Bally Chohan - News, Views & Reviews on Information System

Yahoo has begun testing Search Assist, a new search refinement that could have an impact on search marketers for its ability to prevent typos and guide searchers toward a specific query.

Search Assist refines queries by providing related topics as searchers type to assist them in finding the right search term that will deliver the most relevant information. A recent Harris Interactive poll of online users commissioned by Yahoo showed that Web search users on average needed between 3 and 4 searches to find what they needed. Search Assist is intended to cut down on that number by presenting users with more refined queries and topics early in the search process.

Most of the major search engines have offered post-search suggestions for related searches for years. Google Suggest was the first to offer this type-ahead, pre-search query refinement in its Labs beginning in December 2004. Ask.com added a pre-search query refinement feature in June with the launch of Ask3D.

Yahoo added the pre-search Search Suggest feature earlier this month, which had been available in the Yahoo Toolbar for Firefox since March.

With Search Assist, Yahoo takes that idea a step further by offering related topics as well as specific suggested queries as searchers type. It’s also designed to stay out of the way when users don’t need it, and will only engage when users pause in the middle of typing a query.

More article : http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3626550

Get more from your Google Base listings by using Google Checkout
By Stephen Salinas, Google Base Support

As a Base user, you’re probably well aware of the increase in traffic that Base listings can deliver to your online business. Now you can convert more of that traffic into sales with Google Checkout, a fast and convenient checkout process that allows customers to buy from you quickly and easily with a single username and password.

If you currently list individual products on Base-hosted pages, you can now place a Google Checkout “buy” button on each of your listings. Customers who use Checkout can buy from you quickly and securely – and you’ll be able to use Checkout to process their orders and charge their credit or debit cards. Learn how to add Google Checkout to your Base listings.

Checkout can also be integrated into your own website alongside your existing process. Google Base merchants that accept Google Checkout on their sites get their product listings and AdWords ads badged with the Google Checkout logo in Google search results, which set them apart from competitors and lets customers know that buying from those sites will be quick and easy. And until 2008, Checkout merchants pay no transaction processing fees. Learn how to offer Google Checkout on your site.

For more information about using Google Checkout with Google Base, visit the Help Discussion Group for tips from other Google Base users.

Source: http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=25396&topic=8288

The latest company to join Google is on-demand communications security and compliance solutions Postini. The deal was sealed today with Google purchasing Postini for a hefty sum of $625 million according to a Google official press release. Postini is currently serving 35,000 business and 10 million users worldwide. None other than Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt explains the reason for the acquisition of Postini:With this transaction, we’re reinforcing our commitment to delivering compelling hosted applications to businesses of all sizes. With the addition of Postini, our apps are not just simple and appealing to users — they can also streamline the complex information security mandates within these organizations.

On Postini’s side, President and CEO Quentin Gallivan explain that:As the market leader in on-demand secure communications and compliance solutions, Postini complements Google perfectly. We share a commitment to providing enterprise customers with compelling technology alternatives. This is an exciting milestone, one that will certainly lead to the next level of rapid innovation.With the acquisition of Postini, Google is hoping to strengthen its

Enterprise suite Google Apps to effectively serve the needs of its enterprise clients. Especially since, corporate customers are very concern about enterprise network security when utilizing enterprise wide applications on their corporate servers. Postini would certainly enhance the effectivity and integrity of Google Apps as an enterprise solutions for office networking and computing.

Source: Search Engine Journal