Google Blogoscoped

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Google Gets More Webby Awards

Google recently won two Webby awards for Best Practices and Services. Yahoo gets a Webby in the category Games. Google is winning Webbies for several years now.

Pinkfreud Hits 1000

Congratulations to Google Answers Researcher Pinkfreud for her 1,000th question successfully answered. Google Answers maintans its status as Google’s best-kept secret...

Blogger Movie

Google’s Blogger.com service, or rather, one of its users (Salam Pax of Where is Raed?), is now starring in a movie based upon the book The Baghdad Blog.

“Salam Pax, whose real name has never been revealed, spent months writing an often bleakly humorous weblog which detailed the fears and hardships of Iraqi citizens.

The diary began as a way for the 29-year-old architectural student to keep in touch with his friend Raed in Jordan.”
– BBC News, Film deal for ’Baghdad blogger’, 12 May, 2004

Gmail Terabyte Gone

[Gmail]

A Google spokesperson told German news service Heise.de the Terabyte storage many Gmail users were seeing recently was a bug, and has now been fixed. In the meantime, Lycos Europe starts offering 1 Gigabyte ad-free email for £3.49/ month. [Via Markus.]

I have been informed some people still get the 1 Terabyte display, even though Google says it’s fixed.

Google Grafitti Continued

There has been some discussion and questions regarding my Google Grafitti bombing, so I’d like to explain: when you attach a keyword to a website like this:

www.cnn.com/?-thisIsANewTerm-

... then neither do you boost your own ranking, nor is this some kind of SEO technique, nor does it necessarily help CNN rank high for “thisIsANewTerm” than it would when you include “thisIsANewTerm” as simple link text.

However using Google Grafitti you might be able to convince Google the page you are linking to does actually fall into the “page contains keywords” (and that only in case it “understands” keywords in URLs, as opposed to just bolding them in the SERPs), thus having it rank the page higher than it otherwise would.

Also, Google Grafitti does show the words in the URL in the search results...

[http://www.cnn.com/?-gmail-account]

... which will have it appear like it was an official page supporting the keyword; in the case of e.g. miserable failure not something the page owner would want to (think of http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html?-miserable-failure-).

In any case if soon above thisIsANewTerm (which currently cannot be found in Google) returns CNN.com as result page, this will further explain what’s happening (because I will avoid linking to CNN.com using the phrase in question as link text, like I did in previous examples).

Orkut Map Removed

[Orkut Privacy]

I previously reported on how Orkut data was leaking to the outside. Also, I send an email to the Orkut team. Now the host of the Orkut Map shut down the service after an email from Google’s Orkut team (“If you do not delete this data, we will be forced to consider taking legal action in order to resolve this matter”). [Thanks to Eric LeBeau’s brand new French Google Blog Zorgloob.]

Top Queries

Here are the top 10 gaining queries in Google for the week ending May 17, 2004 (via Google Zeitgeist):

  1. Nick Berg
  2. Troy
  3. American Idol
  4. Iraq
  5. Lynndie England
  6. Lakers
  7. E3
  8. Orlando Bloom
  9. Graduation
  10. Alexandra Kerry

Also just published are the Top 500 Search Engine Keywords Of The Week by WordTracker:

  1. Free Games
  2. Al-jazeera
  3. Nicholas Berg
  4. Nick Berg
  5. Latoya London
  6. Nick Berg Video
  7. Recipes
  8. Google
  9. eBay
  10. Yahoo

Google Guideline

Yesterday, Google published their “proposal to help fight deceptive Internet software”:

“We’re alarmed by what we believe is a growing disregard for your rights as computer users. We’ve seen increasing reports of spyware and other applications that trick you in order to serve you pop-up ads, connect your modem to expensive toll numbers or hijack your browser from the site you’re trying to visit.

We do not see this trend reversing itself. In fact, it is getting worse. As a provider of services and monetization for users, advertisers and publishers on the Internet, we feel a responsibility to be proactive about these issues.”
– Google Inc., A proposal to help fight deceptive Internet software, May 18, 2004

(Then again I always thought spammers make money by not following ethical guidelines...)

Gmail Swap

If you haven’t been lucky enough for a free Gmail invite, Gmailswap.com might be for you... just exchange something for a Gmail account. Then again who knows how serious this gBay really is when people offer “first edition bible, signed by jesus” to get a hold of their own Google-mail. [Via our daily WebProNews.]

Google Desktop Search

“Google, the leading Web search engine, is preparing to introduce a powerful file and text software tool for locating information stored on personal computers, a move which would enable it to compete with software giant Microsoft.

The software is expected to be introduced soon and is the clearest indication to date that Google hopes to extend its search business to compete directly with Microsoft’s control of desktop computing, The New York Times quoted company sources as saying.”
– Rediff.com, Google plans powerful search software, May 19, 2004

According to SeattlePi, the project (which has been running internally in the company for a year and will be released as freeware soon) is code-named “Puffin”.

Writing an Open Source Search Engine

A detailed read: Building Nutch: A case study in writing an open source search engine. [Via ResourceShelf.]

Safe For Work

Now this is a creative use of stylesheets: at German Lostfocus.de you can now click on “Safe For Work” to the right (a sort of Boss Key for the new millenium) and the whole blog will appear just like your average office application – and no more risky images.

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