After few months of testing and lots of debate on Google’s New Fading Home Page, Google today confirmed that it’s switching to a home page that fades in as it loads. The rest of the text and links on the home page will only appear when a user moves his/her mouse.

The Google announcement says the new home page is live now, but both new and old versions are accessible. so users check this new version and give your comments.

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Launches Sidewiki for the Google Toolbar

Google Sidewiki is a new feature of Google Toolbar that allows anyone to leave comments about pages as they surf the web. These comments can only be viewed by others who have the toolbar/sidewiki installed.

Google recommends commenter’s contribute expert insight, helpful tips, background information, and added perspective.

In the past various tools appeared which are similar in working but alas no one became popular and eventually they got disappeared. What are the chances of Google Sidewiki being used is still unknown; we can at least give it a try.

How to use Google Sidewiki

To use Google Sidewiki, you have to install the latest version of the Google Toolbar for either Internet Explorer or Firefox. And enable the enhanced version of toolbar, this means allowing the toolbar to report back to Google about all the pages you view. If Google doesn’t know the page you’re visiting, it can’t send back any Sidewiki information that’s available. It’s not new for the toolbar to send information back to Google, as to view the page rank you have to accept their advance privacy policy in which they gather the information about you.

Google Sidewiki

You’ve Got Sidewiki!

If you are Comfortable with tracking, then here’s what you see with Sidewiki enabled, when you come to a page that has Sidewiki information associated with it. In this example, view the comments on the Google home page itself:

sidewiki comments on Google

All Comments Are Not Created Equal

What comments are shown on pages, and in what order? This is Google Secret.  Read Google Official Line:-

“Using multiple signals based on the quality of the entry, what we know about the author, and user-contributed signals such as voting and flagging, we work hard to ensure that only the highest quality, most relevant entries appear in the sidebar.” Most of the engineering work for Sidewiki was dedicated to this ranking algorithm which is based on some of these factors:-

1. Use of sophisticated language: “This page sucks” isn’t sophisticated; think complex sentences and ideas. Apparently, Google has a language sophistication detector now, and one that works in the 14 different languages that Sidewiki supports.
2. User’s reputation: Are your comments being voted up or flagged down?
3. User’s history: How long have you had a Google Profile? How long have you been commenting?

ProfileRank

To comment on any page you need Google Account and your Google Profile is going to play a major role in this. Just like web pages in which Google gives PageRank, so in the same way your Google Profile page will also have its own form of rank or ProfileRank, when it comes to the Sidewiki system. Those with more ProfileRank have better chances that their comments will be appearing in top. ProfileRank alone isn’t enough, however. The content of the web page, the quality of the comment and many other factors are also taken into account.

Unfortunately, till now you have no way of knowing your ProfileRank. For example, look at Matt Cutts profile and there’s no indication about rank or reputations that I carry within the Sidewiki system. That’s something Google said they’d consider changing.

Profiles will show all the sidewiki comments a particular person has made so far.

So enjoy commenting!! and give a thought is Google Turning the Web Into an Exclusive Social Network? What are your thoughts please do share.

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Today Google Officially confirmed that they have discontinued the use of Meta keyword tag as one of the ranking factors long ago. This means now Google doesn’t use the “keywords” Meta tag in web search ranking. Google says that people are misusing that Meta Keyword Tag from initial days some are copying the top ranking website tags to their own in order to get top ranking in SERPS. Other major misuse is that Keyword Meta tags is often been stuffed with irrelevant keywords without typical visitors ever seeing those keywords so many years ago Google began disregarding the keywords Meta tag. This does not means that Google will ignore all Meta Tags.

A comprehensive list of Meta’s used by Google is

<META CONTENT=”Your website description goes here “>

<META http-equiv=”Content-Type” CONTENT=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″>

<META NAME=”google-site-verification” CONTENT=”+nxGUDJ4QpAZ5l9Bsjdi102tLVC21AIh5d1Nl23908vVuFHs34=”/>

<title> Title of your Web page</title>

<META CONTENT=”noindex, nofollow”>

<meta content=”notranslate” />

<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”…;url=…” />

• Title: The text here becomes the title that is shown in search engine listings, in most cases.
• Description: The text here is text that search engines sometimes use as a description for your web page when listing it (a meta tag lesson for another time).
• Robots: This particular tag is configured to ensure that the page isn’t described using the a description that the Open Directory might have for it.

But I personally advice you all that you should still use this tag for Yahoo and Bing.

Other points to note:

• Google can read both HTML and XHTML-style meta tags, regardless of the code used on the page.
• With the exception of “verify”, case is generally not important in meta tags.

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Google today 9/09/2009 altered the Home Page of their Search Engine Google.com, by changing the size of search box and search buttons. Although it’s a very simple change and many people will not even able to found out, but Google is very excited about this change according to Google sources as quoted by top Googler “it symbolizes our focus on search and because it makes our clean, minimalist homepage even easier and more fun to use” The new, larger Google search box features larger text when you type so you can see your query more clearly. It also uses a larger text size for the suggestions below the search box, making it easier to select one of the possible refinements which is quite popular as searchers won’t have to type complete query. And those who can’t correctly figured out what they should type to get best results will find this suggestion box quite interesting.

Google's New Search Box

So enjoy Googling more !

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Google Wave is a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year. its a new personal communication and collaboration tool which is announced at the Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009. It is a web based service just like Gmail, Orkut etc, whose main purpose is to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wiki, and social networking.

It has a strong collaborative and real-time focus supported by extensions that can provide, for example, robust spelling/grammar checking, automated translation between 40 languages, and numerous other extensions. It was announced in Google’s official blog on July 20, 2009, that the preview of Google Wave will be extended to about 100,000 users on September 30, 2009. At that point, the current view of the Google Wave website (which is a preview with the keynote embedded), will be replaced with the application itself.

I think Now Google is more focused on educating the online community that’s why they are developing so many web applications related to community.

So have a quick look at wave here at Google Wave.

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Google has released a new service known as Google Voice which provides a single phone number that will represent all of your other numbers, such as your cell phone, home phone, and work phone. Currently this service is available through invitation only, remember when Google initially launched Google mail, I remember how crazy we were in order to get invitation for Gmail. And once we got invitations people request me for invitations which makes me feel proud. Google Voice is a new, free service the company will be offering the public. Currently the service is in closed beta and only available to a select few.

Some of the Features of this Service are
• Call screening – Announce and screen callers
• Listen in – Listen before taking a call
• Block calls – Keep unwanted callers at bay
• SMS – Send, receive, and store SMS
• Place calls – Call free within the continental US and to Canada
• Taking calls – Answer on any of your phones
• Phone routing – Phones ring based on who calls
• Forwarding phones – Add phones and decide which ring
• Voicemail transcripts – Read what your voicemail says
• Listen to voicemail – Check online or from your phone
• Notifications – Receive voicemails via email or SMS
• Personalize greeting – Vary greetings by caller
• Share voicemail – Forward or download voicemails
• Conference calling – Join people into a single call
• Call record – Record calls and store them online
• Call switch – Switch phones during a call
• Mobile apps – Try our apps for Blackberry and Android phones
• Mobile site – View your inbox from your mobile
• GOOG-411 – Check directory assistance
• Manage groups – Set preferences by group.

Seems to be interesting … a phone umber that you can use to redirect incoming calls to whatever phone you’re using. But Google Voice is currently available by invite only.So  Get an Invite

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Google Squared. You can type in any search and this Google Lab (scheduled to launch later this month) will try to build a useful “Square” that you can save. Google Squared can be as fun as Google Maps–you can easily spend an hour just typing in random things to see what Google can do for that search.

Rich Snippets. This is also an amazing tool and this one is destined to be a favorite for webmasters. Essentially, you use some open standards (RDFa and microformats in the initial launch) to add some additional markup to your web pages. The markup is pretty simple and you don’t need to register with Google. Then when Google thinks it will help users, shows a “rich snippet” that has more information than a typical search snippet.

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Google has recently introduced various Search Options knows as Google Search Options. Try searching if you haven’t noticed the changes in Google Search User Interface. I am going to explain you all what these options are and what they do !

1. All results – This is same as previous where we can search Videos,
Forums & Reviews. This is really handy if what you not get what you are looking on Google.

2. Any time – This is latest development where you can search for option like Recent results, Past 24 hours, Past week & Past year results.
you can get fresh content if you use either recent results and Past 24 hours results.

3. Standard results – Here you can search for either “Images from the page” and “More text” options.

images from page

4. Standard view – See the results in altogether different look with Related searches, Wonder wheel and Timeline.

Related Searches

You can use a tool called “Wonder Wheel” to explore searches and see the results update as you click.

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Google on 7th May announced that Google Profile results will now appear in Google US. name-query search pages. Having a profile on Google means appearing in Google when ever some one searches for you on Google. Your profile may include online photos, links to your blog or other online profiles, and ways for people to contact you — and you can restrict contact information like your address and phone number to only the people and groups you choose.

When creating a profile, you have the option to use your Gmail username as a your profile URL (profiles.google.com/yourusername), so it’s easier to remember and share. Some examples:

http://profiles.google.com/mattcutts

Don’t have a profile? Go to www.google.com/profiles to get started.

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Did you ever searched for your name on Google? And always being disappointed on seeing the results? Especially when your name is so popular that many results appear from Google Magic Box and some one else dominate the results. Ever looked for someone else and been disappointed that you couldn’t find the person you wanted? Then Good News for you folks!! Google’s new “Profile Results” launched few days ago with an aim to correct both your above problems.Google has allowed people to create Google Profile pages for use with certain Google services. For example, if you created content in Google Maps, your Google Profile let you share who you were with others using that service. The same profile also served to identify you when using the completely different Google Reader service.

Now Google Profiles are being promoted as a way for people to tell the world who they are and, to some degree, being offered as a way for people to claim their identity in Google’s main search results.

“People have no control over how they appear when other people search for them on Google. That’s a big issue we’ve heard,” said Joe Kraus, a director of product management at Google. “The new results are to better control what people see and improve the ability for people to fine what they’re looking for.”

In the new system, a new “Profile results” section will appear at the bottom of a Google search page, when it finds a strong match in response to a name-based search. Up to four profiles will be shown. So start for profiles here.

Building Your Profile Page

In order to have to appear in Google’s Profile page you have got to have a page. That’s very easy. There’s no charge to have that page, and you needn’t use any particular Google services, either, Just sign-up here. You can also search for other profiles on Google, and if you’re signed-in, you’ll see an option promoting how to make your own profile.

After signing-up, you can provide a variety of information about yourself, including:

* Your picture
* Your first and/or last name
* Nickname
* Where you grew up
* Where you live
* Where you work
* Schools you’ve attended
* A biography
* Links to web sites you wish to list
* Pictures from your Picasa, Flickr or other online photo albums
* Contact information, which can be shared selectively with people

Not all of these options were offered when Profile pages were first launched. The pages have gained more features over time, and the new additions have been pretty poorly communicated.

The new system will cause many people to reexamine their profiles, as they hope to appear in Google’s main results. But with only four spaces, some names will be competitive. Which ones will show? Those that Google feels are “comprehensive enough,” Kraus said.

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