New Google Goodies
Thursday, May 11th, 2006 at 4:26 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine
Google is often in the news. But today there are announcements that will interest those who are less interested in Google’s quarterly profits than in their own.
Searchers can type in search terms and view a graph showing how popular they are over time. (The search terms, not the searchers. Although, sometimes those are the same thing.) It also has sections that break down the trend by Cities, Regions, and Languages. You may not be interested to know that “Anne Hathaway” is very popular in the Philippines, for example. But, then again, if you sell DVDs you might be.
This handy and popular set of “gadgets”, as Google calls them, can help you get organized, keep abreast of interesting news, and in general take up even more precious space on your desktop. Then again, maybe you don’t have a hundred shortcuts there already.
Google is moving into the “social network” arena on multiple fronts. In this case, Google will make it possible for users to subscribe to individuals who place tags on content of interest. One notable example is Google’s arrangement with certain health related entities, whereby some hospitals, et al will tag their content. (Hat tip to ClickZ News.)
With the new notepad feature that allows users to save search results and annotate them, this could be a terrific way to get unpaid help in research and other content gathering efforts.
Ok, there probably won’t be a Google Broadcasting System anytime soon. (Although the company did recently acquire dMarc Broadcasting. dMarc’s system connects advertisers to radio stations.)
Nevertheless, this statement from Google CEO Eric Schmidt was particularly interesting.
“There’ve been no fundamentally new breakthroughs in the TV world since color in the 1960s, other than maybe TiVo,” he said, adding the company didn’t yet know whether it was possible to develop a product to sufficiently advance media buying in TV. ‘There may be one, there may not be one.’”
When they start talking like this, it isn’t likely to be very long before they actually do something about the situation.
One can never be entirely sure what Google will do next. (Almost certainly, they don’t know themselves. Any company with more than one employee is like that.) But whatever it is, it’s bound to be interesting. And potentially profitable… for many besides Google.
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Personally I have mixed feelings about the success of Google. Although not surprisingly I’m highly impressed by what the company has achieved, it seems that it has an increasingly powerful hold over the Internet world.
More and more it is holding us to ransom. Recently I began to use Google AdWords to promote my web site. Initially it was showing on the first screen for the specific keywords I was using. But, surprise surprise, a couple of weeks later my web site has slippled down to the 4th page. Other bigger payers have pushed me aside. But are these other sites really getting value from what they are paying for their elevated listings?
The methods that Google is using to rank web site listings are obscure, and we can’t tell how artificial the criteria being used really are.
So while I’m amazed at how quickly Google has advanced, I wish it had some real competition to ensure a fairer Online market place.
NetworkingMaster
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