Michael Arrington over at Techcrunch has a video showing some new experimental Google features.

It allows people to vote and comment on search results.

This works very much like the Social News website Digg where people can vote, promote and comment on stories.

This could just be a sandbox experiment for Google or an early peak at the future of user driven Internet search.

User created input/content is at the heart of popular web sites like Wikipedia and Digg so the concept is well established.

At the core this turns Google into a popularity contest. It will turn Google search results into a Ebay style rating system where “98% of people think the link is good”.

There is nothing better than a personal recommendation, so would user input on search results make for better search?

Overall I would say yes.

Check the video fascinating stuff.

Link: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/16/is-this-the-future-of-search/

Google’s Matt Cutts has a brief Video Interview over at USA today about the basics of getting your site into Google, he also dispels some common myths.

The written article on the link below is also very useful for someone looking for entry level tips about search engines. It covers what you need to do to your content to get ranked.

Video and Article Link:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/services/2008-06-22-google-search-engine-optimization_N.htm

Matt has his own site where he publishes some “good to know” information.

Link: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

Google have updated their easy to read guide “Making the Most of your Content”.

It comprises a 13 page PDF that explains in easy to understand language some of the more complicated aspects of what Google does with your content in their search engine.

Ideal for anyone who has an interest in these things.

The last page is a Glossary explaining all the terms like Crawling and Page Rank.

Link: http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/press/files/webmaster-guide-en.pdf

I had never heard of Udi Manber before. He is the chap in charge of “Search Quality” over at Google.

He gave Popular Mechanics a recent interview in the form of a Question and Answer session over 20 questions.

Some tidbits:

“Last year we made over 450 improvements to the algorithm”

“At Google we do not manually change results. For example, if we find for a particular query that result No. 4 should be result No. 1, we do not have the capability to manually change it.”

This makes for fascinating reading for anyone with a passing interest in Google and search.

Also covered: Privacy, user expectations and Social Networking and search.

Link: http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/technology_news/4259137.html

Yes, now you can.

In business most people use Microsoft Outlook to manage their diary.

At home for say a family or personal calendar using Google Calendar would be the way to go.

But up until now the two competing calendars did not have a synchronisation model to share information between them.

Google have just announced a Sync tool that allows this.

It works like this:-

2-Way: info goes both ways.

or

1-Way either Up or Down. From Outlook to Google, or Google to Outlook.

Example of how this might be handy:-

If my partner wanted to see if I was available to go to a parents event at school, today she does not know my availability as this information is stored in my Outlook calendar. However If I synced my Outlook Calendar with Google I could give her access to view my calendar online and she would be able to view it.

I would imagine this might also be a way for small businesses to utilise shared Outlook/Google calendaring especially those that don’t have Microsoft Exchange.

Link: http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=89955