Google optimises mobile search facility

Google on the go, recent reports are that Google Mobile now supports 38 different languages in over 60 countries, making it a lot easier for international users on the move.

Since the launch of optimized search results pages last December for iPhone and also android powered devices in the US, the team has been working hard to bring search results in more countries. Since March the availability to the new iPhone has been expanded to over 20 countries. And now the experience can be had by feature phones in the Us and Japan and the new format is now more widely available.

If you have mobile internet access regardless of whether you own a smartphone or a feature phone you can now get the new mobile-optimized Google search results pages on your phone. Just visit Google.com in your mobile browser and conduct a search.

Mobile Search Shows Rapid Growth: Opera

Google is the preferred search engine according to the newest State of the Mobile Web report by Opera. The report provides information on the top global trends affecting the mobile Web. In addition to the top global trends and country snapshots, the report highlights trends in Southeast Asia and this month includes a special spotlight on search engine usage on the mobile Web.

Global trends

In May 2009, Opera Mini had nearly 25.4 million users, an 8.4% increase from April 2009 and more than 136% compared to May 2008. These numbers reflect only the Opera Mini users who have specifically chosen to install the browser on their phone.
Those 25.4 million Opera Mini users viewed over 9.6 billion pages in May 2009. Since April, page-views have gone up 11.0%. Since May 2008, page-views have increased 227%.

Opera Mini users generated nearly 160 million MB of data for operators worldwide in May 2009. Since April, the data consumed went up by 5.6%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed up to 90%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed up to 1.5 PB of data in May. Since May 2008, data traffic is up 245%.
In the top 10 list of countries, India moved up, switching spots with Ukraine. Poland also went up, pushing Nigeria down to the tenth spot.

Mobile Search trends

Google continues to assert itself as a global leader in search, but Yandex and Baidu continue to be the top players in Russia and China, respectively, and Yahoo is particularly strong in Indonesia and Nigeria.

Opera Mini users in India and Nigeria are the biggest users of search portals. In India, 16.3% of page-views are from search portals, and users viewed an average of 63.7 search-portal pages per month. In Nigeria, 26.6% of page-views are from search portals, and users viewed an average of 49.6 search portal pages per month.
Opera Mini users in Ukraine use search portals the least: 0.7% of page-views are from search portals, and users only view an average of 4.3 search portal pages per month.

Southeast Asia trends

The top 9 countries using Opera Mini in Southeast Asia are Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei, Singapore, Cambodia and Laos.

From May 2008 to May 2009:

Overall page-views in the top 9 countries listed increased 459%.
Overall unique users in the top 9 countries listed increased 119%.
Overall data transferred in the top 9 countries listed increased 271%.
Since our last spotlight on Southeast Asia, Vietnam jumped from #5 to #2 and the Philippines jumped from #6 to #3.

Growth rates in Southeast Asia remain high: Vietnam leads the top 9 countries with 412.9% growth in users this year, followed by the Philippines (353.6% growth) and Malaysia (249.6% growth).

In our previous Southeast Asia spotlight (October 2008), Indonesia led the way, with each user viewing 358 pages on average. In May 2009, that figure was surpassed in 3 countries--Indonesia (420 page-views per user), the Philippines (705 page-views per user) and Brunei (461 page-views per user).

In Southeast Asia, among mobile Web users, Google is the dominant player in the search engine space, with Yahoo in second place.

Friendster continues to be popular in Southeast Asia, but Facebook has made significant strides, especially in Indonesia--where it finally broke through Friendster's previous dominance of the number 1 spot.

Nokia handsets continue to be dominant in Southeast Asia, followed by Sony Ericsson.

Yahoo and Google bolster advertising solutions

Yahoo and Google have both launched new advertising solutions with advanced features and services in a bid to secure more revenue, according to reports.

Monday (June 22, 2009), saw the unveiling of a self-serve display advertising service at Yahoo which allows companies to create their own online ads.

It’s hoped it will benefit the SME businesses that have not been able to benefit from the expertise and advice of the Yahoo sales team and account managers that have concentrating their efforts on larger advertisers.

The product provides advertisers with more than 800 display ad templates running across the Yahoo network of Web sites. They can also opt to pay on a pay per click basis.

Yahoo’s closest rival Google is to test a new type of ad platform which aims to showcase products in its sponsored links that that appear alongside search results.

According to an announcement from Google on blogoscoped.com, the ads will feature product pricing and a product image and will initially only be visible to a small number of US users before being rolled out.

The move has been prompted by the launch of Microsoft's new search engine Bing. Its search results currently offers more product and pricing information than Google's.

Google Improves Flash Search and Indexing

Google has enhanced its search engine's capacity to index Adobe's Flash files, which are very popular on the Web but tricky for search engine spiders.

Google's search engine can now index external content that a Flash file loads, such as text, HTML, XML or Flash content itself, the company said Friday.

The Google search engine will also tie the indexed Flash file to this externally loaded content and the documents from where it comes, Google said.

"This new capability improves search quality by allowing relevant content contained in external resources to appear in response to users' queries," wrote Google software engineer Janis Stipins in an official blog.

Friday's announcement is the latest in Google's multiyear effort to improve its indexing of Flash files and specifically builds on the announcement in June of last year that Google had developed a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files.

At the time, Adobe also announced it was providing optimized Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo to help with their ongoing efforts to better index Flash files.

Improvements to index Flash by Google, Yahoo and others benefit not only the search engines and their end users but also webmasters and designers, who have struggled to have the Flash portions of their sites indexed and made searchable.

Google searches deeper with DeeperWeb

DeeperWeb, a new search engine extension, introduces Google users with employing Tag-Cloud techniques to help users navigate through search results more efficiently and Topic-Mapping Technologies for fast results identification

DeeperWeb for Google has recently announced the immediate availability of a new release of its beta search engine extension and search plugin, setting a new standard for web search tools.

DeeperWeb 1.1.0 helps Google users to navigate through search results using a fast, simple and useful Tag-Cloud technique and Topic-Mapping features for immediate results identification.

DeeperWeb is available for usage on our website. Downloading our free search tool saves time and allows searching directly from the browser's search box as presently possible with Google.

A number of key features in this add-on release make this the best time yet for Google users to reload their searching experience and boost Google web search results with DeeperWeb. All features are available for Internet Explorer and Firefox:

Improving search results with TAG-CLOUD techniques:

* See the full picture hidden beneath the pile of search results
* Find related tags and phrases extracted from your search results
* Modify search with one click tweak, rephrase and focus your search

In addition to these, there are several clever business, internet marketing and SEO applications to the DeeperWeb's Tag-Cloud extension: identifying main competitors, pinpointing targeted sites for most effective advertisement and isolating the authoritative websites of a particular topic.

Finding the desired information hidden beneath the pile of web search results has never been easier. DeeperWeb's Topic-Mapping search engine technologies reduce the clutter and help users to more effectively identify search results upon topic and type (e.g. articles, videos, podcasts, slides…).

Quick Zoom-In by Area of Interest with TOPIC-MAPPING technologies:

* See Mapped Information for fast results identification
* Quickly Zoom-In (& Out) to categories such as Answers, News,
Wikipedia, Metrics and Survey, Blogs Search and more
* Get Access to high-quality targeted news and information from leading publications.

Google Friend Connect Now Speaking In Tongues

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) on Thursday extended Google Friend Connect, its social gadget set for Web site owners, across language barriers with an enhanced comments gadget.

The revised comments gadget allows Web site visitors to post and read comments in their own language through Google's automatic translation technology.

"With this gadget, visitors from all over the world can leave messages in their native tongue, and other viewers will be able to instantly translate these comments into the language of their choice," Google Friend Connect product manager Mussie Shore said in a blog post.

The benefit for Web site owners and visitors is obvious: greater community engagement. The downside -- of gadgets in general -- is ceding more page real estate to a third party. While Google may be a welcome houseguest on many home pages, the presence of its software takes up room that might otherwise be used for unique content. It also raises questions about whether Google and other gadget makers are privy to too much information about what goes on at the Web sites they're enhancing.

But perhaps the appeal of gadgets like Google's says more about the modest creative aspirations of Web site owners than it does about Google's proclivity to expand to fill all available space. When what one has to say can be squeezed into a tweet, it may be for the best to have Google filling the content void by encouraging interaction.

And Google has been doing its best to accomplish that. It has recently added an Event gadget, for promoting upcoming events and tracking planned attendance; a Poll gadget, for running polls on one's site; and a Get Answers gadget, to solicit questions and answers from site visitors.

It also has begun showing Google Profile results at the bottom of search results pages generated by queries for names in the United States.