Industry News

Did you feel it yesterday? Some did, a slight shaking in the Google results. Yes, it was real. Google’s confirmed to us that a Panda Update happened yesterday.

Google said that worldwide, the update will impact about 0.4% of queries that a regular user might notice. For those searching in the United States in English, the percentage is higher. 1.1%, Google says.

This marks the 21st confirmed Panda Update by Google and stays in keeping with the roughly 4-6 week release schedule. Here are...

It’s Election Day in the United States, and Google is marking the occasion with a special ballot box logo. It’s more than a pretty picture, however. The logo also helps people find their local polling place.

Click on the logo, and you’ll get a prompt to enter your address and find your voting place: That, in turn, leads to the special Google elections page where your voting place will be shown, along with other information that’s accessible:   Related Articles Google Launches US Election...

Do a search for “Obama,” and you might find your subsequent queries for things like “medicare” seemingly personalized based on your initial Obama search. Do the same for Romney, it is doesn’t happen. Is Google biased toward Obama, as some are now writing? No. Is it the “filter bubble” of personalization out of control? Perhaps not. In fact, it doesn’t even appear to be personalization at all.

The news of how searching for Obama can influence your subsequent search results came out in a Wall...

Not happy with just running an interactive Halloween logo today, Google also has an “easter egg” surprise. Searches for some horror movies bring up sleeping bats that fly away with a click.

For example, here’s what appears in a search for “Nightmare On Elm Street,” over the knowledge graph box about the movie: Click on the bats, and they fly away:



These also appear for other films like “The Shining,” “Halloween 1978″ and Aliens, as you can see below:

 Here’s a video of the bats...

It’s Halloween, and Google’s got a special logo to celebrate the day. Click away to reveal ghosts of the not-so-scary kind to spell out Google!

At first the logo looks kind of sad, just a deserted street scene:

 But as you click on the various doors, ghosts are revealed that begin to spell the Google logo:



Eventually, you can spell out the entire name “Google” in ghosts, by clicking on doors:

If the noise bothers you, click on the mute button by the tree in the lower right...

Got the new Google Search app on your iPhone or iPad? Here’s a trick. Ask it, “What’s the best smartphone?” The app will politely decline to say.

The app will reply in one of two ways that I’ve found:“No one phone is right for everyone.”

“You’ll have to decide for yourself.”

Don’t have the app? Here’s a video I made with both answers:



Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m guessing that Google decided to avoid an embarrassment Apple had earlier this year, when Siri was found to be...

Announced in August, Google’s new Google Search app for iOS has been apparently stuck in Apple’s app approval process for over two months. No longer. Google’s just announced that the new app is out.

The news came on Google’s official blog today. The company has also posted a video of how it works:



Click here to view the embedded video.

The new app provides direct answers and uses a “card” format familiar to Android 4.1 (and now some Android 4.2) users who have the Google Now service:

It...