Earlier today, Google unveiled the next evolution of its search engine. Considering that Google searches account for about 85% of the worlds search engine traffic, even small tweaks are headline news.  But Google is calling this latest development “… a quantum leap for search.” So the buzz surrounding this is going to be massive. But some of the doomsday SEO people are getting a little bit nuts.

What is Google Instant?

With the ‘old’ Google, you typed a search query and then clicked the ‘search’ button to begin returning results. Refining your search meant performing a series of individual queries to narrow the results. Google did prompt users with hints, but each query still resulted in its own unique results.

With Instant, Google tries to predict what you are searching for before you even finish typing. The search page is refreshed with dynamic results in real time based on the characters you’ve typed so far. So instead of browsing pages of results, you know in a fraction of a second if your search is on-target. (Google claims to save its users 11 hours every second with the new service.) The effect is almost instant feedback that seemingly reads your mind.

How does it work?

Google has apparently reworked their entire search mechanism to facilitate this feature. A combination of indexed pages and cached searches allows Google to predict what you’re searching for and selectively narrow and prioritize results. Then these results are updated in real time using AJAX.

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Some SEO “experts” are saying it is too early to worry about search engine optimization for Microsoft’s recently launched search engine, Bing.  However, that wait and see attitude may be a mistake and a lost opportunity.

Bing.com

In the two months since it’s launch, Bing has earned respect in the high stakes battle with search engine giants Google and Yahoo.  The New York Times has an interesting article on Bing’s credibility.

The jury is still out on the long term impact, but Bing is clearly beginning to change the expectations of web searchers, and will only increase the importance of search engine optimization for businesses. Continue Reading →

How do you capture the performance of a song without lights and a camera? This is the challenge that the British band Radiohead took on when they created their latest music video for the song “House of Cards.” They used rotating laser scanners to capture the 3D images. It’s way too techy for me to explain here, so you’re better off watching the “making of” video.

The performance close-ups kind of remind me of pin art.

Apparently, it wasn’t enough for them to cut out the music industry middle men with their 2007 “pay what you want” download distribution of their last album In Rainbows. Now they want to put camera crews out of work!

They get points for innovation, but see if you think it was worth the effort.