WebProNews

What Google’s Matt Cutts Sees In 2009

WebProNews' Mike McDonald caught up with Matt Cutts of Google at the Hofbrau Haus in Las Vegas during PubCon to get his views on a number of topics. Is Ranking Dead?

Marketers Spending Close To Half Their Budgets Online

Nearly half  (47%) of all marketing budgets are now spent online according to a joint survey by Hearst Electronics Group and Goldstein Group Communications (GGC)."The sense of urgency to move to online marketing has been felt by leading marketing organizations for some time now, but the extent to which budgets have been re- defined is dramatic," said GGC President Joel Goldstein.

Google’s Webmaster Help Group Gets New Look

Google said today that it is introducing a new look to its Webmaster Help Group.Specifically Google is giving its English and Polish Help Groups a makeover. It says the new forums will make it easier for users to find answers, share resources with each other and have their participation acknowledged.

Google Blog Search Indexing Content Differently

Google Blog Search has undergone some changes in how it indexes content. Before, it indexed content from RSS feeds, but now it is going for full content from pages.

Yahoo Set To Introduce New Search Technology In ‘09

Yahoo says it will introduce new technology next year that will improve the way search results are presented.Instead of offering links based on a query, Yahoo will provide a summary of information behind a URL. Yahoo's lab in India is developing the technology.

Live Search Highlights Malicious Sites in Results

About two years behind Google, Microsoft has finally decided to start marking malicious sites in the search results for Live Search. Better late than never though, I suppose.

LinkedIn Looks to the Community for Improvement

LinkedIn has been making efforts to improve its users' search experience. Recently, Senior Product Manager Esteban Kozak walked us through a number of new changes they made in this post as well as the following video.

Love Letters from Googlebot

In a mildly weird fashion, Google answered some questions regarding HTTP status codes and "if-modified-since" from users who were either made up or had their names changed to protect their anonymity. Names like Little Jimmy, Temp O'Rary, Janet Crinklenose, and Frankie O'Fore (my apologies to any Janet Crinklenoses who may be out there, but I think I'm safe in my assumption that the name is fictitious).

'Tis The Season for Google Mobile Tips

As Doug talked about the other day, Google is counting down the days until January 01, 2009. They're doing so by providing tips for various Google products. Google Mobile has its own countdown providing a tip a day specifically for using it until the New Year as well.

Online Retailers Cash In On Cyber Monday

While the economy boded poorly for brick-and-mortar stores over the holiday weekend leading up to Cyber Monday, Hitwise says business was pretty much booming for online-only retailers.