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Bing eyes Desktop Search Market

May 11, 2012February 4, 2017 Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

Microsoft’s search engine is one of the lesser known search engines on the web. With lesser known I mean that its far behind in terms of market share with respect to the market leader – Google.

One thing that seems to be working in their favour though, is the So.cl is doing better than G+. Now, in an attempt to nudge out Google from the King of Search Engines, Microsoft has rolled out a new update with their Windows platform. The Bing Desktop.

Good features, and I do recommend this because I like beautiful wallpapers on my desktop :), is that Bing auto-changes the desktop on my Windows. It’s a simple feature, but its different from what Google Desktop does. The rest of the features are pretty much the same as Google Desktop (including the search bar when you hit Ctrl twice).

Google increased their business by focusing on their main product – Search. I think Microsoft is taking a page from that strategic move … focus on pushing products via their flagship product – Windows.

Google’s Zerg Rush Easter Egg

April 27, 2012February 4, 2017 Prasad Ajinkya3 Comments

I had earlier written about Google’s Easter Eggs, but the one I found about today was too good to resist.

For the uninitiated, Zerg is a race in the hit Blizzard series – Starcraft (its a RTS). In both Starcraft and Starcraft II, there is a common Zerg strategy of Rushing. A rush is where you send in a small squad of soldiers early on in the game to wreck havoc in your opponents economy. The Zerg Rush is particularly effective since you can execute it within the first 3 minutes of the game.

OK, now back to this post, heres what you do –

Go to Google.com
Type in Zerg Rush
Watch as a swarm of Google O’s attack your search results!
Defend against the swarm and See how many can you get before your search results are wiped out

I did 61 :)

Google Search Update

April 23, 2012February 4, 2017 Prasad Ajinkya2 Comments

I had earlier posted about a starters guide to SEO. Back then my understanding of this was also developing and the only way I could add to my understanding of the subject was via experiments … that I carried out on this blog, and also at work.

Finally, we did arrive at a scalable solution. A solution for SEO which could easily be replicated and scaled for almost all my target keywords. Out of a target 5000+ keywords, we managed to get in the top 10 for a decent 3000 of them, and would have proceeded to touch base upon all of them as well (do remind me to release this as well!)

Had it not been for the upcoming Google, I would have went ahead with the plan. However, the new update effectively means that all black hat SEO tactics (which the Indian SEO industry is famous for) will be negatively penalized. So throw your keyword stuffing, badly written English to match your keywords, slightly different versions to match the keyword variants, and link submissions out of the best practices window.

I wonder what would be the extent of the penalty levied by the new algorithm on sites which are already way ahead on their link submissions. Getting those links off the 1000 or so directories is going to be tough!!

Here’s a parting thought, that Google Search is embedded in so many Digital Strategist’s plans, that people are not even considering to optimize their pages for other search engines (such as Bing). Isn’t it great how being a market leader can impact an entire industry?

Note to Self – Learn about Bing optimization and work on generating search traffic from Bing.

Google Search Easter Eggs

November 6, 2011May 6, 2018 Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

The good folks at Google have a great sense of humor. Ever since the launch of GMail on the 1st of April, and the subsequent April Fool jokes, we are always guessing what hidden joke lurks in each of the Google products. Here are some of them that I have found, you can check them out too!

I am also including some of the outputs, which you can try by yourself as well!

Do a Barrel Roll

Search this term in Google search, and watch the fun as the search queries take a tumble, and literally does a barrel roll!

Askew

Search this term in Google search, and see the screen go askew!!

Ascii Art

Search for this, and the Google logo shows you what Ascii Art is all about!

Recursion

Have you noticed that when search on Google, if you do typographical mistakes, Google corrects you by asking you “Did you mean <corrected spelling>”. Try searching recursion on Google!

There are more such easter eggs in Google, but they are time bound (for example searching football during the Soccer World Cup would give you an interested Pagination navigation on Google).

As a bonus, try this out in your Google Reader – up up down down left right left right b a b a (and beware of the ninja!).

Adobe and Apple: The feeling is mutual

October 21, 2010May 6, 2018 Prasad Ajinkya3 Comments

I was on Google Suggest, and it’s wonderful what little insights you can get on how and what are people searching for – go figure!

Google Fonts!

June 18, 2010January 2, 2018 Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

Came across Google Webfonts, decided to try it out on this blog.

Instructions are pretty simple, as long as you are using CSS on your site. Otherwise you will be forced to CSSify your site first before implementing Google’s webfonts.

Include the Google Font definition in your head section, and simply update the “font-family” attribute in your body CSS definition to the desired font family.

Pretty simple and elegant. Trust Google to come up with this.

PS – A friendly visitor also pointed me to this guide on fonts.

Do a Barrel Roll

Askew

Ascii Art

Recursion

How to