Category: Technology

New Google features

Frequent Google users may have noticed that a few new features have made their way into the popular search engine.

Google Local allows you to enter in a city and state along with your query in order to help find area businesses and services. The results include telephone numbers and addresses, as well as access to maps of the location.

The blue links at the bottom right of the search result page’s header no longer merely point to dictionary definitions of the keywords you used. Now they’re links to Answers.com, which provides more in-depth definitions, explanations and links relevant to those words.

Wired’s Microsoft assault

The February 2005 issue of Wired Magazine has some articles that probably won’t please the Redmond company.

Features include:

  • The Firefox Explosion – Behind the scenes of the alternative browser’s development.
  • The Microsoft Memo – Fictional memo from October 31st, 2008, written by the newest Microsoft employee Linus Torvalds to Bill Gates about Steve’s attempts to kill WinX.
  • Storming Redmond – Illustration of the various open-source projects that are chipping away at the Microsoft empire.

The article listed above on Firefox is a good read if you’re interested in the reasons why so many are switching over to the open-source web browser.

Google to fight blog comment spam

From Google Blog:

If you’re a blogger (or a blog reader), you’re painfully familiar with people who try to raise their own websites’ search engine rankings by submitting linked blog comments like “Visit my discount pharmaceuticals site.” This is called comment spam, we don’t like it either, and we’ve been testing a new tag that blocks it. From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel=”nofollow”) on hyperlinks, those links won’t get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. This isn’t a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it’s just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists.

(story continued)

What’s really nice about this current effort is that it involves a partnership between Google, MSN Search and Yahoo! on the search side and several popular blogging sites and software including WordPress, Livejournal, Blogger and MSN Spaces among others.

The linked article has information on how you can get involved with fighting comment spam through your blog today.