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Google’s Struggle with Censorship
Google has been in a heated battle with the Chinese government since January this year when there were various security breaches targeting Gmail accounts. After Google sorted all the attacks out, they decided they didn’t want to be a contributor to government censorship. So a few months later, in June, Google decided to “stick it to the man” and forward the Chinese Google site, Google.cn, to the uncensored Honk Kong Google site, Google.com.hk.
You can imagine the Chinese government did not take this insult well. Threats went back and forth between Google and the Chinese government arguing over who is right and who is wrong. So Google took it down a notch. Instead of keeping the automatic redirect to the Honk Kong site, Google put a link on the Google.cn page to the Hong Kong site. This kind of takes the blame off Google directly and gives the Chinese people the option to click on and choose an uncensored version.
The Chinese government still were not fond of this solution. And when Google resubmitted their ICP (Internet Content Provider) license renewal application, they prepared themselves to be rejected altogether. At least they weren’t compromising their morals by keeping Google.cn only able to access limited, censored search topics like music and translations.
Google was supposed to know whether they would be keeping Google.cn by June 30th (which was the ICP renewal date). And yet we have all been waiting and waiting to hear from the Chinese government if Google.cn will remain accessible. Finally, today Reuters reported that the Chinese did in fact approve the ICP for Google.cn!
The acceptance is great news for Google seeing as China is the world’s largest Internet market and, with the government’s censorship, a market with little search engine competition.
Read MorePosted by Jeremy Scott | 1 Comment
Killer New Audio Indexing Technology From Google
Google, the current king of the Internet and all-around innovator, has announced a new technology called Audio Indexing–actually it’s called GAudi, which sounds more like a car than a web service.
Either way, it’s one of the slickest things I’ve heard of in months.
GAudi will catalog every word uttered in a YouTube video and add it to a searchable archive. Translation: you will soon be able to search videos by keywords used within the video.
For now, the product is still in Beta (limited testing mode), and will only be indexing YouTube videos related to the current political races. So you can search for a soundbite you read about in a news article–maybe something Obama or McCain said–and then use GAudi to search for video of the speech on YouTube.
That’s pretty mind-blowing to me. Sure, there have been speech-transcription services for years that allow you to dictate text to your computer… but they are far from perfect, and had never been applied to video like this. As video’s importance on the web increases, technology like GAudi makes finding the right video a heck of a lot easier–and if you’ve ever tried to search for a particular video on YouTube without knowing its title… you know how frustratingly hard it can be.
Imagine a future where your company creates and uploads videos to YouTube–maybe instructional, maybe humorous, maybe just advertisements–and you’ve used some good keyword selection in writing the spoken script for that video. People who just surf around YouTube for videos related to their favorite topic will then have a much easier time finding your content than they currently do.
So now everyone in the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) industry will be adding video content writing to their roster of services, as companies begin to learn how the spoken audio of their movies can help them reach new customers.
Very exciting stuff. Stay tuned for more developments. And you can check out GAudi and search for things the candidates have said here.
Read MorePosted by Jeremy Scott | 0 Comments
New Google Competitor Cuil Has A Long Way To Go
There’s a new player in the search engine game, and its name is Cuil (pronounced “cool”).
It’s built by former Google masterminds, and claims to index more of the web than Google can. The big claim to fame for Cuil is their ability to index the world’s websites and return search results to users in a much speedier manner than Google and the other engines… which saves tons of money. It’s been estimated that Google spends billions every year just paying for their index and search functionality.
Cuil is also displaying a unique–some would say “mind-boggling”–new interface. Instead of a single column of results, Cuil displays search results in a three-column layout, making it feel more like a magazine format.
The real problem, though, is that their results aren’t particularly good yet. Now, they’ve only just launched, and the site is still in a beta-testing phase (though it is open to the public). For instance, if you search for “keystone business solutions hendersonville”, Cuil says it can’t find any results. On Google, we come up #1.
They’re taking a beating for this in the press, but honestly… you have to expect a brand new search engine to take some time ironing out the kinks. While the first impression isn’t all that lovely, I’m personally quite excited about this.
Someday soon, someone has to step up and offer a real challenge to Google’s dominance in the search marketplace. They simply have too much power and control right now (and I love Google!). For the consumers to get the maximum service, there needs to be competition. And who better to compete with Google than a team of former Googlers?
Check back down the line for more updates on what’s happening with Cuil.
Read MorePosted by Jeremy Scott | 0 Comments
Google Releases Search Volume Data to Adwords Cust...
It’s a very Google day here at the Keystone Blog. First we had the announcement of Google’s Second Life competitor, Lively. Now we have news that Adwords customers are about to get a lot more useful search data to help with targeting their ads.
Adwords is Google’s advertising system for placing keyword-targeted ads among the search results–usually at the top or to the right, and always marked “Sponsored Links.”
Previously, Adwords had an “estimator” that served as a very rough guide to advertisers in picking the keywords for which they wanted their ad to show.
Now, however, Google will begin sharing actual search volume data on specific keywords–showing customers how many searches in a month or a year were performed for a proposed keyword phrase.
Google promises that this move will help advertisers more accurately target their ads to the right potential customers, and it’s hard to see where that’s not going to be the case.
If you have flirted with Adwords before, but never gave it a try, it can be a powerful driver of traffic to your website. You only pay when your ads are clicked, which delivers the customer directly to your website–and all that only after they’ve searched for keywords you identified as important to you. So it’s a lot more targeted than, say, a billboard on the side of the road.
And people are turning to search engines more frequently than they are to phone books these days. Adwords is a fantastic way to reach potential customers that you might currently be missing out on.
We can help you understand Adwords, as we have lots of experience with it–we can even manage your Adwords campaign for you, which you can read more about here.
Read MorePosted by Jeremy Scott | 1 Comment
Microsoft Will Pay You To Use Live Search
Microsoft will pay you to use their Live Search. Well… sort of.
The big M will pay you cash back from purchases you make after searching for the products on their search engine. So… you want a pair of shoes, you search for shoes at Live Search, click through to a product you find in the listings, and make a purchase… then you’ll get cash back.
From the article:
Products found during a search eligible for a rebate are denoted with a gold coin icon with a U.S. dollar sign in the center. The rebate is based on a percentage of the purchase price and is determined by the advertiser.
So it’s the advertiser paying the cash back, not Microsoft. And looks like the amount you get back will vary from product to product and advertiser to advertiser.
But it’s still an interesting idea. What Microsoft has done, really, is turn themselves into one huge affiliate network. They don’t lose any money out of pocket for the rebates, and the system will theoretically bring them more search traffic. Win win for Gates and Co.
Some other things to be aware of:
Shoppers must set up a Microsoft cashback account, where the rebate money is held. When the amount reaches $5, Microsoft will either mail a check or transfer the money to a PayPal account or bank account.
So, you have to sign up for an account… no biggie, I guess. Other than that… you just shop online as usual, only using Microsoft as your shopping search portal. It’s all going to hinge on whether or not people can find what they’re looking for with Live Search.
There may be other engines out there that handle shopping queries better–I really don’t know. Of course, if none of the products I want to buy are being offered as part of the CashBack program by advertisers, then it won’t do me any good.
Hmmm, I wonder what happens if I search for operating systems like Vista… will Microsoft be a partner advertiser in their own cash back scheme?
Interesting concept here–definitely a move to try and grab some of Google’s traffic. We’ll keep an eye on it and let you know how it performs.
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