Information available at: http://googlecustomsearch.blogspot.com/2007/11/posted-by-matt-wytock-software-engineer.html

Google Checkout's new "Tools" tab

Google checkout has recently lunched a new tab to improve the Checkout experience for their merchants. The new tab is "Tools" tab. This tab has been introduced to alleviate some of the congestion under settings tab.

This tab will include:

• Buy Now Buttons
• Email Invoices
• Coupons
• Integration Console

More Information available at: http://googlecheckout.blogspot.com/2007/11/introducing-tools-tab.html

Changes in Text ads format

Google has changed text ads to help reduce accidental clicks. Earlier, users could click on both the background and full text of an ad, but now they can click only on the title and URL of a text ad. This will help in decreasing accidental clicks, better aligning visitor behavior with their intent.

This new click able format better aligns with the text ads. The main focus is to have a more consistent user experience & to benefit advertisers so that advertisers only pay for meaningful clicks. By reducing accidental clicks, Google hope to increase advertiser campaign value and satisfaction, encouraging additional spend and facilitating higher monetization for all publishers.

More information available at: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2007/11/accidental-clicks-fade-into-background.html

Google Checkout badge on the AdWords ads

Google is now displaying Google checkout badges on the AdWords ads of non-profit organizations who use Checkout.

They have added the Checkout badge to non-profits' AdWords ads to help connect donors and non-profits more easily, and ultimately make donating to them as fast, simple, and secure as possible.

More information available at: http://googlecheckout.blogspot.com/2007/11/google-checkout-badges-on-non-profits.html

Live Search Webmaster Center Blog is Live now

Microsoft has announced that they have created Live Search Webmaster Center blog to help keep webmasters informed on progress as they develop tools to assist webmasters. They will also be sharing from time to time on how to keep your site performing well.

They want to use this blog as a two way communication between Live Search and the webmaster community as SEO’s and webmasters need this kind of information and the tools they are building to keep their sites performing well

You can Sign up for webmaster Central at http://webmaster.live.com/.

Can you cancel your orders on Google Checkout?

Yes, now you can cancel your orders on Google Checkout.

Suppose you have entered a wrong shipping address or you want a different product or you have seconds thoughts about the product which you have just ordered, then with Google Checkout you can quickly and easily cancel your order. You have to navigate to the Order Receipt and click the "Cancel" button at the top of the page. This button will be available for up to 15 minutes after placing orders on most Checkout merchant websites. If the "Cancel" button doesn't appear then you'll need to contact sellers directly.

Sellers will now be able to see in their inboxes which orders are within the 15-minute cancellation window and which orders have been canceled by buyers.

More information available at: http://googlecheckout.blogspot.com/2007/11/now-you-can-cancel-that-order-when-you.html

Live Search's link domain command is back

Live search's link command is now working. Microsoft pulled this command earlier this year but now its working fine.

There is one important change to the command. You have to precede both the link: and the linkdomain: commands with a plus sign. For example a linkdomain command is now +linkdomain:www.microsoft.com and a standard link command is now +link:www.microsoft.com.

More information available at: http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2007/10/16/livecom-link-commands-are-back/

Upload multiple videos to Youtube

If you want to upload multiple videos, then you can use YouTube Uploader. YouTube Uploader is a small piece of software lets you upload multiple videos to YouTube without having to use the standard upload form; each video can be up to 10 minutes in length and up to 1GB in size.

This software is right now only available for Windows PCs. You can download the software from installer webpage. Click the "Install Windows Uploader" button to download and then run the installation program to get started. These videos will be available in My Videos after they have finished processing.

More information available at: http://www.youtube.com/blog?entry=exPJxpwQNfQ

Search in Google reader

Google reader recently announced search in Google reader, that lets you search for keywords to find items in your subscription. If you subscribe to someone's shared items, it'll search those too.

Along with this, now you can now also hide the side navigation by clicking on the separator to its right. Unread counts now go to 1,000 and you can also use the forward and back buttons to move between folders and subscriptions like any other web page.

These are some handy features which were brought by Ben and Chris's tireless engineering work and Jenna's relentless iteration on user interface concepts.

Updates to Google Adwords Site targeting

Google Adwords blog has announced two changes to site targeting in Google's content network.

First, because site targeting now offers more precise targeting options, we've given it a more appropriate name: placement targeting. Second, they are introducing a new cost-per-click bidding option so advertisers can now pay per click or per impression.

Introducing placement targeting

With features like targeting by demographics and richer ad formats such as click-to-play video ads. Now, advertisers can target not only websites but also precise subsections of sites, such as the football pages of a news site, the show times section of a movie site, and even a specific ad unit (a block of Google ads) on a particular webpage. Because of these features, Google has changed the name from site targeting to placement targeting. The term "placement" can be used to refer to any site or subsection of a site that advertisers choose to target.

Cost-per-click bidding for placement targeting

With the launch of cost-per-click (CPC) bidding, advertisers can now choose the bidding option that best matches their needs. If the purpose of your placement-targeted campaign is to increase sales, leads, sign-ups, or other conversion-oriented metrics, you can select CPC bidding and pay when users click on your ads. If you want to maximize impressions and increase brand awareness among your target audience, you can select cost-per-impression (CPM) bidding. And you can specify either the maximum price or the average price (with preferred bidding), that you'd like to pay for each click or 1000 impressions.

More information available at: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2007/11/two-updates-to-site-targeting.html

AdSense Integrated with FeedBurner Site Ads

Now AdSense content ads can be displayed on your blog and/or website. This is a new integrated capability designed for feedburner content. If this service is activated then you can display a 300x250 or 468x60 text or image AdSense ad on your blog. The ad will appear below the first item on your site and archive pages once you have installed the necessary code. Ad content is automatically targeted to complement your site and you will earn revenue each time visitor’s click on ads. These ads can be customized according to the look and feel of your website or blog.

These ads will be subject to AdSense terms and conditions. You don't have to be part of FeedBurner's ad network to put these ads on your site.

To activate the service, sign in to your FeedBurner account, select your feed and go to the Monetize tab where you can connect this service to your AdSense account.

More information available at: http://blogs.feedburner.com/feedburner/archives/2007/10/adsense_integrated_with_feedbu_1.php

Google docs now available in 13 more languages

Google Docs has been launched in 13 more languages, making it now available in 37 languages.

Languages in which people can access Google Docs are:

• Bulgarian
• Catalan
• Croatian
• Filipino
• Greek
• Hindi
• Latvian
• Lithuanian
• Portuguese (Portugal)
• Romanian
• Serbian
• Slovak
• Slovenian.
• Danish
• Czech
• Finnish
• Hungarian
• Indonesian
• Norwegian
• Swedish
• Thai
• Ukrainian
• Vietnamese
• Chinese (Simplified)
• Chinese (Traditional)
• Dutch
• English (UK)
• English (US)
• French
• German
• Italian
• Korean
• Polish
• Portuguese (Brazil)
• Russian
• Spanish
• Turkish

Google Analytics new feature – Site Search

Google analytics accounts have access to a new feature i.e. site search.

With the help of Google analytics site search feature, people can see how people search their site once they are already on it. Alden DeSoto of Google Analytics Team explained:

“This is a goldmine of information because every time visitors search, they literally tell you in their own words what they are looking for. You'll not only see their initial searches, but how they attempted to refine searches when they didn't find what they were looking for. You'll see which pages they searched from and where they ended up. And you'll see how site search correlates with conversion and e commerce activity.”

The site search reports will appear within the content section. The site search feature needs to be enabled before someone sees the reports in the navigation.

The report breakdown is as follows:

• Overview is both a summary of site search activity and a jumping-off point to discover additional site search information.
• Usage allows you to compare visits that included site search against visits that did not include site search.
• Search Terms shows you what people search for and how they attempt to refine unsuccessful searches.
• Start Pages and Destination Pages show you where visitors begin their searches and where they end up.
• Categories show you the product groups and areas on your site that visitors search.
• Trending allows you to track individual search metrics over time. The Segments menu, available in most reports, allows you to cross segment any group of searchers

More information available at: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2007/11/site-search-now-available.html

Yahoo search tips

Yahoo blog has posted some good time saving yahoo search tips for day to day searching.

1. To get more focused search use the following
1. Words within square brackets -- adding square brackets to your search makes the keyword match order dependent. So typing in '[Jack Black]' will return results such as 'jack with black' but not 'black jack.'
2. "inurl" -- if you want to be sure that a specific term will appear in the site's URL, use the "inurl:[query]" operator. For example: 'inurl:iPod.'
3. Site restriction -- to restrict your search to pages within a specific domain, use the "site:[domain]" operator, followed by your query. For instance: 'Site:Apple.com iPod.'
4. "orginurlextension" -- to search on specific file types, add 'originurlextension:[file format]' after your search query. For example: 'nanotechnology originurlextension:swf' OR 'nanotechnology originurlextension:pdf.'
2. If you want to track your package from yahoo, you can use the following method:

1. For UPS, type in your tracking number: '1z9999999999999999'
2. For FedEx or the U.S. Postal Service, add the name before the tracking number. Hypothetically: 'FedEx 999777333222' or 'USPS 03062400000176550683.'
2. You can search for definition of a term by adding "define" or "definition" to your search term and if you want to search for a synonym, add synonym to your search term.
3. To save time you can include following operators:

1. For excluding any terms you can use – operator. 'Simpsons -movie' returns results for "The Simpsons" TV show, books, games, etc., but not the movie.
2. You can use “OR” between two terms which will give you results of either “first term” or “second erm”
3. For exact phrase searching you can use “ “.
4. If you're looking for a Yahoo! site, simply add an exclamation point after the site name and voila! Try it out with 'Mail!,' 'News!,' 'Sports!,' or 'Finance!'
5. You can search for the airline and flight number and you'll get a shortcut to the flight's status. Try: 'American 83' or 'Lufthansa 421' for tracking flight status.
6. Traffic -- You can search for the traffic details. Example: 'traffic Los Angeles.' Click on the shortcut and you'll get a map with traffic alerts.
7. Maps -- You can search for different address on yahoo. You can also search even if you don't have the address. Add "map" before the city: 'map San Francisco.' You can also search for the zip code by itself: '20502.'
8. Yahoo open shortcuts: Yahoo! Open Shortcuts are the ultimate time-saving search feature. Add an exclamation point to the front of certain terms to instantly navigate to a URL, search a site, recall a favorite Yahoo! search, or start an application.

• '!wiki queen elizabeth' takes you directly to the Wikipedia page for Queen Elizabeth.
• '!wsf' gives you the Yahoo! Search results for "weather San Francisco."
• '!clist' takes you to Craigslist.
• '!ebay lamps' searches eBay for lamps

You can also create customized open shortcuts.

Some predefined Open shortcuts can be found at following url: http://search.yahoo.com/osc/list?ei=UTF-8&p=%21list

Increase in CPC

Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian has explained why CPCs tend to increase during the holiday season. He has explained this on Google Adwords blog as:

"Many advertisers track their average cost-per-click (CPC), but what really matters for the bottom line is the average cost-per-acquisition (CPA): how much you have to spend on advertising to make a sale. The third factor to watch is the conversion rate, which is defined as conversions (sales) per click.

Note that these numbers are neatly tied together by the convenient formula:

CPA = CPC/Conversion rate = (cost/click)/(conversions/click).

Clicks, cost, and conversions all go up during the holidays. As it happens, conversions increase more than clicks, so conversion rates tend to rise. This makes the clicks more valuable, so advertisers raise their bids to reach more consumers. As a result CPCs get pushed up."

More information available at:

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2007/11/clicks-conversions-and-christmas.html

Yahoo Search Updates

The Yahoo search blog has posted that they are making changes to their crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms.

Priyank Garg of Yahoo! Search said

"Over the last few days, we've been rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. While we expect the update will be completed soon, as you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index."

More Information available at: http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000500.html

Project Gatineau - Microsoft’s free web analytics service

Microsoft has announced Project Gatineau, its new & free Web Analytics service. First invitations for testing are being sent to US advertisers only.

Advertisers can request an invitation at: http://advertising.microsoft.com/microsoft-adcenter-gatineau

Project Gatineau’s web analytics can be used for sites of all sizes. Project Gatineau’s web analytics will tell advertisers where their visitors come from and they can easily measure marketing campaigns across any medium and from any traffic source.

Features include:

* Click and visitor tracking reports
* Marketing campaign reporting and conversion tracking
* Unique demographic and geographic information from your site visitors


Adcenter blog also states that Project Gatineau is a beta service so Microsoft people will be making lots of changes in by adding more and more features in it for better user experience.

More information available at:

http://adcenterblog.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!85E824269AB8C30D!547.entry

Google Website Optimizer online seminars

Google is organizing two free online website optimizer seminars. Product Manager Tom Leung will be hosting both seminars on October 30th 2007 & November 1st, 2007.

The first online seminar, Introduction to Website Optimizer, is for new & inexperienced users. Tom will discuss the benefits of optimizing your website design and content & will also give a detailed introduction of website optmizer & its features.

The second online seminar, Website Optimizer: Creating & Launching Experiments is designed for those people who have experience with Website Optimizer or other site testing tools. Tom will give a step-by-step demonstration of how to successfully launch multivariate and A/B experiments.

Schedule & Registration Information:

Introduction to Website Optimizer (New or inexperienced users)
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 10:00 - 11:00am PDT
Register to attend.

Website Optimizer: Creating & Launching Experiments (Intermediate and advanced users)
Thursday, November 1st, 2007 10:00 - 11:00am PDT
Register to attend.


More information available at: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2007/10/upcoming-website-optimizer-online.html

Google has acquired Jaiku.com

Google blog has announced that Google has acquired Jaiku.com.

Jaiku is an activity stream and presence sharing service that works from the Web and mobile phones. An activity stream is a log of everyday activities: your status messages, recommendations, events you're attending, photos you've taken - anything you post directly to Jaiku or add using Web feeds.

Google has a plan to use the ideas and technology behind Jaiku to make compelling and useful products.

More information available at:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/reach-out-and-message-someone.html

Adsense Video Units

Google has launched video units on Google AdSense. Video units enable AdSense publishers to display videos from several YouTube content partners.

Video units are ad-supported, and the ads are relevant to both the video and the site content. Christine Lee, Product Marketing Manager has explained that AdSense publishers and YouTube content partners will receive a share of the ad revenue, so video units enable both groups to earn incremental revenue. Advertiser can blend the YouTube player into their site by customizing the color scheme and layout as well as advertiser can choose from three different player sizes.


More information available at: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2007/10/introducing-video-units.html

Location in Google Adword ads

Google Adwords blog has explained as when they display location in Adword ads and how they determine what to display.

When an advertiser uses regional targeting in a campaign, Google users searching from targeted areas will see the city or region name (whichever is more specific) displayed directly beneath the ad. This helps local users in determining that particular ad is relevant to them. Google displays the name of the region or city based on the actual search query or the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the user, if available.

More info available at: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2007/10/adwords-ads-whats-your-location.html

Microsoft has acquired Jellyfish.com

MSN search blog announced that Microsoft has acquired Jellyfish.com.

Jellyfish.com is shopping search engine which helps users to find the right product at the best price. They also do something really very different and interesting. They share their revenue with their users. When someone buys anything from a store in Jellyfish engine, they share at least half of what they earn by connecting users to that store.

Microsoft believes that Jellyfish.com's technology has some interesting potential applications that they can continue to invest heavily in shopping and commerce as a key component of Live Search.

More information available at: http://blogs.msdn.com/livesearch/archive/2007/10/01/microsoft-acquires-jellyfish-com.aspx

Top ten most popular video sites

About: Web Search has posted a list of ten most popular video sites.

On the top of the list, it is MySpace TV where you can find lots of interesting videos.

On second position, it is LiveLeak which has most if political speeches, war reports as well as celebrity videos.

On third spot, it is Break. Break.com is a leading entertainment channel for men aged between18-34, has a wide range of video categories available.

On the fourth position it is Dailymotion which has lot of eclectic video categories available.

On the fifth position it is Metacafe. Metacafe is a video entertainment site where Videos are generated, selected and reviewed by users.

Then it is YouTube which is one of the largest video sites available today. YouTube has thousands of interesting videos available online.

The next spot is of VideoSift where users can view videos and can also vote for their favorite videos.

On the eight spot it is MegaVideo where you can choose from wide variety of video categories, games etc.

Then there is Yahoo video where you can easily share and save your favorite video.

On the tenth spot it is Veoh where you can collect, publish and watching a vast selection of videos.


More information available at: http://websearch.about.com/od/imagesearch/tp/popularvideosites.htm

YouTube and Checkout Non-profit programs

Google blog has announced YouTube and Checkout Non-profit programs.

YouTube unveiled its Non-Profit Program at the Clinton Global Initiative to help non-profit organizations more easily connect with the world's largest online video community. Online videos has emerged as a unique tool for demonstrating the needs of organization in a uniquely compelling fashion. Initially there are 13 participating organizations including American Cancer Society, Friends of the Earth, and YouthNoise.

Google Checkout for Non-profits offers the ability to collect & process donations. Checkout for Non-Profits can be implemented directly into a non profit site. Another major feature is that It offers supporters the satisfaction of knowing that 100 percent of their contributions will be sent to the non-profit, as Google has committed to processing donations through Checkout for free through at least the end of 2008.

More information available at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/youtube-and-checkout-for-non-profit.html

HAVE GOOGLE, YAHOO, MSN, MAMMA, ASK, ALLTHEWEB, WIKIPEDIA TOOLBAR IN ONE TOOLBAR

Yes, You can have all these toolbars in one toolbar i.e. Groowe Search toolbar.

Groowe Search toolbar bundles toolbar functions for many search engines, shopping sites, download sites, including Google toolbar, Yahoo, Amazon, EBay, Ask, Msn, Download.com, Wikipedia, Digg, del.icio.us and others. The entire toolbar reconfigures when you select a different site and it includes many advanced features found in each engine or site. You can also easily repeat your search on all sites included in toolbar.

Toolbar is available for Internet Explorer and Firefox.

More information available at http://www.groowe.com/

Google on Top again

Google has received 64% of all US searches in August 2007. Hitwise has announced that Google has accounted for 63.98% percent of all US searches in the four weeks ending September 1, 2007. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 22.87%, 7.98% and 3.41% percent respectively. The remaining search engines encountered 1.68% of all search engines.

MSN Search percentage has gone down from last months 8.79% to 7.98% & Ask.com percentage has increased from 3.21% to 3.49%. Google & Yahoo are rock steady on the top.

More info available on Hitwise

Official DMOZ blog

Open Directory project has launched the official DMOZ blog. The blog will be the official source for information, insight, and updates about DMOZ, the Open Directory Project (ODP).

The blog will be used by them for:

- Provide authentic messages about DMOZ and the efforts of our volunteer community.
- Highlight enhancements, both current and future.
- Allow editors to showcase their categories and describe, in their own words, why DMOZ is so important.
- Recruit new editors

Additionally they also want to use the blog to get the feedback from the community as what they think about DMOZ, is there anythin which they want to get fixed etc. etc.

More information available at http://blog.dmoz.org/

New Adwords feature

Google Adwords blog has announced that they have launched a new Adwords feature: the Conversion Optimizer beta. This feature will automatically manage bids according to a maximum CPA goal. Maximum cost-per-acquisition (CPA) bid is the amount advertiser is willing to pay for a conversion. With this feature the process of monitoring and adjusting cost-per-click (CPC) bids in order to get more conversions for a lower cost is automated. You simply specify a maximum cost-per-acquisition (CPA) bid for each ad group. The Conversion Optimizer manages your CPC bids for you, making adjustments and showing your ads only when you're likely to get conversions.

More information is available on Adwords Blog

Microsoft in Talks to Buy Facebook Stake

Microsoft is in talks to buy 5% stake in Facebook, putting the valuation of Facebook at $10 billion or higher according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The articles also states that Google has also expressed strong interest in a Facebook stake which can lead Microsoft to another battle with Google.

More information about this is available on The Wall Street Journal.

Google Search trends are now updated daily

Google blog announced that Google Trends will now be updated daily with the latest information. Before that it was updated only once a month. In addition to that they have also created a feed for Hot trends. Hot trends can give you information about the fastest rising search queries are on Google.

Emoticon search :)

Ask.com blog reveled that they have started emoticons search. You can simply search for most popular emoticons by simply entering the characters into a search box. Each result appears as a Smart Answer at the top of a results page, containing a definition of what the emoticon stands for..

They have also given few examples of what people can search for:

:-)

:-(

;)

X(

:-O

Smiley -:) is 25 years old

Happy Birthday Smiley -:) ...

25 years ago, the first email message with a smiley emoticon :-) was sent by Carnegie Mellon Computer Science Professor Scott E. Fahlman.

Now Internet is changing and text is not the only way to communicate online, emoticons have become an essential part of communicating online. We are using them into e-mails, message board posts, and instant messages.

More information is available on News.com

Google Gadget Ads

Google has introduced Google Gadget Ads. This enable individual advertisers and agencies to create ads using maps, images, audio, video, Flash, HTML or JavaScript. The ads can reach Internet users in more than 20 languages and over 100 countries. Advertisers will be able to choose between cost-per-click and cost-per-impression pricing models as well as target their ads based on site context, domain, geography and demographics.

http://www.google.com/adwords/gadgetads/

Windows Live Translator

Microsoft has launched Windows Live Translator. It can translate from English to German, French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Korean etc. You can translate up to 500 words.

http://windowslivetranslator.com/

http://translator.live.com/

Eleven Tips For Optimizing PDFs For Search Engines

Strictly Business - A Column From Search Engine Land The SEO purist may argue why anyone would ever want to use PDF content on a website for search purposes. The reality, however, is that many businesses have a lot of PDF assets. These may include sell sheets, brochures, white papers, technical briefs, etc. The purist simply says why not convert these to html? In the real world, not everyone has the time, budget, and expertise to do that. There may also be other “marketing” reasons. Perhaps a company wants its prospects to experience the content along with all the other brand elements inherent in its print materials. Whatever the reason, there are lots of PDFs available on the web, and you can optimize PDFs to get high-ranking search results. Here are some tips on the right way to do it.

1. Make sure your PDFs are text based. Okay, this first one is pretty obvious. However, we still find companies whose materials were designed in an image-based program. When the PDF is made using these programs, the PDF is an image; there is no text for the search engines to read.

2. Complete the document properties. It seems like the vast majority of PDFs are without specified document properties, the most important of which is the Title. The Title property, if present, almost invariably represents the words that will be displayed as the heading of the search result. It’s the equivalent of the html title tag. If you don’t complete the Title property, the search engine is going to generate a title from the PDF’s content, and it may not be what you would choose. We’ve all seen some pretty goofy looking titles to search results associated with PDFs. Not only do they look ridiculous, but they probably won’t get clicked. In the full version of Acrobat, go to File>Document Properties to specify the Title.

There are other document properties (meta data) you can supply, including Author, Subject, and Keywords, but presently these appear to have little search-related affect. It would be nice if Subject acted as the meta description to be displayed under the heading of the search result, but I haven’t seen this to be true. For now, however, I’d complete the Subject property as if it were a meta description. Perhaps in the future search engines will treat it as such.

3. Optimize the copy. Copy in text-based PDFs is no different than web-page copy. Optimize it.

4. Build links into PDFs. Make sure you include links in your PDFs, and pay attention to the anchor text used. Search engines do recognize these links. Not very often, but sometimes you’ll find backlinks in PDFs. Their limited occurrence, however, is likely related to the fact that most people don’t put links into PDFs; most people treat PDFs as static print documents. In addition to including links in PDFs for search-related purposes, there’s also a good business reason. Often, PDFs are passed along to others via email. Accordingly, a reader may be viewing the PDF in isolation (i.e., not associated with your website.) By placing links into PDFs, you give these readers an easy way to click back into your site, where you can further influence them.

5. Pay attention to the version. While search engines do “read” and index PDFs, search engines’ capabilities tend to lag new versions of Acrobat. Although Acrobat 8 is out, for now you should save your PDFs as version 1.6 (Acrobat 7) or lower to ensure search engines can index the content.

Not only is saving PDFs at a lower version good for the search engines, it’s also good for users. Not everyone has the latest versions of Acrobat Reader. Accordingly, I’d recommend saving PDFs as version 1.5 or lower. This way it will be good for search engines and most readers.

6. Optimize the file size for search. Don’t post a huge PDF for download. Not only is this annoying and unnecessary for site visitors, it’s also burdensome for the search engines. If it’s too big, the search engines may abandon the PDF before even getting access to its content. Using the full version of Acrobat, select Advanced>PDF Optimizer to “right-size” the document.

You may also want to enable the "Optimize for Fast Web View" option in the Preferences>General Settings panel. This allows the PDF to be “loaded” a page at a time, rather than waiting for the whole PDF to download.

7. Pay attention to placement. If you bury links to PDFs deep within your site’s file structure, they’re less likely to get indexed. If you want to use PDFs for high-ranking search results, links to those PDFs should be on web pages closer to the root level of the site’s file structure.

8. Influence meta descriptions for PDFs. For web pages, the meta description is what is displayed under the title in a search result. With PDFs, the search engines search the copy of the PDF and select something to display. While with PDFs you have less control of what is displayed as the description to the search result, you can still influence this. The best way to do this is to make sure that you have a good, optimized sentence or two near the start of your PDF. If these sentences correspond to the search term used, it’s likely that these sentences are the ones that will be displayed as the description under the search result’s heading.

9. Specify the reading order. As noted above, search engines search the copy of the PDF and select something to display as a description under the search result’s heading. Depending on how the reading order of your PDF is specified, this may lead the search engine to select some pretty strange stuff to display.

Every PDF has a reading order. Similar to properly optimized web pages, you want to make sure that valuable content is read first. How do you know the reading order? With the PDF open and while using the full version of Acrobat, select Advanced>Accessibility>Add Tags to Document. Then select Advanced>Accessibility>Touch Up Reading Order. Then the reading order of the PDF will be displayed.

10. Tag your PDFs You can also add tags to your PDFs, similar to html tags. Again, with the PDF open and while using the full version of Acrobat, select Advanced>Accessibility>Add Tags to Document. Acrobat will give you a document report and recommend things you may want to consider changing. You’ll have the ability to tag headings, alternate text for images, etc.

11. Pay attention. Every time you open a PDF, make even a small change, and save it once again, major unseen things may change. The reading order may change automatically. You may inadvertently save it as a higher version. It may get saved using the default size setting instead of a properly optimized size. If you’re going to further optimize existing PDFs, may sure you check all of these things before posting a new version of the PDF.

http://searchengineland.com/070912-095906.php

Google Docs new presentation feature

Google has launched Presentation, a tool for making presentations, much like Microsoft’s PowerPoint or Apple’s Keynote. Google Presentation is part of Google Docs, a suite of tools that was previously called Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

The new presentations feature of Google Docs helps a user to easily organize, share, present, and collaborate on presentations, using only a web browser.

You can import your existing presentations or you can create new presentations using new slide editor. Presentations can be edited, shared & published using the Google Docs interface. Presentation feature is available in 25 languages. Participants can get connected via Google talk, when the presenter is presenting the presentation, to chat about the presentation as they are watching.

More information available at: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/our-feature-presentation.html