If you have been following tech news at all today then you will know that it is obviously been a very big day for Google. The company kicked off their annual Google I/O developer conference and has had no shortage of announcements, including an android update, movie rentals in the android market, Google music beta, Google TV enhancements, a project aimed at connecting android to more of your home appliances and electronics and new ad targeting options. That is to name a few.

In the middle of all of this; Google talked today about their plans for Google app engine – the platform as well; which allows developers to develop and as well as host applications on Google’s infrastructure. The company exclaims that it will be graduating from preview status later this year which must mean big things for businesses.

“When App Engine graduates from preview status, which we expect to do in the second half of this year, we’ll add additional enterprise-grade features that allow us to support many more business application scenarios,” elucidates App Engine Senior Product Manager Greg D’Alesandre. “Graduation from preview status also indicates a longer term commitment by Google to the product and provides a deprecation policy whereby we will support prior versions of product APIs for a guaranteed amount of time, allowing applications written to prior API specifications to continue to function.”

Google brought in Google app engine version 1.5.0 today; which includes the below noted features; as described by D’Alesandre:

• With Backends (for both Python and Java), App Engine can now support applications that require long running and high memory processes. This feature allows for new classes of applications such as report generation apps and custom search engines to be hosted on the platform.
  
• The improvements to Task Queues allow for applications to control how tasks are executed and easily share the work using the new REST-based APIs. This API access expands App Engine’s compatibility with other on-premise and cloud services, furthering our commitment to an open development platform.
  
• With 1.5.0 we are launching an experimental runtime for the Go Programming Language. Go is an open source, statically typed, compiled language with a dynamic and lightweight feel. It’s also an interesting new option for App Engine because Go apps will be compiled to native code, making Go a good choice for more CPU-intensive tasks. As of today, the App Engine SDK for Go is available for download, and we will soon enable deployment of Go apps into the App Engine infrastructure. If you’re interested in starting early, sign up to be first through the door when we open it up to early testers.

When app engine leaves preview status; Google exclaims that it will provide a 99.95% uptime service level agreement, new terms of service, offline billing, operational and developer support and a novel pricing plan; which can be reviewed here Google App Engine – Pricing and Features

Stay tuned with SEO Global Expert for more updates.

With Google looking more at social media nowadays; in terms of ranking signals; many webmasters continue to wonder how Google treats URL-shorteners in terms of search engine optimization.

This is not completely novel information but it yet appears to be a topic which continues to come up fairly regularly. Google’s Matt Cutts addressed this topic in a video posted to Google’s Webmaster Help YouTube channel.

“Custom URL shorteners are essentially just like any other redirects,” he explains. “If we try to crawl a page, and we see a 301 or permanent redirect, which pretty much all well-behaved URL shorteners (like bit.ly or goo.gl) will do, if we see that 301 then that will pass PageRank to the final destination.”

“So in general, there really shouldn’t be any harm to using custom URL shorteners in your SEO,” he continues. “The PageRank will flow through. The anchor text will flow through, and so I wouldn’t necessarily worry about that at all.”

“Now, just to let you know, if you look at, for example, Twitter’s web pages, many of those links have a nofollow link,” he adds. “So those links that are on the webpage, may not necessarily flow PageRank, but we might be able to find out about those links through some other way – maybe a data feed or something like that. But just URL shorteners, as far as how they relate to SEO, are not necessarily a problem at all.”

When we had a word with Gil Reich of Answers.com at SMX Advanced last summer; he recommended utilizing shorteners that allows you to get keywords in the URLs.

Google actually updated its own URL shortener, goo.gl, with certain novel features this past week which are copy to clipboard, spam reporting, improvements in pace and stability and remove from dashboard.

“Even as we add features, we continue to focus on making goo.gl one of the fastest and most reliable URL shorteners on the web,” said Google software engineer Devin Mullins. “We’ll continue working hard to ensure that we add minimal latency to the user experience and extend our track record of rock-solid reliability—we’ve had no service outages since we launched last September.”

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Google has been running from pillar to post in order to make search more social but they continue to leave out your friends’ facebook content from their results. Certainly; you may find people from your social circle in the mix; but hundreds of millions of people utilize facebook and a number of them utilize it as their primary social network; the one where they communicate the most with their family and as well as closest friends.

Facebook data can enhance search for a number of reasons tied to that point. One reason is that of recommendations; even if they are unintentional. People avow positive and negative things about experiences they have with brands, movies, places, food, music, etc; this occurs naturally all the time. This information; based on people that you know can without a doubt offer a great deal of relevance to a query.

Yet another reason is photos. Just imagine how nice it would be to view photos from your friends turn up for pertinent queries. For instance you want to take a vacation in Maui. You could search for pictures of Maui on Google and find certain beautiful shots no doubt. How nice would it be to view your friends’ holiday pictures in the mix. You may not have even known that your friend went there; but if his/her photos appeared in your Google search then you would know and then you can discuss their experience with them.

Videos are another important reason. People nowadays are posting more and more videos on facebook; original and as well as links to interesting or entertaining things they have found on the internet. In pertinent cases; would it not be to view videos from your friends when they make sense. You can apply the Maui example here as well. Or for instance you are looking out for “TV on the Radio” videos; but not one particularly. Maybe you could view certain particular ones that your friends thought were cool.

But unfortunately Google does not include this type of personalized facebook data in their search results and there is nothing indicating that this is on the way either. Bing utilizes more personalized facebook data.

Meanwhile; third-parties are busy finding resolutions to problems like this. Greplin and Wajam are two examples. Granted; neither of them offer the perfect resolution to craft the type of rich search experience I am talking about but they are making strides where the top search engines are dawdling to adapt to user needs. There is a good chance that you do not in fact care about the opinion of everybody you are friends with on Facebook. Just because you knew a person in High School does not intend that you care about their opinions on Italian food. However; your friend who offers an amazing cuisine every time you go to his/her home for a dinner party may carry more weight.

Alternatively; you never know what you are going to be looking out for down the road and whose words may have certain hidden and unexpected relevance. Maybe you are friends with a person who has the complete opposite taste in movies as you.

The point is that facebook content has the potential to make search better when included in interesting and pertinent ways. This is one reason why facebook itself could be a perilous match for Google; if they ever decided to begin taking search more seriously.

To few people; the notion may look odd but it did not take long for a novel search engine called Bing to gain considerable ground in the search market. And Facebook’s user-base is huge. A concrete marketing budget can definitely go a long way as Microsoft proved with Bing and then of course there is that entire Bing-Facebook partnership thing. Bing powers Facebook’s web results and Bing will definitely locate novel ways to integrate facebook into their own experience.

Stay tuned with SEO Global Expert for more updates.

After about a year of testing; Google has taken a decision to get rid of their tag advertising program for Google places.

This program brought in by Google permitted advertisers to highlight their organic listings with yellow tags displaying offers, videos, photos, reservations, menus, etc. by paying out a monthly fee.

“Tags make your organic business listings stand out on the Google and Google Maps search results page with a bright yellow marker that highlights specific attributes such as offers, videos or photos,” said Google Places Senior Strategist Brianna Brekke said in December, noting that it did not affect the organic ranking of a business listing on Google or Google Maps.

“Since that experiment began, tens of thousands of businesses have used Tags to help potential customers make easier, more informed decisions when searching,” said product manager Shalini Agarwal in a Google blog post. “Throughout this period, we monitored Tags closely to learn more about our users’ business needs and how they used the product.”

“We’ve made a decision to shift our efforts toward other present and future product offerings for local businesses, and will be discontinuing this trial,” added Agarwal. “We’ve learned a lot from our Tags trial and will take that knowledge into account as we continue to find the best ways to serve users and local businesses alike.”

Stay tuned with SEO Global Expert Team for more updates.

Google declared the launch of a novel Google-based trivia game for which they have partnered with New York times. It is a daily puzzle namely A Google A Day; where players are asked to utilize their “ingenuity and search abilities on Google” for answering questions; it will appear above the crossword puzzle in Times.

You do not have to be a subscriber of Times to play though. Google has set up a website for the game namely agoogleaday.com; which has a game-specific version of the Google search engine which players have to utilize. It is called deja Google; which Google explains as “a wormhole inspired time machine that enables you to solve today’s puzzle spoiler free by searching the Internet as it existed before A Google a Day launched.”

This version of the search engine keeps out real-time updates and other things which are “likely to incorporate spoilers as people post the answers to the puzzle online.” “As the world of information continues to explode, we hope A Google a Day triggers your imagination and helps you discover all the types of questions you can ask Google—and get an answer,” avows Google user experience researcher Dan Russell.

You can look at past questions and answers and share them with friends through facebook, Google buzz, twitter and e-mail. You can also follow the questions through facebook and twitter.

It sounds like part of a “social layer”. Games without a doubt are a major part of social and it will be interesting to view if Google continues to introduce fun little things like this which could actually have a huge impact in terms of user numbers; this truly inimitable game keeps users utilizing Google to search as well; even if it is only “deja Google”.

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A patent which facebook was awarded about a month ago called as “visual tags for search results generated from social network information,” is out of the blue getting certain industry attention.

The official description of the patent avows:

Search results, including sponsored links and algorithmic search results, are generated in response to a query, and are marked based on frequency of clicks on the search results by members of social network who are within a predetermined degree of separation from the member who submitted the query. The markers are visual tags and comprise either a text string or an image.

Greg Sterling at search engine land calls it as a patent on social search; an area where Google is placing more focus nowadays.

We have talked again and again about how vital it is for search engines to get social search right and without facebook data it looks unlikely that Google will be able to do it at least as long as facebook continues to be the leading form of social communication. Fortunately there are third party tools emerging which will help out in bridging the gap.

We have talked about how facebook could become a vital contender in the search market as well. This patent without a doubt only adds more fuel to the fire in that department; facebook has been doing other things to enhance its search feature and this is not the first search-related patent for the company either.

The bottom line is that with a great deal of social interaction going on among true friends and family the most trusted opinions are most likely to be obtained through facebook than on any other website on the internet. That information is incredibly valuable for many kinds of searches.

In case you are not able to read that; it avows; “Subscribe now to get notified when Deals are available in your area and receive regular updates about new offers.” Right now the only cities which are listed are Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Francisco and San Diego but “more cities coming soon.”

Things are going to get more fascinating for companies like groupon and foursquare as we view more overlap between deals space and location-based service space. While this particular offering by facebook is more groupon than foursquare; the latter is increasingly becoming more of a fascinating place for businesses to turn for client offers.

Having just got back from Austin; I will avow that foursquare’s presence was felt tenfold over facebook’s all through SXSW interactive. CEO Dennis Crowley avowed that Google would make an interesting partner; he also avowed that he is not opposed to potential facebook places integration although he does not hear demand for it very often.

Deals and location are both areas where facebook and Google may find themselves competing with each other more and more. Foursquare may end up being a key component to that; as a leader in LBS space.

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Danny Sullivan interacted with Google’s Matt Cutts and as well as Bing’s Duane Forrester on a panel today at SXSW interactive. Google and Bing on an akin stage without a doubt normally makes for certain truly inimitable search engine-related entertainment. You may recall Matt Cutts and Bing’s Harry Shum bickering about the whole “Bing stealing Google results” ordeal a while back. Today’s discussion was much more tame; in fact; there was no bickering at all irrespective of a brief joke about the Google/Bing debate by Danny Sullivan.

The session took place at a tiny overcrowded meeting room at the Hilton where the seats got filled up quickly leaving probably one third of the crowd sitting on the floor which lead to difficult maneuvering for all those who were trying to work their way up to a microphone to ask questions.

When asked about the JC Penney condition; Matt Cutts avowed; “We’re still taking action.” On black hat tactics, he said that Google’s response (penalties) tend to be “roughly proportional” to how serious the offense is. You might be penalized for 30 days, but if the offense is something that is more obviously deliberate, Google’s response is “going to be stronger.”

To those affected by this penalty; he recommends the old reconsideration request. He avows that he does pay attention to people who tweet him but he would not recommend that as the primary way to carry out things; Duane Forrester’s response was along the akin lines – you can tweet him but it will probably get lost in his timeline.

There was not a lot of novel information given out in the session; though where Google has its classic “more than 200 signals” for ranking; Duane Forrester affirmed that Bing has like a thousand. Not certain if that was a big exaggeration or not. He did not present it that way. It is interesting to note that there could be a difference of nearly 800 signals which the two search engines utilize.

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Matt Cutts posted a novel webmaster help video in which he answers his own query rather than a user-submitted one. Particularly; he inquires if there is any advice which he would like to change from what he has avowed in the past.

“I did a video back in May of 2010, that said we don’t use, for example, Twitter at all in our rankings other than as a normal web page, and the links are treated completely like normal web pages,” he avows.

He then refers to a recent Danny Sullivan article; which breaks down how both Google and Bing utilize twitter. He notes that Google worked with him for ensuring its accuracy. “It says that in some cases we do look at, for example, how reputable a particular person on Twitter might be, and we can use that in our rankings in some ways.”

“SafeSearch, when I wrote the very first version, years and years and years ago – whenever you’re not able to crawl something – so for example, if it’s blocked by robots.txt, since people have deliberately said, ‘I would like a safe version – a family-safe version of Google, we would say, ‘oh, if we haven’t been able to crawl it, then we don’t know whether it’s porn or not, so we’re not going to be able to return it to users,” avows Cutts.

“So, the Library of Congress or WhiteHouse.gov or Metallica at one point…Nissan, had blocked various pages from being crawled in the search engines, and so to be safe, we said, ‘you know what? We don’t know whether that’s family-safe or not, so we won’t return it’,”  he adds.

“Luckily, the SafeSearch team has gotten much more sophisticated, and better, and more robust since I wrote the original version, so now that’s something that we might change. If something is forbidden from being crawled, but for whatever reason we think that it might be safe, now we’ll start to return it in our search results.”

It’s always better to put the record directly.

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