Search

Earlier this week, Google rolled out Panda 4.0 and Pay Day 2.0. These updates to the search algorithm were touted as being designed to further reduce the ranking of low-quality and spammy content. According to analysis by Searchmetrics, Panda and Pay Day did just this, with websites that offer undifferentiated content suffering in terms of overall ranking.

However, Panda did not just punish websites: various major websites actually increased their rank in Google Search as a result of the change in algorithm. From the study:
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Google has made two notable changes to its search algorithm in the past 24 hours, both of which continue Google’s crusade to keep its search results relevant. The 4.0 release of the Google Panda algorithm is intended to make it more difficult for websites with poor quality to rank highly in search results (via SearchEngineLand).

Payday Loan Algorithm 2.0 was also released yesterday, and it targets “very spammy queries,” and is unrelated to Panda’s rollout:
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Update: In keeping with the square theme, Google has taken this anniversary as an opportunity to join Instagram, hooray! First post is the Rubik’s Cube in video.

This may just be the best Google Doodle yet: a fully-functional Rubik’s Cube! Click on the small cube to open up the interactive version. Click and drag any row or column to rotate it, and do the same underneath or alongside the cube to turn the entire cube … 
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We’ve covered the Chinese search engine giant Baidu before, commonly referred to as “China’s Google”, the search engine is one of the leading sites in web traffic in the country. Looking to further support its title as “China’s Google”, Baidu today made a significant hire. First reported by Technology Review, Baidu has hired Andrew Ng to oversee a new artificial intelligence research lab it is opening in Silicon Valley.

Andrew Ng is a Stanford professor who is most well known for his position at Google, where he was a key component in the company’s “deep learning” field. Ng also cofounded the online education company Coursera.

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Photo: Associated Press

The European Union Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that individuals have a right to require Google to remove sensitive information from search results, reports Reuters.

The ruling […] came after a Spanish man complained to the Spanish data protection agency that an auction notice of his repossessed home on Google’s search results infringed his privacy […]

Google says forcing it to remove such data amounts to censorship.

The ruling reflects a 2012 proposal by the EU known as the “right to be forgotten,” in which it was argued that even accurate information may become “outdated or irrelevant” after a period of time has elapsed … 
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Remember that Pokemon April Fools joke that Google ran earlier in the month? While it was an obvious gag, it turns out that there was a slight piece of truth to this challenge. Google is reportedly sending out reward notifications to participants who completed its Pokemon Master challenge by finding all 151 of the pocket monsters. While we’re not too sure of what Mountain View is sending to the people who finished its challenge, we do know that it’s a physical item, because the company advised participants that it’ll take four to six weeks for their reward to arrive.

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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk3oc1Hr62g]

With Google’s self-driving car project now having racked-up 700,000 miles – most of them on freeways – the company is now focusing on teaching the cars to cope with the far greater number of variables found on city streets … 
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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-lMnhiAzEw]

Ahead of its Google I/O developer conference this summer, Google today posted three new videos to its Google Developers YouTube page giving us a taste of how the conference will be more focused on design this year. The company announced today that “design will be an important focus at this year’s conference” and it wants to get the conversation started with the new videos. 

At Google I/O this year, we will have sessions and workshops focused on design, geared for designers and developers who are interested in design. We’re looking forward to exchanging ideas with you both at the conference and online afterwards. Remember, registration is open until Friday and details on Google I/O Extended events are coming soon. 

In the first video, Google designer Isabelle Olson talks how she and team took the original Glass prototypes and turned them into the product you know today. Two other videos (below) have Googlers walk through recent redesigns of Maps and Search while talking design philosophy. 
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Google is considering giving higher search rankings to websites that use security encryption, according to The Wall Street Journal. If true, this could force more websites to adopt a secure setup, possibly making it harder for cyber criminals to spy on web users. This new idea was recently mentioned at a conference by Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team. Still under consideration, if Google decides to move forward with this process, a change reportedly won’t happen for quite a while. 

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The Wall Street Journal reports that Google has struck a deal with startup Room 77 to boost its current hotel search efforts. The company, which makes hotel-booking software, will be joining Google’s hotel-search team that is currently working various efforts related to Google’s Hotel Finder product. In addition, Google is said to have also struck deals to “add more hotel-related content to its search results, including photos and room rate and availability information.”
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College Humor is back by popular demand with a yet another look at the far too realistic personification of the search engine in the sequal to its “If Google Was a Guy” video. Certain questions prompt a camera appearance by the ominous NSA. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Bing makes a guest appearance as a pristine but vacant office employee. The parallels drawn are undeniable. Watch it below:
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You may have noticed that in recent weeks Google has been testing a new streamlined search results page that introduces some notable design tweaks. Google has been testing the new and improved design for select users but now Google’s lead designer for search Jon Wiley has made things official by announcing the changes are rolling out to all desktop users. The improvements reflect much of the same changes the company introduced to its mobile search experience last year.

While the general look and feel of the results page hasn’t changed much, Google said the tweaks it has made will result in enhanced readability and “an overall cleaner look.” Here’s what you’ll notice:
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Photo: Li Xin for AFP/Getty Images

The Washington Post reports that Google has begun automatically encrypting web searches carried out in China to defeat government monitoring and censorship, and plans to continue rolling out the program globally to prevent monitoring by the NSA.

China’s Great Firewall, as its censorship system is known, has long intercepted searches for information it deemed politically sensitive. Google’s growing use of encryption there means that government monitors are unable to detect when users search for sensitive terms, such as “Dalai Lama” or “Tiananmen Square,” because the encryption makes them appear as indecipherable strings of numbers and letters … 
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CNET is reporting that Google is set to announce a smartwatch next month, manufactured by LG (who also manufactured the two most recent Nexus phones). The device is described as the Nexus of smartwatches, with Google controlling the design of software and hardware.

Although Google will announce the product in March, the watch will not be released until June at Google I/O. As 9to5Google reported last year, Google’s smartwatch will revolve around Google Now’s assistant features with voice playing a major role in how users interact with the product.

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With so much of what is offered on Valentine’s Day feeling contrived and commercial, today’s U.S. Google doodle provides a rather heartwarming antidote, allowing you to listen to real-life love stories from This American Life.

Click on any of the hearts to play the story, narrated by Ira Glass. If you enjoyed those, you can subscribe to the free weekly This American Life podcast on iTunes … 
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Google today rolled out a minor update to its Search app on Android. The update doesn’t add a lot, but does make the voice recognition functionality even better. With the update, you can now assign titles to people in your contacts. For example, you can say “Ok Google, call Mom” and it will either call the number that you have assigned to your mom, or prompt you to choose who you want to be labeled as your mom and remember that option for future use. The funcationaily also works for texting. Simply say “Ok Google, send a text to my wife” and the Search app will pull up the wife contact. Officially, the app supports the following relationships: father / dad, mother / mom, brother, sister, cousin, niece, nephew, aunt, uncle, grandmother / grandma, grandfather / grandpa, wife, husband, girlfriend, and boyfriend.

Want to save time keeping in touch with your loved ones? Or just not drop your phone or your shopping bags whilst you try to find a number to make a call? You can skip scrolling through your contacts and just say to your Android phone “Ok Google, call Mom” or “Ok Google, send a text to my wife.” Starting now, the Google search app on your Android phone will be able to pull up the right contact for you—and if you don’t have Mom saved as “mom,” it’ll help you set that up quickly.

The update appears to be a staged rollout, so it may take a little while to appear on your device. Keep an eye on the Play Store.