Google is known for its spare, clean search homepage, A single search box, two buttons.I've always liked the minimal Google.com homepage, but if you prefer a little spice to your search page (like Bing), you'll like Google's new background image feature.
(Google Search - Custom background)
It's a simple enough feature that we've heard rumors of here and there: Just go to Google.com, move your mouse to the bottom left of the screen and click "Change background image." You can then select from a list of Editors' picks, pick any image from Google's public gallery hosted by Picasa, use something from your Picasa web album photos, or upload any image from your desktop.
Some claim that Google is copying Bing. First when Google updated their search with a left side panel similar to Bing's, and now with the addition of the big background image. Maybe; Bing is a successful product in the Microsoft portfolio and is grabbing more and more search share every day.
Bing and Google are not alone in the home page war, as Yahoo is taking on Google with a new ad against Google homepage. Yahoo also bring its social networking focused homepage with its new revamp design where user can customize/add apps like Facebook updates, twitter updates, news, new site feed etc.
And don't forget the on going argument that white background of Google's home page wastes energy when compared to a black background.As part of green initiative addressing that fact, other engines like Blackel and Earthle emerged.
About 2 years ago, Google introduce Google Desktop for Mac to extend Google search capabilities to your Mac. after that Google rolled out Search Box in developer preview. Now Google officially releasing this technology to all users as the Google Quick Search Box or QSB for short. Quick Search Box already available in the Windows version of Google Desktop as well.
A hot Buzz of development is going in Twitter space, particular desktop app for Twitter like TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop, which both now pull updates from Facebook & Twitter. Now Google is also getting involved in this buzz up.
Google Quick Search Box (QSB) is a Mac desktop application makes your web & desktop searches at a finger tip, With Google Quick Search Box you can search for information from just about anywhere. As you type, suggestions will appear that match your query, ranging from applications and local files on your computer, to web search and navigational suggestions, to items from your browser history and contacts and the types of results you can get will only grow over time! means, if you chose Google Calendar, the next time you search for "cal", Google QSB will reorder the results so that you don't have to arrow down to your desired choice. Instead, you can just type "cal" and press enter.
Google Quick Search Box is extensible. This means that anyone can create a plug-in that enables the QSB to search over additional data or perform more actions on results. in this version you can add twitter plug in
So, aside typing search queries into the Quick Search Box (QSB) , you can also use it as a Twitter status updater. but still you are not able to perform Twitter search via QSB & this feature is missing in Windows version, probable soon, Google will add it in windows version too.
To get started,Go to Preferences > Add Accounts > Add > Select Twitter as the account type > Enter your Twitter account name and password > Click Setup
Your Twitter account name and password will be stored in the standard Apple keychain.
Some information is easy to find. If you want to learn the rules of golf, you can search Google for [something and we'll return a list of relevant web sites right at the top. But not all your information needs are that simple. Some questions can be more complex, requiring you to visit ten, perhaps twenty websites to research and collect what you need.
Google Squared, a new feature just released in Google Labs, to help you batter search.
Google Squared is an experimental search tool that collects facts from the web and presents them in an organized collection, similar to a spreadsheet. If you search for Cars, Google Squared builds a square with rows for each of several specific roller coasters and columns for corresponding facts, such as image, height and maximum speed.
While gathering facts from across the Internet is relatively easy for humans to do, it's far more difficult for computers to do automatically. Google Squared is a first step towards solving that challenge. It essentially searches the web to find the types of facts you might be interested in, extracts them and presents them in a meaningful way.
This technology is by no means perfect. That's why Google Squared to be conversational, enabling you to respond to the initial result and get a better answer. If there's another row or column you'd like to see, you can add it and Google Squared will automatically attempt to fetch and fill in the relevant facts for you. As you remove rows and columns you don't like, Google Squared will get a fresh idea of what you're interested in and suggest new rows and columns to add. See it in action in the video below:
The Local Business Center team of Google is rolling out a new feature, a dashboard that will provide you with information on how Google users are interacting with your local listing in Google Maps and Google Search.
If you're a local business, you can drive traffic via Google Maps to your website and to your business. While you may be tracking usage metrics on your website using a tool like Google Analytics, but data about how customers found you in other ways never got back to you & you don't always get as much information from that as you'd like. For example, a user may search for "pizza," click on your business listing, look at the reviews, and decide to pay a visit to your Italian restaurant without ever visiting your website or calling you. here the new LBC dashboard feature will change all that, making this data easily accessible to business owners by introducing a new "dashboard" tab in your Local Business Center (www.google.com/lbc) account. So if you're a business owner who maintains one or more physical locations, and you're curious about what people are searching for when they see your business listing and where your customers are coming from, the dashboard will answer many of those questions for you. Data available in the dashboard will include the following:
Impressions: The number of times the business listing appeared as a result on a Google.com search or Google Maps search in a given period.
Actions: The number of times people interacted with the listing; for example, the number of times they clicked through to the business' website or requested driving directions to the business.
Top search queries: Which queries led customers to the business listing; for example, are they finding the listing for a cafe by searching for "tea" or "coffee"?
Zip codes where driving directions come from: Which zip codes customers are coming from when they request directions to your location.
So how will you use the dashboard? The first thing you'll need to do is make sure that you've claimed your listing in the LBC. Even if you hadn't claimed it until today, you'll be able to use the dashboard, since Google automatically populating it with data from the past month. When you log in to the LBC, you'll notice a new "View report" link right under the statistics.
Clicking on the link will take you to the dashboard page, where you'll find several features. At the very top, you'll see a timeline tracking the number of "Impressions" and "Actions" that your business received on Google. "Impressions" refers to the number of times that users saw your listing appear as a local business search result; "Actions" refers to how many times users interacted with your listing. You can change the date range selected to view more or less data.
Right under the graphs, you'll see a summary for the date range you've selected, along with a breakdown of the various types of "Actions" that users took
Below that, you'll find a list of the top search queries people are using when they discover your business listing. For example, do people tend to find your Italian restaurant more by looking for "pizza" or "pasta"? Do more customers seem to find you because of your reputation as an affordable hotel, or as a quiet hotel? This gives you valuable insight into the ways that your potential customers are looking for you, and what terms are associated with your business. To protect any potentially personally identifiable information, queries with a very low search volume are put into the "other" category, and Google filter addresses out of the queries. for example, if a someone searched for "bakery near 5873 Maple Ave," you would only see the "bakery" term.
Finally, you'll also be able to see a breakdown of zip code starting points for driving direction requests to your business. To protect privacy, Google aggregate these requests at the zip code level. If you hover over the counts inside the map, Google will highlight the area represented by that count. This lets you find out where there's an interest in your business, which can help inform advertising strategies or future growth.
your dashboard will be populated with data for the previous 30 days at launch. After that, Google will add fresh data daily, so you'll want to be sure to check back often to see how things are going and how various strategies like your latest offline ad campaign or the addition of a photo to your listing affect your traffic etc.
A team of researchers Tuesday unveiled an almost perfectly intact fossil of a 47 million-year-old primate found in Germany was displayed. they say it represents the long-sought missing link between humans and apes. The 47 million year old fossilized remains of a primate is seen at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
A small, lemur-like creature may have been an early ancestor of monkeys, apes, and humans.
This is talk of the town everywhere and each of one interested to find the of humans. Now Google also create a doodle for this topic and while I'm writing it's live on Google search Home Page.
Just recently Google announce Doodle winners for it's Doodle4 Google competition
Google Suggest, which gives suggestions as we're typing our searches.since it saves time by giving suggestions for our searches.
Today Google Provides new features to Google Suggest.
Suggestions on the results page Previously, Google only showed suggestions based on your original search input. Now, when you make a search from a results page, Google will provide suggestions that relate to the current results page. As you can see in the example below, if your previous search was for "roller coasters", when you begin a new query the first few suggestions are still related to roller coasters This feature helping you refine your search queries to quickly find what you want. I also try to search for "missing link found" & try to refine it on the current result page but it didn't work for me.
(Suggestions on the results page)
Personalized suggestions Now, if you're signed in with your Google account and have Web History enabled, Google may show some of your relevant past searches as you type& it will give you personalized suggestions. It will make it easier and faster for you to repeat searches that have worked before. Or, if you need to step away in the middle of a search task, this will help you continue your search tasks at a later time.
Many people don't like Google's personalized service, If you think that there is no privacy in this then you can remove a personalized suggestion that you do not like by clicking "Remove", which will remove the search from your Web History. You can also remove searches from your Web History directly & manage Query Suggestions on the preferences page, or sign out of your Google account entirely to stop seeing personalized suggestions.
(Personalized suggestions)
Navigational suggestions When you try to search something & your first keywords that mach to specific site then Google will list it and send you directly on that website if you click there. See the below example which show direct link to NASA website in suggestions when try to type "kennedy space center"
(Navigational suggestions)
Sponsored links in suggestions Now Google also find a another space for it's sponsored links. Similar to the navigational suggestions above. Google will show sponsored link in suggestions according to relevant keyword you type and if it's mach. When an ad is shown, To identify it, Google mark it with the text "Sponsored Link" and a colored background, as on the results page. see the below example.
(Sponsored links in suggestions)
There are few changes in Google Suggest apart of above, Now Google will no longer show the result count for items in the suggest box because Google is getting feedback that the numbers were not helpful in comparing the relevance of the queries and another change is, Now Google bold the text of suggestions to help you more quickly scan the suggestion list.
As a webmaster, you have a unique understanding of your web pages and the content they represent. Google helps users find your page by showing them a small sample of that content -- the "snippet." for that they use a variety of techniques to create these snippets and give users relevant information about what they'll find when they click through to visit your site. Today, Google is announcing Rich Snippets, a new presentation of snippets that applies Google's algorithms to highlight structured data embedded in web pages.
Rich Snippets give users convenient summary information about their search results at a glance. . When searching for a product or service, users can easily see reviews and ratings, and when searching for a person, they'll get help distinguishing between people with the same name.
It's a simple change to the display of search results, by this users will find the new valuable data & if they see useful and relevant information from the page, they are more likely to click through. Google is beginning the process of opening up this successful experiment so that more websites can participate.
As a webmaster, you can help by annotating your pages with structured data in a standard format. By incorporating standard annotations in your pages, you not only make your structured data available for Google's search results, but also for any service or tool that supports the same standard. As structured data becomes more widespread on the web,
Well, I'm not talking about the search Box you all see in Gmail. A really nice feature that i always wanted from Gmail. As you people know that Gmail is a Search based email and when you need to search anything from a product to a client's important email at that time we have to leave the Gmail interface and it was very distracted. With the new Google Search experiment in Gmail Labs When you turn this feature on from the Labs tab under Settings, you'll see a new search box on the left side of your inbox, like this:
Type your search in, and a window similar like a chat window that appears in Gmail, It will Displays Google search results inside your mail window, letting you quickly find things and use them when you're writing an email. but a bit bigger which appears at the bottom of your screen with the first few search results.
When you click on a search result and it'll open up in another window or another tab & you can make sure it's what you're looking for. You can also Pop Out the result which will also open in new window or tab. Once you're sure it's a result you need, moving your mouse over the result back in Gmail reveals a pull-down menu that lets you do stuff with the search result. According to your activity menu will appear like this:
Google search within the Gmail like a chat window
When you're reading an email, at that time if you search you can Reply that email with the search result.
When you're composing an email, you can paste the result or just past the URL into your email or send entire result by email
If you're chatting with someone, you can send the Search result via chat.
You can also always compose a new email to send the search result.
Whatever you search from that Sidebar. it will show you the keyword history, Of course you can clear the history just by a click says "clear"
This feature is not working for searching emails within your Inbox. It would be nice if we can search emails also via this search box.
(Google Search - Custom background)
