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Archives for December, 2005.

Archive for December, 2005

Hello, Music Lovers and Audio Searchers

6:13 pm - December 21, 2005 in Yahoo! Search blog

I wanted to spread the word that we’re turning up the volume a bit on audio search by adding a new “Audio” tab to the Yahoo! Front Page. Since launching Audio Search in August, user response has been great; proving yet again that the Web wants its audio. So, it is time that a larger audience gets to enjoy the sound…

If, like me, you're audio searching for newer bands or the more obscure side of things, Yahoo! Audio Search is the place to start. There's even a lot to browse about the late, great comedian Richard Pryor, including some podcasts if you'd like to hear some good commentary on his life of comedy.

Yahoo! Audio Search is engineered so that it can accommodate the broadest range of audio interests on the Web, which means more than just displaying structured data for mainstream music queries. It means finding all the content that’s out there; not just popular songs from the large record labels, but the smaller artists, podcasters and audio publishers who have already posted their content on the Web.

Along these lines, Audio Search is integrated with our media-RSS format to enable all musicians, podcasters and audio publishers to submit their content directly to us.

In addition, I would encourage you to check out the open Audio Search API which extends Audio Search functionality to the developer community outside Yahoo!. The tools are in your hands; build what you want.

That’s about it – just tapping the volume knob a little – so keep sending your feedback, and I promise we’ll be back with more updates as Audio Search evolves. Happy listening!

Regards,
Ethan Fassett, Product Manager

PS - For a deeper dive into Yahoo!'s strengths and strategy in multimedia search, check out this Podtech interview with Jeff Karnes.

More from search-blog-admin[]yahoo-inc.com in Yahoo News

 

Handy plug-ins for everyday use

6:00 pm - December 21, 2005 in Inside Google Desktop
Posted by Mihai Ionescu, Software Engineer

Having fun with plug-ins lately? Our developers sure do!

Several of the Google Desktop plug-ins we have received combine a
geeky sense of humor with helpful information. Here are some of our
favorites:
If you have a cool idea for a plugin, have some fun implementing it yourself or discuss it on the Google Desktop Developer group.

More from Mihai Ionescu, Software Engineer in Google News

 

www vs non-www versions of a site

4:47 pm - December 21, 2005 in Inside Google Sitemaps
Two URLs to a site -- one that is prefaced with www and one that is not (for instance, http://www.example.com/ and http://example.com/) -- often point to the same location on a server. But depending on the server configuration, they may point to different locations, so search engines can't assume they are the same.

This post provides tips for viewing stats if the www and non-www version of your site point to the same location.

If you have added your site without prefacing the domain with www (for instance, http://example.com/), and the www version of this domain points to the same location, try adding the www version of the domain (for instance, http://www.example.com/) to your account. You may see a wider variety of stats for the www version of the domain.

You can add a site by:
  1. Clicking the Add tab.
  2. Scrolling to the "If you don't have a Sitemap" area and entering the site URL.
  3. Clicking Add Site.
Similarly, if you have added the www version of the domain and the non-www version points to the same location, you can add the non- www version to see stats for that version.

If the verification file still exists in the root of your site and both versions of the domain point to the same location, you can verify the second version simply by accessing the Verify tab and clicking the Verify button.

Note that having both versions of the site's URL listed in your account won't affect the indexing of your site as long as you have submitted a Sitemap for only one version - the version you want to be indexed. Don't submit a Sitemap for both versions if the location and content are the same.

If both domains point to the same location and you have pages indexed under both versions, see our Google Help Center for more information on consolidating the listings under one domain.

We hear requests for help with this often, so we'll be looking at ways to improve this issue in the coming months.

More from Vanessa Fox, Google Engineering in Google News

 

Flair for your ad units

4:45 pm - December 21, 2005 in Inside AdSense
Are your artistic talents limited to crayon drawings of stick figures? Good, looks like I'm not the only one. For those of us who peaked at a seven-year-old skill level, here's a holiday gift from a true artist: Google's Dennis Hwang.



Our new themed ad units incorporate elements from past Google logos created by Dennis, to give your pages a little extra flair during various holidays and special events. You can enable or disable themed ad units by logging into your account, visiting the My Account tab, and scrolling down to the Ad Type Preference section to click 'edit.' Check or uncheck the box marked 'enable themed ad units when available' - any changes you make will take effect within 24 hours.



If you've enabled themed ad units, users who visit your site may see themed ad units that are relevant to their geographic location (as determined by user IP address) and the date or season. Depending on your location, you should see the seasonally themed ad units for the winter holidays start appearing on your site soon and remain until December 26th. Here comes one now.





Happy holidays, everyone.



Posted by Shannon - AdSense Product Management

More from Inside AdSense Team in Google News

 

In the Spotlight: Solomodels

3:57 pm - December 21, 2005 in Official Google Base Blog
By Denise Gamboa, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Among the recipes, course schedules and events that can be found on Google Base, we came across a service called Solomodels. It’s a web solution for models and photographers, created by a group of software engineers, graphic artists and flash programmers. This site incorporates Flash pages, private galleries, group discussions, and competitions to entertain searchers while driving exposure to its clients. We found it by searching on [fashion model].


Hoss Etemad from Solomodels talks a bit about their experience with Google Base:

“Our mission at Solomodels is to provide a one-stop solution for the fashion industry by bringing worldwide exposure to top models and photographers. The Google Base program, which we found through Google AdWords on Google.com, has allowed us to quickly and seamlessly publish thousands of member portfolios free of charge. By including related tags such as “fashion” and “modeling” as well as photos and geographical locations, anyone looking to hire a fashion model or photographer can quickly find them on Google Base with a simple search. If they need more information about a listed member, they just have to click their link to be taken to their complete portfolio on Solomodels. Publishing our member lists to Google Base has not only increased the traffic to our member portfolios, but also resulted in a number of members finding modeling and photography type work because of their listing.

We generated an XML file using the Google Base bulk uploads instructions for reference. Because the process is so simple and the exposure on Google so valuable, we plan on updating our content at least once a month.”

More from Denise in Google News

 

Happy Holidays: Part 3

12:40 pm - December 21, 2005 in Official Google Video Blog
Diana Krall and the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra serenade you with this jazzy version of a classic.





Diana Krall-Jingle Bells

Backed by the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, the Canadian-born vocalist scats like Satchmo on a ringing version of "Jingle Bells". Diana Krall fills up the tempo of the song with holiday cheer. Her sound so intimate that you might swear the sexy singer is crooning exclusively for you at of midnight on Christmas Eve. Krall excels with an approach mastered long ago: elegant delivery that gives extra polish to a very familiar global favorite. This segment takes you through a favorite Diane Krall performance of “Jingle Bells” where she shares her playful side with a festive, yet grown-up vibe. (Description provided by content owner)

www.dianakrall.com

FastFocus.tv
3 min 9 sec

More from Christine in Google News

 

Holiday? What holiday?

2:14 am - December 21, 2005 in The Writely Blog
Ah...a quiet week before the holidays. Some time spent with the family, wrapping a few last-minute presents by the fire. So quiet and cozy and...

Not!

Just when we're recovering from last week's traffic, and things are starting to settle down again -- Whammo! A quick mention in the 'This Week In Tech' podcast and a column by John C. Dvorak of PC Magazine and we're off again! It's a good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless.

We're Writely users ourselves, and are thus very aware of the performance issues we've been having. Believe me, holiday or not, we are working to make everything run faster.

Thank you to everyone for your patience with our beta!

Now, please go out shopping, or drink some eggnog, or something! ;o)

More from Claudia in Google News

 

Setting trends

1:22 am - December 21, 2005 in Official Google Blog
Posted by Yu Chen, Software Engineer

As part of the personalization team, I'm pretty addicted to looking at my search history for interesting patterns. So I decided to go a step further and write a script to pull together some stats about how I was searching. We thought other people might like to see this sort of thing too, so today we launched a Trends feature that gives you a look at a list of your top searches and clicks and other info about your search activity.

To use it, you have to turn on Personalized Search and be signed in to your Google Account while you search. (If you don't have a Google Account, it's easy to create one for free.) Just click the "Trends" link on your Search History page, or go directly to your Trends.

More from A Googler in Google News

 

improved search experience on live.com

10:53 pm - December 20, 2005 in live.com blog

We just released some significant (and needed J ) updates to the live.com search experience. This includes fixes for some of the top user complaints, so we hope that you'll enjoy these. Some of the highlights include:

 

  • Improved UI
    • Search results now span the full page
    • Improved UI for search tabs aka filters
  • Browser back behavior (we're really excited about this one in particular :) )
    • Click on a search result, filters, pages and click the browser back to go back to your previous search results/state
  • Permalinks
  • Improved add to page experience, with control over number of results and tabs

More from live.com blog in Microsoft News

 

improved search experience on live.com

10:53 pm - December 20, 2005 in live.com blog

We just released some significant (and needed J ) updates to the live.com search experience. This includes fixes for some of the top user complaints, so we hope that you'll enjoy these. Some of the highlights include:

 

  • Improved UI
    • Search results now span the full page
    • Improved UI for search tabs aka filters
  • Browser back behavior (we're really excited about this one in particular :) )
    • Click on a search result, filters, pages and click the browser back to go back to your previous search results/state
  • Permalinks
  • Improved add to page experience, with control over number of results and tabs

More from live.com blog in Microsoft News

 

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