In this post Switched on Media report about a new feature which has popped out for Google searches related to flood. After a bit of investigation we realised that the extent of keywords which trigger the extra info are quite broad and even target generic terms like flood if you are searching within Australia which is a very nice use of geo-targeting feature by Google.

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According to our observations Google has recently removed as much as 360 million pages from its index.

Days monitored: 35

Start Date: 18/11/10

End Date: 22/12/10

Maximum Pages in Index: 25,630,000,000

Minimum Pages in Index: 25,270,000,000

Major Difference: 360,000,000 pages

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Since April 2010 Google has been rolling out gradual improvements to Google Webmaster Tools. December update brings more visual information about search queries and page popularity data.

Search queries section now contains all filters in one place in addition to the date range selection.

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In their ongoing effort to make their search engine’s results more relevant to social media users, Google has announced that they have now begun to add some direct social sitelinks to search results when it is appropriate. This new feature allows users who are moderately to heavily active on the major social media services to have much simpler access to the information that they are looking for the most by taking every user’s unique social circle into consideration when they using Google.

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Google has updated the search result page for branded searches and now shows “quadruplet” listings. First snippet is of a regular size with the addition of shortcuts and more results link, while the other three have a compact description. Since we made our homepage snippet nice and short our quadruplet listings look quite consistent.

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Google Hotpot is a new application that is designed to help Google users find local businesses and hotspots based on their own preferences and on the recommendations of their friends. The application is a location-based recommendation service similar in function to the service offered by companies such as Foursquare and Yelp.

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How much time do you waste by “pogosticking” during your Google searches? If you’ve never heard that term before, it refers to selecting a link on the search results, not liking what you see, and then going back to the search results to start over.

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YouTube Insight for SEO Experts

YouTube is a household name and having a popular video can be a powerful marketing tool or a complete waste of time and money. It’s all depends on how you go about it. Internet marketers have been trying to find the right angle to employ video, as a growing online medium to launch and grow their campaigns.

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