Experian Hitwise today announced that Bing’s share of searches has increased for the third straight month.
Image by SESConferenceSeries via Flickr
In other news, Google accounted for 71 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending Feb. 27, 2010. Yahoo! Search accounted for 15 percent. Bing accounted for 10 percent. And Ask.com received 3 percent. The remaining 73 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for less than 2 percent of U.S. searches.
Although marketers probably don’t need to change anything that they are currently doing because of the trends above, Hitwise reported another trend that may require some adjustments.
Just in time for spring, Google is helping you enjoy the great outdoors by adding bike trails to Maps.
Simply open up maps and search the location you’re looking for. Then click the “More” tab and select “Bicycling.”
The bike paths are highlighted in bright green:
If you zoom in, you can see that there are solid lines and dotted lines. The solid lines are greenway or bike trails. The dotted lines are bike routes on streets.
It’s a contribution to the digital renaissance.
Even though an Italian judge has found Google execs guilty in the case of an offensive video being uploaded to Google Video, that isn’t stopping the company from partnering with the country on a book digitization project.
Google is partnering with the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage to digitize up to 1 million out-of-copyright books.
Gino Mattiuzzo, Strategic Partner Development Manager, Italy wrote on the official Google blog:
Catching up on a week of new stuff from the GOOG.
Google and DISH Network may be teaming up for a TV search.
AdWords released a new feature for advertising on the Google Content Network that filters out below-the-fold inventory.
Google Webmaster Tools now offers Fetch as Googlebot Mobile and the ability for page owners to claim their Sidewiki entry.
Google Public Data Explorer is a new Labs application.
Google Maps served up three updates:
- A new imagery update was released for Maps and Earth. It includes new imagery for areas affected by the Chile earthquake.
Handwrite your way to faster search.
If we’re going to be honest, no one completely loves the process of typing search queries (or typing much of anything) onto a mobile device. The search engines know it – that’s why they include query suggestion features on their mobile apps.
There are also voice search features, barcode scanning apps and experiments with like-image search. Now you can add another nifty search feature to the lineup: gesture search.
Google has introduced the feature as a Labs product for Android. To use the search, you write a letter across the screen. Gestures search will then begin bringing up contacts, apps, bookmarks and music that begin with the letter.
A month ago, Google enabled starring of items in Google News. Now, they’re extending that same feature to the main Google search. Items starred sync with Google Bookmarks and the Google Toolbar.
Starring will replace SearchWiki, which enabled users to promote selected results to the top or nix other results altogether. Google said they found that people like marking items they liked, but they did not like altering organic results. These actions taken in SearchWiki only affected a user’s personalized search. The same is true for starring.
At SMX West 2010 in Santa Clara, California, Peter Norvig, who spearheads Google’s wide-ranging research efforts, offered a behind-the-scenes look at the cool technology projects Google is developing for future products and services.
Image via Wikipedia
Before joining Google in 2002, Norvig was the head of the Computational Sciences Division at NASA Ames Research Center, which means he is literally a “rocket scientist.” He’s also the author of over 50 publications in computer science, including Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. But he’s also the author of the Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation and the world’s longest palindromic sentence. So, he’s a modern day Renaissance man.
Expansion of feature allows national phone numbers irregardless of user location.
When AdWords brought Click-to-Call to mobile ads a month ago, the idea was to enable local businesses to reach searchers on-the-go. Now, the feature is being extended to national advertisers who wish to use a primary number.
For example, let’s say you’re searching for a car rental and an ad from a national chain pops up in your mobile search. Perhaps they want to funnel all calls through a single number. Now, they can do so with Click-to-Call mobile ads in AdWords.
The spending spree continues.
Picnik is a cloud-based photo editing tool. Upload your photos and edit them without needing any software on your computer.
While Google has no immediate plans to make changes to Picnik, but it’s easy to see how an online photo editing tool could blend in nicely with Google Docs. That would also make Google’s Chrome operating system on say, a netbook, be very attractive. Such computers wouldn’t need a ton of storage and could potentially run at high speeds by just needing a browser open – as opposed to a bunch of programs all at once.
Bike fitted with street level imagery cameras to visit five locations in the U.S.
Last October, Google unveiled the Street View trike, which was designed to go to places cars couldn’t go. With the unveiling came a contest to decide where the Street View trike would go next.
Today, Google named the winners. They are:
- Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY
- Boulder Creek Path, Boulder, CO
- Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Boston, MA
- National Mall, Washington, DC
- Detroit Zoo, Detroit, MI
