Tag Archives: custom-search

Smartphones Driving Non-Voice Communications

Posted on November 18, 2009 by admin

The increase in mobile device usage for non-voice communications, such as text messages, email and Internet access is being driven primarily by the popularity of smartphones, according to a new study by BIA/Kelsey. BIA/Kelsey's Mobile Market View study, found 18.5 percent of consumers searched the Internet for products or services in their local areas, up from 15.6 percent in 2008, and 16.7 percent visited a social network such as MySpace or Facebook, up from 9.6 percent in 2008. "This third wave of our Mobile Market View study confirms several key trends taking shape in the rapidly evolving mobile advertising space," said Steve Marshall, director of research and consulting, BIA/Kelsey . "Not the least among these trends is that mobile is quickly developing into a viable platform for local commercial activity." Among the heaviest mobile users, 48.2 percent sent or received more than 10 text messages per week and 21 percent accessed the Internet more than 10 times per week. Searches for local products or services now surpasses out-of-market searches by a wide margin. Among consumers using mobile devices: Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged bia/kelsey, consumer, custom-search, facebook, google-launches, mobile, mobile-market, review and story, search, smartphones | Leave a comment

Bing Gets More Mobile Features in The US

Posted on November 2, 2009 by admin

Microsoft has launched some new features for the mobile version of the Bing search engine, which is available at m.bing.com . These include features related to the NFL and to travel. The NFL feature lets the user type a team or player and see upcoming games, stats, and scores. If you use the feature while a game is being played, you can get real-time updates on the plays. The feature is only available in the U.S. The second feature is for flight status. You can enter the airline and flight number and get the latest departure and landing times. In addition to these, there is also a new feature that makes Bing work better with touch devices. "Great news for you touch phone owners in the U.S.: we have a new version of Bing just for high-resolution touch devices," says Justin Jed for Bing Mobile. "We optimized for touch navigation to make the most of your phone, and added a great new Movies feature. Search for Movies in your city, and you’ll see the movies playing nearby, showtimes, overviews, and even trailers and video clips." To use the touch version, just go to m.bing.com from an iPhone, Zune HD, T-Mobile G-1, Verizon Imagio, or Samsung Omnia. Microsoft says that support for additional devices over the next couple of months. Related Articles: > Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged city, custom-search, facebook-cooks, google-launches, mobile, mobile-features, new feature, search-engine, t mobile, voice | Leave a comment

Mobile Phone Market Shows Signs Of Improvement

Posted on October 30, 2009 by admin

The global mobile phone market saw slight growth in the third quarter, according to IDC's Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker. Year-on-year growth remained negative, but improved from the first half of 2009. Mobile shipments totaled 287.1 million units worldwide in Q3, down from 6 percent from the previous year, but up 5.6 percent from the second quarter. "The mobile phone market is showing the first signs of improvement since the onset of the economic crisis," said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC's Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team. "During the third quarter, we saw a number of channels promoting older devices at significantly lower prices. For many, this was enough to spur demand and push volumes higher. Now that we have moved into the fourth quarter, vendors are setting the stage for further gains by launching their flagship devices to meet pent-up demand." The North American market posted mixed results for Q3. The United States posted positive results, with mobile devices and prepaid handsets once again driving growth. The Canadian mobile phone market declined for the third straight despite double-digit mobile device growth. Nokia took the top spot in market share with 37.8 percent, but its year-on year growth dipped 8 percent. Samsung landed in the second spot with 21 percent market share and positive year-on-year growth of 15.9 percent. Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged apps, custom-search, fourth, google-launches, mobile phone market, nokia, review and story, since-the-onset, technology | Leave a comment

Google Does Some New Things with Custom Search

Posted on October 27, 2009 by admin

Last week Google's Custom Search offering turned 3, and the company launched Custom Search for smartphones. Now Google has launched a couple of additional features for Custom Search, as well as a Custom Search Wikipedia skin. When a Wikipedia user enables the Custom Search skin, he/she will be able to use Google Custom Search across all Wikipedia articles for a given topic and find relevant pages linked from the Wikipedia page that he/she is currently on. Search results will appear inline at the top of the Wikipedia page. Results are organized into 3 tabbed groups: All Wikipedia pages, Linked Wikipedia pages, and Linked non-Wikipedia pages. " Linked Custom Search enables the creation of dynamic search experiences, where the content being searched can be defined on the fly, and can change over time as new information becomes relevant," explains Google. "The Custom Search skin creates a Linked Custom Search engine on demand for every Wikipedia page that you navigate to." More on that here . Google has also now introduced "structured" custom search. If you use a Custom Search Element , you can now add publisher-provided links to your search results based on specific metadata markup in your web pages. "These special structured data objects, such as Thumbnails and Actions, are generated from the PageMaps you provide," Google says. "For example, Scribd , one of our partners, provides both Thumbnails and Actions in PageMaps on their pages, so we display both of these in our sample Custom Search engine , as shown below. The Actions in this case are 'Download' and 'Fullscreen View', but each publisher can provide customized actions, which they can also style via CSS." More on that here . Finally, Google has launched Custom Search Themes. Users can choose from a number of different styles. They can also customize them further by changing fonts, colors, backgrounds, etc. "You can also select from among a set of convenient layouts for full flexibility on the location of the search box and results - contiguous or in 2 columns - you decide!" says Google. "We've even added a compact layout (with only 4 results) that is useful for websites where space is at a premium and search results will not occupy the whole page." Learn more about Google's Custom Search Themes here . Related Articles: > Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged actions, Business, css, custom, custom-search, google-custom, google-launches, linked, linked-custom, location, search | Leave a comment

Google Launches Custom Search For Smartphones

Posted on October 23, 2009 by cgseo

Google has launched Custom Search for smartphones. This means that if you own a site and add a Google Custom Search box to it, it will format search results to fit the screens of supported mobile devices. The following devices are supported: - Android-powered phones - iPhone - iPod Touch - Palm Pre When users search on a site with Google's Custom Search box, they are redirected to a Google-hosted Custom Search results page created specifically for the siteowner's custom engine. If webmasters would rather serve the results from their own site, however, Google does give that option. They can host their own version of the mobile Custom Search home page. "You can test this out on your phone right now. Here are a few samples: search for user-generated content (e.g., search for "zakumi") from sites like Wikipedia or Knol, or look for more information on Custom Search (e.g., search for "promotion")," says Google Search Group Product Manager Rajat Mukherjee. "As you can see, Custom Mobile Search results can match the look and feel of your own website, and we've enabled interactive features, such as label tabs for navigation, as well as promotions ." More information about setting up custom search for mobile can be found here in this post from the Custom Search blog. The addition of custom search for smartphones should make a lot of people happy. The company says one of its most requested features in a Product Ideas survey was about enabling a mobile version of custom search. Google says that more features will be coming soon. Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged custom-mobile, custom-search, from-the-custom, googel-custom, google-custom, google-search, group-product, ideas, phone, review and story, search | Leave a comment