Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- Google Places Maintenance & Webinar Coming
Google announced two upcoming events for Google Places, the new Google Local Business Center. They include upcoming maintenance and an upcoming webinar. The first Google Places Help thread announced upcoming maintenance really smack in the middle of the work day. The dates and times are: Monday, May 3 @ 3pm-3:30pm EDT (12pm PDT)Thursday, May 6 @6pm-6:30pm EDT (3pm PDT) So, one was yesterday and the next one is this Thursday during business hours. So don't - Google's Brand Push Is Officially Here: Brand Refinements
Thursday, we reported that some users are seeing 'brand for' links in Google's search results. Over the weekend, Google confirmed it with a blog post calling these "Brand refinements in search results." Sometimes when searching for product information on Google, you may not know some of the brand names relevant to your particular search. For example, if you're taking on a new river-rafting hobby, it's quite likely you don't have a clue about kayak manufacturers - New: Google Phone Numbers in Google AdWords
On Friday, a reader told me that Google was testing a new form of phone numbers in AdWords ads. He sent me a screen shot and I used it over at Search Engine Land. Today, based on DigitalPoint Forum thread, I decided to try it reproducing it and I was able to for the search [jazzy wheelchairs]. As you can see from the image at the top right of this story, Google is placing a - Google Buys BumpTop, A 3D User Interface For Chrome OS & Android?
A few days ago, Google acquired a company named BumpTop. The company basically created a 3D user interface for a computer desktop - in fact, some TV stations use it to be cute. Here is a video demo of what it does: Why would Google buy them? Well, maybe to be used for their Chrome OS project? Maybe to be used on Android mobile devices? Maybe to be used to acquire desktop and mobile user - Yahoo Says Users Not Searching More Often
Since Yahoo is no longer a search company, they have decided to publish papers proving that search is now a losing business. Yahoo's search model developing a new face from SFGate.com reports Yahoo released papers at the World Wide Web Conference in Raleigh, N.C. saying search is a dying technology, in other words. Yahoo used data from their Toolbar to come up with: It found that people only spend about one-sixth of their online time
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Is there a maps outage today?, Google Maps Help
- Facebook Removes Your Profile Rights and Choices, Sphinn
- Google Mail becomes Gmail, Google Blogoscoped Forum
- The Real Reasons Big Brands Don’t Rank, Sphinn
- The Twitter Search Revolution: Popular & Promoted Tweets Mature The Service, Sphinn
- Why 80 per cent of the links your have built will disappear in 6 months?, Sphinn
- Doodle Um Kalthoum, Google Blogoscoped Forum
- upping the limit of websites allowed, Bing Community
