ComScore Releases February 2011 US Search Engine Rankings

A Ray of Hope for Bing as it gains rise in market share while the rival (Google) remained with its 64. 4 %share. Even though Bings’ achievement is very less, they claim to be the achiever.

Tags: bing, Google, search engine news

Google “search” becomes more personalized

Google is providing you many options as far as its “search results” are concerned. For the improvement of the same Google had introduced Searchwiki, Stars in search and Locations settings where you can prioritize and mark your search results. Now they have added one more efficient feature for its users to blocks sites which they don’t want to see again.

Many of you surely had a bad experience in getting the apt results in Google. You might have visited websites that carry irrelevant and low quality content and hence resent it and would be looking for an option to block particular domains from your search results for ever. Google now brings out this feature letting you block sites. When you click a result and then return to Google, you’ll find a new link next to “Cached” that shows “Block all ———.com results.  If you proceed with the same by clicking the link “Block all ——.com results, you will receive a confirmation message as well as an option to undo your choice. You could view the link irrespective of whether you are signed in or not but the domains you block are connected with your Google Account so you will have to sign in to confirm a blocked site.

Tags: Google, Google search, search engine news

Blekko banned 1.1 Million Sites from Its Search Engine

It seems that every search engine is having a cleanup. Recently Google has updated their algorithm by giving a boost up for some websites and a downfall for someother as per the quality of the content. Now Blekko is a going a step further by banning 1.1 million websites from its searches. They had already removed around 20 websites including eHow, Answerbag (Demand media), but the main difference between Google and Blekko in updating the algorithm is that while the former had sorted the websites based on the content by demoting the sites,  Blekko removed them completely, so that it will never ever appear in Blekko.

Blekko announced on their blog that they have brought out this change with the help of ‘Adspam algorithm”  and claim that this algorithm is the first of its kind to find spam rather than rank results. The algorithm is designed to identify pages which are spam and abolish before they appear in search results. They have given an explanation about “Adspam” algorithm in their blog. It says that “is a machine-learning algorithm that examines pages for a specific spam signals — the presence of multiple display ad positions on a single page and thin to zero content. Unlike algorithms used by other search engines, AdSpam is being used in conjunction with human curation to detect to continue the War on Spam.

Tags: Blekko, Google, search engine news, SEO

Bing launches “Deals”

Bing have partnered with The Dealmap, to launch Bing Deals. By launching this, Bing offers you an excellent way to navigate the web and get the best results instantly. The Dealmap is a leading source for people to find and share the best local deals, so Bing have just utilized this to provide outstanding results for its users.

You will see “deals” from m.bing.com (iPhone and Android)on the  homepage and once you proceed you could access top deals (30%-40% off) featuring the very best offers from your own area/location.

It is not just daily top deals; you could even find the ‘nearby’   places such as restaurants, spas, theaters etc and their special offers and could browse by category to narrow down your search and get accurate results.

Once you find your relevant deal, you could access/ claim from the deal provider or share it with friends via email. You could also see for a business opportunity, Bing will highlight any available bargains below the business listing.

You can also get deals at home on your desktop by searching  the name of the business on Bing. If there is a deal, they will display it with a green deal icon. You can avail more information like reviews, images, maps by proceeding with the detail page.

Tags: bing, Bing deals, Google, search engine news

Google, Bing and Blekko on a single platform talking about the recent ‘copying’ issue

Matt Cutts from Google, Harry Shum from Bing and Rich Skrenta of Blekko on a search panel open out their views. The debate frenzied between Harry and Matt, despite Matt being a calm natured person. Matt was very certain at Bing Copying Google’s result and clearly pointed to that whereas Harry’s response and answers were quite ambiguous. It is clear that both Google and Bing are using users data to influence rankings. The conversation then diverted to on ‘how’ both are getting their data, of course from the respective toolbar. Here again Matts puts a valid statement blaming that Bing creeped the toolbar onto users PC’s via IE where Harry had a fragile answer as that no one is bothered T&C’s so it does not value. And the discussion concluded with a note of pacifying messages.

Here is the gist of the debate/talk show/conversation

Bing uses user data on Google as a ranking signal – but that these keywords were outliers and that Bing does not just copy results.

Bing uses data from Google in their algorithm, Google denies using Bing data.

-Both Google and Bing are using user data in their algorithm

-Google have developed a chrome add on that will allow user to veto sites from their search results

Tags: bing, Blekko, Google, Latest SEO news, search engine news