Search Engine Optimization News Blog

Gmail labels are updated with many new features that would be of great help to the users. The features would help its users in categorizing and organizing messages in different folders.

Google has made these changes and included so many changes in its labels in ore to be more organized and help the users of its labels in getting the task done more easily. This would be of great use as it would be more intuitive and easier. This new inclusion would certainly be appreciated by users, as this would put an end to all the problems that have been created because of lack of folders in Gmail. It was a problem as it was the only way to file and sort messages in the mail system.

Gmail Product Manager Mr. Todd Jackson while taking about the new inclusions in an interview has said, “We’re always striving to improve label functionality in Gmail to make it easier for people to organize their mail,” These comments from Mr. Todd Jackson has left the discussion open and means that they would even be implementing more features and upgrading it further.

Google had adapted these changes in order to make Gmail more competitive and efficient. This would provide more flexibility to the mailing system and would allow users to apply multiple tags instead of individual folder.

Google labels are getting a very prominent position in the industry has they are seen to be becoming increasingly popular. The mails would be sorted in an order from where the users would be able to sort and categorize the mail they have received. These items would be found in the upper left column. In short, it would be above the Chat Session and next to the Inbox so that email was be sent and received nearby without any problem or issue.

Google just does not include extra features but also has changed and in some cases removed certain features that are considered a waste or those that are not being used by the clients as often as other important features. For instance, Labs phase was such a feature that was never used by the users.
In the new upgraded email system, there would also be options for the users to hide or reveal the labels as required. These labels would be found under a category called “More”. This link when clicked would show the Labels that are less popular and rarely used.

Drag and Drop is one among the new features that is expected to be liked by the customers. This option would enable the user to drag and drop messages into the labels. It can be done the other way as well. This would certainly be very useful, as this would make it easy for the client to organize mails. The appearance of the labels has been changed completely and has a better neat look now.

Google UK results have been completely scrambled by a major update at the beginning of the month. The results are being utterly overtaken by non-UK websites.

On June 4th, a major update went live across Google. The result? A host of international sites springing to the top of Google UK results.

Rolling changes have developed throughout June as Google apparently is scrambling to tweak their algorithm in regard to geographic results, but the search results still are bouncing madly and are highly unreliable and off base.

Apparently branding filters have complicated an already impossible situation, ensuring that  big authority sites acheive rank for irrelevant keywords. Major competitive keywords are now giving favor to websites which what should be inadequate search-friendliness.

In addition, the rumour keeps circulating that Google is testing a new UI in Google Chrome. This would eliminate even the option that to search results by UK only -your only hope would be to use a footer link once a search has been made, adding yet another step.

Google has an undisputed monopoly in search for the UK, covering at least 80% of the user market. This could change in a short time span, however, as Microsoft just relaunched their Live search as Bing.com.

So far, Bing.com is being treated more as a short term novelty than as a serious search option – theier results appear too similar to previous Live offerings, seeming to be ovely sensitive to keyword URLs and link volume.

These current changes to the Google UK ranking algorithm, however, are another hindrance to Google users, as there has been an unending panorama of user-focused changes to the search engine this year, making it less friendly to use.

This year in particular saw an attempt to push Local Search into major traffic keywords – which is turning out to be a dismal failure, at least in the UK. Britain is so small and densely populated that user IP’s depend more on datacentre locations than actual user locations. Google’s attempts to geolocate by city in the UK just aren’t working. Various Local Results appear based in incorrect assumptions about user location, and are useless.

Now, to make things worse, reports are in that UK cities are being listed with references for equivalent US cities instead of UK data. Google needs to fix UK results before Britain’s users defect to Bing or Yahoo.

Google Voice earlier called as GrandCentral would now be available for free and this free service would be offered by Google to all the subscribers who are there in their waiting list. The original GrandCentral VOIP service was purchased by Google in 2007 and meant for the use of its subscribers. But Google after its purchase added some more features like interoperability with SMS (Short Message Service) and has been in 2009 renamed as Google Voice.

Google Voice as well has all the features that many typical VoIP services have like Follow Me or Find Me service for all the calls that would be forwarded, call routing based on the identity of the caller that would be findable using the caller id, ability to switch calls from one phone to the other without disturbing the quality of the current call that is currently on line and feasibility to record calls. Google Voice also offers toll free click to call and click to return call features. Calling to US number with a web based GUI interface is also possible with Google Voice.

There are also many hi-fi features found in Google Voice that cannot be commonly found in an usual consumer VoIP service. Few of such  features are speech to text conversion feature that helps in generating voice mail transcripts, SMS transactions using which users can send receive and store SMS, personalized greetings that can be set by the user, calling screening to avoid unwanted calls and the ability to use the mobile phone for viewing the inbox.

The most important and interesting feature in Google Voice is its ability to allow the user to link a phone number to a person instead of another phone number or location. This is certainly an interesting feature that would help the user in managing multiple calls effectively based on personal priorities and preferences.

Google Voice however have few drawbacks as it completely relies on the call back feature using which the connection has to be extended from the user’s existing phone to the called party; incoming number portability is still a non-available feature in Google Voice. As this is another important drawback of Google Voice, Google Voice is not likely to replace other VoIP services completely all on a sudden.

Though it can be said that there would no problem for other VoIP services from Google Voice for now, Google with its master network would be able to work wonders anytime getting all advanced features in to Google Voice. So other parties always need to be careful and have them updated. However, Google Voice has not yet become the master of outbound calling industry. So there are still possibilities for others to upgrade themselves without having to loose and struggle later. In short, for a basic use Google Voice can be called the bets as they are not only easy to handle but can be called the best.

China is really cracking down on Google and associates, period.

The Chinese government has apparently used the “Great Firewall” to block Google, YouTube and Gmail for a couple of days this week, according to a report from Fox News.

Access to Google both in English and Chinese was blocked for part of Wednesday and Thursday in parts of China. This is just another temporary ban in a long line of bans on Google and it’s affiliates out of China.

Fox News stated, “The outages occurred after China accused the Internet behemoth of spreading pornography among its citizens. Google was said to be investigating the service disruptions.”

China has its own internal search engines and the government has strict control. After months of concessions, back and forth wrangling and downright battles over what constitutes pornography, Google has acknowledged it is censoring search results in the country.

Again according to Fox News, Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang said Google China “is a company operating within China to provide Internet search services, and it should strictly abide by Chinese laws and regulations.”

Britain’s Telegraph also reported on the situation, saying that Google agreed to filter results demanded by the Chionese government based on government censorship restrictions and various content requirements  when they established the localized search engine Google.cn four years ago, but Chinese officials say that Google has circumvented the filter due to the presence of links to Google.com.

According to the U.K. Guardian, “Google China’s website has not installed filters to block pornography in accordance with the laws and regulations of our nation,” said the CIIRC – the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Centre. “A lot of overseas Internet pornographic information has spread into our nation by way of this website.”

Google could be losing a major consumer market which is just now coming online (half the world population lives in China). Google had said they would address China’s requests but it may be too late with the Chinese governemnt apparently fairly happy to simply keep banning Google and with Baidu ready to fill the empty space.

According to a commenter on TechCrunch, “a person seemingly located in Xiamen, China” said “Google Books, Google Talk and Image Search have also been blocked in the comment section of this post. Other services like Blog Search, Translate, Maps and Analytics are reportedly blocked as well. YouTube has been blocked in the country for quite some time already”.

What will Google do to remedy their sad situation in China?

Time for a recap of Google! They keep the upgrades coming so fast it’s easy to miss one or two.

Number One: Google Flash Indexing – Now the Googlebot can use SWF files to index internal content sources.

Number Two: Google Webmaster Central Wondering where you are at in the reconsideration process? Now Google notifies you so you are aware of progress made towards reinclusion after your massive screw-up (whatever it was

Number Three: Custom Search Automatic Transilteration – It happens before your very eyes!! Transformation!! Now you can watch instant translation as you type a query in one language but receive results in another.

Number Four: Google AdSense – More functionality as youc an change the font size within your ad display units. Thanks, Google!

Number Five: Google Maps and Transit - More agencies are being added constantly – seven just this week, including:

• Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, Houston, TX
• VIA Metropolitan Transit in San Antonio, TX
• Utah Transit Authority, Salt Lake City, UT
• Metro St. Louis, St Louis, MO
• Foothill Transit, San Gabriel Valley, CA
• Riverside Transit, Riverside, CA
• Charlotte Area Transit System, Charlotte, NC
• Pinella Suncoast Transit Authority, St. Petersburg, FL

Number Six: Google Book Search – Now featuring embedded links, the ability to perform book search within each book, new thumbnail views, a spiffy content drop-down menu, functional plain text mode, a quick page turn button and animation, and even a comprehensive update to the book overview pages.

Bonus Number Seven: Apparently a microblogging search engine may be coming soon to Google, or so says the unofficial Google Operating System blog. It would be expected to compete with Twitter search as well as Facebook’s new search tests.