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Today at the TED conference in Southern California, Microsoft’s Blaise Aguera y Arcas demonstrated a new crowdsourced-version Bing Maps that integrates photos and even live video that is shared by others. Microsoft will also soon launch what we’ve dubbed “Bing Sky,” the ability to use Bing to look up in the sky and see what’s [...]

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Want to follow Google cofounder Sergey Brin on Google’s new microblogging service, Google Buzz? Brin says he might join in the future.
During the Google Buzz launch event, Brin spoke of being a big fan, even using it to gather opinions internally at Google about a New York Times opinion piece he was writing about Google [...]

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Our SMX West search marketing conference is approaching fast, and there’s a unique way for one person to attend — by proving their chops as the “Biggest Search Geek.”
For the second year, in conjunction with Marin Software, SMX is offering the Biggest Search Geek contest. Marin’s assembled a list of 20 challenging questions. Get them [...]

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Google’s stated goal for Buzz is to help users cut through the noise of social networking. Ironically, yesterday’s announcement created as much noise (maybe more?) as an Apple announcement. Yep, everybody’s got an opinion about Google Buzz and if you’re one of the many who found it impossible to follow the reactions, we’ve done some [...]

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Google continues to flirt with being an ISP or carrier. Several years ago the company was part of the aborted municipal WiFi bid for San Francisco with Earthlink. Google is also one of the major forces behind the White Spaces initiative (”WiFi on steroids“) that seeks unused TV spectrum for broadband purposes. In addition, Google [...]

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After the 2009 Super Bowl, I monitored how the commercials drove searches and reported back on how well the brands did at ensuring visibility in organic search results. It didn’t go so well. The primary problems were:

Microsites – Microsites aren’t inherently a bad idea, but too many of them can cause brand confusion, external link [...]

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Various marketers have offered advice on writing “killer” PPC ads. But examining the ads Google runs on competing search engines suggests that a simple list of “tips and tricks” may not be enough.

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Google has announced a new product called Google Buzz, which represents the company’s latest attempt to hitch its wagon to the popularity of social networking and, more specifically, the growth of social sharing and status updates.
Many will call this a Twitter killer or a threat to Facebook. Certainly the company is targeting the audiences that [...]

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Google is set to announce a new social tool at a 10:00 am event on its Mountain View campus. Due to the last-minute notice, we’re not on the scene, but Google is providing a webcast via YouTube that we’ll be using.
Stay tuned for the liveblogging to start at 10 am or shortly thereafter….
Okay, so it’s [...]

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In Search Month European Edition we bring you a monthly update of European search news, with related links to full coverage. Here’s what happened in January.
Germany content owners call for investigation of Google. German newspaper publishers association (BDZV), Microsoft owned Ciao and online maps service Euro-Cities AG called the German cartel authorities to investigate Google’s [...]

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Perhaps yesterday’s tweet by Google CEO Eric Schmidt put it best. Hell has indeed frozen over. Google has run its first major television ad, during the Super Bowl, no less.
The rumor that Google would run an ad during today’s Super Bowl 2010 proved true. Google aired a spot from its online video Search Stories series, [...]

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Last year, I took a look at the spiking searches leading up to the Superbowl to see how the search engines, and those who want to be found in them, satisfied those queries. This morning, I took another look, and while things are a bit better from a searcher satisfaction perspective (primarily due to increased blended results [...]

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Google CEO Eric Schmidt is causing quite a stir with this tweet from about an hour ago:

Is he hinting that Google will be running an ad during tomorrow’s Super Bowl broadcast? It would seem so, but there’s little evidence to support it.
In Friday’s paper, USA Today posted a list of brands that have bought ad [...]

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I’m scratching my head over this one: Google has added a new content block on place pages that, quite often, gives free advertising to a local business’s competition. It’s called “Nearby places you might like” and it appears below reviews on the place page; the content block will show up to ten recommended businesses — [...]

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The Bing Search Blog announced Microsoft has extended their search deal with Facebook. In addition to extending the search deal, as expected, Facebook will drop Microsoft on the display ad side of the deal.
The extended search deal includes a more robust Bing search experience on Facebook. This includes “richer answers combined with tools [...]

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When I’ve spoken in the past to people at Siri we’ve discussed and they’ve struggled a bit with how to present and “position” what they’re doing. Described as a “virtual personal assistant” — and called the “Siri Assistant” in fact in its formal launch — the company’s much anticipated iPhone app has arrived. There will [...]

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The US government has filed (.pdf) an opposition to the Google Book Search Amended Settlement Agreement (”ASA”). The government commends the parties for their efforts to reach a settlement but concludes that there are still fundamental problems with the ASA, as summarized in its conclusion:
Despite the commendable efforts of the parties to improve upon the [...]

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I received a tip from a New York retailer named Oh Nuts, that Google came to their store to take pictures for a new Google Maps product named “Google Store Views.” I was told that they took pictures of the inside of the store, every 6 feet, in all directions. They also took [...]

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