Google Places Removes Yelp Reviews From Search Results
As of right now, Google has removed all Yelp reviews from its Places feature. Even though the local reviews website’s snippets will no longer be appearing in the Google Places results, relevant results can be found in the “more about this place” section – which is the last section on the Places page.
Evelyn Rusli from Tech Crunch conducted an experiment to see whether or not Yelp snippets had really become a fond memory on Pages. She found that every once in awhile a Yelp snippet would appear, but when clicked on the page was there. It seems this is Google’s way of filtering out the content.
A few months ago Yelp was a little perturbed to find that Google was crawling its pages for content to bolster Pages’ results. The two companies have had a pretty rocky relationship since Yelp walked away from the relationship they had with Google, who was paying them for access to their user-created content. However, they are said to be in “talks” to come to some sort of agreement when it comes to Yelp content being used on Google Places.
Google Reports 1 Million Calls Made in First 24 Hours
Google’s new voice client is already a success after just having launched earlier this week. A mere 24 hours after it’s debut, Google reported via Twitter that over 1 million calls have already been placed by Gmail users in the U.S. and Canada. While Google stated that the feature would only be available in North America for now, reports are coming in that users in several other countries have received their invitations to chat and have made calls successfully.
The large number of users so early is no surprise; Google boasts hundreds of millions of Gmail users around the world and many of them already take advantage of the video chat feature. The mere installation of a new plugin to use the VoIP feature is not deterring Googlers and numbers are expected to grow exponentially as the application becomes available in other countires. As of right now calls placed to anywhere in the U.S. and Canada are free (and are expected to stay that way until at least the end of the year) and international rates are as low as $0.02 and are said to be pretty clear.
It appears as though Skype has their first real competitor on their hands.
Google Fixes Bug That Leaves Some User Blacklisted as Spammers
Over the past few days, ending on Thursday, certain Gmail users were experiencing a problem with their accounts – specifically, having emails resent multiple times even when the communications in question were deleted. Even though Google says this bug only affected less than 2.5% of users, in a statement by the company at the end of last year it was reported that there were over 176 million people using Gmail. So although that percentage may seem minuscule, that still amounts to about 4 million accounts sending rogue emails for almost a week.
Users flocked to the support forums posting similar stories of having people, among which many companies’ clients, informing them that they had received multiple copies of the same email. Business owners, especially, were put-off by this malfunction because they feared that they would appear unprofessional to clients and other customers. Google resolved the problem and an apology was issued by an employee on the forum:
“Sincerest apologies for the inconvenience this has caused you,” he wrote. “While I can’t take the messages back with some sort of magical Undo Send, I totally sympathize with your situation.”
Google says all new emails should unaffected by the issue.
Over the past few days, ending on Thursday, certain Gmail users were experiencing a problem with their accounts – specifically, having emails resent multiple times even when the communications in question were deleted. Even though Google says this bug only affected less than 2.5% of users, in a statement by the company at the end of last year it was reported that there were over 176 million people using Gmail. So although that percentage may seem minuscule, that still amounts to about 4 million accounts sending rogue emails for almost a week.
Users flocked to the support forums posting similar stories of having people, among which many companies’ clients, informing them that they had received multiple copies of the same email. Business owners, especially, were put-off by this malfunction because they feared that they would appear unprofessional to clients and other customers. Google resolved the problem and an apology was issued by an employee on the forum:
“Sincerest apologies for the inconvenience this has caused you,” he wrote. “While I can’t take the messages back with some sort of magical Undo Send, I totally sympathize with your situation.”
Google says all new emails should unaffected by the issue.
What Is a Search Engine?
so you know the basic concept of a search engine. Type a word or phrase into a search box and click a button. Wait a few seconds, and references to thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of pages will appear. Then all you have to do is click through those pages to find what you want. But what exactly is a search engine, beyond this general concept of “seek and ye shall find”?
It’s a little complicated. On the back end, a search engine is a piece of software that uses applications
to collect information about web pages. The information collected is usually key words or phrases that are possible indicators of what is contained on the web page as a whole, the URL of the page, the code that makes up the page, and links into and out of the page. That information is then indexed and stored in a database.
On the front end, the software has a user interface where users enter a search term — a word or phrase — in an attempt to find specific information. When the user clicks a search button, an algorithm then examines the information stored in the back-end database and retrieves links to web pages that appear to match the search term the user entered.
The process of collecting information about web pages is performed by an agent called a crawler,
spider, or robot. The crawler literally looks at every URL on the Web, and collects key words and phrases on each page, which are then included in the database that powers a search engine. Considering that the number of sites on the Web went over 100 million some time ago and is increasing by more than 1.5 million sites each month, that’s like your brain cataloging every single word you read, so that when you need to know something, you think of that word and every reference to it comes to mind.
In a word . . . overwhelming.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion. Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.
The acronym "SEO" can refer to "search engine optimizers," a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems, images, videos, shopping carts, and other elements that have been optimized for the purpose of search engine exposure.
Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms, keyword stuffing and article spinning that degrade both the relevance of search results and the user-experience of search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion. Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.
The acronym "SEO" can refer to "search engine optimizers," a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems, images, videos, shopping carts, and other elements that have been optimized for the purpose of search engine exposure.
Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms, keyword stuffing and article spinning that degrade both the relevance of search results and the user-experience of search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.
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