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Google has again shaken the Internet tree in a way that will raise more than a few eyebrows. In a nutshell, Google is reassessing its working relationship with the world’s largest potential market, China, as a result of recent security breaches. How this plays out over time could have significant impact on how China and the world get along economically. Google’s official blog gives an overview in the first paragraph of the post that is both informative and scary. Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different. How it was different is that the targets of much of security breach were Chinese activists (read: people who prefer freedom over censorship) who had Gmail accounts. A quick summary of the main points of this new approach to China from Google is summed up like this. It wasn’t just Google who was targeted and hit. There were 20 other US companies and they are apparently in the process of sorting this out themselves. Google states: “We have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves. “ There was routine third party access of Gmail accounts of human rights activists related to China who are based in China, US and Europe. This access is likely due to malware and phishing scams. Google then recommends for folks to be up to date on their security for their computers and is careful to “play nice” with China by saying In the last two decades, China’s economic reform programs and its citizens’ entrepreneurial flair have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. Indeed, this great nation is at the heart of much economic progress and development in the world today. They also point out that when they entered the Chinese market in 2006 they were doing it with a watchful eye. So what’s the result of this? These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China. The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised. So Google makes a stand that says they are not going to censor their results and if there is no way to reconcile then they may need to move on. While the Chinese people are clearly in favor of Baidu as their engine of choice , if Google were to say that they will not do business in China what kind of pressure does that place on other companies to possibly isolate the biggest and fastest developing market in the world? This could get interesting.

Link:
Google and China: Maybe They Can’t Get Along

Two weeks ago, it looked like Google might have been . . . well, fibbing. Back in June, the search engine announced that they would no longer redistribute “link juice” around nofollowed links , effectively deprecating the practice of PageRank sculpting. But late last month, it looked like the technique was still effective when SEOmoz published some research to that effect. Not so much, it turns out. Today, Mozzer Danny Dover revisits the tests he used in the original post and shows that the results were, in fact, inconclusive . The short reason is that the test didn’t include enough data to be statistically significant. He’d have to repeat the test with 168 domains (instead of the 20 he used) to assure that the results were meaningful and not merely a fluke. Apparently, there’s been some backlash against Danny and SEOmoz for their innaccurate information. Danny didn’t realize his error until Darren Slatten corrected him in the comments two days after the post had gone live. Naturally, it was too late to unring the bell—and a number of people were very upset that SEOmoz would post something misleading or outright wrong. In his correction post, Danny points out that this is just another example of the power of the Internet. I think it’s good that Danny did more than just update the old post, also publishing a new post to correct the misinformation (and apologize). Two weeks after the correction is fairly quick to reanalyze the data, though it’s possible he could have acted even faster. This is also a microstudy on reputation management and transparency, something we’re a little passionate about around here. As a reminder, back in August, Matt Cutts told SEOmoz that it’d be okay to keep nofollow links in place, though when building new sites or redesignin old ones, PageRank sculpting shouldn’t be a consideration. What do you think? Did everyone handle this situation well?

Read the original post:
Google Didn’t Lie After All

ForeSee Results has issued the results of its annual E-Retailer Satisfaction Index—a survey of 10,000 shoppers at the top 40 retailers—and the results are good—if you’re a big e-tailer. If not, well—let’s just say you’re pulling down the average. As the Wall Street Journal reports , the 40 largest online retailers averaged a satisfaction score of 79 on a scale of 100, up five points from the 2007 and 2008 steady results. But for their sample of over 100 large and small e-tailers, overall satisfaction was down to 73, off from 75 in 2008 and 77 in 2007. MediaPost adds an important finding, too: ForeSee’s research also finds that shoppers who are highly satisfied are 65% more likely to purchase online, 44% more likely to purchase offline, 70% more likely to recommend, and 49% more likely to return than a dissatisfied shopper. While satisfaction drives purchases, a leading indicator of satisfaction wasn’t competitive pricing or free shipping—but the website’s ease of use. ForeSee CEO Larry Freed noted that most of the top 40 also work hard to integrate their online experience with that of their offline brick-and-mortar. Only six of the top 40 are not associated with an offline retailer—with Amazon, the long-time satisfaction leader, one of those notable exceptions. (Amazon leads the satisfaction survey with its score of 87.) Web-only stores, Freed says, succeed when they make sure to include information such a product reviews and continually invest in their user experience, including the look and feel of the site. Naturally, the satisfaction index shows a strong positive correlation with sales. According to comScore reports, the top 25 retailers saw a 13% increase in holiday spending YOY, while small and medium companies saw a 10% decline. The overall holiday spending was up 4% over last year. What do you think? Were you more satisfied with online shopping this year? Do you use smaller retailers or do you tend to stay in the top 40? Photo credit: Joel Telling

Originally posted here:
Survey: Online Shopping Satisfies; Bigger is Better

What’s the name of that song? You know the one. They play it a lot at NC State football games? C’mon, you know it. “Boom, here comes the boom….” No? Forget it! I’ll Google it instead! Yes, that’s it! And, pretty soon, you’ll never have problems finding a song, artist, or album again–thanks to a new “Discover Music” onebox from Google. Maybe you remember only the chorus — or maybe you remember who sang it, but you forgot the exact name of the song. If you’ve ever heard a catchy song in a car or cafe, but just can’t figure out the name of the song, you’ll know what I’m talking about. This search feature also helps you find many of those songs by entering a search containing a line or two of lyrics. Cool, huh? Google has partnered with MySpace and Lala to source the results and Pandora, imeem, and Rhapsody are standing by to help you discover music related to your query. Not only does the Onebox show the result, but you can click the play button to activate the pop-up–and play the song! **Time out! Google is allowing pop-ups now? That’s the topic for a another blog post!** If you’re not seeing the results yet, Google has launched a music search site you can try out. The only thing missing? Maybe a partnership with Shazam , so I can play music to Google and have it recognize it–without me knowing anything about the song. That would be cool!

See the article here:
Google Hits a High Note with New Music Onebox

Search is changing very rapidly these days and it looks like we are going to need to buckle up to keep up with the changes and, even more likely, the rumored changes. Until I can use something myself (which means the rest of you can as well) then it is all rumor. Experimentation is the order of the day in search and especially as it relates to social search and the holy grail of real time search. Since bing and Google have both announced their deals with Twitter regarding using Twitter’s vaunted stream to allow the world to update us with whatever the world deems important (note: while that sounds valuable on the surface I think that getting through the spam and other crap is going to be a pretty big deal for the end user to stomach but that’s for another day I suppose) the talk is all about how we can harness this new age of on-demand information. Google’s Marissa Mayer informally rolled out a Google Labs experiment which was introduced yesterday and reported by TechCrunch At the Web 2.0 Summit today in San Francisco, Google’s Marissa Mayer unexpectedly came on stage to unveil a new product. She first announced that Google has also reached a deal with Twitter, which she wrote a blog post about earlier in the day, following the announcement that Bing and Twitter had done the same thing. But Mayer had more to share. There’s a new Google product called “Social Search” that is launching soon in Google Labs. This is a new feature that allows you to see results for queries from people in your social network. This works by using your Google Profile. If you fill it out with the other social networks you’re a member of, such as FriendFeed, Google will scan who you are connected to and give your results from those people. Nifty, I suppose. First, let’s define the people that are in many of these networks of ours. How many of them do we really know and also how many are reliable sources of any data to begin with. Not that this idea isn’t interesting it just seems that as we put more and more power into the hands of people with no experience there will be a degree of “train wreckiness” in the results. Also, as some people start to feel some power around being a source I suspect the limits of what is newsworthy will be stretched paper-thin pretty quickly. So enough of the negativity, right? This Google Labs thing could be interesting. It will work with your Google profile and be opt-in for now according to Mayer (which implies later on it won’t be? When it’s not, it will likely end up like the personalized search history that not many are aware of which means more data for Google. Yay.). So this should take place in the next few weeks and we’ll keep our eyes peeled for any updates. When it does happen are you interested?

Originally posted here:
Google’s Social Search for You and Yours