The Next Web
SocialRank is expanding its Twitter analytics service to include geographic segmentation and keyword searches. Launched earlier this year, “the original version of the service helped brands … scan all of their followers on Twitter and locate those who are most influential, engaged and a combination of the two,” The New Web reports. The startup currently counts about 5,000 brand customers.
The Wall Street Journal
Google is adding ratings to its “product listing” ads, which, as The Wall Street Journal reports, “are used by merchants to sell everything from juicers to microwaves to flat-screen TVs via Google search pages.” The rating system is based on aggregated rating and review data from multiple sources, according to Google. WSJ sees the move as part of broad attack on ecommerce giant Amazon.
Reuters
European Union watchdogs have few good words to say about the way Google handles "right to be forgotten" requests from European citizens. There are several concerns, but the one under the most scrutiny is Google's decision to only remove results from its European search engines, such as google.co.uk, and not those indexed in google.com. The company claims the "decision is restricted to localized versions of Google," per Reuters.
NewScientist
Similar to Google's self-driving car, Baidu has been working to develop self-driving bikes. "The project isn't ready to be launched yet but Baidu confirmed it is exploring the idea," writes Aviva Rutkin. Company scientists have spent the past few years increasing their knowledge of artificial intelligence. Baidu hired computer scientist Andrew Ng last year to head a new AI lab in Silicon Valley. He's know for spearheading Google Brain, a research project that harnesses huge clusters of computers to do machine learning.
ACSI
Customer satisfaction with portals and search engines jumps 5.3% to a score of 80 -- largely on the strength of the world’s most popular search engine, Google, which rose 8% to an ACSI score of 83. Other search engines and portals fell below Google for user satisfaction. The combined score for smaller, niche-like search engines is up 10% to a score of 77. Bing fell 4% to 73 and ties with MSN, which fell 1%.
Seeking Alpha
During the Q2 2014 earnings call, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella spoke about Delve, an Office 365 cloud-based service. Microsoft calls it "a new breed of intelligent and social work experiences." Delve becomes available to some Office 365 customers by the end of 2014. Bing U.S. search query share surpassed 19% and revenue per search (RPS) grew by double digits again, per Microsoft during their Q2 earnings call.
eMarketer
New stats from eMarketer suggest business-to-consumer ecommerce sales worldwide will reach $1.471 trillion in 2014, up nearly 20% compared with the prior year. How much of the 20% increase in ecommerce sales can marketers attributed to any type of search? Not likely all of it, but marketers might know if they had a better handle on attribution modeling, suggests Forrester Research. Let us know when you know.
Covario
Google is global, but not all global search belongs to Google. Google's search bots can now crawl and index JavaScript, but not all search professionals know this. Steve Beatty gives us five SEO myths and shares the best practices that go along with them. He also explains how pages have become the new keyword data.
Rand Fishkin shows us a screenshot of a message someone received in their Google Webmaster Tools inbox about some links violating Google's Quality Guidelines. Although many site owners have received similar warnings, many of the sites and the links clearly do not violate the guidelines Google's published. It's a slippery slope keeping away from what Google considers "spammy" sites.
Android Police
Google is testing a maps feature that allows users to discover interesting things about their surroundings. Android Police point to the updates for the feature "Explore Nearby." It aims to do a better job to help users search and find information in a specific category. Ryan Whitwarm explains how the updated gives the feature its own button on the bottom right of the map screen and how the categories in the menu are split into focused groups that include points of interest.