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Google May Change Your Page Titles

Chris Crum | December 4, 2009 @ 9:43am | 10 Comments

In case you were not aware, Google "reserves the right" to change the titles of your pages in search results. Google’s Matt Cutts has released a video discussing why and how they go about doing this.

Cutts says Google wants to show the titles that it thinks are most useful. "For example, suppose the title of your page is ‘Untitled’ or if there is no title. If that’s the case, we try to show a relevant, useful title."

New Google Feature Could Steal Some of Bing’s Travel Thunder

Chris Crum | December 4, 2009 @ 9:11am | Leave a Comment

Google has launched a new "Translated Search" tool as one of the search engines search options. Google’s search options can currently be accessed by clicking "show options" on any results page, once a search has been performed (although you may not even have to do that soon). The idea is that searchers can more easily find and read content written in other languages.

Google Earth Users Get a Way to Build Architecture

Chris Crum | December 4, 2009 @ 8:51am | 2 Comments

Update 2: Google has announced the addition of more cities:

• Stockholm, Sweden
• Nuremberg, Germany
• Hiroshima, Japan
• Saitama, Japan
• Miami Beach, FL USA
• Orlando, FL USA

Where Google Stands on the “Keywords” Meta Tag
Chris Crum | December 4, 2009 @ 7:48am | 93 Comments

Google does not use the "keywords" meta tag in its web search ranking. Google’s Matt Cutts explains this in a Webmaster Central video. This is not breaking news, by any means, but there are a lot of people out there that still put a lot of stock into this.

Microsoft’s Bing Down for 45 Minutes
Rich Ord | December 4, 2009 @ 6:35am | 3 Comments

Microsoft’s Bing.com search engine is facing a mini PR crisis after going down for 45 minutes last night starting at 7:10 PST. Microsoft used its Twitter account and blog to keep Bing visitors and fans informed:

From Twitter:

Google Adds DNS To its List of Services
Chris Crum | December 3, 2009 @ 5:30pm | 4 Comments

Google has announced the launch of a free global Domain Name System (DNS) resolution service, simply called Google Public DNS. People can opt-in to use this as an alternative to their current DNS provider. You do not need a Google account to use it, and it is an independent service, meaning it does not depend on any other products.

YouTube Wraps Up Another Content-Sharing Deal
Doug Caverly | December 3, 2009 @ 5:28pm | Leave a Comment

More professionally-produced, full-length programming (along with a lot of clips) is coming to YouTube, thanks to a deal with a television channel called Five. Five, which operates in the UK, should bring more than 3,000 hours of content to the table.

University Creates iPhone Orchestra
Mike Sachoff | December 3, 2009 @ 5:20pm | 1 Comment

iPhones are being used as musical instruments in a new class taught at the University of Michigan.

The students who design, build and play instruments on their iPhones, will perform a free public concert on December 9.

The course called "Building a Mobile Phone Ensemble" is believed to be the first of its kind. The class is taught by Georg Essl, a computer scientist and musician who has been working on developing mobile phones as musical instruments.

Mobile Banking Trends Accentuate Mobile Growth in General
Chris Crum | December 3, 2009 @ 5:10pm | Leave a Comment

Mercatus released the results from an interesting survey about the mobile offerings of banks. According to the firm’s findings, banks that offer mobile financial services can increase their new customers acquisitions by as much as sixty percent.

Wikipedia on Staying Relevant to a Diverse World
Chris Crum | December 3, 2009 @ 5:10pm | 14 Comments

We recently reported on the notion that Wikipedia losing editors could lead to a decline in accuracy. Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, tells WebProNews growth in editing has slowed, but the number of editors is just flat, and not declining.

Google Puts More Images (And One Big Pic) On Results Pages
Doug Caverly | December 3, 2009 @ 4:43pm | 5 Comments

The PageZoom, NoSquint, and Image Zoom add-ons for Firefox have been downloaded over 5 million times, all together, so obviously, there are a significant number of people for whom default sizes don’t cut it. And now Google’s trying to help them out by adjusting the way in which it displays image results.

Microsoft Throws IE Rivals A Bone In Europe
Doug Caverly | December 3, 2009 @ 4:13pm | 1 Comment

Today, Microsoft may have given Firefox and Chrome a better shot at grabbing market share in Europe. A report’s indicated that Microsoft will appease antitrust regulators – along with its competitors – by showing Windows users a randomized ballot screen for Web browsers.

Google Reportedly Readying Property Portal in UK
Chris Crum | December 3, 2009 @ 3:29pm | 1 Comment

According to the Financial Times, Google is in talks with estate agents in Britain to launch an online property portal for the UK, similar to one that already exists in Australia. Through that one, agents list properties and show pictures from Google Maps Street View.

FT cites Douglas & Godon (an estate firm) commercial director Ed Mead as its source, who claims to have spoken with Google about the plans. No comment has been received from Google on the matter.

MySpace Music Launches In The UK
Doug Caverly | December 3, 2009 @ 1:59pm | 1 Comment

MySpace is continuing to make big strides on the music front. Or more accurately, the social network has made a huge, across-the-Atlantic leap, as late yesterday, MySpace Music launched in the UK.

Google States Case for Online News in WSJ
Chris Crum | December 3, 2009 @ 1:33pm | 1 Comment

Update: The Wall Street Journal is running a piece from Google CEO Eric Schmidt on how Google can help newspapers. It’s an interesting read.

Pulitzer Allowing More Online Entries
Mike Sachoff | December 3, 2009 @ 12:06pm | Leave a Comment

The Pulitzer Prize Board said Wednesday it is opening its doors wider to entries from text-based online-only newspapers and news sites.

A year ago, the Board broadened the competition to include many news outlets in the United States that publish on the Internet at least weekly, but it required that all entered material had to come from outlets "primarily dedicated to original news reporting and coverage of ongoing events."

YouTube Gets Faster With “Feather” Beta
Doug Caverly | December 3, 2009 @ 10:53am | Leave a Comment

YouTube’s supposed to be fun and easy to use; people want to visit the site and, in short order, view all sorts of interesting clips. Making things load more quickly is a solid goal, then, and Google’s pursuing it with the launch of a new project called "Feather."

Google Exec: Docs Can Supplant Office In One Year
Doug Caverly | December 3, 2009 @ 10:38am | 20 Comments

Dave Girouard, the president of Google’s enterprise division, made an interesting admission earlier today, acknowledging that Google Docs isn’t right for the average person. But Girouard also made an interesting prediction, putting Google Docs about a year away from seriously challenging Microsoft Office.

Twitter Users a Click Away From Google Friend Connect
Chris Crum | December 3, 2009 @ 9:58am | 1 Comment

Google has launched Twitter integration with Google Friend Connect. This means any site using Google Friend Connect can potentially gain a much greater audience through Twitter.

The integration allows users to sign in to Google Friend Connect with their Twitter account information. From there, they can tweet about new site membership, share discussions from comments with their Twitter followers, and invite Twitter followers to join their Friend Connect community. The following clip explains how the new integration can be useful:

New Film Website Offers 12,000 Clips From Major Studios
Mike Sachoff | December 3, 2009 @ 9:43am | 2 Comments

Clip sharing site Movieclips.com has launched in beta with a catalogue of more than 12,000 two-minute streaming clips.

Movieclips has struck licensing deals with six major Hollywood studios including 20th Century Fox, MGM, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. The clips are available for free on an ad-supported network that links to third-party sites where users can rent or purchase full length films.

Google Launches Site Performance Feature
Doug Caverly | December 3, 2009 @ 9:37am | Leave a Comment

In mid-June, Google commenced an initiative known as "Let’s make the web faster." Late yesterday, the search giant performed a follow-through of sorts with the release of an experimental feature called "Site Performance."

Number of New Twitterers Declines
Chris Crum | December 3, 2009 @ 8:26am | 3 Comments

We’ve been looking at Twitter’s growth on a monthly basis, in terms of new user registrations and number of tweets. In October, new Twitterers were down, but tweets were up.

November’s numbers paint a similar picture. Matthew Daines, the lead developer of Twellow, has shared a couple of new graphs for last month.

What’s Not to Like About Twitter’s New Retweet Feature?
Chris Crum | December 3, 2009 @ 5:01am | 32 Comments

Twitter is of course in the process of rolling out a new retweet feature. The feature adds a retweet button to each tweet on your timeline, much like the "reply" button that has always been there. However, one distinct difference between these two buttons is that where the reply button fills out your form with the proper information ("@username"), the retweet button sends the initial tweet to your followers’ timelines without giving you your own tweet.

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