Google’s Real-Time Search Feature Resurrected Through Google+

Search engine giant Google is planning to bring back its Real-Time search feature, which was temporarily discontinued a while back.

Google offered Real-Time search which came with live stream from micro-blogging platform Twitter. Google Search turned into a source of live Twitter messages whenever some world event used to take place.

When Twitter’s deal with Google to provide it with the data came to an end, the two companies were not able to renew it due to certain differences and Google was forced to discontinue the service.

“The value the product was providing was not enough,” Google Fellow Amit Singhal said during a search panel meet, Mashable, reports.

The company is ‘actively working’ on bringing the Real-Time search feature back, Singhal said, adding  that the engineers were trying to integrate data from Google+ and other sources with the Real-Time search feature. Singhal did not elaborate what the ‘other sources’ were.

He also confirmed that Google+ stream will soon be getting its own search engine, a core feature which has remained absent from the platform, which now has more than 25 million users and is expected to surpass Twitter and Linked In in terms of user base within a year.

Read more: http://www.itproportal.com/2011/08/07/googles-real-time-search-feature-resurrected-through-google/#ixzz1URGXb2zn

Google AdWords: Now With Images

Some AdWords ads on Google are now showing associated images — and getting much larger in the space they take up — through a “Show products from” Plus Box implementation that some are seeing now when searching at Google.

For example, try search for bluenile, which brings up a Blue Nile ad. Under the usual ad title and description is a plus symbol (called a Plus Box), followed by the words, “Show products from Blue Nile for bluenile.” If you click on the box, it opens up three product listings from Blue Nile, each listing with an associated image.

The most shocking part of this ad is that how much room it takes up. Here is the ad when it is closed:

When you click to open up the product results, the whole visible part of the page is consumed with this one ad. Here is an image of just the ad, that measures about 370 pixels tall for me:

The ad also shows on the right hand side, as Steve Rubel shows. I was able to replicate Steve’s findings, by searching for diamonds. This implementation is better, in my opinion, because it does not change how the natural/free results are shown but rather only pushes down other ads on the right hand side.

 

Images associated with search ads are not too surprising. We have seen implementations ofvideo ads in AdWords several times. It just seems to me that Google is willing to try anything now when it comes to ads, from video to images to multimedia and who knows what.

Do note that back in November of last year January, I reported that Google was testing product results within AdWords. But those product results seemed to have been powered by Google Base and did not contain product images.

Google has also been testing showing banner ads in image search.

Google Panda Update Officially Goes Global (In English)

Earlier, we reported that webmasters were finding signs indicating the Panda update may have been launched in more countries. Now, Google has addressed it in a post on the Webmaster Central Blog. 

They’ve rolled out the update globally to all English-language Google users. “We will continue testing and refining the change before expanding to additional languages, and we’ll be sure to post an update when we have more to share,” says Google’s Amit Singhal. 

Singhal also says Google has incorporated “new user feedback signals”. 

“In some high-confidence situations, we are beginning to incorporate data about the sites that users block into our algorithms,” he says. “In addition, this change also goes deeper into the ‘long tail’ of low-quality websites to return higher-quality results where the algorithm might not have been able to make an assessment before. The impact of these new signals is smaller in scope than the original change: about 2% of U.S. queries are affected by a reasonable amount, compared with almost 12% of U.S. queries for the original change.”

It would be very interesting to know what constitutes a “high-confidence situation”. Domain blocking as a ranking signal could be a tricky area, in terms of the potential for abuse. The company has said in the past that it would look at making this a ranking signal, and that it would tread lightly. 

“Based on our testing, we’ve found the algorithm is very accurate at detecting site quality,” he says. “If you believe your site is high-quality and has been impacted by this change, we encourage you to evaluate the different aspects of your site extensively.”

Well, that’s exactly what we’ve seen a lot of sites doing. Whether or not it has been working for them remains to be seen. It’s going to be a matter of time. 

Singhal does say webmasters should look at Google’s own quality guidelines. He also suggests posting in the Webmaster Help Forum. “While we aren’t making any manual exceptions, we will consider this feedback as we continue to refine our algorithms,” he says. 

Now the fun really begins. Now we can see how hard some of the sites that were already heavily impacted by the Panda update get hit on a global scale.