Google minus Google v2 launched
Google minus Google, a search engine that lets you Search with Google without getting results from Google sites such as Knol, Blogger and YouTube has become an unexpected hit. After the launch on Monday thousands of people from all over the world have used the tool and it has been a topic in numerous blog posts and discussions on Friendfeed.
After the launch, several people have suggested that I should have used Google Custom Search (cse) to do the job. After some hard detective work I have swithed to CSE. Detective work - you ask? Yes, the reason for my initial solution to just use the basic Google search engine and remove the google sites in the query (using “-site:google.com etc”) was not technical. I needed to gather all the domains Google owns before I could use cse.** The list of Google domains in the exclude list of Google minus Google contains more than 2500 domain names. And it needed some work to compile. I’m sure I have missed something, though.
Enjoy the new and more useful version two of Google minus Google.
** For you techies out there: cse doesn’t allow wildcard usage in the top level domain (like google.*), but it can be used in the normal query.
Google Minus Google: Google Search Results Without Content From Google
Inspired by an article in NYT about Google becoming a media company, I decided that something had to be done. So I created a way to Search with Google without getting results from Google sites such as Knol, Blogger and YouTube.
The result is Google minus Google.
UPDATE: Google minus Google has gotten a huge start: 3000 visitors in the first day! The visitors came mainly through a few Finnish IT news sites: Digitoday, that interviewed me this morning, IT-Viikko and Tietoviikko. I’ve also updated the filters to include some Google domains: Jaiku, Gmail and Blogspot
UPDATE 2: Version 2 of the launched. Now built with Google Custom Search Engine.
UPDATE 3: Miguel Helft continued the original story in the New York Times blog with an article about Google minus Google. He had received a statement from Google: “For years, users have been able to customize their experience via the advanced search feature within web search, and we welcome all efforts that help deliver useful information and expand user choice.” So I guess I’m of the hook for now.
The Key To Succesful Startup PR: Build Trust Before You Need It
Brian Solis wrote a profound article on TechCrunch called PR Secrets for Startups. He lists many good tips all startups should know about public relations, including Understand You’re Not the Only Story in Town, Don’t Launch on Mondays and Measure Success, Not Traffic.
Many of his advice are very important for startups, where ever they are coming from. Solis writes about the role of the founder in attending and creating conversations and making contacts all the time.
As Solis points out, blogging is one natural way for a founder to get into the conversation. He should comment on other blogs and write articles that link back to his own or company blog. He should of course make contacts with journalists and bloggers at conferences and other networking events. Most importantly, and I can’t stress this enough, contacts should be made and the reputation built before they are needed.
One good example of Finnish startups that are active commentators on blogs and have a good blog of their own are they guys of Scred. I see their comments often at places like TechCrunch and Arctic Startup. But I believe that they could be even more active in their own blog. Other Finnish startups should definitely do the same.
Biggest Barrier For Startups: User Experience
Mukund Mohan wrote a great little article on the new barriers to adoption for your startup. These barriers have to do with the user experience and what are the minimum standards that the users expect. Of course the user expects the user experience of Google and the like.
The new barriers are:
- Application better work super FAST
- Instant gratification
- Allows users to make mistakes but still works
- Make the first impression seamless
These are difficult to overcome and a lot of startups fail to reach these goals and the users will punish them by never coming back. This doesn’t mean that they should not try, on the contrary. The user experience is what matters in determining the success of startups..
Read the whole article: the new barriers to adoption for your startup.
Startups from Finland: VerticeTree Creates Business From of Social Networks
VerticeTree is a Finnish startup founded in October 2007 that offers “Research, technology and consulting for online and mobile social networks”.
Their offering is divided into three areas: Network analysis and visualization (Analyzing and visualizing your most valuable customers in social networks), Advertising experiments (pretesting of advertising -which is nothing new - and Facebook apps) and Social targeting of advertising which sounds somewhat similar what Facebook does with its Newsfeed and Beacon.
So far VerticeTree has created PlayFinland, which is a community (web site and a Facebook group) for the Finnish Game industry funded by Tekes and an interesting Facebook experiment on the network of one apps users. What VerticeTree is doing is very interesting and I’m really looking forward in hearing more from these guys in the future.
Smart Aggregation, Not Search or RSS, Is Key In Getting Valuable Traffic
Fred Wilson has shared where the traffic to his blog, A VC, comes from. He made an important notion on how the majority of users have come to his site through search engines, but their dominance has declined in the past year. He notes that an almost good a source has been from sites he calls smart aggregators. By these he means sites that aggregate either algorithmically (Techmeme) or through user behavior (Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon) the most important new articles. The importance of these aggregators will surely continue to grow especially in topics like technology.
As Fred mentions himself, the traffic from RSS-readers has not increased for him, because they just are too hard for the average user to use. I have to admit that I personally fall into the same category. It’s not that I don’t see the value of RSS-readers, it’s just better (easier, faster) for me to get a pre-prioritized list of the most important news and post through Techmeme or even Friendfeed.
For most publishers and bloggers getting traffic from these smart aggregators is more valuable than getting traffic from search engines using some random keywords. Fred Wilson correctly divides search engine results between “search bookmarks”, which should be counted as direct traffic, and real search. The importance of Search Engine Optimization is not diminishing: see my earlier post about the declining importance of URL’s in navigation as opposed to search.
Death Of The Domain Names Is Near
Or more correctly: the slow decline of the importance of domain names has begun. Cabel Sasser wrote an inspiring article about how in Japan they do not use URL’s on billboard ads, but instead they have pictures of search boxes with keywords. This is done beacause all the good domain names are already gone, but more importantly, as Snipperoo pointed out, people do not remember domain-names, instead they input the brand or product name into search boxes i.e. use search for navigation.
How many domain names do you remember?
When thinking about this I realized that domain names are becoming more like phone numbers, you need them to get to the right place, but nobody really remembers them anymore. The most important ones you have written down (bookmarked) and for the others you use the white pages (Google).
[via Techmeme]
[Original image from Cabel.name]
Teen Age Girls Will Take Over The Internet
New York Times has an article on the differences of online behavior between teenage girls and boys. The article is based on an earlier PEW research report Teens and Social Media that found that girls are more creative than boys online. Girls blog more, are more active on social networking sites, post more photos and create more websites of their own. The only area where boys are more creative is shooting and posting videos.
Read more…
6% of Users Are Responsible for 50% of Clicks on Ads
A new study conducted by Starcom, Tacoda and comScore aptly named “Natural Born Clickers” reveals that 6% of online users are responsible for 50% of all clicks on online ads.
Heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000. Heavy clickers behave very differently online than the typical Internet user, and while they spend four times more time online than non-clickers, their spending does not proportionately reflect this very heavy Internet usage. Heavy clickers are also relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites – a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers.
Twitter Ready for Main-Stream Competition?
Twitter is a great service. The microblogging platform is already the fastest media when it comes to technology and Silicon Valley related news. Twitter is proving to be more and more useful all the time.
It’s a shame Jaiku wasn’t able to keep its front runner position after being bought by Google. Jaiku is the very reason why Twitter hasn’t gotten picked up here in Finland at all, but Worldwide Twitter has close to 900k users (according to TwitDir) and has evolved to become the better service. Read more…
Subscribe
Follow me on Twitter