Blogging India

Hello all,

I seem to be talking "Google" a lot during these times, but what else can I do with all the stuff I keep finding about this behemoth website?

Today for instance, I found something pretty amazing. I was going through my search stats, when I found a keyword "INDIAN BYBY NAMES" through which a person came to Blogging India. Now that was pretty weird, since I had no idea what the keyword was all about. So I decided to search for it and guess what I found?

I have reason to believe that Google is using the aid of pronounciation(pronunciation) to better refine its searches. Google used the pronounciation of "BYBY" and matched it with "Bye Bye". And then, it searched for and highlighted pages having the term "Bye Bye" rather than "BYBY". Never before have I seen it happening, and it didn’t work for a few other combinations I tried, but nevertheless, the fact remains, it equated one search term, with the other, without a command from the user.

Again fascinating in this same query is that search terms are never sliced to find a match. i.e. If you search for "multiplayer", you don’t get results for "multi" and "player", or for "mul" and "tiplayer". Here, you can see that "Indian" has been substituted with "India" and "Names" with "Name". Of course, Google had mentioned earlier that it would consider plural results when we searched for singular queries, and vis versa. So that explains the "Name" result. But what about "Indian" being substituted with "India" in a search result?

Don’t believe me? Try searching for "baba black sheep" on Google. You get results on "Baa Baa Black Sheep", and the search engine doesn’t show a correction("Did you mean…").

Now does this mean that Google is experimenting with pronounciation search? Its a field I’ve never heard of before, nor have I heard of search engine experts talk about it. Would it be an innovative break for all those words which have different pronounciations throughout the world? We shall wait and see.

But one thing is for sure, if Google is indeed playing with pronounciation search, they are heading the semantic way. And a slight amount of semantic search mixed into the present Google formula could make it a lot better.

[tags]google, pronounciation, pronunciation, search, best search, better search[/tags]

Hello all,

I found this rather curious little thing while I was browsing about a week back. I was searching for something in Google, and it was something rather hard to find, so I thought of searching for it in Google Groups and News. So I scrolled to the top of the Google search page, where the little links to Google Images Search, Google News Search, Google Scholar Search and other Google utility searches were displayed.

To my surprise, there was a link to Orkut(Orkut is the social networking website owned by Google)! This particular link took me to an Orkut search page for what I searched. I was logged in to Orkut at that time, and thats why it showed me the search page. When I logged out, and searched, and clicked Orkut again, the usual log in page appeared.

But the interesting point is that, Google either thinks that Orkut has useful material, or it wants to drive traffic to its Social Networking site. It is most probably the latter, since most of the content on Orkut are either highly personal (and useless for a 3rd person, unless he’s studying customer psychology) or extremely spammy. Most of the communities I’ve been to so far, barring a single one on Indian stock exchange updates, are notoriously spam filled, thus presenting nothing search-worthy.

Then we have to question – why is Google going so orkutty?  A few of my observations -

• Information contained in Orkut is highly useless to any person searching for something conrete
• Orkut communities are extremely spam filled – thus leading to incorrect information
• Orkut communities harbour many illegal activities, like hacking/phising attempts
• Thus, presenting Orkut search as an option in Google search destroys the search engine’s credibility by providing highly incorrect search results.
• Google, by putting in the Orkut link, is trying to get more visitors to sign up at Orkut, thereby providing more income to Google

So finally, we have to ask a few questions… Is Google compromising on search quality to drive forward its products? Isn’t Google thus creating an unfair advantage for Orkut over other social networking websites? Isn’t Google misleading people to click on the Orkut search link, and thus making them sign up?

Unfortunately, we do not have answers. Hopefully, a Googler will see this post, and send me a rather flighty email But until then folks, ciao, take care

[tags]orkut, orkut search, google, google search, decreasing google, google standards, orkut information, google news[/tags]

Hi all,

I was a bit late to catch up on this news, but Google is planning to release a Wikipedia-Squidoo style social content website. Christened "Knol", Google calls this a "tool" which will "encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it".

In short, Google is trying to chase an area, in which Wikipedia currently rules the roost. With a big difference – Google will be commercializing Knol. Which means that a user can opt for an advertisement, Google Adsense of course, on his/her article pages, and he/she gets a "substantial share" of the revenue.

(click to enlarge)

Now the debate raging throughout the web is whether Google will give unfair advantage to pages from Knol on their search results.

Extract from the Official Google Blog

"Our job in Search Quality will be to rank the knols appropriately when they appear in Google search results. We are quite experienced with ranking web pages, and we feel confident that we will be up to the challenge. We are very excited by the potential to substantially increase the dissemination of knowledge.

I hope that Udi Manber, the writer of this post in the Google blog means what he said in a positive sense.

Anyway, experts argue that the Google brand will give value to these Knols, which will encourage users to link to Knols, and thus organically increase the ranking of Knols. This is again a far cry, since this same image and reputation exists even for Wikipedia. Ok, so Google is set to earn profit for Knol, unlike Wikipedia, but does that really matter?

Meanwhile, I’ve contacted a couple of my friends, well placed at Wikipedia, to try and get invites to Google Knol. Hopefully, they might succeed, and give me an insider review.

Now, bloggers are opining that Google is going a step too far with Knol. To be exact, Duncan Riley of TechCrunch. He’s given quite a comprehensive insight into how Google could do foul play with Knol, but then, Riley is known for his hopelessly ridiculous What-If posts (not that his intuitions are not accurate, but sometimes, when he plays with the "hot" of the moment, he gets carried away; otherwise, his reviews are excellent).

"He’s right. Google is moving away from simply indexing the worlds content to being a content provider itself. Of course Google in response would argue that it is simply facilitating user generated content (like with Blogger), that ultimately they are the host as opposed to the creator, but it still competes with existing content providers, many of whom rely on Google search results for their living. Which takes us to question of search results.

(TechCrunch)

Well, pretty true that Google is moving towards being a content provider, so what? So whats the big deal? If Google doesn’t cash in unethically, then why the big hue and cry?

Well, I guess we’ll wait and see…. And then we’ll decide to knol, or not to knol…

[tags]google knol, knol, knowledge, social content, wikipedia, squidoo, advertisements, make money, write articles[/tags]

Hi all,

I just noticed that I had got my Google PageRank back. Well, not exactly back, but I’m now better off than 0. I had a PR of 4 before, until Google started penalizing blogs for displaying paid links which did not have the "nofollow" tags. I was advised by a Google contact of mine on what to do, and now I’ve got a PR of 2 – which I attribute to my inactivity.

Steps to recover your PageRank if you’ve been penalized by Google –

1. Remove the paid links
2. OPTIONAL : Append rel="nofollow" to all hyperlinks in your site to "shifty" webpages
   eg : <a href="http://the page here . html" title="Page here" rel="nofollow"> Link </a>
3. Go to Google Webmaster Central and sign up, if you haven’t already
4. Log in and click on "Request Reconsideration"
5. Select your site, check the checkbox, and explain in the text box truthfully about what happened, why it happened, how you got to know the Google guidelines only now, what actions you’ve taken, what all you’ve removed, and that your site now complies with all Google guidelines. After all this, hit the button which says "Request Reconsideration". You’re done!

Now wait for a couple of weeks (2-4 weeks). If your case is genuine, and you’ve been honest, you’ll get your Google PageRank back. Thats what happened to me, and many others. I wish you luck!

[tags]five steps, get back pagerank, google pagerank, google pr, google, pagerank, blog pr[/tags]

Disclaimer : I found this on Digg. Thanks to Nirmal. We envision that you use the information given below for legal(or educational) purposes only. Thank you.

Hi all,
Here’s a cool tool named Google Hack which allows to you easily search for the file of your choice – be it music, video, lyrics, hacks, caches items, fonts, proxies, torrents, applications or books.

Google has in built search queries which can be used to effectively track down these files, but these long codes need to be appended to the search term. Who will bother to do that?

So here, a few smart guys have released a cool program which will surely reduce your search time, and increase your search accuracy, when you’re searching for such, uh, ‘unconventional’ things.

Google Hacks hosted at Google CODE is a program available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Download the appropriate file, and enjoy Googling

Hi all,
    How many of you knew about the Easter Egg in Google Earth? Its a HUGE Easter Egg! Its a Flight Simulator game which could rival Microsoft’s Flight Simulator (well yes, thats a bit exaggerated…). Yep, you didn’t know did you? All the time you were using Google Earth to see your home and office and car in the car park, you never thought it had another fun side did you?

    Folks, we’re talking real here! To unlock the flight simulator you need to open Google Earth and hit Command+Option+A on a Mac or Ctrl+Alt+A on a Windows PC. You can find more information about the controls from the Google Earth Flight Sim Manual.

    Interesting eh? Yes, I know its pretty basic, but still Well, have fun Cheers!

[tags]flight simulator, Google Earth, Google, Googlism, fly planes, games online[/tags]

Hi all,
    Matt Cutts, senior software engineer at Google, also known as the Porn Cookie Guy, , blogged the day before yesterday about five things you didn’t know about Google’s search.

    Its a pretty big post, and I recommend that anyone into Google should really go through this. Its posted at Matt Cutt’s blog.

    The main points are as follows -

• Google still has a strong focus on search, despite bringing out the innovative features and tools.
• Google makes a lot of improvements that most people never notice, but makes Google Search a lot more easier and friendly for many. A few changes are made to Google Search every week!
• Google Search has a very complex algorithm with thousands of tiny tunings which compose the “secret sauce”. Each of these tiny tunings make the service better for particular users.
• Google has great internal tools to debug and dissect errors, or mismatches
• There are a lot of people “behind the curtain” at Google that improve search

    Or in other words, Matt Cutt sums up what you might have not known until you’ve read the article -

- Just because Google doesn’t always talk about search and journalists don’t always write about core search doesn’t mean stuff isn’t happening. Google devotes a ton of effort to improving our search in many different ways.
- Google makes a go/no-go decision on several different quality changes each week.
- If you want to build search loyalty, you have to get a lot of different things right.
- Google has many ways to prioritize feedback and tools to look at how to improve search.
- I’m glad we’re shedding light on some additional people at Google. Many people work behind the scenes to improve the user experience at Google, and we should look to highlight even more of those people.

    Thank you Matt And great work Google .

    By the way, Matt, why do you use Wordpress?

[tags]google, matt cutts, 5 things you didnt know, google search[/tags]

Hey again all,
    Google Blogoscoped reports that Google Images has introduced 2 new search categories – facial search, and news search. Though still not available by API, these features can be accessed by appending a tiny query to the end of the Google search URL.

• Face Search – Now you can search for only faces! It seems that Neven Vision, a company acquired by Google in 2006, specializes in facial recognition, and thus adds the feature of face search to Google Images.

  A Google Images Face search can be done by appending the code “&imgtype=face” without the quotes, into the search URL. i.e. Go to Google Images, search for something, then append the URL with the code given above, and hit enter. You get a facial search done!

  eg : I searched for “rocket” using Google Images. I get the following URL -
  http://images.google.co.in/images?q=rocket
  &btnG=Search+Images&svnum=10&um=1&hl
  =en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla
  %3Aen-US%3Aofficial

  

  Then, I appended the URL with the query &imgtype=face to make the URL -
  http://images.google.co.in/images?q=rocket
  &btnG=Search+Images&svnum=10&um=1&hl
  =en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla
  %3Aen-US%3Aofficial&imgtype=face

  

  Check it out for yourself!

• News Search – apparently, you can search for the latest images which have come up in the news. The working is exactly the same as face search, and you can do it by appending a small query -
  &imgtype=news

  Simple and handy

    Yep yep yep Thats it from us. Yet again, Google brings in ultimate innovation! I wonder when Gmail starts giving Face Recognition Passwords

[tags]google, google images, face search, face recognition, news search, news images[/tags]

Hi all,
    Google launched, last week, a security blog. Titled Google Online Security Blog, this weblog is intended at fighting malware and spyware, and making people aware of the security threats online.

Online security is an important topic for Google, our users, and anyone who uses the Internet. The related issues are complex and dynamic and we’ve been looking for a way to foster discussion on the topic and keep users informed. Thus, we’ve started this blog where we hope to periodically provide updates on recent trends, interesting findings, and efforts related to online security. Among the issues we’ll tackle is malware, which is the subject of our inaugural post.

Malware — surreptitious software capable of stealing sensitive information from your computer — is increasingly spreading over the web. Visiting a compromised web server with a vulnerable browser or plugins can result in your system being infected with a whole variety of malware without any interaction on your part. Software installations that leverage exploits are termed “drive-by downloads”. To protect Google’s users from this threat, we started an anti-malware effort about a year ago. As a result, we can warn you in our search results if we know of a site to be harmful and even prevent exploits from loading with Google Desktop Search.

Unfortunately, the scope of the problem has recently been somewhat misreported to suggest that one in 10 websites are potentially malicious. To clarify, a sample-based analysis puts the fraction of malicious pages at roughly 0.1%. The analysis described in our paper covers billions of URLs. Using targeted feature extraction and classification, we select a subset of URLs believed to be suspicious for in-depth investigation. So far, we have investigated about 12 million suspicious URLs and found about 1 million that engage in drive-by downloads. In most cases, the web sites that infect your system with malware are not intentionally doing so and are often unaware that their web servers have been compromised.

    The basic advices are the same -

• Keep software updated
• Avoid visiting untrustworthy websites
• Use antivirus programs, and keep them up to date
• Never give out personal information on the net

    I believe that this blog will serve as a basement for all future Google security updates. Its a great initiative by the company, and very much on time!

[tags]google online security[/tags]

Hi all,
    I came across an article at The Marketing Pilgrim, written by David Vogelpohl, titled “Tin Foil Hat Alert: Is Google Indexing Your DNA?“.

    The article talks critically about Google’s acquisition of 23andme, a privately owned DNA sequencing enterprise. In other words, a website working towards Google’s aim. And they’re taking the Mickey off Google because a co-founder of 23andme is Anne Wojcicki, Sergey Brin’s wife.

    They also talk about Google prying into our private lives. Actually, they’ve got it all wrong.

    Google’s aim is simple. Sequence every part of the Human 46 chromosomal DNA and find out which part deals with what, and make it available on the internet for searching. By doing this, Google allows people to compare their DNA’s with the Google database for diseases or other disorders, thereby making DNA scanning free of cost, and easy to do. It also allows information inherited traits, ancestry and genealogy.

    No one’s asking you to submit your DNA on the internet. No body is forcing you to give your DNA. Its in no way NECESSARY to check your DNA with the Google databases.

    23andMe along with Google can make milestones in the biotechnology world! Here, David is making implications to Google’s involving in a bad guy scenario like in Michael Crichton’s book, Next, doing biogenetical crimes. Yeesh! Fiction is Fiction buddy!

[tags]23andme, Google, genetics, genetical search, DNA search, DNA indexing[/tags]