Google still has a long way to go, however, when it comes to maps, specifically indoor maps. The search giant already has quite a few indoor maps, but as it says, this is the next frontier.

“Mapping streets and buildings is the hard part,” Google says. “But the even harder part is mapping indoors. Not only is Google acquiring floor plans for major buildings and venues, but we’re also working out ways to provide positioning data inside those buildings. When GPS doesn’t work, how do you find your place on the map?”

Sarah Peterson and Waleed Kadous talk about just that in this Google I/O session, which Google has now made available to the general public:

According to the report, the event will be “product-related.” Of course, that’s a rather unspecific description, and could mean a variety of things.

Yahoo to hold a product-related news event in New York City on Monday; CEO Marissa Mayer to speak at event. $YHOO

— CNBC (@CNBC) May 17, 2013

This announcement does come on the heels of reports that Yahoo was in “serious” talks to buy or invest in Tumblr. That report indicated that Marissa Mayer has been in close talks with Tumblr CEO David Karp, but that Facebook may also be poised to throw their hat in the ring. any acquisition of Tumblr would be an expensive one – valuations put the company at upwards of $1 billion.

It may seem unlikely that Yahoo would announce an acquisition at an event like this, but it’s not completely out of the question. It seems a bit early for a Yahoo-Tumblr product, but who knows. It’s been a while since Yahoo scheduled anything like this, so we’ll be very interested to hear what they announce next week.

[CNBC via The Next Web]

Starting today, Google will begin to roll out a few new quick actions inside Gmail, including event invite responses that link to Google Calendar, places reviews that let you rate a restaurant, for instance, right inside Gmail, and one-click actions like confirming a product or site registration via email.

“These buttons appear next to certain types of messages in your inbox and let you take action on an email without ever having to open it. For example, you can RSVP to your friend’s party invitation or rate that restaurant you went to last night all right from the inbox. You’ll be checking things off that to-do list in no time,” says Google.

Another quick action involves check-ins for flights. Although the quick action button in this scenario takes you outside of Gmail for confirmation, flight emails now feature a useful card with all the pertinent info – time of departure, terminal and gate, estimated arrival time, and whether of not the flight is on time.

Google is also asking developers to add custom actions to their emails, and they say that they hope to add many more action in the near future. Developers can go here for more info. These new actions should hit your Gmail inbox in the coming weeks.

If you’re curious about more new stuff from Google (and there’s a lot of it), check out all the news from Wednesday’s I/O conference keynote.

Last week, images of a new Google Maps redesign leaked. Last night, the sign-up page with details about new features leaked. Today, at Google I/O, Google discussed the new offering further.

First, they talked about the next generation of Google Maps for mobile coming to Android and iOS. This involves a new design

It includes a new Zagat experience, with Zagat badges in the interface for restaurants, and some Google Offers integration. If you find Starbucks, for example, you can see an offer from Starbucks, and save it for later or use it. You can take pictures and submit them to Google Maps, and they’ll instantly appear from that place.

There is also a new five point rating scale across Google Maps across mobile and desktop.

As far as directions, some new features were announced: a revamped incident experience (live coverage of incidents from around the world). You can see incident alerts in real time. Another one is dynamic re-routing. If you’re driving, and something happens ahead of you, Google will give you an early warning and give you a better route to take.

Then came a demo of new fully dedicated tablet Maps experience. There’s a new “Explore” experience, and you can find stuff to eat, drink, places to shop, places to play and be entertained, and what have you, if you’re in an unfamiliar place. This is coming to Android and iOS devices (smartphones and tablets) this summer.

Finally, came “the future of Google Maps,” which is more what we were expecting. Thee new google maps is “built for you,” has immersive imagery (which includes Google’s indoor imagery), and makes the map the user interface. It’s been rebuilt from the ground up.

It includes social features, and makes recommendations when you are looking at an area where someone you know has left a review. There is also heavier integration with public transit information and a new schedule viewer, which is dubbed “the future of getting directions”.

Again, here’s a rundown of the basic features from Google’s leaked sign-up page:

The most comprehensive map, now built for you: The new Google Maps draws you a tailored map for every search and click you make. So whatever you’re trying to find or wherever you’re trying to go, you’ll always have a map highlighting the things that matter most.

A map that gets better with use: As you search the map, star places you like and leave reviews, the map starts to adapt and can suggest things like restaurants you might enjoy or the quickest way home. In other words, the more you use the new Google Maps, the more helpful it becomes.

Google also announced that there are now one million websites using Google Maps in their sites, visited by a billion people a week.

Google Maps is up to 200 countries, as it recently added North Korea.

More from Google I/O here.

I expect a blog post will be going up soon to give you a more comprehensive look at the new Google Maps.

You should be able to go here to request an invite to the preview.

“Search is dramatically changing right before our eyes,” he said. This involves Google getting closer to the company’s famous “Star Trek” dream – that is, making tools that put us closer to a Star Trek-like reality.

He announced some new capabilities of the Knowledge Graph, which includes anticipating your next question. For example, if you search for the population of India, it will show you other populations as well, and compare these. From the sound of it, it will mostly be doing this with stats.

Knowledge Graph is also rolling out in additional languages: Polish, Turkish, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. Singhal also noted that Knowledge Graph already has over 570 million entities, and continues to grow.

Then, Singhal announced that the conversational search available on Android is coming to Chrome. You can ask Google questions by saying, “Okay Google” and asking your question, without having to push the microphone button, and Google will respond to you with its voice.

Additionally, there are some new cards coming to Google Now, including Public Transit, and some new cards for music, TV shows, books and video games. You will also be able to set reminders in Google Now. These are launching today.

All of this, as Singhal notes, will make Google more useful as assistive tool.

Here’s a blog post about the new stuff. There’s also some new stuff in the search field trial:

Follow @mattcutts

Matt Cutts
@mattcutts

In addition to http://t.co/ptV8oDZOwC it’s safe to assume webspam will continue to tackle link networks that violate our guidelines as well.

 Reply  ·  Retweet  ·  Favorite
11 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Follow @mattcutts

Matt Cutts
@mattcutts

In fact, we took action on several thousand linksellers in a paid-link-that-passes-PageRank network earlier today.

 Reply  ·  Retweet  ·  Favorite
10 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Let the good times roll.

Webmasters continue to anxiously await an upcoming, bigger version of the Penguin update, and Cutts also indicated that Panda would be easing up a bit.

As part of Cutts’ big video, he said Google would continue to be vigilant when it comes to all types of link spam. Already, the webspam team is making good on its word.

Last week, a couple screen caps of an apparently upcoming Google Maps redesign leaked. While the authenticity of these was questioned, it seemed likely that they were real. Now, it’s pretty much certain than they were, as another leak has sprung ahead of Google I/O.

DroidLife reported on a sign-up page for the new Google Maps leaking last night, and has shared screenshots of that. Luckily for those interested, this includes descriptions of all the new features, so we don’t have to wait for Google’s keynote today to learn about what it does (assuming this is where they are planning on unveiling it, which seems highly likely).

There are a lot of new features. Here is Google’s run down from the leak:

The most comprehensive map, now built for you: The new Google Maps draws you a tailored map for every search and click you make. So whatever you’re trying to find or wherever you’re trying to go, you’ll always have a map highlighting the things that matter most.

A map that gets better with use: As you search the map, star places you like and leave reviews, the map starts to adapt and can suggest things like restaurants you might enjoy or the quickest way home. In other words, the more you use the new Google Maps, the more helpful it becomes.

It’s a pretty big overhaul, and one that seems like it will only make Google’s hugely popular maps service all the more useful, though we’ll have to wait until people can start using it to truly now how good the revamp is.

It will be interesting to see if any complaints come out from competitors. Don’t forget the FairSearch Coalition was formed because of Google’s Flight Search feature, and it looks like they’re making that a much more prominent part of the Google experience.

Are you paying close attention to Google’s algorithm updates these days? Are you looking forward to the updates, or are you afraid of what they will bring? Let us know in the comments.

Cutts is careful to note that any of this information is subject to change, and should be taken with a grain of salt, but this pretty much the kind of stuff they have planned at the moment.

Penguin

We already knew the Penguin update was on the way, and he touches on that.

“We’re relatively close to deploying the next generation of Penguin,” says Cutts. “Internally we call it ‘Penguin 2.0,’ and again, Penguin is a webspam change that’s dedicated to try to find black hat webspam, and try to target and address that. So this one is a little more comprehensive than Penguin 1.0, and we expect it to go a little bit deeper in have a little bit more of an impact than the original version of Penguin.”

Before the video came out, Cutts was already talking about this update on Twitter, saying that it would be “larger” and roll out in the “next few weeks”.

Updates To Panda

Google recently changed its updating strategy for Panda. Webmasters use to anxiously await coming Panda updates, but Google has turned it into a rolling update, meaning that it will continue to update often and regularly, to the point where anticipating any one big update is not really possible any longer. On top of that, Google stopped announcing them, as it just doesn’t make sense for them to do so anymore.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t Panda news, as Cutts has proven. It turns out that the Panda that has haunted so many webmasters over the last couple years may start easing up a little bit, and become (dare I say?) a bit friendlier.

Cutts says, “We’ve also been looking at Panda, and seeing if we can find some additional signals (and we think we’ve got some) to help refine things for the sites that are kind of in the border zone – in the gray area a little bit. And so if we can soften the effect a little bit for those sites that we believe have some additional signals of quality, then that will help sites that have previously been affected (to some degree) by Panda.”

Sites And Their Authority

If you’re an authority on any topic, and you write about it a lot, this should be good news (in a perfect world, at least).

“We have also been working on a lot of ways to help regular webmasters,” says Cutts. “We’re doing a better job of detecting when someone is more of an authority on a specific space. You know, it could be medical. It could be travel. Whatever. And try to make sure that those rank a little more highly if you’re some sort of authority or a site, according to the algorithms, we think might be a little more appropriate for users.”

Advertorials

Also on the Google menu is a bigger crackdown on advertorials.

“We’ve also been looking at advertorials,” says Cutts .”That is sort of native advertising – and those sorts of things that violate our quality guidelines. So, again, if someone pays for coverage, or pays for an ad or something like that, those ads should not flow PageRank. We’ve seen a few sites in the U.S. and around the world that take money and do link to websites, and pass PageRank, so we’ll be looking at some efforts to be a little bit stronger on our enforcement as advertorials that violate our quality guidelines.”

“There’s nothing wrong inherently with advertorials or native advertising, but they should not flow PageRank, and there should be clear and conspicuous disclosure, so that users realize that something is paid – not organic or editorial,” he adds.

Queries With High Spam Rates

Google will also be working harder on certain types of queries that tend to draw a lot of spam.

Cutts says, “We get a lot of great feedback from outside of Google, so, for example, there were some people complaining about searches like ‘payday loans’ on Google.co.uk. So we have two different changes that try to tackle those kinds of queries in a couple different ways. We can’t get into too much detail about exactly how they work, but I’m kind of excited that we’re going from having just general queries be a little more clean to going to some of these areas that have traditionally been a little more spammy, including for example, some more pornographic queries, and some of these changes might have a little bit more of an impact on those kinds of areas that are a little more contested by various spammers and that sort of thing.”

Denying Value To Link Spam

Google will continue to be vigilant when it comes to all types of link spam, and has some new tricks up its sleeve, apparently.

Cutts says, “We’re also looking at some ways to go upstream to deny the value to link spammers – some people who spam links in various ways. We’ve got some nice ideas on ways that that becomes less effective, and so we expect that that will roll out over the next few months as well.”

“In fact, we’re working on a completely different system that does more sophisticated link analysis,” he adds. “We’re still in the early days for that, but it’s pretty exciting. We’ve got some data now that we’re ready to start munching, and see how good it looks. We’ll see whether that bears fruit or not.”

Hopefully this won’t lead to a whole lot of new “fear of linking” from webmasters, as we’ve seen since Penguin first rolled out, but that’s probably wishful thinking.

Hacked Sites

Google intends to get better on the hacked sites front.

“We also continue to work on hacked sites in a couple different ways,” says Cutts. “Number one: trying to detect them better. We hope in the next few months to roll out a next-generation site detection that is even more comprehensive, and also trying to communicate better to webmasters, because sometimes they see confusion between hacked sites and sites that serve up malware, and ideally, you’d have a one-stop shop where once someone realizes that they’ve been hacked, they can go to Webmaster Tools, and have some single spot where they could go and have a lot more info to sort of point them in the right way to hopefully clean up those hacked sites.”

Clusters Of Results From The Same Site

There have been complaints about domain clustering in Google’s results, and Google showing too many results from the same domain on some queries.

Cutts says, “We’ve also heard a lot of feedback from people about – if I go down three pages deep, I’ll see a cluster of several results all from one domain, and we’ve actually made things better in terms of – you would be less likely to see that on the first page, but more likely to see that on the following pages. And we’re looking a change, which might deploy, which would basically say that once you’ve seen a cluster of results from one site, then you’d be less likely to see more results from that site as you go deeper into the next pages of Google search results.”

“We’re going to keep trying to figure out how we can give more information to webmasters…we’re also going to be looking for ways that we can provide more concrete details, [and] more example URLs that webmasters can use to figure out where to go to diagnose their site.”

So Google has a lot of stuff in the works that SEOs and webmasters are going to want to keep a close eye on. It’s going to be interesting to see the impact it all has. Given that Google makes algorithm changes every day, this has to be far from everything they have in the works, but I guess the video makes up for the lack of “Search Quality HIghlights” from Google in recent months. Still wondering if those are ever coming back. They were, after all, released to keep Google more transparent.

What do you think of the changes Matt Cutts talked about. Looking forward to any of them? Dreading any? Let us know in the comments.

But that hasn’t stopped plenty of people from going after Google when they don’t like what they see appearing next to their names or businesses. And sometimes successfully, I might add. The latest case to spring from a disputed autocomplete result comes from Germany and is bad news for Google.

A German court has ruled that Google must manually remove autocomplete results if they are determined to be defamatory. This wide ruling could have an effect on not only cases in Germany, but in other countries who could use the decision as a model.

As the AP reports, the case stems from an unidentified plaintiff, only known as “R.S,” whose company sells nutritional supplements. R.S. filed a complaint when they saw that Google autocomplete results associated the name of the company with “fraud” and “Scientology” – both of which they considered defamatory.

A lower court dismissed R.S.’ claim, but the Federal Court of Justice overruled. According to the ruling, Google isn’t being directed to turn of autocomplete or even interfere preemptively, only required to eliminate defamatory autocomplete suggestions when they are brought to the company’s attention.

This isn’t the only case in Germany involving Google’s autocomplete to make headlines. Last year, former German First Lady Bettina Wulff claimed that Google destroyed her reputation with their autocomplete suggestions. Wulff, who has battled rumors that she worked as an escort prior to marrying former German president Christian Wulff, has her name associated with “escort” and “prostitute” in multiple languages in Google autocomplete.

Of course, those suggestions only exist because of the high volume of Google searches. But this new ruling could affect that case, which is still pending.

In April, Google lost a case in Japan over their autocomplete function. A man sued Google over suggestions relating to criminal activity – activity he denied. A Japanese court ruled that Google must alter their results and they also issued a 300,000 yen fine (roughly $3,100).

Google has also faced autocomplete complaints in France.

Bing is reportedly adding the Klingon language to Bing Translator as part of a marketing deal between Microsoft and Paramount, as the studio prepares to release Star Trek Into Darkness.

While we’ve been unable to bring up the language in Bing Translator so far, The LA Times (via Engadget) reports that it is coming today:

The Bing service will translate text written in any one of 41 supported languages — including English, French, Hebrew and Urdu — into Klingon. Fear not, native Klingon speakers: words or phrases written in that language can be translated into the more than three dozen available tongues.

According to the report, Microsoft engineer helped develop the feature, has he apparently speaks Klingon. The LA Times shares a quote from Bing’s Craig Beilinson: “We have people who understand the deep science of linguistics and we also have people who are passionate about the ‘Star Trek’ franchise. This was a labor of love from a lot of different avenues.”

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the Klingon Language utilized by a major search engine. You can still see the Google Klingon homepage here.

Star Trek Into Darkness releases in the U.S. on May 17th.

Image: StarTrek.com