Google announced today that it has upgraded Google Social Search to now include social data from Twitter, Flickr and Quora. In the past you may not have even noticed social results as they typically showed up at the bottom of the SERP. Now they are going to be blended throughout the SERPs as you can …

Facebook created quite a stir (again) with the recent projection that its global revenues could surpass $4 billion in 2011 … the majority coming from small businesses that are self serving. Now Twitter is abuzz, as eMarketer predicts that top-line income will triple to more than $150 million in 2011, and surge to $250 million in 2012. Considering …

From the cool stuff department, Google’s Goggles mobile visual search tool can now read print ads and (the cool part) Sudoku boards.
As part of a new update that includes faster scans, Goggles will now recognize any newspaper or magazine ad in major publications printed after August 2010. This not only lets users inquire more about …

One of the principal questions in the local marketplace heading into 2011 is how location-based services (check-ins, barcode scanning) and deals will continue to synergize to create an integrated user experience? Just as important, what role will Google play?
An early clue may have turned up with SCVNGR nabbing a third round of funding, this one for $15 …

Following Google’s Carter Maslan at ILM:10 last week, we got to hear about Google Ventures’ investment parameters from partner Wesley Chan.
The fund invests in tech companies at every stage from seed to mezzanine. Its portfolio includes HomeAway, 23andMe, ngmoco, SCVNGR and other oddly punctuated names. But new to me was the fact that all of …

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, in his opening keynote at ILM:10, noted a general frustration with Google’s apparent de-emphasis of Yelp’s content, but said he sees major opportunity in mobile app access as a workaround of Google.
Stoppelman showed an example of a 2007 search that showed the vast majority of results coming from Yelp. “We loved …

Google is reportedly set to pay $5.3 billion for Groupon, a spectacular investment that would give The Big G a compelling way to get close to local businesses, leverage Gmail and really rev up a social media paradigm (as opposed to search).
The big price, if it is consummated, clearly is not based on the …

Google galvanized a lot of mainstream attention for the online-research-for-offline-purchases market with its recent rollout of Product Search. But with the total sales pie expected to eclipse $1 trillion in 2011, it’s a big enough playground for more than just the big G to stock store inventory online. Milo, which jumped into online-to-offline product search …

Content remains king on the Internet mainly because there are more ways to produce, connect and interact with content than ever before. According to Rod Smith of IBM, “there are more ways to dig into content than ever before, but it also produces more targeted ways for advertisers to interact with the audiences they are …

Over on our Local Media blog, we cover Google’s new “Hotpot” product. It essentially adds a social layer to local search, allowing users to connect to friends (Gmail contacts). Merchant ratings from you and your friends then govern personalized recommendations in search results.
This is a logical step for Google that joins a long line of recent …

Many of you have heard by now that Google has launched a social “layer” onto local search with the new Hotpot feature.
– Rate and review local businesses.
– Add friends from Google contacts (based on Gmail contacts).
– Both of the above points will govern the recommended places that surface in local search results.
– Friends and ratings …

October U.S. online video rankings from comScore reaffirm an established trend: Watching video online is a social exercise. Fueled by YouTube’s stranglehold on unique viewers, viewing sessions and minutes per viewer, Google posted dominant numbers, besting its closest competitor — Yahoo sites — by almost 93 million UVs and 1.7 billion viewing sessions. In total, …

Google has been telling anyone that will listen just how bullish it is on local/mobile commerce, and it has backed the bombast with a series of initiatives (Places, Place Search and Tags just to name three recent, relevant examples) to aggressively court SMBs and better connect with consumers at a neighborhood level. The latest is the formal …

Google announced today that it will add trackable numbers to AdWords campaigns. Known as AdWords Call Metrics, this will offer advertisers analytics on call activity such as total calls per campaign, origin, time of day and duration.
The underlying technology will be Google Voice and unique numbers will be assigned to businesses. These will be inserted …

Google today announced a rather significant change to its local search results and ranking algorithms. Dubbed Place Search, this provides more detailed information about places that match your search query and location (inferred or explicit).
This means a few things. First, it’s the official end of the famed 7 pack (formerly 10 pack) that Google launched at the beginning of …

In the ongoing developments of mobile bar code readers, Google recently launched a QR code generator for any Web site, based on its link shortener tool Goo.gl.
Link shortening incumbent bit.ly has now responded to Google’s entrance to its space by firing back with the same QR code generating feature.
This is ultimately good for users and …

This just in (via Bloomberg), Marissa Mayer, Google VP of search products, will switch roles and now head up all local and location products.
These are increasingly important areas of development for Google as evidenced by its public moves and conversations we’ve had with the company. The initiatives in this local bucket of course include Google …

Google announced today on its official blog that it will pull the plug on the very cool but underused GOOG-411 free directory assistance.
Underuse was not the cited reason though. As we’ve written many times since it launched in 2007, the service has the byproduct of refining Google’s speech-to-text processing. The fruits of this have been applied …

We’ve been paying lots of attention to the emerging fields of voice and visual search. This comes down to the notion that the mobile device has eyes and ears. As mobile search, apps and games evolve, they’ll better leverage these hardware realities, rather than replicate the desktop experience.
Besides augmented reality, voice search and bar-code scanners, …

Surojit Chatterjee announced today on Google’s Mobile Ads Blog that the company has launched a new format for hyperlocal mobile ads.
After searching for a business, ads will now tell you how far the closest location is, indicated by both text and a collapsible map view. This builds on Google’s Local Extensions program that allows businesses …