Google has announced it will launch a new matching behavior for exact and phrase match keywords that will match close variants, including misspellings, singular/plural forms, stemmings, accents and abbreviations. Google is also making this new matching behavior optional and will be rolling out this option throughout the next few weeks. However, the actual matching behavior (should the advertiser opt in), will not go into effect until mid-May. In an effort to focus on user intent, Google believes these changes will be very beneficial for both users and advertisers.
POV: Move over Lin-sanity, it’s time for Pin-sanity!
Pin-What?
What is Pinterest? Pinterest is a ‘Virtual Pinboard’ website where users can share photos/videos (pins) of ‘things’ they find interesting. Individual boards can be created based on a specific category to maintain organization of ‘pins’. Taking a page from the Twitter handbook, users can ‘follow’ other users to see real-time pins. One can follow all of the user’s pins or follow just a specific board. The design of the page makes it simple to view many images and doesn’t require a ‘next page’ button to load more. As a user continues to scroll down, more pins will appear.
POV: Google ‘Symptoms Onebox’
Google has recently launched a ‘symptoms onebox’ that appears when one searches for a symptom or a set of symptoms (e.g., headache pain). It is a list of potential related conditions that assist in refining search results further. When one of the keyword links is clicked the searcher is led to a refreshed search engine results page with the refined results. Google’s blog states that the hope is that this feature will make it easier and faster to research symptom information.
POV: Google Unifies Privacy Policy
Google’s updated privacy policy and terms of service will take effect on March 1, 2012. The new policy, designed to cover an array of Google’s products and features, will simplify the user experience across the entire network. Without jeopardizing current privacy principles, Google maintains the claim to never sell or share any personal information to a third party without user consent. Once the changes take effect, the new policy will give the search engine flexibility to sync certain products and services into a more integrated user platform.
POV: The Other TLD’s and .COM’s Future
Every website is digitally organized by a Domain Name System (DNS) that is used to best associate a company with a particular identifier that is contained in the actual web address. The highest identifier in this system is the Top-Level Domain (TLD), which we commonly recognize as .com, .org, .net, etc. These TLD’s not only include generic definitions, but also country codes.
