currybetdotnet Google archive

Google Street View spycams spotted in Walthamstow
I was hanging out in Stoke Newington the other day and wound up in a little Turkish cafe called 'The Dervish' - presumably, I'll have to ask forgiveness when I re-enter Greece. I spotted something that I hadn't noticed before - in the window, underneath a tattered old London Olympic bid sticker, was a sticker boasting that the business was listed in Google Maps. Once I'd spotted one, I started seeing them cropping up all over the place. And I...

Read the full post - Published July 3, 2008 in Google, Walthamstow

More thoughts on Google's sitelinks algorithm
I was writing yesterday about Google's choice of sitelinks for a domain name, and I was speculating, based on the evidence of the links they list for currybetdotnet, that there may be some hand-editing involved. What got me started on this train of thought was an article by Ann Smarty on Search Engine Journal. She suggested six factors that make up the 'sitelinks algorithm'. Surfers oriented Domain-authority oriented Internal-architecture oriented On-page SEO oriented Brand-strength oriented Competition oriented One of the...

Read the full post - Published June 22, 2008 in Google, Search

Is this evidence that Google hand-edits 'sitelinks' for small sites?
A few days ago Search Engine Journal published an article by Ann Smarty where she tried to reverse engineer the algorithmic decisions that lead Google to display a selection of up to eight sitelinks under a search result. She identified 6 potential theories. As ever, when dealing with the black box that is Google's SERPs, it is a mix of speculation, evidenced-based logic, and extrapolation from Google's published FAQs and webmaster guidelines. The 6 elements Ann mentioned were: Surfers oriented...

Read the full post - Published June 21, 2008 in Google, Search

Castrol's Euro 2008 Performance Index not performing on Google AdWords
As part of their sponsorship of Euro 2008, Castrol have developed a website which produces real-time performance statistics during the matches. Here, for example, are the figures from the Netherlands' obliteration of France last night. It looks like a very nice site - even if they can't spell 'defence' the European way. There is a downloadable Castrol widget for the tournament as well. It is built using Adobe's AIR, so in theory it should be cross-platform. I didn't download...

Read the full post - Published June 14, 2008 in Euro2008, Football, Google, Web, Widgets

There is the BBC's new media overspend...and then there is Google
Yesterday I bookmarked a piece on The Guardian's site which gave Edward Roussel from The Telegraph the chance to put his view on the BBC's massive new media 'over spend'. There are some good contributions from Jemima Kiss and Emily Bell in the comments, and the whole thread is well worth a read. Roussel makes the point that the BBC's new media budget is greater than the digital budget of all UK newspapers put together, and that it threatens to...

Read the full post - Published June 1, 2008 in BBC, Daily Telegraph, Google, Newspapers, Popular, The Guardian, Web

Google News and the missing Mayor from Henley
Most people building search services of any type hold Google up as their benchmark, so it always nice to be reminded that the search giant can be fallible as well. I was recently having a look at the advanced search features they offer on Google News UK. These include some options to limit results by date, which are not sadly available on the general web index, otherwise I'd introduce date-sorting and date restrictions to Chipwrapper in a flash. Google News...

Read the full post - Published May 27, 2008 in Google, Search

Newspaper widget review: Google Gadgets
I recently gave a presentation at the Miami IA Summit about Information Architecture and user-centred design ideas for widgets, and I very often blog about newspaper websites on currybetdotnet, so it seemed like an obvious idea to put the two together, and blog about newspaper widgets. In the previous post, I looked at the Yahoo! Widgets platform, and was surprised to find that only one British newspaper seemed to feature in any widgets - The Independent. Today I'm turning my...

Read the full post - Published May 13, 2008 in Daily Telegraph, Google, Newspapers, The Sun, Widgets

Newspaper "Site Search Smackdown": Round 6 - Google vs The Search Engine All-Stars
I've been running a series of Newspaper Site Search Engine Smackdowns to see which papers were able to index their own content faster than Google could. It turned out that the answer was not many, with only The Daily Express, Daily Mail and The Independent getting close to indexing news stories faster than Google's web search did. Although it is the dominant player in the market, Google is not the only search engine, so I also carried out the...

Read the full post - Published April 13, 2008 in Google, Microsoft, Newspapers, Search, Yahoo

Newspaper "Site Search Smackdown": Round 5 - The Newspapers vs Google
Over the last four days I've been pitting British newspaper site search engines together in a fight to the death to see who had the fresher index - the Newspaper Site Search Smackdown. The Independent triumphed, followed closely by the Daily Express and the Daily Mail. The exercise was prompted by the fact that Google has launched "Search in search" boxes for several of those papers. Kevin Anderson argued that this was an improved user experience for most newspapers,...

Read the full post - Published April 12, 2008 in Google, Newspapers, Search

7 years of Google April Fool jokes
If the tech and search blogosphere isn't awash this morning with posts about Google's latest April Fools prank, then we'll know that corporate culture has finally bitten hard at the Googleplex. In just a few years, the Google April Fool has become something of an internet tradition. Last month there was already even speculation as to what the joke might be, with the discovery in Google Documents of an animated rival to Microsoft's annoying paper-clip 'helper'. This was strenuously denied...

Read the full post - Published April 1, 2008 in Google

Google hijacks traffic from newspaper site search

Published March 31, 2008 in Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Google, Newspapers, Popular, The Guardian, The Sun, The Times

The online fall-out of the Daily Express apology to Madeleine McCann's family

Published March 19, 2008 in Daily Express, Google, Media, Newspapers, Search, Web

Making the most of blog comments: Part 4 - Do people read comments via RSS?

Published February 26, 2008 in Blogging, Bloglines, Google, RSS

Google blocks access to the Biased BBC blog via search

Published January 30, 2008 in BBC, Google, Search

Google DMCA complaint follow-up

Published January 12, 2008 in Blogging, Google

Issuing a DMCA take-down notice to Google over splogger

Published January 7, 2008 in Blogging, Google

BBC RSS subscription league table for English & Scottish football teams

Published November 23, 2007 in BBC, Football, Google, RSS

Top 50 BBC Podcasts in Google Reader

Published November 22, 2007 in BBC, Google, RSS

Top 100 BBC RSS feeds in Google Reader

Published November 21, 2007 in BBC, Google, RSS

British newspaper RSS subscriptions in Google Reader

Published November 5, 2007 in Google, Newspapers, RSS

Top 100 British newspaper feeds in Google Reader

Published November 2, 2007 in Google, Newspapers, RSS

Pavarotti and Jane Tomlinson's deaths test search

Published September 7, 2007 in Google, Search

Shonky email etiquette after 18 months away from my BBC email address

Published August 8, 2007 in BBC, Google, Web

BBC iPlayer search plugin for Internet Explorer and Firefox, and an iPlayer Google Toolbar button

Published August 2, 2007 in BBC, Google, Search, iPlayer

Gary Lineker isn't leaving comments here

Published August 1, 2007 in Football, Google, Web

ITV advertise using the keyword 'iPlayer' on Google and Yahoo!

Published July 28, 2007 in BBC, Google, Yahoo, iPlayer

Google Toolbar buttons for British newspapers including headline feeds

Published July 19, 2007 in Google, Newspapers, Search

BBC related custom Google Toolbar buttons

Published July 16, 2007 in BBC, Google

A level playing field for the BBC on Google AdWords?

Published July 6, 2007 in BBC, Daily Telegraph, Google

Quickly setting the default Google Analytics dashboard view to show a week or 48 hours

Published June 25, 2007 in Google

Today is the deadline for opting out of Feedburner handing all of their usage data to Google

Published June 15, 2007 in Google, RSS

Google search results promoting YouTube's Premier League copyright infringement

Published June 13, 2007 in Football, Google, Search, YouTube

Twitter polluting Google search results for news topics

Published June 6, 2007 in BBC, CNN, France 24, Google, RSS

How much did shingles cost in 1963?

Published May 18, 2007 in Google, Music, Search

Questionable eBay adverts on Google "Jewish cemetery" searches

Published May 14, 2007 in Google, Search

DirectGov's indirect use of Google Ads

Published April 10, 2007 in Google, eGovernment

Will virtual representations of sporting events become part of the online rights economy?

Published April 5, 2007 in Austria, Games, Google, Greece, Web

Google putting Wikipedia extracts at #1 - for Bruce Hornsby anyway

Published March 29, 2007 in Google, Search

My 'biased' view of the Biased BBC blog - part two

Published March 15, 2007 in BBC, Google, Search

Where do you go to complain about spammy Google adverts in the UK

Published March 12, 2007 in Google, OFCOM

Turkish YouTube ban unleashes the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast within

Published March 8, 2007 in Google, Greece, Turkey, YouTube

Google's anti-American stance on spelling the Habsburgs will upset Conservapedia

Published February 28, 2007 in Austria, Google, Web

Google kills the political Googlebomb - well, unless you are French

Published January 30, 2007 in Google, Search

Yahoo! door-stepping ex-Google Answers researchers

Published December 7, 2006 in Google, Web, Yahoo

Sitemaps in search engine news

Published November 16, 2006 in Google, Search, Yahoo

High rankings for Wikipedia doesn't mean the net has been hi-jacked by teenagers

Published October 30, 2006 in Google, Search

Google Talk's latest update doesn't behave gracefully offline

Published October 19, 2006 in Application design, Google

Smarter searching: liberating information from the Internet - Google's personal search services

Published October 10, 2006 in Google, Search

I'm loving Google's Blogger Web Comments for Firefox extension

Published October 7, 2006 in Google, Web

Using Bloglines to snoop on people's private Gmail

Published October 1, 2006 in Google, Popular, Web