Words that appear more often in the results appear as bigger, bolder tags that you can click on to re-start the query with that word tacked on. The creators recommend dialing up the number of default search results to 100, which may make your searches slightly slower but result in a much more accurate tag cloud. This can be done from the user preferences in both Google and Yahoo.

In addition to standard Google and Yahoo searches the extension works on Google News both for keywords and locations. It also works for Google Blog search in a really neat way by adding tags for each author that you can click on to filter which posts come up.

Search Cloudlet is an experimental add-on and does not yet work on the latest beta of Firefox 3.1.

Google and Yahoo search results get smart tag clusters that let you narrow down results with Firefox extension Search Cloudlet.

That shorthand didn’t work very well for the U.S. Supreme Court, and
it’s not working that well for Google, as a report in Monday’s editions
of the Wall Street Journal made clear. The article
said that Google “has approached major cable and phone companies” with
a plan to “place Google servers directly within the network of the
service providers,” in apparent violation of the company’s
long-standing exhortations that Net neutrality means
everything-must-be-treated-equally.

Google promptly replied to the Journal in a post Sunday evening by Richard Whitt, its Washington telecom counsel. Whitt dubbed the Journal story “confused” and “hyperbolic,” and offered this elaboration:

Google has offered to “colocate” caching servers within broadband
providers’ own facilities; this reduces the provider’s bandwidth costs
since the same video wouldn’t have to be transmitted multiple times.
We’ve always said that broadband providers can engage in activities
like colocation and caching, so long as they do so on a
non-discriminatory basis.

All of Google’s colocation agreements with ISPs — which we’ve done
through projects called OpenEdge and Google Global Cache — are
non-exclusive, meaning any other entity could employ similar
arrangements. Also, none of them require (or encourage) that Google
traffic be treated with higher priority than other traffic. In
contrast, if broadband providers were to leverage their unilateral
control over consumers’ connections and offer colocation or caching
services in an anti-competitive fashion, that would threaten the open
Internet and the innovation it enables.

Perhaps the Journal was hasty; the story dwelt little on
the technology being used (which is the heart of the matter), included
little comment from Google itself, didn’t mention caching, and mostly
explored what this could mean for Washington politicking next year.

But if there’s a bit of confusion here, that’s to be expected. Much
like pornography is in the eye of the beholder, so is Net neutrality.

In a February 2008 post
on its public policy blog, Google said: “Some major broadband service
providers have threatened to act as gatekeepers, playing favorites with
particular applications or content providers, demonstrating that this
threat is all too real.”

Let’s read that a second time. Early this year, Google was upset
that broadband providers may ink deals–”playing favorites”–with
certain content providers. That was then. Today Google is actively encouraging
broadband providers to ink deals with certain content providers–that
is, itself, especially for YouTube videos. (Here’s Google’s own definition of what should and should not be permitted.)

Of course, Google includes the obligatory disclaimer that anyone else
should be able to enter into deals with broadband providers for
colocation or caching as well. Fair enough. But if one of the
justifications for Net neutrality was to protect the ability of the
next Google or Yahoo or Facebook to become popular without cozying up
to AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast, well, that particular justification
seems to have evaporated.

This is hardly the end of Net neutrality regulations. There’s no
indication that President-elect Barack Obama has changed his mind about
its desirability, and liberal advocacy groups are planning a
legislative push in 2009. Web firms may still find it useful to attempt
to shackle AT&T, Comcast, and so on with vague and open-ended
rules. But what this episode should demonstrate is that some of Net
neutrality’s most vigorous proponents may not like it when those same
vague and open-ended rules apply to them.

In a surprise move, the search giant took its Chrome Web browser out of beta this week , in the hopes that business partners, such as computer makers, will bundle Chrome on their systems. Google launched the first beta version of Chrome in September.

However, Chrome is still rough around the edges to be a version 1.0 product. Also, although Chrome has been in development internally at Google for years, it’s curious that the company would take Chrome out of beta when it’s resisted the impulse to do the same with Gmail and several other high-profile projects.

Google also brought Gmail users a to-do list to help them be more productive. When the new Tasks feature is enabled, a box shows up on top of the Gmail window. In it, users can add, reorder, and delete tasks. It’s also possible to assign a due date to each action and even convert e-mails into tasks.

The company hopes the second time will be the charm for a Gmail Labs feature that lets people send text messages to people’s mobile phones with the company’s Web-based e-mail service. After the feature’s fleeting debut in October, Google removed it to fix a problem in which turning the feature on didn’t actually fully turn it on. The feature returned this week, but is available only in the United States for now.

Download Google Chrome Here : -

When friends push friends onto Gmail, it usually involves talking up the seemingly limitless storage space, the fast-moving interface, or its inter-connectedness with other Google applications, like Calendar. Those features are all fine and good, but Gmail does a lot of helpful things that some users never get to dig into. From one short web address, you can video chat Skype-style with contacts, ensure you didn’t leave yourself logged in elsewhere, help mom gradually migrate from her old dial-up-era email address, and pluck a single message out of tens of thousands. Let’s dig in and take a look at Gmail’s less-touted features for power users.

Gmail’s themes cover a nice range of aesthetic choices, geekiness, cute-overload, elegant color tweaks, and, for those who put a lot of time in on the screen, dark-themed schemes. If you haven’t checked them out yet, they’re certainly worth a look, if only to give your eyes a rest from all the variants of light blue.

9. Launch video and audio chats, no Skype required.

It’s Windows-only at this point, and still requires a little browser plug-in, but it’s surprising how little fanfare Gmail’s native video chat application has received. It’s comparable quality to most software-based solutions, it’s got a full-screen mode, and, well, if the person’s not all that intriguing, you can minimize them and get back to your email.

8. Back up your email from any system.

Just because Google wants you to put your digital life in the cloud doesn’t mean you can’t have your own copy of your own messages and attachments. There are lots of ways to get your entire Gmail dump onto your desktop. We’re currently into Gmail Backup, which is graphical for Windows and command line for Linux and Mac OS X. You can also grab it with the command-line-based Fetchmail, grab them via POP with Thunderbird, or use the web-based StashMyMail for 99 cents, if you don’t mind the third-party-ness of it. To back up another email account using Gmail’s generous storage space, you can always BCC: your outgoing messages to a Gmail account to make sure you’ve always got an online searchable copy of your mail.

7. See all the places where you’re signed in, and remotely sign out.

Friends’ and significant others’ computers, work, public terminals—people sign into Gmail from all kinds of places, and don’t always remember to hit that privacy-ensuring “Sign Out” in the upper-right corner. At the very bottom of any Gmail inbox, though, is a text line showing where else the account is open, along with a list of sign-in times and IP addresses and a button that signs you out of everything but the browser you’re in right then. No need to worry, then, that your friends’ willpower will ever be tested by discovering you’re still signed in on their system.

6. Serve as a central, synchronized, smarter contact list.

Used to be that Gmail put everyone you sent five emails to went into your contacts, but they’ve wised up and created two lists: Your true contacts, and those oft-mailed but not well-known folks into “Suggested” contacts. That makes Google a much nicer, cleaner place to sync your computers and devices from. Mac users can pull Google Contacts into their Address Book with or without an iPhone, Blackberry owners can hook up too, and fans of Thunderbird have got their own tool as well. Oh, and the Google-centric Android platform does it too, of course.

5. Consolidate all your email accounts.

Gmail eliminates the need to ever have to send one of those very late, apologetic “Don’t check this email often” replies from your ancient accounts. Gina’s explained how straightforward it is to consolidate multiple email addresses into Gmail, with full importing of messages from any POP or IMAP-compliant account (almost all of them are) and the ability to keep sending emails from your old address, eliminating the need for mass pleas to update address books.

4. Help friends find their own Gmail messages or bookmark your own.

“You honestly do not have my email explaining how to take care of my dogs and disable the alarm system? Okay, no, it’s no big thing, Steve. Hit this link, it should take you to the right message: http://mail.google.com/mail/#search/buster+alarm+code+Pedigree” That kind of universal search link is pretty helpful, but the addresses of any email you open in Gmail are also permalinks for the account owner, meaning you can create lists of emails you need to get back to, bookmark an important thread in your browser favorites, and save them for any other purpose or list.

3. Keep your Gmail account(s) on your desktop.

More than one of the Lifehacker editors had gotten used to keeping Gmail and Lifehacker’s Google Apps email open in two browser tabs, clicking over when a new message hit the title bar. With the just-launched Google Desktop Gadget, though, all the basic actions of email—read, star, label, delete, respond—can fit into a corner of your desktop. If you’re good with Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts, the gadget works with those, too, and can be opened in multiple instances for different accounts. Pretty neat stuff, but if it’s not worth installing the whole Google Desktop suite for, check out the other ways our readers get their Gmail notifications.

2. Give you total search power.

It’s easy to forget that the company providing Gmail is, by and large, a search specialist, and has given its webmail app some serious search, filter, and organization tools. Don’t waste time scrolling through page after page of your mom’s email—find that one email she sent a few months back, with the attached JPEG file and mentioning that cat, Mr. Nibbles or Snibbles or whatnot–from:Stacey after:2008/09/01 has:attachment (nibbles OR snibbles). You can start at learning the basic operators, then take Adam’s tips on building advanced filters and persistent searches

1. Do much, much more with Gmail Labs experimental features.

It started out as a modest set of tweaks and small Oh Neat items, but Gmail’s Labs section has become a powerhouse of email features. From Labs’ increasingly-long list of tools, you can set up canned responses for standard replies, stop yourself from forgetting attachments, get your Google Calendar agenda and Remember the Milk tasks, get at all your various attachment types with Quick Links, and many, many more tweaks. Labs isn’t particularly hidden away or obscure, but if you haven’t taken the time to scroll down the list of options, you’re almost certainly missing out on something that makes your webmail home a bit more comfortable.

Those are our picks for ten tricks that Gmail pulls off without a lot of praise, but everyone uses their webmail differently. Let’s hear your own hidden (or obvious) Gmail tricks and glad-hands in the comments.

Empornium.us is probably the world’s largest adult-material tracker. Indeed, at one stage it had over a million members which could elevate it to the position of world’s biggest private tracker, for any material. The site found itself in controversy in 2006 when an Israeli advertising company took over the site and kicked out many of the admins. For its part, Targetpoint denied the allegations, claiming one of its associates simply brokered the sale to an unknown third-party.

Today, users searching Google for Empornium.us are met with a warning under the URL: “This site may harm your computer”. After ignoring the warning and clicking the link using Internet Explorer, the Empornium main page starts loading, but is then punctuated with virus/malware/exploit warnings from an up-to-date anti-virus scanner. Google reports “Malicious software includes 4 trojans, 3 exploits. Successful infection resulted in an average of 11 new processes on the target machine.”

At this point we deemed the Google Safe Browsing report to be correct and abandoned our own tests. Accessing the Empornium homepage using Firefox3 caused an immediate halt:

Google notes that the ‘malicious software’ is actually hosted on 4 domains, including gianttopnano.cn, mmcounter.com, filmmultimediaonline.cn. Furthermore it states that two domains appear to be “functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site” including vxhost.cn, and filmmultimediaonline.cn.

TorrentFreak has contacted Empornium management for a comment, but so far there has been no response.

Update: Empornium Team contacted us, confirming that the malicious code has nothing to do with them and they are “taking action to shut down the infiltration & remove the code asap”. Their own tests so far show it is “exploiting a known & patched security hole in Acrobat”.

The default setting for the Google crawl rate is to let Google determine how often it crawls your website. However, if you have special needs then you can set your own crawl rate. But I wouldn’t recommend changing this unless you understand the special needs of your server and you are an advanced webmaster.

To change your crawl rate, log in to your Google Webmaster Tools account and click on Settings. In these settings you can establish a geographic targeting area, set a preferred domain (using www or without www), and choosing a customized crawl rate. Find the crawl rate button and set it to “Set custom crawl rate”. Below the crawl rate button you’ll see two settings - requests per second and seconds between requests. Select the settings you desire that are faster or slower than the default rate and click “Save”.

If you are experiencing higher than expected volumes of traffic then you’ll want to have Google crawl your site less often. You may even want to slow down the requests per second. Slowing down your crawl rate will allow you to handle the increased traffic better on your site and this is a particularly handsome way to let Google know that you are seeing a spike in traffic due to increased PPC marketing or link bait that is working. If your site is not getting crawled or it is taking an extra long time to get indexed then you can increase your settings and invite Google to spend more time on your site to increase the number of your indexed pages.

The singer’s steep trajectory to redemption restored her to the top of searches. Her year began with a police visit, hospital stay, and psych evaluation. She returned under her father’s shelter and, by summer, settled custody with her ex. Professionally, she guested on a sitcom, won thrice at the MTV Video Music Awards, broke records with “Womanizer,” relaunched her site, and released a documentary detailing her fall and comeback…by age 27.

2 WWE

A June explosion destroyed a World Wrestling Entertainment stage and “injured” chairman Vince McMahon, unleashing a sweaty soap opera of chaos that included his kids appealing for cooperation in difficult times. The stunt could’ve symbolized the sporting empire’s battles against the economy’s fall and mixed martial arts’ rise. WWE produced more events, video games, and movies to make up for fewer paying fans, and faithfuls kept track online to maintain its Top 2 status.

3 Barack Obama

The Illinois junior senator faced two hard-fought contests and nearly won a third—although toppling Britney Spears wasn’t on his list. He entered 2008 as a relative newcomer on the national scene and ended the year as president-elect. His campaign defied political wisdom and made history at every turn. His Web strategy set the groundwork to make him the first wired president and, in an unprecedented Search surge, landed him at No. 3.

4 Miley Cyrus

Before 2008, the singer/actress had been better known—and searched—by her Disney persona, Hannah Montana. She appeared on shows like “Idol Gives Back” as Cyrus, but true name recognition came with scandal: a Vanity Fair spread featuring the 15-year-old seemingly wrapped only in a bedsheet. Savvy Cyrus apologized, survived, and closed down Disneyland for a 16^th birthday charity bash, and ended up at No. 4.

5 RuneScape

The multi-player role-playing game’s international popularity rests on its cheap access, ability to run on older computers, and compelling play. Its underground success has even led to a real black market, trading actual cash for RuneScape gold—and controversial restrictions to stop it. A new boss, graphics, and touted player-versus-player combat release signal the company’s power play to step up in the RPG battle…and take hold at No. 5.

6 Jessica Alba

Her movies fared none too well, following 2007 missteps that got her three Razzie Worst Actress nominations. Still, she earned Best Movie Actress at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards and No. 6 in searches, buoyed by her wedding and baby Honor Marie (who earned a reported $1.5 million in her OK! mag debut). The pregnant pause may have given her impetus to switch to more serious roles—something to watch for in 2009.

7 Naruto

The manga. The game. The anime. Whatever form Naruto Uzumaki takes, the awkward but accomplished young graduate of the Ninja Academy remains the Web’s most popular fictional character in seventh place. His peers and enemies also command their own followings, but the complex tale of Naruto (whose name translates to “maelstrom”), the orphaned misfit who craves recognition, resonates with its generation of fans.

8 Lindsay Lohan

At No. 8, the actress made stumbling progress back from rehab, revolving-door relationships, and rejected roles. On the upside, she settled down (with a monogamous twist), blogged about politics, and recreated Marilyn Monroe’s photo shoot. On the downside, she got booted from “Ugly Betty” and as World Music Awards host. Lohan has had celebs testifying to her talent, but a true comeback may have to wait for 2009.

9 Angelina Jolie

Leading power lists in Forbes and even Guinness World Records, the actress took her place among Hollywood’s elite. “Delicate” condition aside, she underscored her image as a tough-dame throwback with a 21^st-century vibe. She earned box-office bucks as an assassin and cartoon tigress, Oscar cred in “Changeling,” and karma by donating her and Brad Pitt’s twins’ $14 mil pictorial payout to charity—moves that muscled her in at No. 9.

10 American Idol

Judges kept declaring its 2008 singers their best ever, but while the Fox reality show ruled ratings, an audience decline since 2007 sent producers into a fit of self-examination. In a season beset with complaints, “Idol” had the last laugh with a smashing finale and iTunes recordbreaker. The show also got “cougar” into household vernacular, unlikely credit for exposing youth to the democratic process, and a top Search 10 nod once again.

So according to scoreboard we bet 4 times and out of them I won once, lose twice and 1 got no result. I won 550 bucks and lose 1250 till now. So today he becomes father and this is my little similar kinda tribute to him for his useless fruitful efforts. Hope the doc mind these basic things .

It just poped up the list of related titles and URLs. It make me feel dizzy coz of those tag clouds.  So here’s I found a way to disable this ‘Awesome bar’. I guess many of you too feel the same after upgradation as most of the listed results were irrelevant cozing some hassles.

So here’s the list of steps which can disable it..

•    In the address field of Firefox 3.0, type about:config, then press Enter.
•    In the filter field, type browser.urlbar.
•    Click on the line with browser.urlbar.matchBehavior, change the value to 0 (zero).
•    Click on the line with browser.urlbar.maxRichResults, change the value to 0 (zero) also.
•    Now exit FireFox and open it again.

And if any of you want it to behave like Firefox 2.0 then do the following :-

•    In the address field of Firefox 3.0, type about:config, then press Enter.
•    In the filter field, type browser.urlbar.
•    Double click on the line with browser.urlbar.matchOnlytyped, the value will automatically change to true.
•    Now exit FireFox and open it again.

Happy browsing…

The map is quite interactive and is similar to the display on Google Analytics. You can click on the regions and zoom in to cities to get an exact idea of where and what people are searching for and in which cities maximum searched are being performed.

Yes, they sometimes do, in different countries, like Germany, France or China. Sometimes, specific content is censored globally (including US results, e.g. in the case of certain censored newsgroup messages).

Do other search engines censor too?

Yes, Yahoo, MSN and others censor search results in different countries.

What’s search results censorship?

For the scope of this FAQ I’ll define censorship as missing results which are filtered for reasons of politics or regulations, not because they’re spam, non-family friendly, or copyright-infringements (though your mileage may vary).

Can we be sure it’s censorship, don’t localized search engines always show different results?

Because Google mostly discloses their censorship, we can differentiate between normal differences among local engines, and differences due to censorship. Using the “site:” operator appended with a domain we suspect to be censored in a local search engine, we can verify specific missing sites.

What other forms of filtering are there in Google results?

Google also sometimes removes sites if they are infringing on copyright (someone can send a DMCA – Digital Millennium Copyright Act – complaint to Google), or infringing on Google’s webmaster guidelines (e.g. if a site includes hidden keywords visible only to the searchbot, but not users). If you have Google’s SafeSearch enabled, Google may also not show certain sites containing adult content (note that in some countries, the user cannot toggle a SafeSearch option in the preferences). Additionally, Google may show up warning pages before delivering certain content, which happens on YouTube or Blogspot blogs. Also, Google does usually not allow explicit adult content on any of the hosting solutions they provide (e.g. YouTube, Blogger). And then, Google sometimes removes adult content from its Google Zeitgeist report as well as its Google Suggest feature.

What does Google censor?

It depends on the country. In Germany, Google censors certain Nazi websites like Stormfront.org, for example. In the US, Google censors sites containing child pornography, Google’s Sergey Brin stated. In China, Google also censors human rights groups, like HRW.org (Human Rights Watch), but many other things as well, like “台独” (Taiwan independence), names of current and past presidents, names of locations, historical events and so on. Due to the broad scope of Google China censorship, the list of queries hitting on censored results is huge, and often unrelated to sensitive issues (except that the censored sites appear in the results).

How many web pages does Google censor?

Google knows, but they won’t tell you. The figure might be somewhere inbetween millions to hundreds of millions of web pages. Using the “site:” operator, you can do some comparisons; e.g. a Google.cn search for site:news.bbc.co.uk returns 0 pages, whereas a Google.com search for the same returns a page count of around 2,250,000, meaning there may be over two million pages missing on BBC alone (note that Google’s page count estimator is only a rough value, and it often differs in localized results for other reasons than censorship; still, this methodology gives some good first indicators as to the amount of missing pages).

Does Google censor less than other Chinese search engines, or more?

This is hard to measure and partly depends on the search queries you will try. In general, Google was the last to commit to Chinese censorship requests, and they’re fairly consistent in disclosing censorship. However, other search engines sometimes show more than Google when it comes to “sensitive” terms, e.g. MSN.com.cn returns many image results for “胡锦涛” (China’s president Hu Jintao) whereas Google.cn doesn’t show a single image for this query. [Update: Google now shows images for this query.]

Did the Chinese have search engines before Google entered with Google.cn?

Yes, whether or not Google is in the market, Chinese had and have a variety of search engines to choose from.

In which of its different search services does Google censor?

There’s censorship to be found in different Google services, including Google web search, Google image search, Google News, Google Groups (Google’s Usenet discussion group search), and Google Maps (e.g. on request of the Indian or US government). Google also sometimes removes content from Blogspot or YouTube for different reasons, with the difference here being that Google acts as host, not just a messenger of other people’s content.

Does Google disclose the censorship?

Google prints a disclaimer at the end of search results in most cases, though this wasn’t always the case before early 2006. The disclaimer may read “In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed N result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at ChillingEffects.org,” or “In response to a legal complaint we received, we have removed one or more messages. If you wish, you may read the legal complaint,” or (a translation from Chinese) “In compliance with local laws and policies, some search results are not showing.”

Do other Chinese search engines disclose censorship too?

Yes. For example, MSN shows a “Some of the results have been removed” disclaimer in China when search results are censored. Yahoo does not (or not always) disclose censorship, though they did at one time with the message “We have already helped you filter out excess web pages” oir “according to relevant laws and regulations, a portion of results may not appear,” according to reports from Human Rights Watch.

Is Google’s disclosure easily visible?

Google decided to put the censorship disclosure at the end of search results (not at the top), a place where many, but not all people, will see it (some people just look at the top results). But clearly if you look out for you can easily find it.

Is Google transparent about their censorship?

Google discloses what they censor when you hit on a specific search result (they didn’t always do this, but they regularly do since 2006). However, Google Inc does not respond to questions regarding how specifically they censor, how the process of censorship is implemented, which blacklists they use, which words are censored, which specific discussions they have with governments, and so on. Google also ignores issues of censorship in their official Chinese blog (according to Human Rights Watch), and in the censorship defense statement made in their official English blog, they do not mention the word “censorship” at all.

Since when does Google censor results?

This is hard to tell. Personally I’ve spotted censorship way back in 2003, but it’s likely it’s going on longer than this. In China, Google self-censors since January 2006. (According to Google employee Matt Cutts, via Search Engine Roundtable, one of the first DMCA removal/ counter-notification processes against an anti-Scientology site was implemented in 2002.)

How did Google justify their China self-censorship?

In general, Google says that it’s their “policy not to censor search results. However, in response to local laws, regulations, or policies, we may do so.” In regards to China, Google argued that filtering their results clearly compromises their mission, but that failing to offer Google search at all to a fifth of the world’s population compromises their mission more severely. Others, like Bill Gates (according to Times Online), supported Google’s position by arguing that state censorship is “no reason for technology companies not to do business in China”, adding that “access to the outside world is preventing more censorship.”

Did Google fail to offer Google search at all before the self-censored Google.cn?

Not really. Almost always, next to about a couple of times of a complete shut-down courtesy of the Chinese government (shut-downs that were removed due to user protest, as Sergey Brin stated in an interview with Playboy), Chinese users had access to Google.com and the Chinese Google search engine available at google.com/intl/zh-CN/. However, according to Google’s figure, Google.com was only accessible from China in 90% of all cases. Additionally, according to Google’s Sergey Brin (via CNN), some universities weren’t able to afford the international bandwidth costs necessary to pay for Google.com.

Has it become easier now for the Chinese government to block Google.com?

Some argue that this is the case, because a public outcry over a blocked Google.com is less likely when there is a censored Google.cn alternative available.

How can I check if a Chinese result is censored?

Set your preferred browser language to Chinese (e.g. in Firefox, Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Choose) and visit www.google.cn. Alternatively, you can directly access www.google.cn/webhp?hl=zh-CN. At the bottom of censored search results, you will see the Chinese text “据当地法律法规和政策，部分搜索结果未予显示。” in italics.

How does Google censor?

From what little you can see from the outside, it seems Google censors based on domains, sub-domains, full URLs, or keywords. For example, all of the roughly 2.25 million pages of news.bbc.co.uk are censored in Google China web search, hinting at a URL blacklist. In Google image search China, the keywords “胡锦涛” (Chinese president Hu Jintao) or “六四” (colloquial Chinese for the Tiananmen Square Massacre) are fully censored, hinting at a keyword-blacklist.

Is search results censorship evil?

Whether or not results censoring is evil depends on who you ask. The two basic opposing opinions are: 1. censoring may not be great but it’s the lesser of two evils 2. censoring is evil so needs to be avoided at all circumstances

The proponents of censorship in the Chinese government for example may argue along the lines of 1), that censorship isn’t great but that free speech would lead to greater problems for such a large country where order needs to be provided. Google Inc also argues along the lines of 1), saying that censorship isn’t great but that not getting deeply involved in such a large country as a company leads to even greater problems in the long run. Others argue that 2), a principled approach – allow no evil at all – makes more sense in the long run. Sergey Brin once told CNN that he thinks “both kinds of viewpoints are perfectly valid.”

Is Google China censorship compliant with Google’s informal corporate motto, “don’t be evil”?

I’d argue no, because in order to enter China Google introduced a new philosophy of balancing evil scales. So the most optimistic interpretation is that they now accept smaller evils for a greater good – a more pessimistic interpretation is that this won’t even result in a greater good. However, neither of the two interpretations conforms to a strict “don’t be evil.”

Is Google China censorship good for Google’s business?

Only time will tell. According to The Guardian, Sergey Brin in 2007 admitted that so far, “On a business level, that decision to censor… was a net negative,” mostly due to the reputation which suffered from the public perception of Google’s move. (I’d argue that user trust is an important asset for businesses which handle user data, possibly even more so in the future.)

Does Google only censor what can’t be seen in that country anyway?

No. Sometimes Google censors sites that aren’t accessible anyway in a specific location, at other times, they censor sites that are otherwise accessible (if you enter the site’s URL directly into the browser address bar).

Does Google rank pro-government sites higher on request?

Not directly, but indirectly: if an anti-government site is the #1 result, and a pro-government site is the #2 result, then censoring the anti-government result like e.g. Google China sometimes does pushes the pro-government site higher up the ranking.

Does censoring a search result get rid of the site in question?

One thing to remember is that censoring in search results means “killing the messenger” because you’re not removing the actual site in question, you’re only removing the words of someone telling that it exists. Some countries ensure that the site itself is shut down, or blocked by ISPs, while others often consider a removal of its “traces” in search engines sufficient (e.g. in Germany).

Does Google censor all material the country’s government deems “sensitive”?

No. E.g. in China, much sensitive material is removed, but there’s also a lot of sensitive material that’s being shown in Google.

Do Chinese users prefer the self-censored Google.cn over the almost non-censored Google.com?

Not really, according to information from Google’s Sergey Brin, who in 2006 said that “virtually all the company’s customers in China use the non-censored service.”

Can users from China circumvent the Google censorship?

Yes, users can switch from Google.cn, Google.de or Google.fr to e.g. Google.com to circumvent most censorship. However, outside the responsibility of Google, local sites may be blocked by ISPs, in particular in China. However – again in particular in China – there may be some risk involved when you actively try to circumvent censorship (I have no specific information about this).

Does every Google employee agree with Google’s censorship politics?

That’s likely not the case – it is far more likely that even within Google, opinions are divided. Google co-founder Sergey Brin in 2006 pondered “Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense.” Before Google censored in China (according to UC Berkeley News), Sergey argued that “Google does good in China by making it possible for the Chinese people to have broad access to information.” In 2004, the Google Team somewhat proudly posted that “For Internet users in China, Google remains the only major search engine that does not censor any web pages.”

What do locals think of local censorship?

In Germany, some people are pro-censorship when it comes to material such as holocaust denial, while some are against censorship. In China, the opinions are also greatly divided. Human Rights Watch writes (footnotes removed): “Opinions differ in China – even among people who chafe against official restrictions on their freedom of speech – as to whether Google’s compromise was acceptable. When Google.cn was first rolled out, a number of Chinese bloggers concerned with free speech issues were quick to condemn the move. One labeled the new service the “Castrated Google.” Others, such as Michael Anti, were more philosophical, pointing out that while Google had made a compromise, it had done so after considerable weighing of the human consequences, and made a conscious decision not to provide services that would put itself in the position of having its local employees – with no choice but to comply – into conflict with the Chinese government demands to censor content or, even worse, to hand individuals over to the police. Some Chinese bloggers have also expressed concern that the existence of the censored Google.cn will make it easier for Chinese ISP’s to block Google.com without excessive public outcry, because some form of Google search remains available. Indeed, in late May and the first days of June – the most politically sensitive time of the year due to the anniversary of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre – several Chinese Internet users in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou reported that Google.com was consistently inaccessible while the censored Google.cn remained accessible as normal.” Chinese Hong Xiaowan argued in this blog’s forum that “Google should [change] their Censorship based on the locations. Different [countries] have different laws, different cultures.” He adds that Chinese want to be rich, free and safe, just like citizens of the US. He says that things aren’t simple in China – “If you think you are protecting the human rights, in fact you are hurt them.” Isaac Mao, also Chinese, in reply to Hong Xiawon comments: “Google’s decision of self-censorship was made after Google’s business operation in China. Google’s motto and principles was changed by the local employees and local managers, then impacted to their founders by mistake. (…) The ultimate way is keeping its universal value. If ’non-evil’ is a motto, it’s applied anywhere and even anytime. Otherwise, it will lose its value totally. Many people here in China, especially those geeks, hate the comprise by Google. Didn’t Google listen to them? [Remember], they are also opinion leaders to the market, no wonder the market share will lose.”

How did human rights or freedom of speech organizations judge Google’s censorship in China?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) demands: “If U.S. companies find that oppressive governments block or impede their Internet services, they should not simply give in to the threat.” The Human Rights Watch boss Ken Roth told CNN: “Google’s in the vanguard in the United States, and it’s compromising along with the rest of them in China. I’m surprised. I would have expected better from Google.” Amnesty International says: “’The argument that the companies are ’bringing the internet to China’ is spurious: the internet has been in China for ten years. These companies are simply trying to get a slice of a vast and growing market. And it’s at a great cost: their activities are aiding and abetting government censorship rather than challenging it.” Reporters Without Borders argued: “US firms are now bending to the same censorship rules as their Chinese competitors but they continue to justify themselves by saying their presence has a long-term benefit. Yet the Internet in China is becoming more and more isolated from the outside world and freedom of expression there is shrinking. These firms’ lofty predictions about the future of a free and limitless Internet conveniently hide their unacceptable moral errors.”

How did search bloggers judge upon Google’s censorship in China?

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch wrote: “Ultimately, I want Google to pull out and fight back. I can see the argument for being engaged in a country, for trying to help promote change over time. But I feel like Google should be big enough and principled enough to be engaged by not being engaged. That might do far more good now than years down the line.” Ionut Alex. Chitu argues: “Somebody told me that google.com is still available in China. So users have 2 options: [1] go to google.com and see results they can’t access [or 2] go to google.cn and see only the results they can access. I think this changes things a lot. Google doesn’t censor results, they just remove ’inaccessible links’ (’dead links’ in China).” John Battelle of Searchblog said: “Sure, I understand the logic. But, well….in your heart, is this what you wanted to do? No? Then why did you do it? (…) I think they convinced themselves it was the right thing to do. They thought themselves into it. And deep down, they aren’t sure they did the right thing. At least, that’s what I want to believe.” Nathan Weinberg of InsideGoogle said: “I believe Google has the right to censor its searches. That is the cost of doing business in China. But to cloak it in their typical PR-bullshit, to claim that it is in the best interests of Chinese users and not their bottom line, to not once acknowledge that this is the result of laws that should never be, that disgusts me. People have died for this, and how dare you ignore them.” Miel van Opstal, co-blogger at InsideGoogle, wrote an open letter to Google, arguing: “The [pre-Google.cn] service might have been slow, but at least it produced results unfiltered. Maybe browsers stalled, maybe Google News was down. Maybe images were only accessible half of the time. At least they were accessible, the other half of the time. At least the info was there. That was something to be proud of. I can’t speak for all the Chinese searchers because I don’t live there, but I’m pretty sure they’ll think you’re a lame service now. You used to be different. Slow, stalling, but different. You were a link with the outside world. Now all you do is promote the same brainless information the other search engines pre-chew for the Chinese people. What extra value is there now, except for the ‘us-too’ feeling that you have for joining a club of engines and deliver the exact same politically corrected results? I dare to say: none.” Other commenters argued that Google has a legal obligation to its investors to grow its business, justifying their Google China move.

Does Google lobby against censorship?

In the past, no. While Google’s help entry on the subject states that it is their “policy not to censor search results,” they also argue that they will censor content to comply with local laws or regulations. In Germany, for example, Google joined the Voluntary Self-Monitoring of Multimedia Service Providers. In China specifically, according to the Associated Press, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that Google “haven’t lobbied Beijing to change its rules” adding that he thinks “it’s arrogant for us to walk into a country where we are just beginning to operate and tell that country how to operate.” However, Google in January 2007 along with Microsoft, Yahoo, Reporters Without Borders and others aimed to create a code of conduct “to promote freedom of expression and privacy rights.”

How can I help Google censor results?

This depends on which local version of Google you’d like to see “sensitive” information removed from. E.g. in China, the Ministry of Information website or the Ministry of Information branch handling the shut-down of unregistered Chinese sites, as linked from the Google.cn homepage. In Germany, your best bet is the complaint form of the Voluntary Self-Monitoring of Multimedia Service Providers, of which Google, Yahoo and others are part of. If you feel a Blogspot blog contains “sensitive” content, you can flag it by using the top-position “flag” button. At YouTube, you can use the “Flag as Inappropriate” link. When it comes to mere filtering, you can also file a DMCA complaint with Google or report a site to Google’s web spam team. If you’re a Google employee, you can of course help optimize local filter algorithms to censor more sensitive information than before, or provide better support to countries who don’t have censorship in Google yet.

How can I fight against Google censoring results?

Unless you mobilize huge masses of users who boycott Google, you can’t make them just quickly stop what they’re doing, though every voiced protest (via news reports, letters to Google, demonstrations in front of the Googleplex etc.) will cause the company to see similar issues in a different light in the future, or reconsider their move. Additionally, making censorship more transparent helps defeat its original purpose of hiding information, so it gives less incentive to governments to try impose such censorship regulations. For example, you can report on censorship methodologies, or mirror censor content on your own server. If you’re a Google employee, you can voice your protest to your co-workers more directly and actively convert your responsibility into action. You can also help make the issue more transparent to the outside world by talking about censorship specifics, not generalizations. As a citizen, to make the country in question stop their censorship behavior, you can protest against local laws (e.g. organize demonstrations) and vote for those politicians opposing censorship (or get active in politics yourself). However if you’re in e.g. China this may cost you your freedom (the Chinese authorities jails many of its critics).

Does censorship really matter?

Ideas have effects on lives, and removing access to the ideas (for you can’t ever remove an idea itself), does have a very real effect on us. Depending on where you live this may be a mere theoretical issue. In other countries, your freedom of speech is heavily limited in everyday communication. German writer Heinrich Heine once said, “This is only the beginning, for where they burn books, in the end they’ll burn humans too.” What we should realize when thinking about the issue is that some of the authors of material Google now agreed to censor are kept in jail for writing it. On the other hand, speeding up access to information matters as well, and Google’s voiced position is that providing a self-censored local search engine provides a better overall search service.

Isn’t Google just following orders?

Digital censorship is more subtle than book burnings like in the past because you won’t see any single person lighting a match. The responsibility is far more diverted: from a government order passed through various instances, or a court order, to an ISP, to a search engine, to the PC or the browser itself, there is a multitude of ways the responsibility of censorship can be shared, and every party gets some right to point to someone else, arguing they have the best intents and are themselves an irresponsible part of a longer responsibility chain. This however does not free any of the various parties from the responsibility.

The sum shatters the previous record for a .co.uk domain of 300,000 dollars, paid in October last year. Seamus Conlon, whose company bought the address from a German travel company, said it was a necessary move to retain dominance in the rapidly growing market for ocean cruising. “Cruises is consistly ranked first on Google, with cruise just behind” he said. “We wanted the top positions so that when internet users are searching for deals… we are the first port of call”. While purchase is a record for Britain. It is a long way behind the huge sums paid for the more popular .com addresses. Its SEX.COM which hold the record for most expensive domain which was bought for 12 million dollars in 2005. Running close behind is porn.com, snapped up for 9.5 million dollars last year. Yep sound weird to many of my female friends..but that’s how it is buddies.

This is what me and my friends are gossiping around along Saturday night. I mean the issue was how does a new website gets thousands visitors in a day. See as getting indexed in SEs 1st page takes a long time. E-mail marketing and paid to surf are oldies. Planting links in 3rd party sites generate traffic but it takes too much effort and time….so what left is PPC kinda campaign which is costly to many around and managing the process is another daunting task.

Here is what our individual opinions are :-

( other chatting stuff and lang. format is removed. Its only what they talk on the given issue is published here in concise )

James : - Quality backlinks , press releases and submitting to social bookmarking sites plus to paid directories as Yahoo Dir. BOTW.org etc.

Ashley : - Submit your articles and pages to the social networking websites such as Propeller – Digg- Stumble Upon which confirms your website will be found organically by the search engines.

Danny: -   No way a new site is going to get OOO’s visitors a day unless you pay for advertising and other PPC campaigns. Things take time.

Damien :-  It depends on the theme of your site. Getting thousands of visitors a day on some websites can be relatively easy coz of their subject, whereas most others may be hard. Opting for blackhat techniques is not bad either in getting traffic pretty quick.

Happy : - If someone don’t want to spend money and effort to it then its good to try Stumbleupon and Digg etc….create 5 odd killer articles and traffic will start flowing from these sites in no time…

Hubpages are very tricky place for marketers as they don’t allow advertising or more than 3 odd links. One must tread lightly in your advertising so you arn’t flagged straight away. They have strict rules with firm goal to be an authority site on relevant subjects so have tough game rules. My friend did receive some traffic from squidoo lenses but nothing major and frankly didn’t try the hubpages for some reason as his linking strategy didn’t got even with Hub pages…

Ofcourse both are great places for getting links back to your  site but personally I also recommend Blogger, Wordpress, Craigslist, Backpages, Gather, Propeller, friendster etc that works equally well.

Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects. The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It’s their knol, their voice and their opinion. I have noticed lots of medical related knols. Frankly this time round I think Wikipedia will prevail, it is definitely not easy to build up another Wiki from scratch. However their search engine is just a waste of time, for sure there is no distant competitor looking to Google and Yahoo , in the same way as Google Knol is no match against Wikipedia. I guess each needs to concentrate on their core competencies rather than spreading their resources too thinly. Wikipedia is better more information and knol after I look at it I just wana think that google need to hire someone to desgin it for them !  

Personally I don’t bother it that much as it all seems a part of Google’s cat and mouse game that likes to keep everyone guessing what’s important to Google and what is not. There doesn’t seems any meaning of PR has virtually at all in terms of search results. Google representatives have said as much - yet they inadvertently admit that PR is important by penalizing website owners who try to increase their “unimportant” page rank by purchasing links, or selling them, from sites such as Text Link Ads. Doesn’t seems any practically value but still this is interesting buzz in online world….So what’s your site score….  guys???

It gives me a compelling reason to write something on what should be considered as best SEO Techniques. True SEO is a balance of many factors whose effectivity did vary from time to time and a multitude of white hat techniques –  using unique content, frequent updates and Digging and stumbling inlinks, link bait pages, having others in your niche syndicate your content, squidoo, hubpages, social bookmarking, quality directories, commenting on blogs, forums… list goes on and on………..One must first optimize his website and  make sure you don’t have under construction pages and then start link building.

Personally I always try to follow Google Guidelines and with continue work on site results come. This is the simple and easy trick for me. So building website which is loved and talked by visitors is the secret for accelerating traffic. But most people dont follow the basics. Onpage and offpage factors can be manipulated but in long run only quality content and user friendly site is what matters. There are some other things as well i.e. - Offering something of genuine use that your competitors haven’t thought of yet. - Undercutting your competitors and potentially taking a loss (special offers, pay to action, etc) - Harnessing an existing and very powerful relevant link profile. - Sending juice from authority websites. For sure you don’t need to employ them all. The real question becomes which of these techniques can be grouped to keep your SEO efforts efficient without investing more time than necessary ?

So we have discussion on this for some half an hour . He stressing on botw.org and Yahoo ! directory  plus press release solutions but finally settle down on social bookmarking plus submitting an article to Digg and stumbling it as I tell him. For the information to newbies and other learners these are the best resources to utilize in order to get indexed ASAP.

Other than that submitting the sitemap helps in getting the site indexed pretty quickly. Also you shall put your signatures in relevant do follow forums in your niche with high PR.  Just submit couple of useful posts and Google will surely index your site within 2 days.

Getting good press releases can be a wild fire. Yep getting higher SERP ranking for new born sites is a distant dream as many are filtered by Google Sandbox . Another best way is blogging. A blog can be indexed within no time of posting. All of my new blog posts are normally indexed by Google within 24 hours.  It’s a proven technique.

Traffic estimation of top social networking sites May 07 - 08:

Here is the list of top 100 social networking sites with their alexa ranks.

[poll id="6"]

What they seem put stress on is best local relevant results to serve global audience and no manual interventions. Google doesn’t reject the policy of action against sites with legal issues, child porn, viruses/malware, etc and on others which are against its webmaster policies.