The Beast Grows Driving Abilities

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So if you haven’t seen Google Beast you should – quite frightening in time for Halloween.

One of the latest things to make it out from under the wraps of the beast is that Google developed a process/software/robots/whoknowswhat to drive cars!!!

What this means is one day my dream may come true and I may never have to drive again! I can leave my worries at home and have a nice little robot zip me around town. It appears that we will need to pay attention, but you do not actually have to drive. I’m a really good back-seat driver so this could work out exceptionally well. Now what makes this extra crazy is that I read in another story that the robot car only had one accident within X miles and that was due to another car rear-ending the Google Car!

I think this Google Car has some implications for search, because imagine if this idea comes to fruition you can input your destination into the interface and imagine how many ads and ‘detour’s Google’s car can make past local advertisers to maximize their advertising dollars.

Google runs between 50-200 tests at a time

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It seems like we will be addicted to Google forever. I came across this article about Google and how it’s testing Full Page Previews in its search. From the screen shots in the article, you can see that the feature allows users to view a miniature version of a page before you click on it. If you have the tool enabled, simply hold your mouse over a link to see it in action.

What does this mean for PPC and SEO? I guess we will just have to wait and see. According to the article, a Google spokesperson said in an email, “At any given time we are running between 50-200 search experiments.”

-Kristina Zhao

I Usually Like My Ban(d)s to Play Music!

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Apparently Google, who usually pride themselves on open source and a lack of censorship have banned certain words from Google Instant.

What are these words you ask? Well CNN via Mashable via 2600 has a rundown of some of the words which include “bisexual”, “lesbian” and “butt”.  If you attempt to type any of the listed terms into Google –  Google’s new Instant Search will stop delivering new results – forcing a user to finish typing and press enter to see search results. The algorithm that blocks these terms for Google Instant also blocks these terms within Google Suggest as well.

Google’s intent is to block previous offensive searches to pop up for users who are searching more “innocent” terms.

This safe block on Google Instant search, however, has the potential to offend activist groups. A Google representative maintains that they are working to fully improve the system.