Google has begun to show longer snippets for some search queries that include more than three words. According to a post on the Official Google Blog, the longer snippets are being introduced to “provide more information and show more of the words you typed in the context of the page.” The longer snippets span three or four lines. Google also announced that they have deployed new technology that “can better understand associations and concepts” related to search queries. Google is using the new technology to show more related searches and show related for longer queries.
Internet Explorer 8 Released
Microsoft today released Internet Explorer 8, coming less than two months after the Release Client was released. The new version renders web pages in standards compliant mode by default and Microsoft claims that the new version is the browser that is most complaints with the CSS 2.1 standard. The browser provides a compatibility mode for web pages that are designed for older versions of Internet Explorer. The new version also provides limited support of HTML5, including XDomainRequest (XDR), Cross-document Messaging (XDM), local storage, and AJAX page navigation. The new version is available in for Windows XP and Vista in 25 languages.
Google Brings Behavioral Targeting to Content Network
Google today announced the launch of behavioral target advertising on the Google content network. The advertising, that Google calls “interest-based”, will show ads based on categories of interest of the user determined by the “types of sites you visit and the pages you view.” Google says that a limited number of advertisers will be offered the chance to use “interest-based” advertising as part of a beta, and that the offering will be expanded later in 2009.
To deal with privacy concerns Google touts the fact that most ads it provides include a label that includes links to “get more information about how we serve ads, and the information we use to show you ads”. Google has created a tool called the Ads Preferences Manager that allows users to view, delete, or add interest categories associated with the advertising cookie in their web browsers. They also allow users the option to opt-out of the advertising cookie and have provide a plug-in to insure that the opt-out cookie is no deleted when a user clears out the cookies in their web browser.
February U.S. Search Share Results
Nielsen Online yesterday released its rankings of U.S. search share for February. Overall search increased 10.1 percent year over year to 8.5 billion searches. Google had year over year increase of 19.2 percent and received 63.5 percent of searches. Google’s percentage of searches was it’s second highest reported by Nielsen Online, only surpassed by November of last year when it received 64.1 percent. Yahoo had a year over year increase of 4 percent and received 16.7 percent of searches. Microsoft had a year over year increase of 2.4 percent and received 10.4 percent of searches.
Major Web Publishers Introduce Larger Display Ads
A group of the web’s largest publishers have announced they will begin to support three larger ad units. CNN, ESPN, MTV Networks, New York Times, and other publishers that are part of the Online Publishers Association will begin to offer at least one of the advertising units by July 1. Some of the publishers have already introduced the ad units on their websites. According to Online Publishers Association the participating sites had “unduplicated reach of 108.3 million visitors, or 66 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience” in January. The Assocation says that new formats will only be available through the publishers’ direct sales teams and not through ad networks that that some publishers blame for declining display ad pricing.
The new ad units are:
The Fixed Panel (recommended dimension is 336 wide x 860 tall), which looks naturally embedded into the page layout and scrolls to the top and bottom of the page as a user scrolls.
The XXL Box (recommended dimension is 468 wide x 648 tall), which has page-turn functionality with video capability.
The Pushdown (recommended dimension is 970 wide x 418 tall), which opens to display the advertisement and then rolls up to the top of the page.
Google Testing Expandable Ads on Content Network
Google has begun testing expandable ads, ads that expand in size when clicked on, on the Google content network. The ads will be limited to expanding to double the original size and can “include a streaming video or other content designed to engage users through an interactive experience.” In addition to limiting the size of expanded ads, ads will expand only after a user clicks on the ad, ads will be required to be able to be closed by the user at any time, and ads must comply with Google’s standard AdWords image ad policies. The ads are price on a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM) basis, CPC ads will only accrue clicks when a user visits the advertisers landing page and not when a user clicks to expand the ad. According to a post on the Inside AdWords blog the test is currently limited to the U.S. advertiser who advertise through Google’s 3rd Party Ad Serving program and the test will be expanded, but no details were given.
Google Dominates Mobile Search According to Report
Google received 97.49 percent of global mobile searches in February according to a report by Net Applications. Yahoo received 2.03 percent, Ask.com received .21 percent, MSN received .07 percent, and others received the remaining .20 percent.
Google Brings Ads to News Search Results
As part of Google’s continued expansion of advertising to it’s various search products they have now added text ads to search results pages on the Google News search. This follows the introduction of text and display ads to Google Image Search last year. The ads are currently displayed only in the United States. According to post on the Google News Blog, Google has in recent months “been experimenting with a variety of different formats, like overlay ads on embedded videos from partners like the AP” in Google News search.
Yahoo Adds Ad Scheduling and Demographic Targeting To Search Advertising
Yahoo today announced that they would be adding ad scheduling and demographic targeting to their search advertising service in March. With ad scheduling Yahoo will support varying bids based on what time of day and day of the week ads will run, which Google and Microsoft already support in their search advertising products. With demographic bidding Yahoo will support varying bids based on age and gender of searchers, which Microsoft already supports. In addition, Yahoo has added the option to show display advertising on the Yahoo Network targeted to users who performed searches on Yahoo for a given keyword.
Apple Releases Safari 4 Public Beta
Apple has released a public beta of Safari 4 for Mac OS X and Windows. The new version introduces HTML 5 support for offline technologies, support for advanced CSS Effects including reflections, gradients, and precision masks, and improved JavaScript performance. Apple claims that new version runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3, more than 3 times faster than Firefox 3, and up to 30 times faster than Internet Explorer 7. They also claim that Safari 4 loads html web pages 3 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and almost 3 times fasters than Firefox 3. Apples performance tests were run on 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac with 2GB of memory running Windows Vista.