duminică, 29 august 2010

Clean up extra url parameters when searching Google

Clean up extra url parameters when searching Google: "

You know when you do a Google search and get all those extra url parameters that crowd things up? “ie” and “hl” and so on? I hate that, because I often copy and email Google urls, and I try to clean up the url by removing all those extra params each time.


You can fix this annoyance in Chrome. Right-click on the address bar and select “Edit Search Engines…” (You can also edit the search engines via the Options menu.) You can either edit the Google option or add a new entry; I added a new entry. Added: you can’t edit the entry for Google, so you have to make a new entry. I set the URL field to be “{google:baseURL}search?q=%s” (without the quotes).


Now when you search for [flowers] the url is just http://www.google.com/search?q=flowers . Ah, nice clean urls in the browser bar. :)


Update: Chrome expert and fellow Googler Peter Kasting points out in the comments that “Doing this results in no more NavSuggest or Search Suggest in the omnibox dropdown — a real quality loss. NavSuggest especially is extremely valuable.” Peter has a good point: search suggestions can be very helpful. It’s up to you to decide whether you prefer search suggestions or a clean Google url. For most people who don’t cut-and-paste Google urls all day long, it’s probably better to stick with the default search option that gives you search suggestions.


"

Call for spam reports in five languages

Call for spam reports in five languages: "

I recently returned from a vacation to Japan, Hong Kong, and Thailand. It was a ton of fun and I hope to blog about it at some point — each country was of course unique and each offered different, wonderful experiences. From the cherry blossoms and the kindness shown to me by my colleagues at the Google Tokyo office in Japan, to the hustle and bustle and skyscrapers of Hong Kong, to the beautiful landscapes, people (and elephants!) of Thailand, I relished every minute. The trip also redoubled my interest in webspam in world-wide languages. :)


Google has always cared about search quality in dozens of languages, not just English. We’re trying a new experiment in webspam: we decided to identify five languages where we’d really like to drill down into webspam, solicit spam reports in those languages, and pay even more attention to spam reports in those languages over the next couple months. If you know of spam in these languages, we’d especially like to hear about it.


The five languages where we’re asking for spam reports are Thai, Indonesian, Romanian, Czech, and Farsi. Of course, we always welcome webspam reports — in any language! — at http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport but we’d be especially interested to hear about spam in Thai, Indonesian, Romanian, Czech, and Farsi. If you know of webspam in those languages, please let us know, and thanks!


"

Site review for Google I/O attendees

Site review for Google I/O attendees: "

If you’re attending Google I/O next week then you might enjoy the SEO site review session that we’ll be doing. If you’ll be attending Google I/O, you can now submit your website for review. I’ll also include the form below:


Added 5/20/2010: The site review is today and we’ve already gotten over 500 sites submitted, so I’m removing the form submission.


By the way, if you’re attending Google I/O you’ll probably want to install the very spiff Android app for it. You can search for [Google I/O] in the Android Market. And if you want to know what to expect in the SEO site review session, here’s the video from the panel we did last year:



If you see me at Google I/O, please say hello and tell me what you wish Google would do that we’re not doing. :)


Added: Note that sites and comments submitted to this form may be publicly reviewed in our site review session.


"

Live-blogging (okay live-waving) Day 1 of Google I/O Keynote

Live-blogging (okay live-waving) Day 1 of Google I/O Keynote: "

Okay, I’m going to try live-blogging the keynote of Google I/O, but I’m doing it with a twist. I’m going to try live-blogging in Google Wave with some other folks.


Watch the live-stream video at http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleDevelopers by the way.


Lots of folks will be live-blogging or waving. Here is a different live wave with Gina Trapani, Kevin Marks, Leo Laporte, and Adam Pash, for example.


Danny Sullivan will be live-blogging the keynote over on Search Engine Land. I believe that Tom Krazit is live-blogging the keynote for CNET too.


Here goes my live-wave:




"

Live-buzzing Day 2 of the Google I/O keynote

Live-buzzing Day 2 of the Google I/O keynote: "

Okay, today I’m going to try something different again. I’m going to try live-buzzing the keynote of Day 2 of Google I/O. You can follow the live-buzz right here.


I’m going to update the buzz as news comes out; if you’re following on the web instead of on Buzz, you might need to hit reload to see updates.


Watch the live-stream video at http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleDevelopers by the way.


Check out other live-blogging from:

- Engadget

- Search Engine Land

- A live-wave from Lifehacker

- New York Times

- Wall Street Journal


I believe it should be fine to say that I think you’ll like the speed and polish of Froyo. :)


"

A few thoughts on SSL Search

A few thoughts on SSL Search: "

I’m incredibly happy that Google has added the option to search over SSL by going to https://www.google.com/ — note the “s” in “https.” I’m writing this blog post in a hotel right now because I’m in Europe for a week doing a series of tech talks, but I could just as easily be working down at local Dublin cafe with an open WiFi hotspot. In both cases, I might want to do a private search that the hotel or local cafe can’t see. A Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connection provides an encrypted tunnel between my browser and Google, so other people can’t sniff what I’m searching for.


I believe encrypted search is an important option for Google searchers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked for secure search in the past (see this post from 2009), and I credit them for helping to put this on Google’s radar. Another inspiration that helped to spark this project was Cory Doctorow’s book “Little Brother.” It was one of my favorite books of 2008 and while I won’t go into the book’s plot here, it’s a quick, fun read. “Little Brother” also makes a compelling case for encrypting HTTP traffic on the web.


Some people don’t yet fully understand how SSL search works. I saw one commenter sayIf they still pass in the search parameters in the URL (Get), what’s the point? People can still see what you queried, if they made them “post” messages it might actually do something.” It’s important to realize that even though you as a surfer can see the query in the url, the sites between your browser and Google can’t. Google OS demonstrated that by sniffing a regular HTTP query and an HTTPS query in Wireshark to show that the query can’t be seen going over the wire.


Thanks to all the people at Google who did the all the hard work and heavy lifting to deliver this. One of the main engineers behind the effort was Evan Roseman, a member of the webspam team who you might have met at previous search conferences. In fact, Evan was originally scheduled to be on our site review session at Google I/O this past Thursday, but we decided that launching SSL search took priority. :) I also wanted to say thanks and congratulations to the other Googlers (for example Andrew Widdowson, Nathan Dabney, and Murali Viswanathan, but also many, many others) who generously gave their time and effort to make the launch happen and happen smoothly. You might think that switching on SSL for websearch is easy, but for a website with the complexity and scale of Google, it’s really not. The launch wouldn’t have happened without a ton of assistance from Googlers from many parts of the company, and I sincerely appreciate it.


I hope you enjoy https://www.google.com and find it useful.


"

Help me pick my new 30 day challenge

Help me pick my new 30 day challenge: "

Okay, I’ve finished roughly a year of 30 day challenges, and now I’d like your help picking new ideas. So far, I’ve done:

- 30 days with no TV (May)

- 30 days of 10,000 steps each day (June)

- 30 days biking into work (July)

- reading 15 books in 30 days (I only made it to 12) (August)

I took September off. I had a bunch of work I had to focus on.

- 30 days with no Microsoft software or operating systems (October)

- 30 days without Robert Scoble (November). I like Robert a lot; this was kind of a no-op/easy 30 day challenge to force me to find additional people that I’m interested in online.

- 30 days with no caffeine (December)

- 30 days with no Twitter or FriendFeed (January)

- 30 days with no iPhone (February)

- 30 days with no sugar (March). That was hard. My wife and I did this one together and it was the roughest.

- 30 days without replying to external email (April). This one was hard and I wasn’t perfect, but I got in much better balance on time spent on email.

- 30 days with no Facebook (May). This one was another easy one for me. I never used Facebook that much in the first place.


So what should I do now? So far I’m playing with two ideas:

- no email after 10 p.m. Email remains the biggest part of my life where I lack balance, and I still need to get it more under control.

- read 50 pages a day. This is one that my wife has been doing, and she’s been enjoying it.


Other possibilities include:

- 30 days as a vegetarian.

- read the Bible (or the Qur’an) in 30 days. I’ve never read either all the way through.

- 30 days of trying to learn to play guitar.

- meditate 10-15 minutes a day for 30 days.

- try one new thing a day for 30 days.

- draw something everyday for 30 days.

- try polyphasic sleep for 30 days.

- go 30 days spending as little money as possible.

- learn as much of a new language as possible in 30 days.

- 30 days to get my finances in order (I haven’t really paid attention to financial stuff as much as I should).

- try to write a novel/book in 30 days.

- write down one thing I’m thankful for each day for 30 days.


Okay, those are a few that I’ve come up with. Tell me your suggestions and then I might put up a poll to let people vote. :)


"