Google has introduced an iGoogle gadget for Insights for Search. It displays the top rising searches and top related searches on your Google home page. Users can change the settings to show results for a specific location, keyword, category, or source.
Digg Gets Ready For Search Improvement
Digg announced the unveiling of its new DiggBar yesterday to much enthusiasm. The toolbar makes Digg a direct competitor with StumbleUpon and TinyURL. You can check that out here:
Report: MSFT To Spend $100M Promoting New Search Brand
Microsoft’s new search brand should be announced sooner rather than later, and when that day comes, it looks like the corporation is going to make sure people notice. According to a new report, Microsoft intends to spend as much as $100 million on an advertising campaign.
Twitter Getting More Integrated with Search
Twitter is working on integrating search into its interface more than it has been since it began featuring the search feature on the home page. It’s only in the testing stage for a select few users at this point, but in the future, if you perform a Twitter search, the results will show up right on your home page instead of a different page altogether.
Google Shows Paid Search/TV Relationship
Google has conducted a study looking at how paid search affects TV viewing habits. The results are pretty interesting.
Adam Stewart, Google’s Industry Director for Media & Entertainment tells Murdok that the research confirms that paid search is an effective way to build traffic for a network’s website and, as a result, increase viewership for content like online video.
Google Updates Blog Search Algorithm
Google has updated its Blog Search algorithm after postponing the update earlier in the month. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable quotes Googler Jeremy Hylton who explains:
Google Starts Including User-Generated Maps in Search Results
Google has now made it easier to find maps created by others using My Maps. They are starting to show links to completed user-generated maps when they deem it relevant to a query.
Google Insights for Search Gets 3 New Features
Google has launched a few new features for Insights for Search, which should make the tool even more useful to marketers than it already was. If you are unfamiliar with the tool, it was launched last summer, and it helps marketers find trends in search so they can be applied to your own marketing campaigns. It was discussed fairly extensively here.
Twitter Tweak Could Improve Search Rankings
Twitter has adjusted the title tags for member pages. Where they used to go "Twitter / username" they now go "User’s Real Name (username) on Twitter"
1 in 5 Google Visits Come from Browser Search Box
AT Internet Institute released its monthly Search Engine Barometer for the month of February, revealing some interesting findings. For one – one out of every five Google visits is attributed to the browser search bar. That’s 20.1% of Google visits – three times more than Live Search (7%) and ten times more than Yahoo (2.3%).