Search News Recap 12.12

As we approach the holidays, search engines are getting more attention than usual. I think this time of year sparks more interest in the topic because of the prevalence of online shopping, and the significant power and sway search engines hold over the economic fate of many e-commerce based businesses. With these business owners relying on organic, paid and social media avenues to drive conversions to their websites, everyone wants to know how to get the most out of their search engine exposure, and how to do this for a nice profit margin. This week I’m going to be talking about the interesting organic vs. paid listings debate, updates to Google’s SearchWiki, and the emergence of Google’s beta-less browser, Chrome.
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Search News Recap 12.5

In keeping with my post last week about recapping the latest news in search, here’s some search engine stories of interest from around the web. This week, we’ll be talking about the recent releases of the data on the search trends of 2008, Google’s beta release of the social networking tool Friend Connect, and the on and off again drama of the Google / Yahoo search deal that has dominated headlines recently.

Search Trends 2008
It’s the time of year when the search giants like Google, Yahoo! and Ask.com give us some insight into the behavior of searchers. Some trends have remained consistent from 2007, but 2008 saw some interesting new topics rise and fall in the search box, most notably in American politics, natural disasters, the 2008 Olympics, and celebrity gossip. Search Engine Land has summarized the information quite nicely for us, highlighting the most important trends across all the engines that provided info. Here’s an overview:
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Search News Recap 11.24

We only scratch the surface of the search engines when it comes to news on our blog here at iePlexus, and I think we need to devote a little more time to such a broad and important subject. From here on out, I’m instituting a weekly search news recap, a place where we can review and discuss the most recent developments in search engines, ranking, optimization, and technology. Although we don’t directly provide search engine optimization here at iePlexus, it’s vital to consider the engines in any online marketing campaign, and news relating to that subject is just as significant. Also, with any social media advertising or web 2.0 marketing campaign, greater exposure in the search engines is often a byproduct of effective work, so it makes perfect sense to be stay informed. I’ve always been an advocate of a comprehensive, all-inclusive approach to internet marketing, so despite the additional work, I’m just going to have to create a new blog category and start sifting through the archives for relevant posts. Sympathy is definitely appreciated.
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Google Meets Life

As if Google hadn’t already completely revolutionized how we use the internet, it had to take it one step further. The latest news surrounding the uber-search engine is an announcement that they have recently partnered with Life magazine.

And what does this new partnership mean for eager searchers? About 10 million of Life’s archived images available by keyword search. The project holds special significance considering the fact that the vast majority (somewhere around 97%) of the photographs have never been previously released to the public.

The massive undertaking required that all of these images be scanned and catalogued into one database. The images range from 1750 to present day, and the end result is one of the most comprehensive and impressive collections of online photographs to date.
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Web 2.0 Halloween

From around the web this Halloween:

Google apparently has a sense of humor that even appeals to code geeks, by adding this to their robots.txt file:

User-agent: zombies
Disallow: /brains

SearchEngineLand put together a great collection of Halloween search logos spotted around the web.

Lastly, in a blast from the past, CommonCraft gives us the low down on zombies:

Google’s New Browser - Google Chrome

It wasn’t a quiet Labor Day over at Microsoft, that’s for sure. Online sources began reporting early today that Google would be releasing a new browser, dubbed Google Chrome to directly compete with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The download will be available tomorrow in as many as 100 countries worldwide. The Google Blog officially announced the launch today at 2:10pm PST.

Chrome is an open-source browser running on WebKit, the same engine that powers Apple’s Safari and Google’s own Android mobile platform. WebKit is known for its speed, reliability and smart memory usage. Because many online applications are being run in browsers, Google is tailoring Chrome to that market specifically. Obviously, this is a direct attempt to garner some of Microsoft’s share of the browser market, of which they currently have a 74% hold, with second-place Firefox at 18% and Apple’s Safari at 6%.
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Google Ranking Insights

Internet marketing wouldn’t be what it is today without Google. Higher visibility in such a popular tool has long been sought after by every online business as a vital component to success. With that desire to rank higher, the ins and outs of how ranking is determined proves to be an interesting debate. There are certainly standards that everyone, including Google themselves, will agree on, but beyond the official posted guidelines, the search engine leader has been pretty quiet.

To bring a little more transparency to their ranking philosophy and technology, Google has put together a series of posts on the Official Google Blog discussing different aspects of this mysterious algorithm and the reasoning behind it. Let’s take a look at some of the key points:
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