March, 2007 Archives | Homepage

Web Surfing Highlights

Here are some Internet and web surfing news highlights from around the Web.

  • Search Engine Smackdown: Test your search engine knowledge
  • Live Search turns off link:, linkdomain: and inurl: to stop data mining efforts
  • Yahoo has announced the release of the Yahoo Mail API
  • Baidu, the most popular search engine in China, is opening a search engine for Japan.
  • A search engine for pizza at www.pizza.net (via WebProNews)
  • Where's Waldo the search engine?
  • Google has added a new feature called "Plus Box" that displays maps, stock quotes.
  • TV Guide plans to launch a video search engine.
  • K-Fed lures visitors to his search engine with an Olde English Font.
  • FBI releases Internet crime stats. Suprisingly, complaints are down from last year.
  • Google to alter search privacy data once search data is 18 to 24 months old.
  • Bloomberg is reporting that Microsoft Search will be bumping Google off Lenovo PCs.

    Posted on March 30, 2007
    Permalink | Blogs linking to this post: Bloglines | BlogPulse | Technorati |





    Google Adds Themes For Personalized Homepages

    Loch Ness Monster on Google ThemesGoogle's personalized homepage service now has added six nice themes for users that change with weather, time of day and season. The themes include a city, a teahouse, a winter scene, a sky, a beach and a bus stop. They have started with just these six themes but Google says many more themes are planned.

    Tony Ruscoe has found some Easter Eggs hidden in the themes including a Loch Ness Monster in the beach theme (see photo on right) and UFOs in the City Scape theme.

    Posted on March 25, 2007
    Permalink | Blogs linking to this post: Bloglines | BlogPulse | Technorati |

    Amazing Google Maps Closeups

    Google Maps CloseupA Google Maps trick allows people to zoom-in on locations much more closely. The screenshot on the right shows a zoom-in on a camel. You can see that same location here on Google Maps and if you move the map around you will find more camels and people. Google Blogoscoped explains how the super zoom-in works.
    1. Select a location and switch to satellite view
    2. Zoom in as far as you can, and click "link to this page" at the top right
    3. Now replace the "z" parameter in the URL with a higher value, e.g. 20, 22, or 23, and wait. Some locations will now show more detailed imagery
    The trick doesn't work everywhere but people have already found close zoom-ins of people at the beach. These super satellite closeups make create privacy issues if they are over people's private homes.

    Posted on March 8, 2007
    Permalink | Blogs linking to this post: Bloglines | BlogPulse | Technorati |



    Google Search Tips

    SmallBusinessHub has a good collection of tips to use when searching the web with Google. Some of the tips that many novices do not know are to use phrases, search within specific websites and exclude words from your search. These following tips covers this situations.
    1. Explicit Phrase: Lets say you are looking for content about internet marketing. Instead of just typing internet marketing into the Google search box, you will likely be better off searching explicitly for the phrase. To do this, simply enclose the search phrase within double quotes.

    Example: "internet marketing"

    2. Exclude Words: Lets say you want to search for content about internet marketing, but you want to exclude any results that contain the term advertising. To do this, simply use the "-" sign in front of the word you want to exclude.

    Example Search: internet marketing -advertising

    3. Site Specific Search: Often, you want to search a specific website for content that matches a certain phrase. Even if the site doesn't support a built-in search feature, you can use Google to search the site for your term. Simply use the "site:somesite.com" modifier.

    Example: "internet marketing" site:www.smallbusinesshub.com
    Other tips on the SmallBusinessHub post including using the "OR" command, finding word defintions and using numeric ranges.

    Posted on March 5, 2007
    Permalink | Blogs linking to this post: Bloglines | BlogPulse | Technorati |

    Traffic Up at Yelp and Insider Pages

    Traffic to local social networking sites like Yelp and Insider Pages has climbed over the last six months. Traffic to Judy's Book, a local shopping site, has not jumped. These websites all combine local information with user reviews.
    This week Insider Pages was acquired by the Citysearch division of IAC. Hitwise data shows that the market share of US visits to Insider Pages was up 34% in the past 6 months (August 2006 vs. February 2007). The market share of visits to Yelp, another user-generated local review site, was up by an impressive 91% in the same period. Judy's Book did not show an increase, although traffic jumped in September and October 2006 when it received a substantial increase in traffic from Local.com, suggesting a content deal that was turned off.
    Hitwise also looks at traffic to Local.com, Yahoo! Local and Live Local Search in the post and finds that traffic for these sites has not been growing. So the growth in this categry has mostly been occuring at social local sites like Yelp and Insider Pages.

    Posted on March 2, 2007
    Permalink | Blogs linking to this post: Bloglines | BlogPulse | Technorati |