It has been a while now that Google has rolled out the great Panda update. The reactions are sharp and overwhelming and it forced Google to open up a new cell, to be precise a new thread, in its Google Webmaster Help center to get some direct feedbacks from the webmasters who are supposed to be wrongly affected by the recent algo shuffle. But there is a catch to it. Google would not care a fig to make an exception in its algo just because your website gets suffered badly from it. So, you need to pull your socks up and get ready for some actions if you are serious about getting your rankings back. Here are some tips that you can try out and of course best of luck:

Look At Your Content: Unique content does not mean that you hire someone and tell him rewrite some existing content from other websites so that it can pass the CopyScape hurdle. This thing is not going to help you anymore. The Panda update is primarily targeted at weeding out low quality content (even though they transpire to be unique) that does not add much value to users’ experience. If you can make your visitors happy, you would not have to do anything for Google. This is as simple as that.

Start A Manhunt: Figure out how many pages of your website are affected by the recent Panda Update. Once you track them out, you will have two options in your hands. Either you will have to edit them and replenish them with fresh and new content. Or you will have to delete them completely from the database.

Try No Index: If any particular section of your website seems worthless or is filled with drivels, get rid of that section by removing the entire thing or try ‘Noindex’. Featuring ‘thin’ content in your website can have negative impacts on the overall performance of your website. These pages are doing more harm than good, and that means you need to make them inaccessible to search engines so that Search Engines index only those pages with original content.

Supplimentary Index: Google is rumored to have a secondary database that mainly contains pages that are less important. Now, as obvious, if you find that the number of Supplimentary index has increased dramatically, it obviates the fact that Google is giving your website less priority.

Make It User Friendly: The bottom-line is that you need to make your website as users friendly as possible. Forget about Google, yes we know how hard it is, just think about the users. Google has already insinuated the fact that it is going to give more importance to users’ behavior, presence of a website in social media etc. In short, all boils down to one thing, keep your visitors busy and happy and it will do the trick.

Patience: - Do not be in a hurry to get thousands of links, just because your website is nowhere in Google SERP. It is not going to work anymore. You need to wield the power of self-control and patience and we hope, you will be able to cruise past this difficult time.

Google did it again; the nerds who performed and the fools who fell for it!! GMail Beta Motion….oh come on! Is this the 21st century or what…?

The stroke of midnight last had many Googlers excited. Google introduced its GMail Beta Motion technology; a new breakthrough in advanced technology that allowed human-computer interaction like never before.

A Google dry write-up on how a computer’s in-built webcam and their spatial-tracking technology can be used to detect and translate human movements into readable commands, had everyone hooked, err…stretching and bending.

Really, if you downloaded the “motion guide” and spent even a couple of minutes trying to to perfect those moves, you were prey to Google’s April Fool prank! But then, you may have already guessed it by now, haven’t you?

Frankly, the “motion guide” lost it for me, although I agree, the rather sad looking man in the tutorial put forth an acceptably convincing demonstration. But don’t get me started on the “safety precautions”! “Make sure to clear the area around you” – pray, who does that before sending an email?

Anything is possible, and so far as technology goes, we might yet see the day when Beta Motion becomes a reality. Until then however, to all those who have done their share of bend and stretch exercises trying to send an email, here’s to us – ‘April Fool’!

Life without Google is almost unthinkable these days. In fact, Google is everywhere. With it you can not only search and chat but also indulge in lots of other interesting stuffs, that too without paying a penny. In a nutshell, Google is here to make your life easy and comfortable. As Google launches new product or service almost every next day, you can easily have a collection of Google apps that will help ease up your workload. Here we have handpicked some of the best Google apps that you should not miss out at any cost:

Google Desktop: – With Google Desktop, you can search your computer as you search on web. You can even make a text search over your email, chats, photos, music, files and other things that you have viewed. Google Desktop puts everything within your reach, which means you would not have to spend your valuable time managing emails, bookmarks, files etc.

Google Toolbar: – It is a must-have toolbar for your Firefox browser. With it, you can share any webpage with your friends. As Google Sidewiki is preinstalled in this toolbar, contributions can be made easily and directly. It is also good at translating web pages instantaneously and automatically.

Google Health: – Google Health is a smart tool to monitor, organize and act on your health information. With this tool, you can have easy access to your own health information, anytime and anywhere. You can keep all your health and wellness information in one place and the good thing about Google Health is that you would not have pay for it.

Google Calendar: – Do you feel embarrass when you miss an important event? If yes, you need to have this tool – Google calendar where you can add details of important events. Moreover, you can access your calendar on the fly. Text message can be sent directly to your cell phone with Google calendar and that means you will never have to miss another event.

Google Reader: – Most of us find it hard to manage our favorite blogs and websites. As the number of bookmark sites increase, you will realize that you need to do something to make them searchable. Here is something that can relieve you from this tiresome job. Google Reader is here to declutter your virtual life. With its built-in public page, you can share interesting items with your friends and of course, it is free.

Google Docs: – Google Docs is a viable alternative of Microsoft Word. But unlike MS Word, you can access it anywhere, anytime. All you need to have is a PC with internet connection and nothing else. With this magnificent online tool, you can make presentation, conduct surveys and manage documents effortlessly.

Google Trends: – It is another powerful tool to check out the current trends of virtual world. All you have to do is put the keywords and hit the “enter” button and you will get all the info that you need.

Google has always tried to empower and encourage website designers and developers so that they can build engaging website that can add value to user experience. Over the years, Google has launched different tools and almost all of them are highly effective for building, improving and maintaining website. However, the most interesting thing about them is that they do not come at a price. You need to have a Google account and nothing else if you wish to try these website design and development tools. Here in this article, we have enlisted a list of some of the best Google products that may prove instrumental in designing and developing a website:

Webmaster Tools (google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en)
Of all the Google products, Google Webmaster Tools is the most versatile. It comes with loads of interesting features that can help you analyze website in myriads of ways. You can check whether or not your website has been attacked by virus or malware and you can also pinpoint spider crawl errors. It also offers HTML suggestions and some information on how to speed up the loading time of your website.

Google Chrome Developer Tools (blog.chromium.org/2009/06/developer-tools-for-google-chrome.html)
Testing and debugging your website in a web browser is the most convenient and easiest way of ensuring the stability and performance of a website. Being aware of this vital issue, Google Chrome has come up with an all new suite of effective tools that help you inspect different elements of your website meticulously before making it live. Some website developers even argue that this tool works even better than the popular Firebug.

Page Speed (code.google.com/speed/page-speed/)
As Google is passing more importance to loading time of a website, website owners are getting cagey about it since the ranking of a website is invariably associated with it. Page Speed is one such tool that lets you speed up your website by trimming redundant things as far as possible. You just need to install this amazing tool in your web browser and it will analyze your website automatically and then will show you the results.

Google Code Search (google.com/codesearch)
You are writing a mail function but it is not working somehow. Now, do not bang your head against the table rather do some searches in Google Code Search to find out what is wrong with your written codes. Google Code Search finds out results from different publicly available sample codes and it comes with an advance and intuitive search interface that will let you specify your search queries specifically.

Google Website Optimizer (google.com/websiteoptimizer/b/index.html)
Usability of website usually tops the list of concerns of most of the website designers and developers. Now if you are unable to make decide between two different designs, you can get some valuable feedbacks from the users by using Google Website Optimizer. With this powerful tool, you will be able to experiment with your website look and feel by launching A/B testing.

Browser Size (browsersize.googlelabs.com/)
You need to check out how your website gets loaded in different web browsers. Browser Size is one such powerful tool that will give you an excellent opportunity to explore how your website renders in different web browsers.

Google Analytics (google.com/analytics/)
This is an excellent and the most powerful tool of all Google products that will give you useful statistics about how your website is performing in terms of traffic. Various options are available to analyze traffic source of your website.

mod_pagespeed: A Tool With Unlimited Opportunities
Google’s fascination with speed is not showing any signs of ebbing down anytime soon. In fact, Google has gone an extra mile by coming up with a tool that can make your website load faster than ever. It is a part of Google’s noble initiative to enhance web experience by making it faster and safer and thus releases a new tool “mod_pagespeed” that has little to do with the complexities that are quite common when you are dealing with CSS, JavaScript, HTML and other related server issues.

What mod_pagespeed is?
“mod_pagespeed” is basically a module for the Apache HTTP Server that is developed to perform different page speed optimization processes automatically. Though this tool is still in the development stage, it is powerful enough to redress some common optimization issues such as payload size, client-server round trips, cache and some other aspects of web performance. It has been observed that mod_pagespeed is powerful enough to reduce page-loading time by 50% and if it can be employed properly, it can do better than this.

Here are some tasks that can augur well for your website but it is painful to do so manually:

• Extending cache lifetime of the images and logo of a website without affecting updation of these images at the same time.
• Re-compressing Images
• Making small tweaks in the pages that are developed in CMS

These are quite complex issues and sometime may appear nerve wracking but with Google mod_pagespeed, you will be able to ride past them. Google has already teamed up with Go Daddy and they are optimistic about making the web faster that goes in line with the guidelines of Google. In addition to that, Google is also working with Cotendo for the same purpose.

You can download this revolutionary app here .

Google is showing its benevolence by offering a web clinic for the US webmasters so that they can get some good advice regarding the visibility of their website from none other than the search engine giant. This is definitely an ambitious move of Google, who is clearing targeting webmasters to make their websites more user-friendly and search engine friendly. However, this offer is available exclusively for the non-profit organizations and Google as it seems is not interested in extending this facility to other websites.

Though Google Clinic is going to focus on the problems of non-profit organizations, government and business sites are likely to get benefited from it. Interested webmasters are invited to get registered and post information about their website. Google will then analyze those websites and will suggest how to improve the quality of the sites to improve its visibility. Analysis of the websites will be posted in the follow-up post.

Google has already outlined the guidelines for the participants that include:

• The website has to be associated with an officially registered non-profit organization.
• You need to verify the ownership of your website via Google Webmaster Tools. You can do it easily by signing into your Google Webmaster Tools account (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/)
• Before you get registered to Google Clinic, you need to make sure that your website meets all the webmaster quality guidelines, as Google will analyze your website against those guidelines later on.

So, are you ready to get registered? If yes, just furnish some basic details about your website here and there you go.

Interestingly, Google has never mentioned the term SEO in the entire post though the entire effort is geared at making sites for SEO friendly. So, wait few more days to get some good advice from Google and hopefully, they will give us some good inputs on how we can make our website more search engine friendly.

Google is now having an all-pervasive presence in both virtual and physical worlds. It is in your office, in your home, in the roads (Google Street View) and by making a foray into the Television industry, it has sneaked into your bedroom. Now, do not hate it for doing so because Google is redefining the very concept of Home entertainment as well as website design, and users are getting a thundering opportunity to surf between TV and web content and that even at real time.

Opportunity and Challenges
The synchronization of TV content and web content has definitely heralded a new era in but it has at the same time opened us Pandora ’s Box, since designers are going to face a barrage of troubles to make a website looks impressive even when it is being viewed in TV. Though it is relatively a new area of work, you need to arm your website with adequate ammo so it can face the challenges of the coming generation with equal ease.

Area of Focus
Since TV viewers sit far from the TV screen, you might find it hard to make your website readable at that distance. Navigation is another segment where troubles are expected to surge since just putting links on the right side panel would not work here at all. Here are some other issues that you need to focus:

• Blank space between different elements has to large enough so that viewers can figure out the difference between them without making any strenuous effort. This typically known as white space or padding and you need to be a little particular while using white space your website for TV.
• Use large fonts and graphics so that viewers can recognize them even when they are viewing it from long distance.
• Since wide screen monitor comes with a large and usable horizontal space, it is always better to feature navigation in the side, as it will help you place important elements horizontally.

Layout
Layout is another important area where you need to give utmost attention. Since TV screen contains a limited number of pixels, you need to be a bit cautious while using images in your website.

Make It Easy On the Eyes
Try to shun lightweight text or narrow text. Instead, keep your faith on simple sans serif font and apply anti-aliasing in order to increase readability. It is good to make a choice between Droid Serif and Droid Sans font families, since both of them are supported by Google TV.

• Font embedding techniques can be adopted for further customizing users’ experience.
• Try to sum up a line within 5 to 7 words. Do not make it longer than 12 words.
• Break long text into small chunks.
• Use light text on dark background.
• Paragraphs should not exceed 90 words.

Color Guidelines
Compared to computer screen, TV screen have higher saturation and contrast level and therefore, you need to maintain some guidelines to make your website look impressive and unique:

• Do not use bright colors since they can cause strain on eyes and can get distorted at times.
• Be sure to test your website in different TV modes such as Games, Vivid, Standard, Theater etc.
• Try to use pure white sparingly. Instead, you can use 240/240/240 (RGB) or #F1F1F1.
• Test your website on lower quality displays.

Limit scrolling
It is a fact that Google TV does not scroll down seamlessly and smoothly and therefore, try not to feature large content in your website.

Know The Safe Area
Every TV has a safe area i.e. an area that is surrounded by a small amount of screen space. If you place anything beyond this safe area, it will not be displayed. Therefore, try to keep 10% margin at each of these resolutions:

• 1920×1080 resolution, recommended width is 1728×972
• 1280×720 resolution, recommended width is 1152×648

Keep navigation Simple
Since people watch TV to relax, you should stop playing with the navigation system. Make it dead simple.

Google is good at delivering search results instantly so what the heck is all about Google Instant Search? Google Instant search is basically a new feature that is purely based on the assumptions of the users behavior and it gives random suggestions on probable search queries that users may find useful or interesting while typing certain words in Google search box.  So, with Google Instant, you are about to get a preview of search result of a search  query while you are typing.  But was it not there in Google? Then what is new about it?

Wait ! Have you checked how the search results is getting changed automatically whenever you choose a particular search query from the list of drop-down queries. Google Instant search is using a new autocomplete technology for showing probable search results of predicted search terms even when you are not hitting the Search button.

So, what purpose does it serve?

• It relives your from making searches with different combinations of keywords since now on you will be able to get a fair idea of the probable outcome of a particular search query thanks to the newly introduced Google Instant Search.
• Webmasters are likely to notice a significant rise in Impressions in Google Webmaster Tools as your website will appear each time a user start typing a keyword that is somehow related to your website.
• Users will be able to save their time and effort since they will now have a preview of different search queries.
• Google Instant is expected to cut down average time that users spend for making a search in Google so far. Users are likely to save at least 2 to 5 seconds each time they search with Google Instant.
• Power users are definitely going to adore it, since it much faster and smarter than previous Google search.

Will It work in all Platforms or in all conditions?
Definitely not. This new feature has been rolled out for web searches and that means, you are not going to try this in your cell phone for the time being. One more thing, if your internet connection is slow, Google might make this feature invisible.

Google Instant search might not work with those queries, which are considered to be offensive or lewd.

So far so good but still you may find it utterly disgusting and want to get rid of this thing as soon as possible. So, here it goes.

Disabling Google Instant

Google knows that it cannot make everyone happy with a new product and which is why there is an option to disable this feature in Google Search. There is a small link to the right of the Google search Box that bears these three words: “Instant is on”. Just click on to that link and choose “Instant is Off”.

There is an alternative way making it off permanently. Go to Google search preferences and you will find there an option to make it disable for once and all.

Not an Yahoo moment for Yahoo as its millions of loyal fans are crying hoarse over its much speculated and much anticipated integration with Bing that is supposed to ring the death bell of a great search engine. This is pathetic reduction of a great search engine to an appendage of Bing. Yahoo which was once considered to be the arch rival of Google, has sold itself to Bing and it is no more a search engine. All its secrets that were developed painstakingly by some of the best developers of the world for years are in the hands of Bing, who is now revving up use this new arsenal to invade the territory of Google.

Yahoo Up For Sale
However, Yahoo is not going to acknowledge this fact. It still believes that it will be able to retain its position as a search engine in coming years. Shashi Seth, Senior Vice President, Yahoo! Search Products, in his latest post in YsearchBlog has proudly stated “Yahoo! Search will always be a Search Engine”. But the reality does not say so. It seems people are already shifting their attention from Yahoo search to Bing and we believe that Bing is relishing it.

Yahoo: The New Yes-man
The process of annihilation was started most probably on August 17, 2010 since in that day, Yahoo has posted three posts in its YSearchBlog for making people aware of the coming changes. As was to be expected, it tried its level best to convince the readers that this move is going to benefits the users by enhancing users experience but this is nothing more than just a façade. When the merger will be completed, we will like to have a new Yahoo, which will lack all its originality. It will just be a mere shadow of what it had once, it will be transformed into a yes-man of Bing.

Bing Is Better, Smarter
From now on, search listing on Yahoo! Search is likely to be powered by Bing. However, this change will come into effect in the US and Canada at the initial stage. It is likely to take 2 years more to complete the full transition in other parts of the world. Yahoo! Video, Image and Web search are now powered by Microsoft platform in Canadian and the US market.

Bing is visibly happy with the outcome. In its blog it has expressed its unbridled happiness for the successful completion of this task. Here are the excerpts:

Today I am happy to share that Bing is powering Yahoo!’s search results in the US and Canada (English only for now, the other languages will come in the weeks and months ahead).

What Should Webmasters Do?
Try to please Bing. This is all you can do since there is no need to please Yahoo anymore. If you can manage to get better ranking in Bing, we hope that you will be able to get better ranks in Yahoo as well. Try to keep a close eye on the latest developments and pray to God.

Has Google ultimately found its calling in shopping or is it becoming a shopalcoholic? This is probably the most debated question as of now, as Google has gulped down another popular website and this time it is none other than Like.com, which is one of the most favored destinations for a majority of online shoppers.

Google Loving it
You may like it or not but the fact is that Like.com has eventually been overtaken by Internet behemoth Google. Like.com, which was a having a good time with its loyal visitors, but as it seems, it could not resist the temptation of getting merged with Google. And as far as Google’s motif is concerned, what it is trying to do is to revive its long-forgotten product: Google Product search but this is just a wild guess since no one at Google is willing to spill the bean. There was no disclosure on financial term but the market is abuzz with the rumor that the takeover might cost Google a whopping $100 million. However, Google is keeping a mum on this issue.

Like.com will continue to operate separately as stated by Google and therefore, there is no reason to press the panic button yet if you are a regular visitor of Like.com. This website is specialized in a technology that is basically built on visual search. People used to visit this website for gathering information about latest fashion trend and for getting supercool shopping deals at a mind-blowing rate. Here, you can get almost anything for making a fashion statement that may range from handbags to hanky, from clothing to garments.

Like.Com Not A Loser:
Like.Com is not going to lose its identity as dictated by its owner in its home page. This deal in all its probability is like to supervise its vision and supercharge its passion and probably, it is going to create a fertile ground for Google so that it can develop new and revolutionary products. Like.com is visibly excited and ecstatic about this deal as evident from the remark of Riya chief executive Munjal Shah.

Doubts Creep In
But there are some serious doubts over this acquisition. Critics are not sure whether this deal would do any good to Google or not. Another disturbing fact is that for the last couple of months, Like.com was finding it difficult to increase its popularity and therefore, when Google approaches it, it agreed to its proposal.

However, this move is quite expected since Bing is turning the heat on Google in the search engine market by initiating the process of integrating its algo into Yahoo results.