But what would be termed content farms? Seems to me, the content farms are sites that churn out large numbers of pages, mostly duplicate or low quality content, although that isn’t entirely clear to me. Content farms? Think of Web 2.0 article directories that receive mass submissions from the public like Ezine Articles, Hubpages, Suite 101, Associated Content, and similar.

Does that mean these sites are no good anymore? No! They will still be valid for a long time. But if you’ve been focusing too much attention writing article after article for these sites, it is time to seriously reconsider your approach. Those who have written hundreds of pages for these sites could be feeling the pinch now. What you should be doing all along is putting most of your energy on your OWN sites. Here is an interesting theory on why Ezine Articles was among the hardest hit (too much spammy content?)

Were content farms the only ones hit? No, the changes were widespread. During the first week of the algorithm change, many of my sites did take a slight hit, although they are recovering now. There seems to be not much consensus on what were the factors, but it should not be too hard to figure out what Google (ultimately) wants.

Since Google’s stated intention is to give people what they want, it is in your best interest to strive to do so as well. It is a waste of time to pore or argue over small details like ad-content ratio above the fold or below the fold, or blackhat vs whitehat. To KISS is to give people what they want and in time, things should fall into place. At least, you will have less things to worry about!

Just some of the considerations that Google has hinted on in the past (actual checklist is certainly much longer):

• Content – Is it unique?
• Backlinks
• Age of site
• Time visitors spend on site
• Ads to content ratio. Is it overboard?
• Site loading time/uptime
• Social media presence

I’ve also heard of many human reviewers that are being employed by Google as well, to look at the results and rate the sites that show up. If this is being done on a large scale, I guess even the blackest of blackhats will not get away for long!

Put it another way, it’s about quality and maintaining your focus to align with that ideal as close as possible. Shortcuts may work in the short term, but in the long run, will eventually fall away. If you’ve been pumping out lots of spun articles, now is a good time to evaluate if this approach is what you really want to do. If you’ve been using spam tools to gather tons of links overnight, it’s time to pause and think whether this will work tomorrow. It might still be working today, but will it pass the test tomorrow? If you have been scraping the content from other sites and dishing them out on autoblogs, maybe it’s time to scrap those things for good……

Of course, these developments set the bar higher and higher and make it harder (and continuously harder) for people to game Google, and unfortunately for the little guy on the street, it hurts them too. There was plenty of collateral damage from this update, and we can expect more to come in the near future. So if you are a website owner, how are you coping and how will you keep up?

For starters, many sites were not indexed or lost their number of indexed pages sometime beginning around Oct 21. I’ve certainly experienced this when some sites of mine that used to be crawled and indexed very quickly now take a day or two to get indexed. While Google certainly wasn’t “broken,” it certainly made for a catchy headline. This glitch was admitted by Google (and also claimed to have been resolved) at their webmaster forum.

Since then, crawling and indexing has more or less improved back to pre Oct 21 levels. But the number of reduced indexation reported by many still seems to be maintained, and some sites still report a few days before their new pages are indexed.

While the glitch improved, many sites reported big drops in traffic after their pages dropped in Google’s search results (SERP) ranking starting around Oct 29. This wasn’t isolated, but seemed to affect many sites across the Web. Even the guys at Alexa confirmed this too, although you’d need to be aware that when some rankings drop, others go up to take their places, so it is all relative in the end. Those whose traffic dropped would certainly be more likely to report it compared to those whose traffic went up.

What’s odd is some old and large sites got dropped for many of their search terms; there seems to be a preference in Google now for big labels and brands to be listed nearer the top, phasing out many small and “thin” sites that Google possibly now considers redundant. These changes indicate some kind of update with Google (that is probably here to stay). Whether it is still an ongoing glitch or a definite update, remains to be seen in the coming months.

The take home message? If you’re depending on Google (as virtually all webmasters are), you have to get used to these Google quirks, and roll with the punches – It’s a given. If you’re a webmaster, your focus should always be on creating useful, accurate, and engaging content; that’s about all you can do to stay as close to the “middle zone” as far as is possible.

To me, Google Instant is simply Google trying to improve its main product for its users, no big deal.

Personally, I’m not really a fan of Google Instant…..

My own search habits remain the same; I always know what I want to search for, and don’t need an automated machine giving me suggestions. In fact, I find the suggestions a little annoying and distracting (especially when you are in serious mood searching up a serious topic). I don’t even look down at the instant search results that appear – until after I am done with typing out my query. I do like the convenience aspect, since I can do less typing on shorter keywords and save what, two seconds?

For many people who are lazy or don’t have anything in particular on their mind, they might find Google Instant helpful. Yet, overall, I think this has more of a gimmicky feel than anything else. Especially, when recent reports suggested that Facebook has surpassed Google itself for traffic. Google would do better to address poor search results and doing more to weed out spammy, black/gray hat sites, or sites that give a poor user experience.

SEO marketers have been griping that Google Instant would distract people from typing in long tail keyword searches and reduce the traffic to their pages; fortunately, it maxes out at 4 word suggestions. If your website was getting traffic for a query, “Make money online right,” now Google suggests, “Make money online fast,” and then delivers the results. So you may lose traffic when some people settle for Google’s suggestion and browse down. Personally though, I’ve not noticed any negative impact from Google Instant for my sites.

Time will tell what effect Google Instant will have on web searches, and how it will impact Google. It may even turn out detrimental to Google, but hey, no matter what happens, I couldn’t resist jumping on the Google Instant buzz bandwagon

Find Google Instant annoying? Here’s how to turn it off:

On your main Google page, look up at the top right hand corner of the screen. There is a link to your Search Settings.

Scroll down the bottom and there is an option to turn off or disable Google Instant. Alternatively, there is a small link on the right of your query box to turn it off, too (I turned mine off).

Motivation & Functionality of the tool

Universal Translator, Google’s impracticable technology is aimed at converting spoken words into a different language. At present one can convert text in 52 languages using “Google Translate”. However, Universal Translator is a speech-to-speech automated translator that will translate speech in real-time. Universal Translator will be embedded in the Android phones.

The idea inspiring the development of this pioneering tool is to enable Android users to easily communicate with people speaking in other languages with their smartphones.

The working of Universal Translator is straightforward. The tool will “listen” to the speaker (sender) at one-end and wait for them to complete until it comprehends the full meaning of the words (or phrases). It will then send this interpreted data to Google’s servers for translation. The person on the other end (receiver) will be able to listen to a computerized voice translation of the phrases spoken by the speaker. The communication will proceed similarly, both ways.

Overview of the technology:

Universal Translator is essentially a combination of two existing technologies by Google.

1. Google Translate: Online universal translator service.
2. Voice recognition system: Technology to recognize human voice. This technology is embedded in the Nexus One phone by Google and is used to bring about users spoken commands.

As Universal Translator combines voice recognition with Google Translate, it is very important for voice reorganization to be on the ball. However voice recognition is still not very capable in current smartphones, causing users to repeat commands often. Combining these technologies will present problems for the engineers working on this project.

Another prime challenge the team of programmers will face is the problems associated to various accents used for the same language. We know that languages are spoken with different dialects across different locations. Recognizing and translating these accents in real-time will be challenging, and it’s one of the main kinks that need to be ironed out; but I think we all look forward to when such technology becomes reality. And I’m sure this one is going to get used a lot.

The Windows Calendar window will be displayed.

You can easily use this calendar to manage your appointments and other day-to-day activities. However, if you prefer to stick to your Google Calendar, you can easily integrate it to the Windows Calendar and access it right from your desktop.

Here’s how to do this.

• First open your Google Calendar and click the “Settings” link given at the top of the web page.

• On the Calendar Settings page, click the “Calendar” tab

• Select your calendar and then on the Calendar Details page that is displayed, scroll down to the “Private Address” section.

• Here, right-click on the “ICAL” link, and the select the “Copy Shortcut” option. This will copy the link to your clipboard.
• Next, go back to your Windows Calendar and click the “Subscribe” button located on the toolbar.

• Paste the URL you copied in the “Calendar to subscribe to:” box and click “Next”.

• Windows Calendar will take some time to subscribe to your Google calendar and after some time, the Calendar subscription settings dialog box will be displayed.
• Here, enter a friendly name for your Google Calendar and choose the interval at which you want the calendar to update. Also, choose whether or not you want to include reminders and tasks.
• After you are done, hit the “Finish” button.

That’s all there is to it. Once your Google Calendar is synced with your Windows Calendar, you will be able to view your Google entries in the Windows Calendar. In the screenshot given below, entries in blue are from the Google Calendar.

The Google entries displayed here are read-only and you cannot make any changes to them. If you don’t to wait for the calendar to update on its own, on the Share menu in Windows Calendar, click the “Sync All” command.

Google Buzz is another social media application released on February this year. The application built in the Gmail window allows users to follow their favorite contacts and share links, videos, photos etc. in a hassle free way, collaborate with friends, and keep updated. Being integrated with Gmail, the friends list is automatically created and you do not have to make one from scratch. However at the same time, Buzz is not intrusive for Gmail users. In this post, we will pinpoint some exciting features of Google Buzz.

Buzz can be visualized as an amalgam of social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Friend Feed. There is also Google Buzz for Mobile, on mobile devices like Android and Iphone.

Getting started with Buzz on your mobile phone is easy:

• Log onto http://www.google.com/mobile/buzz/
• Send Buzz to your phone from the Send to Phone button
• Once you successfully open the page, you are able to view Buzz (updates) from your friends, essentially the same way as on your computer.
• In order to enter your status, you must post a Buzz. You can also tag your location via Google Maps. You can also post comments on the status of your friends.

Google Buzz for mobile has some distinguished features that make sharing via mobile a convenient experience. Here are the core features, elaborated briefly.

• Tagging Locations:
  Google Buzz, like Google Latitude is a location-Aware social Network. Many features of Latitude are enhanced in Buzz. When posting a Buzz from your phone you can also tag your location. To tag location from your phone, select your suggestions or search your locations. The location you select will be displayed on your Buzz which makes sharing more interactive. This location-implementation is based on an AGPS system.
• Integration of Buzz with Google Maps:
  The ‘Buzz Layer’ on Google Maps for mobile enables you to find out the happenings in the vicinity of your current location. The numbers of Buzz messages coming from a location indicate how eventful it is.  With Buzz Layer in Google Maps you can mark these action-packed places that can possibly be a newly opened restaurant, any social meeting or art exhibition. Similarly, you can view the affairs of any location you are interested in.
• Views in Buzz:
  There are 2 major views for your Buzz messages – Following View: The Following View will show Buzz messages from the people you follow. It is similar to Google Buzz in your Gmail. Nearby View: The Nearby View will display public Buzz updates tagged in your near-by location. You can also select location for which you need to span the associated Buzz messages.
• Using Buzz with Google Phone Voice Shortcut:
  As all the text fields in the Google phone are voice enabled and capable of transcribing voice into text, posting buzz is more unproblematic with Google Phone. You can effortlessly touch “Post buzz” and speak the content you want to publish about yourself.
• Simple shortcut to post Buzz:
  To post your buzz message conveniently, the shortcut for the posting box is placed on the navigation bar.

Comparisons between Facebook, and Google Buzz are obvious. While many assume that Google is too late to venture in this field due to Facebook’s dominance, Google doesn’t seem to think so, and it could turn out that Buzz and Facebook can co-exist.

As Buzz comes with Gmail it becomes convenient to stay informed with emails. However, this can be bothersome in some cases, like for people who use Gmail for professional emails.

Another consequence is through Buzz you might find yourself following people or cooperates you have mailed years ago. People have complained that Buzz tends to expose their contact list. This incorporation of Gmail and Buzz is stirring confusion among some Gmail users.

There have been other complaints concerning security issues, due to which Buzz has been revised for at least three times. However despite trivial complaints Google Buzz for Mobile continues to gain Android and Iphone users as fans, being a location-based social-interacting communication pad. I recommend to try-out Buzz for an interesting experience!