Tips for Making Website run faster

Installing a fast browser is not always enough to have a good experience when you browse the web: many web pages aren't optimized for performance. To help webmasters improve their sites, Google launched a new section as part of Google Code:

Let's make the web faster" which includes useful articles, videos and downloadable tools.You'll learn how to optimize CSS declarations, how to optimize JavaScript code and avoid memory leaks, how to use the best image format and prefetch resources.

Google also released a Firebug plug-in for Firefox that evaluates web pages and provides suggestions to improve them.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/

5 Things I Want to Know about Bing

Ian Paul, PC World

1) Will Bing's related search categories work as advertised?

Related search categories are a great idea and are likely the result of Microsoft's acquisition of the semantic search engine Powerset. But in the two examples of search results we've seen -- a search for Taylor Swift and another for Bose speakers -- the queries were product-oriented. However, not all searches are for products like movie times, albums, and A/V equipment. What about non-product-oriented searches for information on historical figures, health issues, or current events? If related categories can't measure up equally across all search topics, how useful will it really be?

2) Will Bing integrate with other Microsoft services?

One of the great things about Google is that you can find direct links to all of Google's most popular services right from the search page. One-click access to Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Reader from Google.com is a great feature, and shows that Google understands how integrated all aspects of your digital life are. Yahoo is also a fan of one-click access to other Yahoo services, but have you ever tried to find a link to Hotmail on Live Search? You can't, because the link to Hotmail doesn't exist.

If Microsoft wants to pull people away from Google and Yahoo, Bing needs to be integrated with all other Microsoft services and not just the ones directly related to search. For example, did you know that Microsoft offers 25GB of free online photo storage? Without a Hotmail account you wouldn't, because a link to the photo service cannot be found on Microsoft's two primary portals: MSN and Live Search. Note to Microsoft: integrate, integrate, integrate.

3) Will Bing go beyond the 10 Blue Links?

Google and Yahoo have spent considerable time making sure their search results go beyond a boring list of URLs. Google and Yahoo have integrated thumbnails of videos, images, and maps within search results for both popular and niche topics. Google is way ahead of Yahoo in delivering more than just links, but Live Search is pathetically behind both of the two search leaders. The majority of Live Search's results are a pure list of URLs; Bing has to do better.

4) Can I trust Bing to work properly?

I'm not sure if this was due to Microsoft's impending search transition or not, but while looking at Live Search for this article the link from the U.S. edition of Live.com to MSN.com was broken, and clicking on Live Search's Rank feature crashed my Web browser. If Bing causes heartache like that, Microsoft might as well forget about becoming a search leader.

5) Is Bing the end of Microsoft's serial rebranding?

For six years Microsoft's search brand was called MSN Search and delivered third-party search results. By 2004, however, Microsoft realized the potential profits in online search, and unveiled its own search engine under the MSN Search brand. It's been an uphill battle since then, with a rebranding in 2006 to Windows Live Search and by 2007 Microsoft dumped the name Windows, opting for the simpler Live Search. That makes Bing the third rebranding in five years, and the fourth moniker overall, for Microsoft's search service. Instead of focusing on constant renaming, Microsoft would benefit from picking a name for its search brand and sticking with it.

Bing's Debut

While nothing is for certain yet, tomorrow Microsoft should grant us a peek at Bing, and the company could even announce a launch date for the search engine. Whether Bing is available tomorrow, next week or next month, you can bet that once the search engine is live, Bing will be judged against the search's gold standard: Google. So what do you think? Will you be Binging by the end of the summer or is Microsoft's search effort doomed to failure?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/165586/5_things_i_want_to_know_about_bing.html

Search Smackdown: Bing Vs. Google

That was fast. Irish programmer and SEO specialist Paul Savage has made this very basic web service, which lists all results for search queries on Google and Bing side by side so you can compare which one produces the best results for the keywords you enter on one single page. We've played around with it a bit and found that the tool proves that the user experience for both search engines really is very different:

- searching for 'Google'

Google will show news results about themselves first, and a link to their homepage later, which makes sense since people are probably already on there. The rest of the results consists of Google products and local versions of the search service. Noteworthy difference is the presence of a button that lets you drop down a widget displaying information about Google's stock without the need to leave the page.

Bing, on the other hand, provides a list of possible extended search queries on the left sidebar, and a list of useful direct links to Google services below the first result. It also lists 'similar' searches on the right sidebar (not visible in this screenshot) with alternative services - Bing being the first one they recommend. It also displays a box that you can use to jump to Google search, and it keeps track of your search history right on the page, unless you turn that feature off.

- searching for 'Linux'

Using Google, you get much better results for this query, period. Google lists at least five very relevant links (Kernel.org, Debian.org, RedHat.com, LinuxJournal.com and LI.org) that you will not find in the first 15 search results on Bing. No nifty sidebars, nor any amount of spot-on similar results will help Microsoft here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/02/AR2009060200550.html

Microsoft revamps search engine, "Bing"

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp is revamping its search engine to counter the dominance of Google Inc in the Web search and related advertising business.

The world's largest software company, which is still in talks with Yahoo Inc over a potential partnership, has long been determined to play a major role in the lucrative Web search market after watching upstart Google take a stranglehold.

Microsoft, which has been testing the search engine internally under the name Kumo for several months, plans to introduce the new service, re-christened "Bing," over the next few days, with a full launch next Wednesday. The service will be available at www.bing.com.

Advertising Age reported earlier this week that Microsoft was planning a $80 million to $100 million ad campaign to promote Bing. Microsoft declined to comment on the report.

"We'll have what I would call a big budget -- big enough that I had to gulp when I approved the budget," said Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, who unveiled Bing at a technology conference in Carlsbad, California, run by the All Things Digital tech blog.

The Redmond, Washington-based firm has lots of ground to make up. Last month Google took 64.2 percent of U.S. Internet searches -- up half a percentage point from the month before -- handling 9.5 billion out of a total of 14.8 billion searches.

Yahoo was a distant second with 20.4 percent of searches and Microsoft third with 8.2 percent, both down slightly from the month before, according to data firm comScore.

Ballmer offered no quick turnaround in those numbers. "My timeframe is lots of years," he said at the conference. "I don't have a specific forecast, but this is lots of years."

The new name, Bing, is short, universal and can be "verbed-up," said Ballmer, a clear reference to the fact that 'to Google' has become the generic verb for searching the Internet for information.

http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSTRE54Q0GE20090528?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews

Google Mothers day Logo

But for their first year, Google has been changing its home page logo every Mother's Day in a tribute to mothers everywhere. And although the images for the years 2000 and 2001 don't look very different, take a closer look (images below) and you'll find a small but interesting distinction.

We took this years image from Google Australia, but you should see it on all of Google's sites very soon.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/

Google search right in Gmail

I used to have a problem. People would ask me questions, over chat or email, and I'd have to leave Gmail to search Google for an answer. Then I'd have to select the answer, copy it, go back to Gmail and paste the answer into the chat window or my reply. Sometimes I'd get distracted and forget to go back to Gmail, and I'd have to go through it all again when I remembered what I'd been doing.

With the new Google Search experiment in Gmail Labs, my problem is solved. When you turn this feature on from the Labs tab under Settings, you'll see a new search box on the left side of your inbox, like this:

ype your search in, and a window (like a chat window, but a bit bigger) appears at the bottom of your screen with the first few search results. 

You can click on a search result and it'll open up in another window (or another tab) so you can make sure it's what you're looking for. Once you're sure it's a result you need, moving your mouse over the result back in Gmail reveals a pull-down menu that lets you do stuff with the search result.

What's in the menu depends on what you're doing in Gmail:

If you're reading a message, you can start a reply to the message with the search result as the first thing in your reply.

If you're writing a message, you can paste the result, or just the URL into your message.

If you're chatting with someone, you can send the result via chat.

You can also always compose a new message to send the search result.

If you have keyboard shortcuts turned on, typing g and then / will take you to the search box when you're not composing, and Ctrl + g will do it when you're composing (that's ⌘ + g for Mac users).

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-in-labs-google-search-right-in.html