Google

Google.cn Is Over, Redirects To Google.com.hk (Hong Kong)

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This is breaking news coming right from the G-folks : Google has decided to redirect Google’s Chinese web users of Google.cn to its Hong Kong site Google.com.hk starting from today.

This has been posted in Google’s official blog.

earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong.

This is the Google.cn’s cached page as seen from Bing’s cache.

Google.cn china bing cached version

This is the new Google.com.hk site where the Google.cn users being redirected:

Google.com.hk hong kong site

Also Google is predicting that at any moment, the Chinese government may stop access to its services.

We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services.

Hence to keep its users notified about any blockage of Google’s services, it has set up a new web page (China service availability), where one can see the status report of various Google’s app services.

Google china service availability

Google is also worrying about the safety of its employees in China, which is clear fro this statement:

Finally, we would like to make clear that all these decisions have been driven and implemented by our executives in the United States, and that none of our employees in China can, or should, be held responsible for them.

[Video] How Google Search Works ?

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how Google search works

how search works matt cutts

Learn what happens when you do a Google web search :

Here comes a great video from Google (by Matt Cutts), explaining broadly how the Google search works.According to Matt Cutts, when you do a Google search, you aren’t actually searching the web, you are searching only Google’s index of the web which may not include each and every web page from the internet.

Watch this video to learn more:

How Search Works

If you are curious about knowing how stuff works at Google, like how the Google search works or how search ads work or how Google Apps work, you may want to visit this how Google works page.

Google-Certified Ad Networks Made Available For All Publishers

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adsense-logo

As a website publisher we always want more number of advertisers to compete for a slot in our website, the higher the competition the more beneficiary it would be for us.What if advertisers from different ad networks compete for a ad slot in your site ? It would be great, isn’t it ? Adsense , from now on will provide this platform.

Google Adsense has just announced the expansion of Google-certified third-party ad networks to all the Adsense publishers (which was initially available to the publishers in North America and Europe.

How To Allow / Block Google Certified Ad Networks In Adsense ?

allow-block-Google-certified-ad-networks

Google-certified-ad-networks-in-adsense

Just visit Ad Review Center under Adsense Setup tab in your Adsense, find this option Allow and Block Google Certified Ad Networks, and click “Change” to see the whole list of ad networks currently allowed for your website.You can find option to block each ad network individually or choose “block all” option to completely block all the ad networks.Check out the list of currently Google certified ad networks available.The list is huge but it will only get bigger as Google says that they are continually adding new ad networks which the publishers can see in their Ad review centre.

List of Google-certified ad networks currently supported in Adsense:

Adchemy
Invite Media
Specific Media
Turn
[X+1]
OwnerIQ, Inc.
Adconion Media Group
Adtegrity.com
AudienceScience Inc.
Dapper Inc.
Dedicated Media
FetchBack
LucidMedia
NetSeer Inc.
NextAction
QuinStreet, Inc.
ReTargeter
RichRelevance, Inc.
Teracent Corporation
ValueClick, Inc.
Aggregate Knowledge
Atrinsic
Brand.net
BrightRoll
Chitika
Collective Media
CPM Advisors, Inc
DataXu
Datran Media
Dotomi
Efficient Frontier, Inc.
InterCLICK
Media6Degrees
MediaMath
OpinMind
Quantcast Corporation
Rocket Fuel Inc.
Semantic Sugar, Inc.
Sooth Software Corporation (dba AdBuyer.com)
TellApart
Traffic Marketplace
Triggit
Acxiom Corporation
Advertise.com
Ad Pepper
AdReady
AOL Inc
Xtend Global Media LTD
Goodway Group
Innovation Interactive
Cyberplex, Inc
Didit
Announce Media
Media Innovation Group
VivaKi
AppNexus
Epic Advertising
AccountNow, Inc.
People Media, Inc
Bizo
EchoSearch
MaxPoint Interactive
Mpire
Pinnacle Dream Media
Pulse 360
Radius Marketing Inc.
Reply! Inc.
Criteo Europe
Criteo UK
Infectious Media
The Exchange Lab
Mixpo
Mexad
Adpepper Germany
ClickDistrict NL
DSNR
Hurra Germany
Criteo US
Cossette Communications
Pennyweb, Inc. (DBA Ybrant Digital)
Spongecell
OpenX Technologies
Red Aril, Inc.
Redux Media Inc.
ShareThis, Inc.
HTTPool
DQ&A
Mediaplex
Veremedia
ValueClick International Ltd
Struq Limited

New In Buzz: Inbox Notifications Control & Easy-To-Find “Mute” Link

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Google buzz Official logo

Ever since Google has launched Buzz sometime ago in last month, many voices have been raised over the privacy concerns for which at one stage Google had no other option but to reply.

Now after just surpassing the first month of the Google Buzz, Google has once again modified a feature to give users more control about Buzz posts coming in your Gmail inbox.

1.Until now, Google used to send all your buzz posts (in which you participate) directly to your inbox for better and faster accessibility.But now you have been offered the options in your buzz settings to choose which buzz posts should reach your inbox.

Visit your Buzz settings tab in your Gmail settings page,

Find “Send buzz posts to my inbox when:”

  • People comment on my posts
  • People comment on posts after I comment on them
  • People comment to posts after I am @replied on them

Select the proper option according as you wish (see the below screen shot)

Buzz-settings-Gmail

2. You’ll be notified why a particular buzz post has been sent to your inbox and also “Mute” link that you can easily find in the message.

On the top of your each post in inbox, you will see a message explaining why a particular posts ahs been there in your inbox, it’s more like a Facebook / Orkut feature, telling Mr. X has commented on your post , or you have been @replied, etc.

You can also find the “Mute from inbox” link just to left side of the explanation message that stops subsequent comments taking the conversation back again to  your inbox.

buzz-inbox-settings-example

Google says that it’s the first of the series as part of the noise reduction @ Buzz

If have liked this, you may also read our previous posts about Google Buzz counter for your website and Google Buzz desktop Apps.

How To Remove Google Bookmarks

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Google-Bookmarks-logo

You might have read about Google star bookmarklets replacing Google SearchWiki couple of weeks ago.This a worthy feature since you can save any webpage without even visiting it, right from the Google results

Ever since then, I have seen many people asking ‘How to remove Google Star Bookmarks’ in forums.

If you don’t have an idea of the same, this one is for you then !!

First of all, removing an item from Google bookmarks is really simple, what all required is to go the Google bookmarks page (https://www.google.com/bookmarks/), find the small ‘remove’ link next to your starred bookmark entries.

remove Google star bookmarks

Clicking on the link will remove the bookmark and it will no longer shows up in your search results.

Bonus tip : You can export all your Google bookmarks to an HTML page using an option that you can find on the same page. (See the below screen shot)

export-google-bookmarks

save-GoogleBookmarjs-HTML

You can also delete all your bookmarks at once by following the link ‘delete all’

Using Google Reader Play For Visual Web Browsing

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google-reader-logo

For all those lovers of Google’s online RSS feed reader ‘Google reader’, here’s an interesting new feature being added to reader.The new feature is being called ‘Reader Play’.

Google has announced in a blog post earlier announced the launch of ‘Google Reader Play’.Reader play offers you new way to see feeds in your browser, like a slideshow, the feed items will scroll one by one horizontally (you can use side arrows to move one by one or you can also start a slideshow).

By default, Reader play will show feed items that interests you (even if you haven’t subscribed to them), you can always tell the reader about the items you like just by clicking the like button (rectangle one) below your feed items.

However, if you only want to read the visual display of feeds from your subscriptions, just go your reader page, scroll down to the subscriptions folder, click on the ‘Top down’ menu as shown below:reader_folder_top_down

Select the last option “View in Reader Play” to start reading that particular subscriptions folder in Reader Play.

Reader_Play_in_Google_Reader_Folders

And the beautiful visual reading experience will start (as in the below picture ):

reader-play-view

You always click on the 3 symbols below each item,

‘Star’ to mark items for later

‘Like’ items to tell the reader about what you like

‘Share’ to share the items with your followers

reader-stars-like-share

Tip : Read How to use Google reader to track changes in any website that doesn’t offer feeds.

Google Apps Marketplace Officially Launched

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Google apps marketplace logo

Google has launched new Google Apps Marketplace, that lets the Google Apps users to install third party  cloud apps that integrate directly with Google Apps.

This is a new new online store for integrated business applications that makes it easier for the Google Apps users and the software providers to do business in the cloud.

Acc to a blog post in Google official blog, there are more than 50 companies selling applications covering wide range of businesses.Google Apps customers can easily discover, deploy & manage cloud apps with this Google Apps Marketplace.

Visit Google Apps Marketplace page to install the apps that you may need for your company’s domain.

At present, most if the apps are coming with a subscription fee (most of them), but there are still some free and worthy apps available (also available are trail based apps, that provide you a free trail of their service for some period and later you pay to continue using their services),

refine by filters Google Apps

(free apps like Gbridge, offering Free instant VPN for everyone! in the organisation- Support Windows folder sharing and remote printing, as well as Windows Remote Desktop through RDP protocol).

While searching, using “Refine by features” will confine the results matched to only the feature that was selected

Add apps from Marketplace to your Google Apps

Watch Google App Marketplace Introduction/Overview Video:

Install Google Apps Marketplace tools for your Google Apps account and let’ us know the application that you liked most in Google Apps Marketplace through comments.

Google Adds Sidewiki Claim, Fetch As Googlebot Mobile in Webmaster Tools

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Google Webmaster Tools logo

In an update to Webmaster Tools Labs, Google has added two new features to under labs features.

New features:

  • Fetch as Googlebot-Mobile
  • Create your Sidewiki page owner entry

Fetch as Googlebot-Mobile:

Fetch as Googlebot-Mobile as the name suggests, lets you fetch any page in your claimed website, as it’d appear to the mobile version of the Googlebot (XHTML/WML or CHTML Googlebot Mobile).

[Read how to Use Fetch as Googlebot to find malicious hacks in a website]

You can access this under Labs > Fetch as Googlebot section from your Google Webmaster Tools (GWT)

Fetch As Google Bot Mobile

Sidewiki Page Owner Entry:

This feature I guess is of no value to the webmasters right now, according to me.It is just last week that Google has announced about replacing Google Sidewiki with star bookmarks.Many users have already been migrated from Sidewiki to Star bookmarks, at present only Google Toolbar has Sidewiki option.Only Google should know the logic behind this new feature.Given that Sidewiki itself is a failure, this really doesn’t interest you much right now.

Sidewiki entry in Webmaster Tools

Never the less, good features, especially ‘Fetch as Googlebot mobile’ (may be bad timing for the Sidewiki entry, should have been launched earlier)

SearchWiki Goes, Stars Debut In Google Personalized Search

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Google Kills SearchWiki, Adds Stars For Customized Search:

Google has rolled out new “Starred results” in Google search results, killing its previous “SearchWiki”.

This feature will be available to all the users in the coming few days, according to a blog post on Official Google blog.

Google has been offering personalized search via SearchWiki, which the search engine giant thought should be replaced by much simpler “Starring the results”

How This Works?

Google Bookmarks actually allow you to bookmark the sites right from the search results.Just go to search for anything you want in Google,

Find the small white star logo on the extreme right after the every search result listing, click on any result that you liked or what to bookmark to save it.

adding star bookmark in Google results

Now that you have saved the result page in your Google bookmarks using star, next time when you search for the same query, you would see the results like this:

Google starred results overview

Google’s SEO Report Card Available For Download

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Google SEO report card

Google has released SEO report for its product pages for search engines.Actually, it is intended for Google engineers to analyze how the Google’s product pages doing in search engines so as to optimize them for better SEO.

subjects in SEO report for Google

The report (PDF file, 49 pages in total) contains 3 Subjects:

Subject I: Search result presentation

Subject II: URLs and redirects

Subject III: On-page optimizations

These subject cover the all the basic tests and reports reports for better SEO.These are not just for Google employees, you can use this report perhaps to start preparing for your own SEO report for your site.This would be the perfect reference guide if you want to come out with such a report for your site.

Download Google’s SEO Report Card

[Link updated]

If you want to start from scratch in Google’s SEO, you may want to download Google’s SEO beginners’ guide which is available in more than 40 languages.