Live.com has released a great new search option for webmasters which allows you to see just how many links point to other websites from within your own. To use it simply search using the following syntax without the quotes and replacing “yoursite.com” with your domain (do not use ‘www.’):

“linkfromdomain:yoursite.com” Read more…

Brilliant! Sometimes I think the folks at Google are too smart for their own good. Okay, perhaps I am a little too excited about this but I just love to see a good idea. Yesterday Google announced “Google Teacher Academy”:

“The Google Teacher Academy is a pilot program designed to help K-12 educators get the most from innovative technologies. The Academy is a one-day experience at Google’s Mountain View Headquarters where participants get hands-on experience with Google products and other technologies, receive instructional resources to share with colleagues, and share innovative instructional strategies with other local educators. Upon completion, Academy participants will become Google Certified Teachers and will be asked to lead at least three related professional development activities for local educators.” (source, Google Teacher Academy) Read more…

It is widely known that the Indian economy is booming and as a testament to this fact a new search engine providing entirely Indian based content has recently launched: Guruji.com .

The design of Guruji is very nostalgic of Google’s early days; clean, simple, no advertising, and quite attractive. Created to capitalize on the growing need for local search, this 30 million page index is bound to grow considerably over the next year. Currently in English, Guruji will offer search in the following languages within the next 6 months: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Bengali.

If you are interested in getting some exposure in Guruji then your site had better have some Indian content. From my own tests I have to say that their filter to ensure Indian-only content is quite good.

Last week Yahoo! posted that they had launched a few updates to their Site Explorer tool in response to user feedback.

Here is a list of the updates:

• Authentication filenames have been reduced to 27 characters in response to users who stated they were far too long.
• Authentication files are now in HTML format for those who had problems uploading text files. The older text file format is still compatible so no need to change if you already have it setup. They also reminded users that they should not remove the keyfile from their sites because if they do their site will be unauthenticated.

Site Explorer is a great tool for anyone who wants an idea on how well their site is indexed in Yahoo and to find out how many backlinks they have. Here is an article that describes how to use the Yahoo Site Explorer tool.

Occasionally rumor becomes reality! This October 9th, 2006, Google agreed to purchase YouTube for 1.6 billion in swapped stock. Here are the main points of the sale:

• YouTube will stay separate and short of working in an air of unrestrained giddiness the YouTube offices will be business as usual.
• The purchase provides Google shareholders with a fantastic media portal and a great software platform that is in sync with Google’s mandate of organizing the world’s information.
• Other than the obvious financial benefit, YouTube will now have Google’s resources to become bigger and better.

This purchase has been approved by both companies and expects to close in the fourther quarter of 2006.

Source: Google’s Press Release

I hope all of you experienced an excellent weekend full of family, and friends, swirled in the aroma of oven-baked turkey! I had a wonderful holiday weekend with my fiancee, my family, and hers; I ate and drank far too much and I am certain I set my workout routine a few paces back

In any case, I just wanted to wish you all a great short week full of profit and fun. Now it is time for me to get back to work and get our blog caught up with the times – among many other things.

All the best.

Online calendars have been available for many years now but the calendar-sharing feature that Google has included in Google Calendar has opened the door to a great a form of social marketing that is bound to make waves and possibly increase your bottom line.

What is Google Calendar?

If you are not a GMail user or even a fan of Google you may not know what I am talking about so here is some background. GMail is Google’s free web-based email program, which has many features that has helped it create a significant user base. After the emergence of Google Mail (GMail), Google launched a number of additional free applications for Gmail users, which culminated in a combined solution called Google Apps . One of these applications is Google Calendar, which is the subject of this article. Read more…

Google has another, somewhat secretive search engine called SearchMash.com. Kudos to Nathan Weinberg for releasing this valuable piece of information! Search Mash appears to be a testbed of sorts for AJAX search technology (the same technology that Microsoft’s new Live.com search engine uses). Check out the Search Mash features list and you will see how some of the options seem to steer more toward a higher level of personalized results; a direction Google is forging towards. Read more…

Yahoo! announced today they signed an exclusive deal with HP, the #2 global PC vendor (Gartner statistic), to be the start-up home page for every HP PC sold in Europe and North America. Even better news for Yahoo! is that North American computers will include a co-branded Yahoo! toolbar installed on every machine once the new Internet Explorer 7 is launched by Microsoft.

This news comes after a similar deal was announced between Yahoo! and Acer computers. All-in-all, it appears that Yahoo! has a very clear picture of where it wants to be; in your face as much as possible. Read more…

Today ComScore announced their research findings on the size and growth of local search in the USA.

According to their findings, 63 percent of U.S. Internet users conducted a local search in July. Local searches are considered any form of search for local information such as a local business number, address, or business website. The real kicker, in my opinion, was that Google (30%) and Yahoo! (29%) had nearly the same amount of the local search market.

Here is some more data that you may find interesting:

Share of Local Searches by Site  July 2006  Total U.S. Home, Work and University Locations  Source: comScore qSearch

                                     Total Local Searches  Total Internet Population                 100%  Google Sites                             29.8%  Yahoo! Sites                             29.2%  Microsoft Sites                          12.3%  Time Warner Network                       7.1%  Verizon Communications                    6.6%  YellowPages.com                           3.9%  Ask Network                               2.7%  Local.com                                 1.9%  InfoSpace Network                         1.9%  DexOnline.com                             1.4%  All Other                                 3.2%