My Webmaster Blog » News & Trends

You can Now Personalize Google News

John — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:09:14 +0000

A new directory has been added by Google News for customized sections that enable visitors create their own personal news sections. It’s something like what you could do on CNN news.
Google’s earlier method requires you to make a search and then click on its “create custom section” at the bottom of the search results page. With the new feature, you can click on “Add a Section” and this opens a new page where you can add pre-programmed news.

Once the module is done, you have the options to create a custom section title that will appear on Google’s News Homepage. You then have a choice of edition option for UK, US or Asian, source location which optionally allows you to restrict the news to certain locations.

A New MSN Homepage with a Search Engine

John — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:08:29 +0000

Recent visitors to the MSN site are now treated to a new home page with less clutter while making another online milestone with easier and more intuitive navigational feature. You can now get all the information you need about sports, lifestyles, entertainment, videos and a nifty search engine all on the MSN homepage.

Of interest is the Bing search engine which is seamlessly integrated in all the key areas like travel, sports, people, as well as highlighting current events and community news grouped according to ZIP codes. On top of that, the MSN homepage allows you to access social networking sites like Facebook, Windows Live and Twitter right from the MSN homepage. Rolling out first in the US, MSN is encouraging surfers to visit the new homepage and give their feedback.

A Giant to Battle Head On with Google

John — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:02:19 +0000

It’s not enough that Microsoft has the PC market cornered with its OS; it’s striving to get a piece of the Google market as well. Its Bing search engine is getting some help from a noted web tool developer, Wolfram Alpha, to give Bing better search results. Unlike Google and other search engine results where you get pages of websites relevant to your search subject, Bing takes this a step further by actually answering your questions directly.

Wolfram Alpha calls this a “computational knowledge engine” that differentiates itself by grabbing data from licensed and public databases to answer search queries. The new Bing resulting from this technical partnership is expected to be beta-tested in the US and will be limited to select topics like health, nutrition and mathematics.

A More Intuitive Song Searching at Yahoo

John — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:59:33 +0000

Yahoo! Video Search has enhanced the way visitors can dig up their favorite music artists and their works with “Web of Things” where a left columnar rail shows the popular works and hit songs of your artist in the search. Clicking on any of the song or album will bring you to the related music videos or the album containing it on a overlaid page.

The Yahoo developers may have analyzed the search behaviour of their visitors and have made the enhancement in response to make a more personal and intuitive search experience for them. This video search music refiner comes after have a similar image search travel refiner as well as celebrity search refiner done on the site.

YouTube as a Search Engine?

John — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:57:58 +0000

With millions of videos housed under various topics in its database, YouTube has become a search engine to many people online. You can find a topic like guitar playing on the YouTube as well as in any search engine. Sometimes, the visual insights you get from the videos are more informative and enlightening at a much shorter time than getting all those sites you have to go through in a typical search engine result.

It is not surprising that many students, housewives, clerics and professionals find YouTube a more direct search engine that delivers the results they want after clicking the enter button on their PCs without having to swim through various websites related to their searches.

Google On a Buying Binge

John — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:55:29 +0000

It looks like Google is in the shopping mood these days. It just recently acquired AdMob, an advertising agency focused on mobile displays for a cool $170 million in stock. This should give it enough muscle to go into mobile advertising with a more effective handle on it.

In a related buying spree news as reported in TechCrunch, Google bought Gizmo5, a Voice Over IP (VOIP) online service provider that allows subscribers to make calls from their computer like Skype. For just $30 million, the acquisition is expected to further expand and cement Google’s place in online voice with its Google Talk and Google Voice services.