Google is set to make changes to its search ranking algorithm to combat the spate of links leading to malicious web pages appearing at the top of Google’s search results, according to an inside source. Over the past few months, cybercriminals have been using blackhat SEO techniques to manipulate search rankings. When it first began, they were marginally successful at following Google Trends to find buzzy search queries and elevating a newly created targeted webpage. But after a short period of time, these same gangs appear to have become disturbingly effective. Last week, when researching a news story, I found the top...
MoreFirst, let me please wish Emily and family all the best on the birth of her second child, the most precious gift imaginable. And thank you to all at The Planetary Society for the opportunity to guest blog from the Kennedy Space Center press center and launch facilities on the imminent and exciting shuttle flight to Hubble. Previously it was my privilege to report to you all on the successful blast off of the Dawn Asteroid Orbiter in September 2007 and which recently flew past Mars, my favorite planet, for a gravity assisted boost towards Vesta. The final Space Shuttle flight...
MoreI’ve been a long time Yahoo! Messenger (YM) user. Yahoo was my first e-mail account and most of my contacts are Yahoo!. I won’t make the intro long. So here’s what’s I want to post. There are times before where I receive an instant message from an unknown Yahoo! ID. Well, simply, that was spamming. I suspect the spammers were able to get my email address from forums or at the Yahoo! Chatrooms. But then lately (I believe it started last year), I am receiving “wierd” IMs from my yahoo buddies (those are my friends). The first one, as I recalled,...
MoreThe focus of the paid search world, if you measure it by tweets, blog posts and conference sessions, has turned squarely to Google’s AdWords Quality Score over the past few months. Google first introduced Quality Score years ago, but changes they rolled out in August of 2008 recently increased visibility of the score in the AdWords interface and via their API, and a great new video by Google Chief Economist Hal Varian has pushed the discussion to a fever pitch. Part of the appeal clearly is the fact that it’s a numeric value judgement Google is making about our keywords and account...
MoreA Google Analytics API has long been one of our most widely anticipated features. Today we're pleased to announce that the Google Analytics Data Export API beta is now publicly available to all Analytics users! What's so exciting about an API? The API will allow developers to extend Google Analytics in new and creative ways that benefit developers, organizations and end users. Large organizations and agencies now have a standardized platform for integrating Analytics data with their own business data. Developers can integrate Google Analytics into their existing products and create standalone applications that they sell. Users could see snapshots of their...
MoreLots of stuff going on leaving little time to blog, so this will need to be brief... Google Labs released a couple neat new tools yesterday. (Another report here.) One is "Similar Images" which uses the colors and shapes of one image to become the basis for a subsequent search on similar images. For example, I searched for "Jerusalem" and two clicks later on pictures that are closest to the view I want, and I have about 600 pics simply of the Temple Mount viewed from the Mount of Olives. The other new release is Google News Timeline. It is mainly intended...
MoreThe Oracle Corporation, the technology information company, announced Monday that it would acquire a rival, Sun Microsystems, for $9.50 a share, or about $7.4 billion. The agreement with Oracle came about two weeks after I.B.M. ended its talks with Sun. The Sun board balked at that deal after I.B.M. lowered its offer to $9.40 a share from $10. Still, Monday’s deal represented a 42 percent premium over Sun’s closing price of $6.69 on Friday. Oracle and Sun said in a statement that net of Sun’s cash and debt, the deal was valued at $5.6 billion. Lawrence J. Ellison, Oracle’s co-founder and chief executive,...
MoreChances are that whether you’re aware of it or not, you probably belong to at least one Ning social network. Since the platform launched in October 2005, it’s seen explosive growth in the quantity and quality of networks created using their hosted social networking platform. Less than four years later, the do-it-yourself social network site with a $500 million valuation has reached another major milestone — 1,000,000 Ning networks. On their way to 1,000,000 social networks, Ning’s come along way from their early days, when they experimented with three distinct sites that let you build your own YouTube, Flickr, or MySpace. We’ve...
MoreWe are excited to announce three new features being released on Alexa today: Demographics, Clickstream and Search Traffic. Demographics - provides a demographic breakdown for virtually any site, including gender, age, education and more. Clickstream - shows the sites visitors were on before and after any site. Search Traffic - shows how much traffic a site gets from search engines. Let's take a look at each of these features a little more closely. First, let's take the demographics for Oprah.com: We have heard from media planners and ad-buyers that demographic data can be useful when planning a campaign to make sure your ad campaign hits...
MoreSan Francisco - An obnoxious computer program that barged into Twitter Inc.'s mishmash of Internet chatter served as another reminder of the challenges facing the rapidly growing service. The nettlesome program, known as a worm, targeted Twitter's network with four different attacks starting early Saturday and ending early Monday, according to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. The worm was set up to promote a Twitter knockoff, StalkDaily.com. It displayed unwanted messages on infected Twitter accounts, urging people to visit the Web site. The worm was designed to automatically reproduce itself once its links were clicked on, but it didn't filch any personal information from...
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