Sitemaps generators (free)

Google, Yahoo, Live Search as well as other search engines agreed in 2006 to adhere to the same sitemap protocol, which made things simpler for webmasters. Basically you add a link to a sitemap.xml file in the robots.txt file (a simple line like Sitemap: <sitemap1_location>) and the search engines will download your sitemap and crawl (some of) the links mentioned in there. This is a better way to have your site indexed by search engines without relying only on them finding all the links of your website. You can see usage examples and read more about the Sitemap protocol here: sitemaps.org

 

Of course that the only problem is creating the sitemap.xml file according to that protocol. There are a lot of downloadable sitemaps generators out there, commercial and free ones, as well as online sitemap generators. A more complicated way is to use and install scripts that generate the sitemap directly from your website, the advantage of doing so being the fact that the sitemap will be updated dynamically. If you have Python knowledge, Google offers such a script itself: Google Sitemap Generator.

 

However, if you'd feel more comfortable using a program that installs on your computer (or if you don't have the knowledge to install such a script) you can choose one of the free sitemaps generators (for Windows) that are available:

• GSiteCrawler -  a free sitemap generator for Windows, is the one I use too. Offers several options, useful ones being: ability to filter out URLs based on specific keywords, it can upload the sitemap.xml file automatically via FTP to your website, runs multiple crawlers at once.
• Endsheet - Free Windows desktop web crawler that creates Google, Windows Live and Yahoo! Sitemaps. This ones requires .NET to be installed too.
• Diadematus - Free sitemap generator, requires .NET installed too.
• Devintelligence Sitemap Generator - Free sitemap generator, it will crawl for links and automatically remove the dead ones, as well as uploads the sitemap file via FTP when it finishes.
• G-Mapper - Google/Yahoo sitemap generator, which also supports crawling atom, rss and podcast links. You can customize which types of files to include in the sitemap and also uploads it via FTP when finished.
• Site Magellan - Site Magellan is a free sitemap generator and sitemap editor. This generator also finds broken links and allows you to visualize the structure of your website.
• Sorrowmans Google Sitemap Tools - free sitemap generator but outdated. It can filter files/links from your sitemap and upload it via FTP when it finishes.
• Gsitemap - Less featured sitemap generator and kind of outdated (last update in 2005), but should still work fine.

The disadvantage of installable sitemap generators is that it will take longer to create the list of links if you have a website with a large number of pages (say over 5000). However, most websites don't have that many links and the process of crawling and creating the sitemap shouldn't take that long.

 

There are a number of free online sitemaps generators too. While the more popular ones offer paid services too, the free sitemap generation could be a solution for websites with limited numbers of pages. I say limited because the online sitemap generators usually have a limit of URLs they can crawl, a clear disadvantage towards the installable generators:

• XML-Sitemaps Generator -  this is one of the free online sitemaps generators I used and recommend if you have less than 500 crawlable links (this is their maximum limit)
• Sitemapspal -  this one offers up to indexed 2000 URLs.
• PortalApp Generator - has a 300 URL limit.
• Pingoat Sitemap Creator - they don't mention the URL limit but I doubt it's over 300 URLS. Pingoat has a free blog ping service too that it's good.
• Tarrant.it Sitemap Generator - Italian online sitemap generator with a 500 URL limit.
• Hockeygods Online Sitemap Generator -  100url limit
• Peterz.de (German) -  Site is in German but it's pretty obvious where you have to put in the starting URL for the crawl (200 URL limit?).
• Autositemap -  this sitemap generator requires installing an image on every page of your website, has a paid version too.

Quite some generators to choose from. Important is to create and put the sitemap.xml file on your website, because this makes yours more friendly with the search engines crawlers.

Google, what happened to "Do No Evil"?

Anonymous is a group of people best known for their organized protests against the Church of Scientology. They also made an objective from exposing facts about Scientology, one such website created by them being Enturbulation.

Until recently they posted ads via the Google Adsense network on Enturbulation, but their Adsense account was suspended. Reason given:

While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our advertisers in the future, we've decided to disable your account.

 

Enturbulation is a website whose actions are geared towards exposing the Church of Scientology, and apparently the problem was that ads paid by Scientology appeared on the Enturbulation website. So the members of this anti-Scientology website were seeing ads that promoted Scientology, which kind of results in a bad experience mainly for the advertiser. This is why Google decided to close down the Anonymous Google Adsense account. However, even if Google acts like it would be neutral in this matter (pro or anti Scientology), there are some issues that let us believe Google took the part of Scientology:

• Scientology is currently investing enormous amounts of money via Google AdWords, you've probably seen their "Get the Facts about Scientology" image ads on Youtube and other Google Partners - so Google might have decided to protect their interest
• Another thing is that AdWords publishers have the possibility to filter out websites that they don't want their ads to be displayed in, why didn't they simply filter the Enturbulation website (or other websites like this one) so that their interest would have been protected (maybe because they wanted ads to be displayed in such websites, after all it's all about conversion)

 

So, how about that "Do no Evil" slogan Google?

When Google's Hot Trends are really hot

There really must have been a surge in traffic for this particular keyword that made Hot Trends slip, as Google does its best job in keeping "unethical" searches off its suggested search terms, related searches, or in this case the Hot Trends. If it wouldn't do this we all know what would be the hottest searched keyword on Google (starts with "s" and ends with "ex").

Live Search gains in simplicity over Google Search

The Live Search design team has been playing around with a new interface for both the main Live Search page and the Live Search results page, and I must say that they're not doing a bad job. While Google always primed over MSN (now Live) and Yahoo in terms of a simple interface, I must say that Live Search is better - at least from this point of view. See below a comparison between the main Google Search interface and the Live Search interface:

I told you, while the Live Search page shows you only the search box and a link here and there way at the top (or bottom) of the main page, Google Search shows way too many links closer to the search box giving you the impression of a crowded place. As for the search results page, Live Search wins again:

Live Search results page

Google Search results page

While the Live Search page is still undergoing design changes (sometimes you can see a Change setting checkbox) I must say that I like the direction they're going. Unlike Google that seems to want to make you use iGoogle more than the main search page, Live Search chooses simplicity.

Yahoo Search adds SearchScan, a malware filter

Yahoo launched a beta service called SearchScan that will warn you when pages shown in the search results contain viruses, spyware or send unsolicited emails. SearchScan basically uses the reports from McAfee's SiteAdvisor, a service that gives you information about particular websites: if they contain spyware, adware, malware or other threats, if they send unsolicited emails, or if they link to other websites that contain these threats. The problem? If you're a webmaster you must be sure that the other websites you're linking to are "green", because if you are linking to sites that are marked as insecure (a big red X) your website will be marked accordingly.

Back to the SearchScan service, basically when you're doing a search on search.yahoo.com you'll see that some results have a warning right below the title (e.g. Warning: Dangerous Downloads) and when you hover over it you get more details about the threats that website contains:

SearchScan will be turned on by default for all users in the U.S., Canada, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Spain. Google Search also offers for a long time now a similar service in collaboration with StopBadware.org, which will mark websites that install browser exploits or other unwanted malware with a "This site may harm your computer" splash. Unlike Google's service, Yahoo SearchScan will also show a warning when the website you're about to visit sent multiple unsolicited emails, but, when you click on the search result of a such filtered website it will let you visit that site without any additional warnings (Google shows another page before letting you visit the website).
However, Yahoo SearchScan offers a setting that lets you "Never display websites indicated as potentially harmful" (by default it will "Alert you to websites indicated as potentially harmful") and you can change the setting here

One quick bug I've discovered using Yahoo SearchScan, whenever you hover a warning for a first result, the pop-up balloon with the information is stretched somewhere at the top of the browser and you only see the lower part of it

How Microsoft punished Yahoo

Microsoft officially announced (May 3, 2008) that it withdraws the proposal to purchase Yahoo. Because trading opened just Monday (announcement was made on Saturday) Yahoo feels now the wrath of its investors as the share price dropped by 22% in premarket. Even if it recovered a little it still currently faces a 15% drop compared to its share price on Friday, analysts expecting to see a 50% drop in share price (about how much it gained since Microsoft made public its intentions to buy it).

Microsoft warned about a possible hostile takeover a while ago, but that idea seems to have been dropped and one of the reasons Microsoft withdrew its bid is the partnership Yahoo made with Google to offer its search results. So what will happen next? Investors are still unsure if they should sell, buy, or keep their shares and trust Yahoo's decisions, but reading through the lines of the letter Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent to to Yahoo's CEO Jerry Yang you can sense a possible legal battle, as through their search advertising partnership, Yahoo and Google will have more than 70% of the search advertising market making them targets for possible antitrust trials. Quoting the most important part of this letter:

We regard with particular concern your apparent planning to respond to a “hostile” bid by pursuing a new arrangement that would involve or lead to the outsourcing to Google of key paid Internet search terms offered by Yahoo! today. In our view, such an arrangement with the dominant search provider would make an acquisition of Yahoo! undesirable to us for a number of reasons:
• In addition, it would raise a host of regulatory and legal problems that no acquirer, including Microsoft, would want to inherit. Among other things, this would consolidate market share with the already-dominant paid search provider in a manner that would reduce competition and choice in the marketplace.
• This would also effectively enable Google to set the prices for key search terms on both their and your search platforms and, in the process, raise prices charged to advertisers on Yahoo. In addition to whatever resulting legal problems, this seems unwise from a business perspective unless in fact one simply wishes to use this as a vehicle to exit the paid search business in favor of Google.
• It could foreclose any chance of a combination with any other search provider that is not already relying on Google’s search services.

Good luck Yahoo, you'll need it.

iPhone-mania reaches Google

Google announced several updates these days for iPhone users (oh, and iPod Touch), and if you're thinking why the answer is simple: next search engine battle field. Google, Yahoo and Live Search all offer services for mobile devices, because they all know that the next market with a huge increase is going to be the mobile search market (if not already huge). So it makes sense to expand as much as possible, even if this means customizing their services for particular devices (iPhone in this case): Google for iPhone, Yahoo for iPhone. Live Search does not offer a service specially for iPhones, mainly because it would be promoting the products of a competitor.

Ok, what's new from Google regarding the iPhone:

• Google News edition for the iPhone - to access it simply go to http://news.google.com using your iPhone. Using your iPhone you can see Google News sources and even watch associated YouTube content where available.
  
  
• Google for the iPhone goes internationally - The modified Google interface for the iPhone and iPod Touch is now available as a localized service for "33 new markets and 16 new languages, from Argentina to New Zealand, from Swedish to Chinese". I'm not that thrilled about Google's localization services, but I guess many others like it, since it was included. You can access it here: http://www.google.com/m/i (don't worry, Google will localize it automatically).
  
  
• Google for the iPhone can be used with an Apps domain too. To access it go to http://www.google.com/m/a/YOURDOMAIN (using the iPhone of course, and also YOURDOMAIN is your actual domain name).
• Gmail has a new look on the iPhone and offers new functionality: Auto-complete when composing, Automatic refreshing, Faster load times when viewing email.
  

"How to grow weed" - Googlers' top 8 questions

Google Suggest will offer search suggestions as you type letters into the search box, and while this is a good tool when you're trying to remember something (e.g. the name of a movie) it does make it fun sometimes.

The above results are shown when searching for How to, and they are ranked based on their popularity, as Google suggest:
"... uses data about the overall popularity of various searches to help rank the refinements it offers"
While some of these questions really make sense (tying a tie is really difficult thus its popularity), kind of makes you wonder why would people be interested in knowing how to grow weed, given it's illegal? Anyway, Google Suggest does its best in filtering out "bad suggestions" (otherwise porn would be the first suggestion for many searches given its popularity), but there are still slips like this - and why would they filter this out since the people searching might only be interested in understanding the process, not applying it. Dissecting a little the top 8 google suggest how to's, for our own knowledge:

• How to tie a tie. What better instructions than video ones - Expert Instructions on How to Tie a Tie.


• How to kiss. This is a tricky one, given it's not followed by "better/using tongue/a frog" - the first advice would be to close your eyes and let the partner show you. If she/he doesn't know, then rub your lips together and use your imagination. Joke aside, Youtube shows you how, again: How to kiss someone passionately


• How to make out. Kind of the same as the previous question, though an updated version of "making out" includes more than kissing. Anyway, Wikihow gives good tips: How to Make Out for the First Time


• How to play guitar. First step, buy one. Second step, learn it from Phoebe Buffet. Serious about learning? Then watch this video: How To Play Beginner Guitar Chords


• How to get a passport. For US visitors only, you just need to find the nearest location to apply for a passport, and after that you'll receive the appropiate guidance. If you're outside US and interested in how to get an US passport, the best way is to marry an US citizen.


• How to save money. WikiHow seems to give some advices (How to Save Money), but if you ask me the best way to save money resumes to two words: CONSUME LESS.


• How to boil an egg. What's that difficult about doing this beats me: you put the egg into boiling water and you leave it for 3-5 minutes. Sometimes it will be a soft boiled one, other times it will be a hard boiled egg. The real question is for how long do you boil an egg?


• How to grow weed. Best part, last. Weed stands for Marijuana (duh), and it's not that difficult. Toughest part is that if you'll get caught you'll share a room with a "nice" bald guy for a while. Your choice. Web is full with homemade tutorials on how to grow weed.

There's so many funny/strange/scary Google Suggest searches that I'm thinking of starting a weekly post on this.

Blogger statistics now in beta

Blogger tests a new Stats tab, that lets bloggers integrate Google Analytics statistics directly into the Blogger interface. This is great news for Blogger users since you won't need to open a new page and check the web analytics separatelly. In 2006 when I heard that Google bought Measure Map, a company that provided blog statistics, I subscribed to be announced when they will be giving away free accounts (private beta) but that never happened. It makes sense now, because Google let Measure Map die and instead integrated it into Blogger directly (using Google Analytics technology too).

This is an "early private beta" as they call it, so I wonder if it will take a long time until we can see this integrated. The Blogger team is also working on the new experimental features that are now available only in Blogger in draft, so I wonder if they'll somehow add the Blogger Statistics to this too and make all the features publicly available when ... well, when they'll finish. In the meantime we can all stick to using Google Analytics. It's interesting to see how this will be pushed to Blogger users, I mean will the analytics tracking code be installed by default and show you the statistics anyway, or will it be added as a blog element? Remains to be seen.

P.S. Hope you all had a Happy Easter and today, May 1st, you're enjoying a workless day.

Street View mashups, a month later

Street View is the Google Maps extension that lets you view the streets for particular cities in the US just as you would be driving through them. On March 27th 2008 they released the Street View API which basically gives web developers the needed tools to create web applications that interact with Google's Street View service. Almost a month later, there are a dozen of Street View mashups released, some of them being quite nice:

Dual Maps
Dual maps let you display for a single location a Google Maps view, along with a Google Street View and a Microsoft Virtual Earth view - all side-by-side and also linked together, so when you move the cursor on one it will dynamically move on the other two.


Povo
Povo is a wiki for local places in Boston (for now?). On the wiki page for each place they add businesses, parks, parking lots and any other public information users add. You can search through Povo by location, tags, or for specific questions. Each listing also shows the Street View for that location, one that you can modify if it's not accurate.


RealBird
RealBird lets you list and find homes for sale, all including detailed information as well as map listing and Street View for the location where the house is from.


Flyrig
A website that lets you search for New York apartment rentals. Has a basic implementation of Street View, so beside showing you information about the rented place (price, location) you can also see its position on Google Maps and have a Street View for that location (where supported).


Glotter
A website that contains custom world maps, from showing maps for sport events to displaying sightseeing of fun places, Glotter incorporates them all. Now they've added a Street View option that lets you see panoramic street-level views for particular areas. It's also posible to automate the viewing process (rotate, move forward, move backward).


Vegas Vision
A website that integrates Google Maps and Street View to give you a real look at the Las Vegas Strip.

Microsoft Live Search adds Sitelinks too

Google had the Sitelinks added since 2006, and 2 years later these are added into Microsoft Live Search too. Sitelinks (Microsoft calls them Deep links) are shortcuts to pages within a specific website that show below that website's listing. They are meant to help you navigate the website by providing links to popular destinations from that website. If Microsoft Live Search deeplinks works like Google sitelinks does then their system analyzes the link structure of a particular website to find shortcuts and shows them automatically.

As you can see the main difference between Live search deeplinks and Google Sitelinks is their number - Live Search shows only 4, while Google shows 8. Also, the link chosen to be displayed as sitelinks are a bit different between the two, which is somehow normal given that they both use different algorithms.

Also the Live Search deeplinks feature is announced as new, I assume they meant that it was added in its final state today given that there are reports this feature for Live Search goes back in 2007 - probably back then there were just tests.

As with any new Live Search feature this needs work too. One of the things they need to improve is the number of websites they recognize Deeplinks in Live Search, because Google shows them for many more websites. Another thing would be to include the ability to control their display through the Webmaster Live section like Google allows through Google Webmaster Center.

How iGoogle evolves - Developers sandbox

Google launched a "playground" for iGoogle gadgets developers. Called "developers sandbox" this is basically a design view that iGoogle gadget developers can use to put more functionality into their gadgets. This sandbox view is basically the future of the iGoogle look and feel for the end user. The developers sandbox includes support for OpenSocial, an API to help developers build social applications, that also allow interoperability with other social networks that adhere to OpenSocial (such as Hi5, Viadeo, MySpace, Friendster, orkut and Yahoo!).

The new iGoogle will also support canvas view, which means that from an iGoogle Gadget you'll be able to open additional pages (without leaving the iGoogle interface like you do now) where other interactive content would be included.

A couple of things of interest for end-users of iGoogle:

• the new iGoogle interface will also have a toolbar on the left side where you can have an easy-access menu to see which gadgets you have installed, as well as shortcuts to your email or other Google services
• the new iGoogle Gadgets will support canavas view, meaning they will have internal pages that you'll be able to open without exiting the iGoogle interface
• there will also be a right toolbar (more like a gadget) where you will be able to follow what you're friends are doing (kind of like FriendFeed), but also that's where the iGoogle Gadgets updates will be posted - so yes, developers of gadgets will be able to interact with your iGoogle page through that section and post news about the gadgets, limited however up to 5 activities per user per day.
• the new iGoogle Gadgets can contain ads, but only in the canavas view - "Ads will be limited to the canvas view only and certain types of ads will not be allowed" - probably Adsense will be one of the ad type accepted.
• the new iGoogle gadgets will be able to invite your friends or send messages to other users (up to 10 messages per day) - all with your permission.

iGoogle will evolve more and more into a web 2.0 portal, posing a threat to Yahoo's portal but also to other social networks that will start losing users mainly because iGoogle will do the same thing, and better. Also, Google's efforts lately have been towards helping developers build faster, better web applications - a move that targets moving more and more users online, where Microsoft doesn't have monopoly.

GoogleDNA, a new service that indexes DNA?

A recent BusinessWeek article talks about the investments Google started making into genetic screening.
The facts:

• In 2007 Google invested $4.4 million (BusinessWeek.com, 11/29/07) in a genetic screening company called 23andMe. The company was started by Anne Wojcicki (wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin), and her business partner. 23andMe, for a price of $1000 will "help you read and understand your DNA. After providing a saliva sample using an at-home kit, you can use our interactive tools to shed new light on your distant ancestors, your close family and most of all, yourself." So they're taking the fun approach of the DNA analysis, that of getting to know your ancestors.
• Google recently invested (amount not disclosed) in Navigenics too, a company that takes a different approach for DNA testing. You send them a sample of your saliva and they will test it against several possible diseases and send you results that you can share with your physician to see what caution measures could be taken.


• While their investment in these companies is declared to be purely financial, a Google spokesman told that they wanted to invest in these companies because they have a common mission statement with Google's, which is to organize world's information and to make it universally accessible. So, through DNA analysis there will be a lot of information gathered, which seems would fit into the "organizing and sharing" mission statement.

You can read the article for full details, but the basic idea remains: Google started to show interest into the DNA analysis/organizing/sharing field. I wonder what will Microsoft do, because for sure they're not going to be left out of an expanding industry.

Earth Day 2008, will you do something about it?

On April 22nd millions of people will celebrate Earth Day, a special day when you should do something to show your support for fighting climate change. While there's no need to wait for a particular day to do something good for the environment (hence for The Earth), Earth Day has as a purpose promoting such environmental-friendly behaviors and remind people that we shouldn't live on Earth just like simple parasites - we have to give something good back to the nature. The official Earth Day website says it better and gives you clues on what you could do on this special day:

Since the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, Earth Day has been an annual event for people around the world to celebrate the earth and renew our commitment to building a safer, healthier and cleaner world for all of us. There are many ways you can get involved. Volunteer. Go to a festival. Install solar panels on your roof. Organize an event where you live. Change a habit. Help launch a community garden. Communicate your priorities to your elected representatives. The possibilities are endless! Do something nice for the earth, have fun, meet new people, and make a difference.

They've also set up a location where they list events that are going to take place in cities all over the world, so if you have some time to do something on April 22nd why not participate in such an event: Worldwide Earth Day 2008 Events
I use a bike daily to go to work, but tomorrow I'll participate in a peaceful Critical Mass event.

Of course Google wouldn't let this event pass by without making a difference. Tomorrow they'll change their logo to a special Earth Day 2008 Google logo that will most likely link to the official Earth Day website, or to the website Google specially set up for this occasion: What will you do for Earth Day '08?
On their special Earth Day website they've set up a way for you to share your feedback on what you're going to do for your planet.

Not only you can leave a simple text message, but you can add an YouTube video with what you'll do (or did) and also if you'll use Google Checkout to donate money to an environmental non-profit on behalf of your friends a marker will be added to the Google Maps mashup they did on that page - if your friends will donate too, they'll be linked to your marker and you'll be able to track how your generosity spreads (you might need to try a little later given that right now they return the "Google Checkout is temporarily unavailable at this time. Please check back again in a moment" - too many donations maybe?).

We can sum up all this to a couple of things you could do for your community in particular, and for the Earth in general:

• Don't use a polluting car (electrical ones are ok), if not in general, at least tomorrow - there are other ways to go to work/school: walk, use a bike, and if not use the public transportation
• Consume less. Unless your body works different than anyone's else and you consume CO2 instead of eliminating it, don't consume much of anything on Earth Day. You can reduce the electricity usage (go for a walk instead of watching a movie), water (take a short shower, not a long bath), food (eat an apple for dinner, not a hamburger) or pretty much reduce the usage of anything else that is in a way affecting the natural resources.
• Donate to environmental non-profits. Be it Greenpeace or Earth Day Network, they'll all appreciate your effort.

While there's many other things you can do, the most important one is to do something for your Earth - you've heard lots of things about climate changes, pollution and how all of these affect the Earth, but just so you know our planet will always survive, it's the future of the humankind that has a question mark.
[Update]: Google added indeed a special Google Earth Day 2008 logo:

They've also released an Energy Saver Google Gadget (for Google Desktop) that lets you save energy by optimizing the power management settings:


YouTube goes green-logoed too, and shows us 5 easy ways of going green:


Nevertheless Google Docs also gives an example on how using online documents helps save paper - which enventually helps the planet by cutting less trees. The idea of a paperless office is not new, so try using online documents (portable ones, like PDF) whenever possible, instead of printing to paper.

How to report a Google Adsense violation

I've seen on a website a Google Adsense ad that was masked by a tricky image letting you think you were going to play a video - I could tell it was an Adsense ad because when I hovered over it I could see the URL it was going to open (starting with pagead2.googlesyndication.com). When you encounter such a website that you consider contains offensive ads, or that is in some way trying to trick you into clicking on the ad, you can report it and the publisher's Google Adsense account will be banned if found guilty. You can either click on the Ads by Google text that is shown in the bottom-right corner of the ad group, that will let you select an option to report the site, or visit directly Google's policy violation support page (bottom of the post).

Actually the list of violations is quite large, and you can report Google Adsense violation if the website contains: adult content, hacking/cracking content, promotions for drugs, gambling or casino-related content, violent/racial content, promotions for weapons, alcohol, tobacco and tobacco-related products. What's even more interesting is that if you consider (and can prove) the website in cause uses content that is copyrighted you can report it too

Finally, if the site specifically encourages users to click on the ads, places misleading images near ads, it's difficult to distinguish the ads from the content or that if it contains any form of spyware/malware, you can report it too.

The contact form to report the Adsense violation is here: Report a Policy Violation

Whois search using Google is back

Google can show you some basic WHOIS information for a domain if you search using the following format whois domain.com. As an example, you can see the whois information for google.com by performing the following search: whois google.com.

If you click on the title for this you'll be redirected to a domaintools page where you can see more details about the domain. This feature is not something new, Google introduced it back in 2004, but it was turned off soon after that because the sites Google used for WHOIS searches were infringing Netsol policies.

As you can see they are using the whois information provided by domaintools.com, because querying whois themselves would probably require much more investments from their side. Useful would be if in the future they'll add also the registrant information in this summary (which they'll probably do).

Anyway, glad they brought this WHOIS search back because this allows to quickly search and see if a domain is taken or not - if the domain is not taken you'll get the "Your search - whois domain.com - did not match any documents", otherwise you'll get the WHOIS summary.

Googlers are productive

Recent Google software and services updates:

• Google Video gets a facelift. Now offering three ways to view video search-results (list, grid and TV view), showing a timeline view that lets you see what was popular in the past (most blogged, most shared) and they updated the homepage of Google Video too. Though one thing I would have expected is to give up the frame usage for viewing a video - I like to be able to scroll below the video too, like on YouTube, and is annoying I can't do that when watching a Google Video.
• Google Website Optimizer and Urchin are out of beta. What's more interesting is that now Google Website Optimizer is accessed through its own website as a standalone service (using the login you have for Google Analytics) and not part of Google Adwords only as it was before. Urchin is the commercial desktop version of Google Analytics (sold through Google Analytics Authorized Consultants for the price of $3000) and comes with a couple more features than Google Analytics (like logging server errors, offering analytics for intranets, processing previous logs).
• Google Earth reaches 4.3 (beta). Now it offers real photos of buildings from some cities, a Sunlight feature that lets you how does the sunrise look on Himalaya for instance, navigate from Google Sky view to the Streetview one.
• And Picasa for Linux is updated to version 2.7 (I know, not an important update, but it's good to see they don't forget the Linux users.

I'll be covering soon the new beta version of Google Earth since it's one of the most interesting updates.

Use Google Analytics in Google Adwords Editor

I'm using Google Adwords Editor to manage multiple Google Adwords account from my desktop, without going through the hassle of visiting the online page and logging in and off to verify each account. It's very useful because it allows: managing multiple Adwords accounts, making bulk changes to keywords/ads/ad groups, working offline and synchronizing changes when connected, copy/paste keywords/ads/ad groups and campaigns in between ads/ad groups and campaigns - download and more information is available here.

However, there is one feature that it's missing and would prove to be very useful - integration with a Google Analytics account. In order to see how your Adwords keywords perform via Google Analytics you have to go online and log-in in Analytics to verify all this. So, I asked them if an integration with Google Analytics is planned in the near future. To be more specific, this is the email I sent:

I know you received by now a million questions like this, but haven't seen anything in the FAQ. So, will there be an integration of Google Analytics in Google Adwords editor?
Thank you.

They answered the next day, and even if I get the impression this is a semi-automated email, it seems that they will add it in the future:

Hello Claudiu,
Thank you for your suggestion to integrate Google Analytics with AdWords Editor. We greatly appreciate any feedback or suggestions for ways we can improve Google Analytics. Your comments provide us with the assistance we need to optimize our program, so please continue to give us feedback in the future. We will look forward to include this feature and inform you when it is implemented. We thank you for your feature request.

If you have additional questions about Google Analytics, please visit the Analytics Help Center at
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/?utm_id=tf. You can also find helpful tips and information by visiting the Google Analytics Help Forum at http://groups.google.com/group/analytics-help?utm_id=tr.
We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Sincerely,
Puneet
The Google AdWords Team

"Obama said about Iraq" - find quotes with Google News

Google News recently introduced a feature that allows searching for quotes. Actually when you search the name of an important person (be it a politician like Barack Obama or a geek like Bill Gates) you'll see at the top of the news results a quote that this VIP used in a recent interview, for instance searching on Google News for Barack Obama will show a grey box at the top with his latest quote:

And this is not all, if you click on his name (under the quote, "by Barack Obama") you'll see a list of all his quotes that Google News indexed in the published news:

Now it gets more interesting, on the page where all his quotes are listed, there's a search box to the left that lets you "Search these quotes" - what this does is searching within all his quotes for a specific word, so if you enter Iraq in there, Google News will show all the quotes where Obama mentioned Iraq. Useful if you want to test yourself the honesty of a politician - searching for instance for NAFTA in a list of quotes by Hillary Clinton.

Google Search insight from Udi Manber

Udi Manber is a VP of Engineering at Google. Started as a professor at the University of Arizona, after that he was senior VP at Amazon and before he started to work for Google he was Yahoo's chief scientist. Popular Mechanics asked him in an interview 20 questions regarding Google Web Search (how it works, future improvement plans), so if you want to know a little more about how search works and what plans they've got it's a worthy reading. I've extracted below some of the affirmations I consider more interesting from this inteview:

• "Last year the Google research team did over 450 improvements" to the Google Web Search algorithm. Impressive, though by improvements I'm not sure if they mean bug fixes too or simply optimizations they did to make search better.
• "We make the decisions solely based on how good it is for search, how good it is for users not how this affects ads". Pretty self-explanatory, he was asked if when proposing new features or optimizations for the web search algorithm they take into account what impact this will have on the ad revenue - obviously not.
• "At Google we do not manually change results". This is one interesting affirmation, given when asked if they interfere manually on the search results - they don't, every change they make they do it on the overall algorithm rather than handling the exceptions manually (except, of course, in some cases when they deal with spammy websites).
• "The results we show you are based not only on what we know of the Web, but also what other people have searched for". This is interesting too, at least for website owners. It's not clear if he refers specifically to the suggestions Google does via the OneBox results (the Related Searches he mentions in the interview), or if he says that Google will rank certain results better just because those specific results were what other users (searching for similar keywords) were looking for. For instance, you do a search for photofiddle and you click on the second page in the search results, than a different user does the same thing, and another and so on - his affirmation might be interpreted that when a new user will search for photofiddle, Google will show on the first position the result that had the best click-through rate.
• "I can imagine if you give us permission to [fold the context of your social network into search results], and we find that that’s useful for some queries". Showing search results in Google not only from the regular web search index and based on your web history, but also from your other stored information in different social networks (myspace, facebook, digg, delicious)
• One of his favorite features recently introduced in Google Translate is CLIR. How this works: you enter a word in English for instance, and select as an output search Spanish. What Google will do is translate your query into Spanish, search for that translated Spanish word, and return the results to you translated back into English (with the possibility to see the Spanish results too). Currently supported languages: Arabic, Chinese (Traditional, Simplified), Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish

As mentioned above, it's an interesting read, so if you have some time and willing to learn more about Google, take a look here: 20 (Rare) Questions for Google Search Guru Udi Manber