Below is a video which demonstrates how the bookmarklet works,

In case you didn't watch the video, the demonstration outlines a number of queries where Google displays Google+ profiles alongside regular search results. In order to determine if these Google+ profiles are the most relevant social result, the tool runs a Google query for the person's name and returns the top social results for the query instead of the "hardcoded" Google+ result.

For example, below is an example of how the tool modifies search results for "music",

As you can see, Google+ profiles are replaced with higher ranked results from Twitter, Myspace and Facebook.

Following the release of this tool, Google has copped criticism that they've abandoned their "don't be evil" mantra and have started focusing on promoting their own products and services.

Earlier this week, search engine land interviewed Google search Chief Amit Singal, who addressed some of the concerns raised above. Here is his answer from the interview,

Q: But what about the Don't Be Evil tool launched this week, showing that you can create People & Pages results that do go beyond Google+ content.

This is where I'm saying most people are jumping to a conclusion based on the first two weeks of the product. We're designing a product which it will work for all individuals. It will have identities as a fundamental ingredient of search and relationships as another fundamental ingredient of search.

All this debate is centered around these very popular people out there, and what you could have done for them, and what makes the most sense. But when you're developing a product, you don't want to develop it for one segment of the population.

I've not seen the debate that I have a -personal- friend named Ben Smith, and when I try to search for him, I get bad results. If you actually build a product only for popular people, then it undermines what we are trying to do. You can't build a product that behaves differently for one class of people then differently for the real relationships that matter for you.

I feel like this point has not been emphasized enough. People have gotten stuck on these very popular names, and no one has been focused on the cool part of the product where you can find people you care about.

At the end of the day, Google has to manage a very careful balancing act between their Google+ social network and their search results. Let's hope they get it right.

As always, let us know what you think of the issue via the comments below.

The main aim for this change is the hope that it will get people to give up Googl-ing and move to Bing for 'doing'.

Bing has been using the "Bing and Determine" motto since its debuted back in 2009 and feels its time to move forward. As told by Sean Carver, Bing's Director for Advertising; the revamped search engine will be a platform for doing things while aiming for the 18-34age group crowds of workers.

Microsoft's online ad revenue was up 13% in the most recent quarter, mainly because of search and I guess this is reason enough to go ahead with the changes. The new Bing ads promoting the change dares the emotional you to do something inspirational. The first ad debuted last weekend on FOX during the NFL NFC Championship Game and puts the emphasis on verbs: doing, winning, falling, healing, living, and, well, snowboarding. Here is the video:

The theme underlying these ad campaigns is 'evolve from decisions to doing' and with these promotional videos Microsoft will illustrate how decisions enable people to go beyond searching to doing and will highlight people doing interesting things.

Till now Bing has highlighted the decisions people make, but with this new campaign you can look forward to not only get trustworthy results, but also doing some other interesting things on Bing.

Will this ad help Bing in its battle against Google? I don't think so, but what do you think? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

This data refresh has been termed as the Google Panda 3.2, and since Google said this was rolled out about a week or so ago, search experts have estimated the date to be January 18, 2012.

The Panda 3.1 update came in during November 2011. After that Google gave a respite to webmasters over the holidays with an announcement of no Panda updates during holidays.

In the New Year this is the first data refresh/update and has been termed as the Panda 3.2. The Panda Updates Timeline goes back to February 24th 2011, when the Farmer Update was rolled out. The algorithm designed against content and link farms wen international on the 11the of April 2011, when it was rolled for the English sites outside the USA. In the last week of September, the Panda 2.5 was rolled out and there were a number of tweaks made to the algorithm by Google.

Despite trimming policies in 2010, Google says they still have over 70 privacy documents spread across various Google products, making it complicated for users. Google too finds this completely out of sync compared to their vision of integrating various Google products. To get rid of the confusion surrounding the privacy documents, Google now will be consolidating almost 60 privacy policies into one main Privacy policy, leaving a handful policies untouched because of legal and other reasons. These changes will be reflected across all Google platforms by March 1st 2012.

Here's how the changes will affect you personally, for example if you search for Indian cricket team on Google search. The next time whenever you log onto YouTube, there will be video suggestions of Rahul Dravid or other videos related to Indian cricket. Google will also have the power to customize search queries and ability to make better spelling suggestions.

Though it might seem like a welcoming and logical change for many, apprehension regrading the changes have already raised a few eyes brows around the corner. Individuals are getting worried as they believe their privacy will be attacked with Google now gaining the power to collect data from multiple products, linking them together. For example, user information from Android mobile phones can be retrieved linked with users YouTube/Google+ accounts. According to privacy advocates these changes will give Google enough power to share your personal information on Google+ profile on other Google products, even though you have previously ticked the box that says 'don't share'.

Updated Terms of Service and Private Policy is made available, to realise what is being changed here's the current Google Terms of Service.

Comments

This was reported by Google Operating System that Google was showing results for some punctuation symbols, as opposed to earlier, where it did not index them. Now you can see results for symbols/punctuation marks like:

1. -.-- Full Stop


2. -,-- Comma


3. -:-- Colon


4. -;-- Semicolon


5. -#-- Hash


6. -%-- Percent



7. -@-- At


8. ---- Carat


9. -)-- Brackets


10. -~-- Tilde


11. -|-- Vertical Bar


12. -"-- Quotes


13. -<- Less than/Greater Than


14. -$-- Dollar symbol



15. -!-- Exclamation Mark


16. --- Apostrophe


17. -&-- Ampersand


18. - _ -- Underscore


19. ----  Minus sign


20. -+--  Plus sign



21. -=--  Equals sign

Do these searches for yourself and see.

Comments



]]> searchnewz Daily Wrap-up http://www.searchnewz.com/topstory/news/sn-2-20120123NowDownloadSearchQueriesDataInGWT.html Google has provided programmatic access to the search queries data in Webmaster Tools with Python. The Python script for downloading search query data was brought by Google in December 2011 and now has new download options that make the data download highly more useful.

With this open source Python script from the webmaster-tools-downloads project, webmasters can now access their search queries data in CSV format. Google has clarified that the search queries data is not currently available via the Webmaster Tools API, and is being considered for the next API update. Here is the example Google gives as to how the search queries downloader Python script can be used to download search queries data and then upload it to a Google Spreadsheet in Google Docs.

Example usage of the search queries downloader Python script:

1. If Python is not already installed on your machine, download and install Python.
   
   



2. Download and install the Google Data APIs Python Client Library.
   
   


3. Create a folder and add the downloader.py script to the newly created folder.
   
   


4. Copy the example-create-spreadsheet.py script to the same folder as downloader.py and edit it to replace the example values for website, email and password with valid values for your Webmaster Tools verified site.
   
   
   


5. Open a Terminal window and run the example-create-spreadsheet.py script by entering "python example-create-spreadsheet.py" at the Terminal window command line: python example-create-spreadsheet.py
   
   


6. Visit Google Docs to see a new spreadsheet containing your search queries data.
   
   

Webmasters can set up these scripts to be run daily or monthly and can archive it for longer periods too. With search query chart data downloads, webmasters have access to information not easily available before. While viewing search query data, the chart in the user interface shows impression and click data per day. Prior to this, the detail has only been available if one hovered over a dot in the chart. But now, the detailed chart data available for download provides a greater understanding of the data.

Previously, users were only allowed to set a maximum of 10 automated rules. Now Google, have increased this limit to 100 to ensure that the user is given enough freedom when it comes to trying out new rules.

Undo changes made by automated rules

Due to flexibility provided, it will be very exciting for users to try out new rules and see how they it works for them. For situations like creation of wrong automated rules or rules not reflecting the change you seek, AdWords have now added an option to undo the change by providing Undo button.

The one liner is an appeal that takes you to an End Piracy, Not Liberty page. The page is a petition form where people can sign up and join the protest against the legislation. People can also share the following message- Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American business. Millions of Internet users and entrepreneurs already oppose SOPA and PIPA. The Senate will begin voting on January 24th. Please let them know how you feel. Sign this petition urging Congress to vote NO on PIPA and SOPA before it is too late.

There is the latest number of people who have already signed the petition. Will this drive by the tech giants affect the Congress decision? Well have to wait and watch.

Bing is in the second position behind Google with 65.9 percent market share in December 2011, while the third place goes to Yahoo! which dropped to the third position on the US. According to comScore, here are the search engines listed by their ranks as well as market share in December 2011:

• Google with a 65.9 percent share is comfortably on the top with an increase in the market share up from 65.4 percent in November. 12 billion of the total searches were conducted on Google.
  
  


• Bing rose to the second spot with a .1 percent increase from November, to reach at the present 15.1% market share in the United States. 2.7 billion of the total searches were conducted on Bing.
  
  


• Yahoo! takes the third position with a lower share of 14.5 percent as compared to the earlier 15.1 percent. 2.6 billion of the total searches were conducted on Yahoo!.
  
  


• Ask came up 4th again at 2.9 percent market share with a total of 531 million searches.
  
  
  


• AOL remained at 1.6 percent market share and powered 26.5 percent of searches.
  
  

The search numbers have also escalated in the month of December 2011 as 18.2 billion core searches were conducted in December, figure 2% more than the search numbers of November 2011.

The December list includes:

• Image Search landing page quality signals: This was an update that analyzes various landing page signals for Image Search that not only gave users the most relevant images, but also is linked to the highest quality source pages. Launched with codename "simple"


• More relevant sitelinks: -project codename "Megasitelinks"- Changes in the Google algorithm for picking sitelinks to get more relevant sitelinks; that users could control with their location settings. Launch codename "concepts."


• Soft 404 Detection: A status code returned to users when someone searches for a page that doesn't exist. soft 404s (codenamed "crypto" 404s) have always been a problem area for search engines because users might get this code due to a mix of reasons instead of mere code errors. With the soft 404s update Google improved its method of detecting soft 404s, especially for pages in Russian, German and Spanish.


• More accurate country-restricted searches: Users who want to see results only from their particular country other than the domains on .com will benefit from this a new algorithmic update by Google that uses several signals to enhance & determine where are web documents coming from, improving the precision of this feature. -launch codename "greencr"-


• More rich snippets: Users should look forward to see more site with rich snippets after this improvement as Google will now detect sites that qualify for shopping, recipe and review rich snippets.


• Better infrastructure for autocomplete: An infrastructure change to improve how Google's autocomplete algorithm handles spelling corrections for query prefixes (the beginning part of a search).


• Better spam detection in Image Search: Google fortified its spam detection in Image Search by extending algorithms that are already being used for main search results. -launch codename "leaf"-


• Google Instant enhancements for Japanese: This update will work with browsers that are IME (Input Method Editor)-aware and will cater to return better results for Japanese queries in Google Instant.


• More accurate byline dates: An update that allows Google to better establish an association with a date and a document. As a result, users will see more accurate dates explaining search results. . -launch codename "foby"-


• Live results for NFL and college football: There is good news for all football fans; Project codename "Live Results"; an update by Google on NFL.com and ESPN's NCAA Football results that allows real time relay of scores, schedules and analysis of your favorite football teams.


• Improved dataset for related queries: Google often returns results that are related to the original search. Google has now introduced an improved dataset on term relationships to find related queries that will lead to results from more relevant related queries.


• Related query improvements: You must have often received results for your search query that have fewer words and are less related to your original query. Google has now made several changes to its algorithms so that you get fewer results that do not include your main search words. -launch codename "lyndsy"-


• Better lyrics results: This change improves the result quality for lyrics searches on Google. -launch codename "baschi", project codename "Contra"-


• Tweak to +1 button on results page: To make search a simple, quick and well displayed experience, Google has made a minor change to how the +1 button appears on the results page. Unlike before, the +1 button will only appear when you hover over a result or when the result has already been +1'd.


• Better spell correction in Vietnamese: A new Vietnamese spelling model launched to return more accurate spelling predictions for Vietnamese queries. -project codename "Pho Viet"-


• Upcoming events at venues: An update to the places panel for event venues. For major venues, users will now see up to three upcoming events on the right of the page. Give it a go for search terms like -staples center los angeles- or -paradise rock club boston-.


• Improvements to image size signal: An improvement to how Google uses the size of images as a ranking signal in Image Search. Following this update, users will see more full-sized, larger versions of an image. -launch codename "matter"-


• Improved Hebrew synonyms: -project codename "Synonyms"- as context matters a lot for translation, Google has updated its way of handling and refining searches for Hebrew synonyms across multiple languages. This change will omit the use of translated synonyms that are not actually relevant to the query context -launch codename "SweatNovember"-.


• Safer searching: -project codename "SafeSearch"- an updated to Google's SafeSearch tool to provide better filtering for certain queries when strict SafeSearch is enabled. -launch codename "Hoengg"-


• Encrypted search available on new regional domains: Following this update users in the UK, Germany and France can opt in to encrypted search by navigating directly to an SSL version of Google Search on their respective regional domains: https://www.google.co.uk, https://www.google.de andhttps://www.google.fr because Google now offers encrypted search by default on google.com for signed-in users.


• Faster mobile browsing: -project codename "Skip Redirect"- There is some good news for mobile users, Google's latest update to mobile version of a websites will allow Smartphone users to bypass all redirects and load the target pages faster -launch codename "old possum"-.