WebProWorld
Two of the biggest names on the web had interesting weeks. Google experienced a big outage across a number of its services and Twitter mad a change to how it handles replies and sent a tidal wave of backlash throughout its user base.
Both companies received their fair share of negative responses from users, and both have responded to those responses on their respective blogs.
The Google Situation
Update: Google has addressed the issue on the Official Blog. The company says:
Star Trek fans and recession-conscious shoppers take heed: Google Product Search for mobile is going all next-generation. Barcode scanning has been integrated into the product search homepage such that users of Android devices can easily find more info on many UPC-bearing items.
Google has given Google News a bit of a makeover today. Some areas, particularly the section pages have gotten a lot more visual flare.
Google is researching how users of the search engine search the web when someone they know is sick. Google calls this a temporary experiment, but one that people might find interesting.
This experiment will trigger a poll question on a small percentage of random health-related searches. In cases where these occur, users will see see boxes like these in their search results:
A while back, Google launched a Tasks lab for Gmail. Now they have added a new tasks feature for Google Calendar after many requests for one.
There is now a "tasks" link in the upper right-hand corner of the Google Calendar page. Once you click on it, a box will come up on the opposite side of the screen, where you can add tasks in list form. They come with checkboxes so you can check them off as you accomplish them, and a form to enter a due date. The task will then appear on your calendar on the day it is due.
As you are probably aware, Google offers local business ads, which are essentially AdWords ads associated with specific business locations. They appear on Google Maps, Google, and across Google’s ad network.
Earlier this year, Google announced the addition of four new links for these ads – "Get Directions," "Street View" where available, "Save to My Maps," and "Send." The links were introduced as an effort to help people better locate the business that was being advertised.
Update: Google also posted on the Enterprise Blog about how you can utilize richer snippets for Site Search.
Original Article: Today at Google’s Searchology event, the company announced (among other things) that it was rolling out richer snippets. The snippets will extract and show more useful info from results than the current ones, Google says.
It’s that time of year again; if you head to the nearest Lowe’s or Home Depot, you’ll see all sorts of guys fondling various shiny pieces of hardware. And for folks who spend more looking at monitors than chainsaws, something interesting is available, too: a fresh Google Webmaster Tools design.
This June, Google will expand advertiser’s ability to bid on trademarked keywords worldwide in over 200 countries despite a class action lawsuit filed in Texas. The plan to do so illustrates Google’s confidence that trademark bidding is not a violation of trademark laws—apparently anywhere.
