Google has been busy updating its services this week, Google Maps, Adsense, YouTube, Google Reader and Google Books have all been updated as part of Google’s continued development. So the big question is, “What’s New?” Here’s a brief overview.

Google Maps has added Picasa photos to Street view. As long as the image has been Geo-tagged Google will include it in Street View.

“Millions of people already rely on Picasa Web Albums to share their photographs with friends and the internet community. Now, their public geo-tagged photos will help Google Maps users to get a better impression of a geographic place, especially for areas where we may not have any Panoramio photos,” Daniel Cotting, software engineer, Google Zurich, wrote on Google’s Lat Long Blog.


“We’ve selected these photos by looking for geo-tagged public images in Picasa Web Albums. We apply face detection to screen out images with identifiable individuals and image matching so that we’re including the most relevant photographs.”

Google AdSense is conducting email interviews to find out exactly what it’s publishers want. Google are obviously keen to understand more about the needs and requirements of their publishers in light of the new Bing Yahoo search deal. Bing and Yahoo pose a potential threat to Google and customer feedback will help Google to improve the service further. Adsense has also launched a Beta Category Filter system for English Language feed ads.

YouTube recently ran a 1,024 recipe multivariate experiment using Google’s Website Optimizer. The results were fantastic, a 15.7% increase in new account signup based on minor changes to the site layout and text.

Google Reader has introduced a new sharing option allowing you to share content with Twitter and Facebook.

Google books have added a Creative Commons license option for its partners, to protect published content.

Article by Creative SEO

Google’s massive growth and success have seen its existing infrastructure groan under the strain of its expansion. The Google File system is a bit like an operating system on a computer, we can see it but it powers everything Google does. The existing Google File System or GFS, was never built to run such a large system, new upgrades have seen code updates and bolt-on’s which are far from efficient. The new update of the GFS will be test driven as part of the new Google Search Engine update called Caffeine. And from what we have seen Caffeine is fast, really fast, in fact 100% faster than the Google Search Engine.

In an interview with the Association of Computer Machinery, Google’s Sean Quinlan, GFS tech leader for two years, explained that ten years on from its launch and the Google File System was still doing things they never dreamed were possible.

“Its staying power has been nothing short of remarkable given that Google’s operations have scaled orders of magnitude beyond anything the system had been designed to handle, while the application mix Google currently supports is not one that anyone could have possibly imagined back in the late 90s,” said Quinlan.

The GFS was never designed to work with Gmail or YouTube, it was designed for batch-orientated applications for web crawling and indexing. When it was first launched Google was purely a search engine and searching and indexing the web was its main priority. YouTube and Gmail are now working on the system, but they are using excessive resources and non efficient processes. The new version of the file system will tackle these issues and will be custom built to replace its predecessor.

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Facebook have announced the launch of a new search facility which will allow users to search the last 30days of Real Time status updates for users who have public profiles.

“You now will be able to search the last 30 days of your News Feed for status updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared by your friends and the Facebook Pages of which you’re a fan. If people have chosen to make their content available to everyone, you also will be able to search for their status updates, links and notes, regardless of whether or not you are friends. Search results will continue to include people’s profiles as well as relevant Facebook Pages, groups and applications.” Taken from the Facebook blog.

Facebooks existing search is terrible and the news of a new real time search facility will be a great addition to the service and open Facebook to new opportunities. Our biggest concern is the content of the status updates. Unlike Twitter, Facebook is a very personal service; users tend to be a lot more open and personal with their individual status comments. With Twitter you are aware that you are Tweeting to your selected audience, it feels a lot more public, but with Facebook a user could be under the misconception that they were only Tweeting to their immediate friends, especially if the user has not correctly updated their privacy setting. This could result in personal status updates being publicly viewed. Obviously this is an existing issue with the service as it stands now, but a new search could massively increase this problem, bringing unwanted exposure to unknowing Facebook users.

Real Time search is a great addition to Facebook and we are really keen to test the service as soon as it’s available.

Article by Creative SEO UK

Google has unveiled a new secret project which is set to rock the very bedrock of the search engine marketplace.

The new Google upgrade, which was announced on Monday, will be part of Google’s ongoing development to maintain their industry leading online presence. Google Insiders have code named the new search engine as “Caffeine”. The company have opened up access to the new platform to developers.

The design of the new Google remains the same, but what is more important is the behind the scenes technology which has promised radical changes providing users with much more relevant results.

“For the past several months a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search,” taken from Google Blog.

“It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.”

Caffeine is set to allow Google to provide more relevant information to its users, improving the user experience, indexing and crawl rates without loss of quality.

Matt Cutts Writes in his blog. “I love competition in search and want lots of it, but this change has been in the works for months, I think the best way for Google to do well in search is to continue what we’ve done for the last decade or so: focus relentlessly on pushing our search quality forward.”

This new move to update Google comes hot on the heels of the launch of Microsoft’s Bing search engine and the Yahoo, Microsoft Partnership. Both Twitter and Facebook are now becoming involved in search and scientific new boy, Wolfram Alpha, is also a potential threat to Google’s dominance. It’s important for Google to keep doing what it’s doing so well, maintain its existing user experience while improving and developing functionality and result quality. This will help to maintain its existing users and attract new users from its competitors. Click here to test drive the new Google.

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Digg are to commence rolling out an early beta version of a new advertising platform. The new advertisements will only be available to view by a select number of users as part of an initial trial.

Ads will appear within the submitted content results of Digg and will be very clearly marked as sponsored advertising. What is particularly interesting is the bidding model which has been adopted as part of the trial. Advertisers will be charged a cost for each time an ad is clicked, cpc basis, but unusually ad placement will be dictated by user popularity.

Unpopular ads will appeal lower in the list and will pay more for their position and popular ads will display higher in the list but will cost the advertiser less money. This is quite an unusual approach and we are quite eager to see this working in practise. We will be particularly interested in how a new ad is positioned, within the ad listings, by an existing advertiser and how a new advertiser is positioned, within the ad listings, when first joining the campaign? We would hope that a long term advertising relationship with Digg would also bring a loyalty bonus to the advertiser, but as yet these details are not available.

Article by Matt Blay – Creative SEO UK