Google has quietly rolled out an update to its Google Search app for iOS, and before you get your hopes up, I’ll go ahead and tell you that there’s no “Google Now” anywhere to be seen.
The update does, however, bring with it some improvements to voice search. According to the official iTunes page, users will have “faster and significantly improved voice recognition with text streamed on the… → Read More
Google just announced that users who participate in its Gmail and Google.com search field trial will now also see results from their personal calendar on Google’s search results pages. You can see these results by using queries like [what is on my calendar today] and [when am i meeting rip]. → Read More
Google today launched version 2.0 of its search app for iPhone. Google completely overhauled the design of the app, which now looks and feels more like the app’s iPad version the company launched last November. The new version feels significantly faster than the last one and the new design works especially well for image searches. Surprisingly, Google hasn’t officially announced the update yet… → Read More
Google has updated its Google Image Search experience with a redesign targeted towards users of tablet devices, including the Apple iPad. Now, when you’re browsing through image results on your tablet computer (yep, Android tablets, too), you can tap an image result in the carousel view to expand the image on the screen. You can then begin swiping through the rest of the image search results to… → Read More
Remember when Google search ads used to be three lines of text? Nowadays, says Google in a new blog post, roughly one-third of searches with ads show an enhanced ad format (featuring video preview windows, prices, images, specific links on a given Web page, recommendations from your friends and whatnot).
Or as Google puts it in the blog post:
What started as three lines of simple text has… → Read More
This morning, we got tipped to check out wdyl.com. The tipster noted that it was apparently a new Google site attempting to “create a unified UI to search in multiple channels”. Sure enough, visiting the URL brought up a Google page — but it was a 404 page. Turns out it needs the “www” in order to work. Yes, wdyl.com is not quite ready for prime-time. But it is out there, live!
The new service… → Read More
Whoa there tipsters, slow down. We’ve just been bombarded with tips coming our way that Google has rolled out a new-look search results page. Scanning Twitter, it looks like there are in fact a lot of people seeing this. And boy is it ugly.
I mean, it’s great that Google appears to be trying to clean up the look of the results page, which has gotten pretty cluttered over the years as they add… → Read More
Google’s flagship native app for the iPhone has always been a little odd. First of all, it was called “Google Mobile App”, which seemed a bit redundant. More importantly, it just wasn’t really worth using instead of google.com in the Safari web browser itself. But a big update today fixes both issues — and showcases how it could be ever better still.
What was the “Google Mobile App” is now… → Read More
Google search is powered by algorithms. Computers slice and dice data looking for signals that a web page is more or less interesting than other web pages for a given query. PageRank is a big part of this, where Google looks at inbound links to a site as well as the text relevant to that link. But Google also uses lots of other signals to determine the relevance of a web page. They have to… → Read More
At least a couple times a week we get tipped about Google testing a new “social search” feature. The truth is that the “social circle” results that everyone is pointing to have been in place since 2009. But Google clearly didn’t think too much of them and shoved them all the way down at the bottom of the results page. I’m not sure I’ve ever clicked on a link served up there. But this social aspect… → Read More
Today at LeWeb ’10 in Paris, France, our own Michael Arrington took the stage to talk with Google’s Marissa Mayer. Mayer recently took a new job within Google. Technically, she’s now the head of consumer products for the company. So what’s she working on?
Well, as we’ve all heard, location is a big part of it. But she’s also thinking about a bigger picture item that Google is still working on. → Read More
I can’t recall something we’ve gotten tipped about more than Google Instant Previews. Even after we wrote about it appearing in the wild a month ago, the tips kept flowing in. Even just yesterday we received two more: “NEW GOOGLE FEATURE!!!” We appreciate the tips, and I’m happy to say today that you can stop sending this specific one. Because Google is officially launching the feature.
As… → Read More
Two months ago, when they first unveiled Google Instant, Google let everyone know that it would be coming to mobile devices this fall. Sure enough, it’s here, in beta form.
While the feature hit some Android devices about a week ago, today it has arrived for the iPhone as well. I’ve just loaded up google.com on my device and sure enough, right below the search box and location indicator, there’s… → Read More
We haven’t been able to reproduce this, and Google has yet to respond to our requests for confirmation and more information, but SEO consultant Patrick Altoft says he has spotted something fresh while using the search engine: full-page previews of search results.
Update: TheNextWeb has been able to reproduce this as well, so Google’s definitely testing this right now. → Read More
Over time, we’ve scooped things ranging from Facebook Places to various Chrome OS features simply by digging through code put out there in public. What’s great about doing this is that it negates the inevitable non-denial denials from companies when you ask about these features. Code doesn’t lie. Neither do images. And the latter may reveal two upcoming features destined for Google Search.
Check… → Read More
Today at the Google Search event in San Francisco, the search giant unveiled Instant, a huge new feature that allows users to search in real time (without hitting the search button). It looks to be an awesome product that will save users a lot of aggregate time. But that’s on Google.com. I rarely use Google.com anymore. I want it in the Chrome Omnibox.
That’s coming soon, Google’s Marissa Mayer… → Read More
Today at their Search event, Google showed of a huge update: Google Instant. As you can probably guess, this is a way to search in realtime simply by typing. While this new feature is rolling out on Google for users in the U.S. today (and the world shortly), that’s only on google.com. But Google gave a sneak preview of what’s coming next: Google Instant for Mobile, coming “later this Fall.”
While… → Read More
Today at their Google Search event in San Francisco, executive Marissa Mayer kicked things off with a big state: Google is now serving 1 billion users each week.
Mayer noted that they have some big announcements coming up today (likely these), but first reiterated that they’ve already done a lot this year. In 2009, Google rolled out 500 UI and ranking changes — in 2010 so far, they’re already… → Read More
The ongoing saga of Google’s logo continues. The search giant has just changed the doodle on google.com once again this evening, leading up to their search event tomorrow. And once again, it looks as if the logo points to what they’ll be announcing tomorrow.
Whereas yesterday, the doodle was more kinetic, which Google called “fast, fun and interactive,” today’s logo updates as you type in the… → Read More
By now, you’ve likely noticed the interesting, kinetic logo Google has had up today. While there is still no official word from the search giant as to exactly what it means, they are letting out some hints. And based on those hints, a good guess seems to be that the logo has to do with what they’ll announce at their big search event being held in San Francisco’s MOMA tomorrow morning.
Earlier… → Read More
How’s this for absolutely dominating an increasingly lucrative and fast-growing segment?
Google currently boasts a mobile search market share of 98.29%, with it closest competitor Yahoo taking up just over 0.8% of market share and Microsoft’s Bing barely touching even half that, according to recent data from StatCounter as relayed by Pingdom. → Read More
So yesterday, I notice there’s a new article up on Google’s main blog, head on over there and see it’s merely a post featuring the latest video in the company’s Search Stories series, video ads which essentially aim to highlight how all kinds of people use Google Search. They’re nice and all, if pretty pointless in my book, but nothing particularly spectacular about them.
But this latest one… → Read More
Microsoft Europe’s communication team has used its Twitter account to make fun of Google’s latest search page feature: the ability to add background images to said page, a feature that has characterized Microsoft’s Bing search service since its debut.
Google yesterday temporarily added a default background image to make more people aware of the new feature, which apparently prompted Microsoft… → Read More
In August of last year, we wrote about Caffeine, the codename for Google’s latest iteration of its search product. The idea behind it was simple yet encompassing: to “push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.” Back in December, it looked just about ready, but never came. Today, it’s finally ready to roll.
In a post on the Google Blog, the… → Read More
Online privacy seems to be at the top of everyones’ minds these days. Facebook, Google, and Blippy have all had high-profile privacy lapses in recent weeks — the problem seems to be getting worse, rather than better. Today, Google is starting a new project in an attempt to show their commitment to security — they’re adding SSL encryption to Google.com itself.
Now, to be clear, this isn’t on by… → Read More
Orli Yakuel noticed that Google has quietly added a new icon in the ‘Compose Mail’ window of its free webmail service Gmail, enabling users to run search queries from within the interface and insert results and URLs straight into drafted e-mails or open chat conversations.
This is an expansion of a Google Labs feature, simply dubbed ‘Google Search’, that was introduced back in April 2009 as an… → Read More
There are few things more terrifying to me than the idea of going anywhere near a shopping establishment on Black Friday. But if I lived in New York City, I think I would this year because Google, Verizon, Reuters, and R/GA are teaming up to take over the largest displays on Times Square to allow for a giant Google Search by voice experiment/Droid advertisement.
What does this mean? On Black… → Read More
While they’ve been selectively displaying them for a little while now, Google today took the time to talk about and show off its new search ads. The general gist? Bigger, bigger, click me, bigger. Or, in Google’s own words, “Text is often useful, but sometimes videos and pictures are a more effective way to receive information.”
That can be true, I suppose, but each of these additions also make… → Read More
I’m a big fan of keeping things simple, but that doesn’t mean things have to be bland. Google search results are pretty bland. Sure, sometimes you get returned things like YouTube thumbnails or pictures, but many results are still just a monotonous stream of blue links. Google tried to break this stream up a bit with its Search Options, an expandable feature, that gives you a left-side toolbar. → Read More
Last week at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Google’s Marissa Mayer took the stage for two reasons. The first was to formally announce the Google/Twitter search deal, but the second was the show off a new product: Google Social Search. The on-stage demonstration was interesting, but left a lot of questions unanswered. Today, the Google Labs experiment goes live, and we’ll get those… → Read More
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