Posts Tagged ‘google labs’

Google comes up with Social Search!

February 4th, 2010 | Posted by Sahil Arora

 

Google’s announcement of stitching Google search results with social networks is now a successful feature, launched as an opt-in experiment in Google Labs. 

Google comes up with Social Search - SERPS

Google comes up with Social Search - SERPS

Social Search has literally made online search a lot more easy and personal, which means now when you are searching for a particular piece of information blogged about, by a friend of yours, you get it on the first page.
What really makes Social Search amazing is the fact that it easily finds any piece of web content from your social connections on internet, whether you are looking for a Blog or tweet or friend’s profile update. In simple words, you can call this feature as a search filter that finds you result from your social circle on Blogs, FriendFeed, Twitter or any other social networking sites linked to your Google account. 

              

 Google search works just the way it has been doing for years now, which means you can still go on searching for information without using the new ‘Social Search’ feature. Social Search is nothing but an attempt of making search results more relevant and flexible, as not only does it provides all your social circle based web information on one place… but also prioritizes results from your friend circle.

Google Social Search Results

Google Social Search Results

 Despite social networking bazaar of Twitter, blogs and Facebook being a huge platform for social media marketing, it is not hard to find those who are skeptical and ignorant of its ability to advertise to a bigger circle of prospective customers.
The good news is that social circle search not only, remarkably, answers all such uncertainties, but also displays a good example of how social search results can change SEO.

Since the Social Search displays results from a particular circle of friends (Google users) linked to social networking sites, if you are a business firm seeking good SEO or online marketing through web of networking sites, having online networking profiles or blogs can do a lot. So now when a follower on your Twitter profiles searches through Google’s’ Social Search, the result will also feature content or pictures or blogs posted by you… because, you are part of the user’s social circle.
Isn’t that speedy marketing and unique form of SEO? Truth is… ‘Social Circle Search’ boosts and defines the social media marketing feature of many networking sites.

How it works? Simple, you add links to your social networking sites on your Google account, stay online and in no time this new feature will present you with relevant resources, collected from your circle of known people on web.

Google Social Search SERPS for a Search with Google Bus

Google Social Search SERPS for a Search with Google Bus

How it helps? Well, imagine you need a good comparison of iPhone and a new Blackberry mobile set. So, instead of tweeting your friends or calling them up to ask if anyone knows which phone is better, you simply search online… and Google’s Social Search will, scan each and every publicly posted content from your friends online to, give a search results from people you know… in short, if your friend has blogged or tweeted about the information you seek, Google will bring it to you (its always better to get information from trusted source than an unknown blogger) along with other results too.

Google’s Social Search is based on the perception that a user would always give importance to search results, from a known and trusted group of people.
It seems Google is trying to transform the verbal social search into techno form of online social search…!

Google Webmaster Tools upgraded with more features

October 20th, 2009 | Posted by Sahil Arora

Google has launched two new webmaster tool features in its all new Labs section to help website owners and webmasters, with broader viewing of their web pages. The release of features ‘Fetch as GoogleBot’ and ‘Malware Details’ have been purposely done in the Lab section to get user feedbacks, before making it an official release.
Both the features serve individual purpose and help in viewing web pages from perception of a Google spider or bot.

Fetch as GoogleBot is designed to allow users to view their web pages through the perception of a GoogleBot. In simple words, one can see the web pages through the eyes of a web page crawler when seeing a page on a particular domain.
The feature is easy to use, you just have to type the name of whatever page you want to view, if its home page you need not type anything, then click on the button ‘Fetch’. Next step, hit the button ‘Success’ and get the view of the page through a Googlebot’s eye. 

 

fetch-as-googlebot-image

Fetch as GoogleBot Feature

 

New Feature at Google Webmaster tools: Fetch As GoogleBot

New Feature at Google Webmaster tools: Fetch As GoogleBot

 

This ‘Fetch’ feature works well to assists webmaster in seeing if there is any bug on the web pages of their website.

The second feature released by Google in Google Webmaster Tool’s Lab section is Malware Details. This extensively important feature makes work easier for webmasters, who have to go through monotonous process of detecting and cleaning a website infected with malware.

 

New Feature at Google Webmaster Tools: Malware Details

New Feature at Google Webmaster Tools: Malware Details

 

Malware Details Feature at Google Webmaster Tools

Malware Details Feature at Google Webmaster Tools

Earlier, Webmasters had to rely on Google SERPS to see if the website bears a “This site may harm your computer” notification. Now, the Malware Details are just available under this very new section and as soon as it is detected, you can take corrective measure to get rid of any thing malicious on the server.

Overall, we feel that the two new features are good, although there are a handful of free Website Crawler Simulators as well as Malware Detecting tools available online, but when it comes right from the labs of Google, it surely can’t be overlooked!