Google Search

There has been a storm of updates lately over the latest developments between Google’s partnership with Twitter. Not only did Google add the Twitter Follow Finder, which is a tool to help find other Twitter users who have shared interests based on the people they’re following, but Google recently launched a new search feature that allows users to get a live Twitter stream for any topic. The Twitter app is also coming to the Android.

Wonder what people are saying about a new movie? Google the title, click Show Options, and then click Updates.  You’ll be able to catch 2-4 tweets every minute concerning what people thought about the movie.  I tried this out for the new Steve Carell movie, Date Night. …

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Google recently added their neat search tricks to Google Mobile. Some of the ways you can use Google search is to quickly define words, translate phrases, convert units, check weather, look up stock quotes, check times in other areas, and check flight statuses.

If you’re using an iPhone, Android, or Palm device, some of these tricks will appear automatically below your search query while you’re typing before you have to even click search just like the standard Google search page.  Click refresh if you’re not seeing the automatic results on your mobile device.

I also found that these features also work with the Blackberry if you downloaded the Google Blackberry Mobile App. They will not work on the standard www.google.com page in your Blackberry’s …

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We all know that the Blackberry is a business device and the iPhone is a toy, but if you’re a Blackberry user that harbors a little iPhone jealousy, your iPhone envy has waned a little bit thanks to Google Maps 4.0 for the Blackberry.

Google officially rolled out version 4.0 for the Blackberry today and it is a big upgrade. The best feature included in the upgrade is its voice search feature.

Google will discover your location once you log into the program.  To search by voice, simply hold down the green call icon and say what you’re searching for.

My favorite use of this app is to search for restaurants.   With the Google Maps Mobile, you’ll be able to not only get the …

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Have you ever wondered about the popularity of certain search terms? If you have, then you’ll want to use Google Trends. Google Trends measures how popular search terms are over time.

The results are scaled with 1.0 being the search term’s average.  In the image below, you’ll see that Hurt Locker received more than double the average search traffic of Avatar after the movie won six Academy Awards. When you eliminate Avatar from the chart, you’ll then see that the number of people searching for Hurt Locker following the Academy Awards increased by 7.5 times compared to its average traffic.

A more practical way of using Google Trends is to see how popular the search terms you’re targeting for paid and organic search results …

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Google has been striving to make search results more personal and a big part of that is your location. Many times while you are searching, you will likely only want results near your location. By clicking the “show options” link on your search results, you are now able to refine search results based on your location.

When I searched “bakery” in Google, although I received local results from Google maps, the rest of the search results were for websites such as Cakes.com and national bakery chains. The reason I searched for bakeries in the first place was to find a bakery in my own town, so by simply refining my search results to nearby locations, I now only receive bakery websites that are located near …

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Google is constantly developing tools to refine search results to make search faster and more convenient.  In our last Google Maps article, we provided a tutorial on how to create a Google Map from a Google Spreadsheet.  I wanted to provide another update on a few new features that have been added to Google Maps.

Google recently added hotel prices to their search results.  Most people’s first stop in researching hotels is Google Maps, so Google wanted to improve your search by providing pricing information.  However, this feature is available only to select users since the feature is still being experimented with.  I’ve not been able to view this feature yet, but I’ve provided a link on the image below so you …

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If your company has a website, you better make sure that’s its fast. When customers are searching for your business, speed matters, and if your website does not load in under 4 seconds, your customer may be gone.  Additionally, Google gives faster-loading websites better rankings over websites that take longer to load.

Thanks to Pingdom, they’ve provided an excellent tool so you can check your website’s speed.  You should not check your website’s speed with your own stopwatch due to inaccuracies.  Since you have already visited your website, your webpages files, images, and stylesheets are already stored on your hard drive so the webpage loads faster for you.

With Pingdom’s site speed tool, you’ll be able to see how long it took for …

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Google recently added a new feature to their search results that most people have not utilized yet. Starred search results allows you to find the search results you want faster and it personalizes Google just for you.

To use this feature, you have to be signed into Google, so sign up for a Google Account if you don’t already have a Google Account.  Now when you search, there will be a star next to a title, and you can click it if you want that page to appear at the top of your search results the next time you are searching for that term.

For example, when I search “news,” I starred the news pages that I frequently read: Google News, Yahoo News, CNN, and …

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