Google has not let its recent setbacks (the closing of Google Wave comes to mind) stop it from launching new services.

Google wants to be more than your search central. It wants to be your communication hub, becoming your one-stop place for interaction with friends and colleagues. This is why it launched Google Buzz, a kind of Facebook/Twitter social web tool based on your Google email account, and this is why it now attacks VoIP phone service Skype by turning Gmail into a regular phone.

All you have to do is to install a voice and video chat plug-in, and you can use your computer’s microphone, loudspeaker and — if needed — video camera to communicate. And yes, a dedicated head set with mike is useful.

Now, Google’s voice and video chat has been around for a while, but its usefulness has been limited. You could only connect with others having a Gmail account. Now US users of Gmail can call anyone with a phone anywhere in the world.

The Google Blog says:

“Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates. We worked hard to make these rates really cheap (see comparison table) with calls to the U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan—and many more countries—for as little as $0.02 per minute.”

So far Google Buzz hasn’t made much of an impact on the Facebook crowd. May the Gmail phone make Skype users switch to Google? We doubt it, but Gmail users who have not been using Voice over Internet services before, may start using Gmail Phone, and that will tie them even closer to Gmail as their default communication tool. That would in itself be a success for Google.

Google reported that they had clocked 1 million calls made through Gmail during the first 24 hours.

SMX West: March 2-4
Go to California!

And then they were two…

This week the world lost another search engine giant. Yahoo! in the US and Canada has switched over to using the Bing database, and the rest of the world will soon follow. This means that the North American market is now totally dominated by Google and Bing.

This does not mean that Google and Microsoft have achieved global domination, though. Yandex is, for instance, the big player in Russia and Baidu is dominating the Chinese market.

Still, this does not bode well for search engine innovation in what we used to call the Western Hemisphere. There are no alternative big search engine players left in Europe any more.

Here are some other search engine headlines we have found interesting this week:

Google Adds A Filter For Finding Blogs SE Land
New Awesome Ways to Search within Current Site (Using Google’s site operator) SE Journal
Has Google Purged Places Of Yelp? All Signs Point To Yes TechCrunch
Google Realtime Search Gets Home Page, Conversation View, Alerts & Geosearch SE Land
Google News Changes Again, Adds Collapsible Right Side SE Roundtable
Bing’s Market Share Up 51% In Past 12 Months SE Land
Google’s Latest Buy – Like.com Confirmed! PageTraffic
Yahoo! Transitions Organic Search Back-End to Microsoft Platform Yahoo! switches over to Bing search results in the US and Canada.
Twitter hashtags: quick guide Phil Bradley
4 Cool New Gmail Features You Should Know Search mail and docs, sign into multiple accounts, and more; Google Tutor

Facebook, Twitter and Youtube Marketing.
Hourly rates $15 to $25.

Google has relaunched Google Replay as part of an improved real-time search feature.

Google Replay was Google’s attempt at presenting Twitter search results in a new fashion, giving you a time-line graph. By clicking on the time-line you could select the year, month or day, or click any point to view the tweets from one specific time period.

The service soon disappeared, but has now reappeared at a new Google Realtime Search page.

You can also find this microblog search tool by doing a regular Google search and then click on “More” and “Updates” in the left hand column of the search result page.

Resourceshelf reports that the “Updates” database contains content from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, and Google Buzz. Only Twitter is covered by the Replay tool, and then only back to February this year. The idea is to expand the historical Twitter database back to 2006.

You can narrow searches by clicking on the time-line (to select a month or a date) or by selecting “location” in the left hand column. A link to “Updates with Images” give you the same results with image thumbnails fetched from the blog or the page the microblog entries are linking to.

In the right hand column you will find links to the most popular web site links at the time of your search query.

Finally, Google may also add a link to the full conversation leading up to a tweet or update if possible.

Is this and important upgrade for Google?

We think so, as Twitter and other social web sites contain a lot of interesting references to online resources that will be of use to journalists, librarians, researchers and other investigators. Remember that Twitter & Co is much more than senseless chatter about making dinner and going to bed. People use this services to look for information, and by using Google Realtime you can tap into those searches.

Google Realtime can also be used to research trends and retrace the development of a particular happening, let’s say a natural disaster or a political scandal.

See also Google Tutor: Google Increases Focus On Realtime With Realtime Search Page

A World of Friends!

SMX East: NYC Oct 5-7
Click Here for Agenda!

For all the straight talking “I don’t care what you think, I will say what I want” attitude he has on TV, it seems to be quite the opposite on the web for Simon Cowell. Observations on certain trends seem to suggest that the former American Idol judge is going out of his way to avoid bad press.

Observers have stated that it is almost impossible to find any bad news about Cowell on Google’s searches and that he probably has something to do with it. An actual test of this allegation seems to confirm it, as any search for “Simon Cowell” does not turn up anything negative about the Briton.

The theory is that Cowell is using an SEO or Search Engine Optimization firm to ensure that nothing but the good stuff turns up on Google. This could be true as any critical news of him only appears after the 20th page on Google’s search results. Casual users wouldn’t go beyond even the 3rd page on any search result. The theory seems to carry even more weight in light of a censorship story.

Apparently a blog slashing Cowell and his behavior was taken down by the host, Wordpress. They had explained the action by calling it a violation of the terms and conditions of the website. Although the blog was restored after several hours Hans Ebert, the author of the blog, did some digging to find out the truth. According to Ebert, the complaint had come from an SEO firm that was operating out of Bangalore, India. Further digging revealed that the SEO firm was under contract from a firm in London, England which gets them to monitor news about specific personalities. A spokeswoman for Cowell rubbished the story and denied any knowledge of a person named Ebert.

Here at Pandia, we have gathered tools and tips for all kinds of searching. We even have a page dedicated to shopping search which was recently updated, which will help you find quality shopping sites online.

Pandia Shopping Search has three parts. The first part is a list of shopping search engines and online malls. There are separate sections for comparison shopping, customer information, shopping trends and more.

The second part contains links to selected online stores in 16 categories. Find established online shopping sites for home & garden, food & drink, gifts & flowers and much more.

The third part is a collection of links to shopping sites listed in our own Pandia Plus Directory. This part contains links to some 40 categories each containing hand picked links to quality sites. Give it a try to find quality shopping web sites!

photo credit: jk+too

A World of Friends!

SMX East: NYC Oct 5-7
Click Here for Agenda!

Social media of all kinds are a source of huge amounts of fresh information about news and events, likes and dislikes. But the signal-to-noice ratio is not good: Much, maybe most, of the material posted is personal and it can be hard to find the pertinent information. You need help to sift and sort the items, so why not try one of these five great real time search engines.

There are all kinds of search engines out there, searching the real time web. Some search a particular channel, like Twitter or Flickr. Others search for particular media, like images or video. These five search engines all search several sources and present results in several kinds of media.

Collecta

My personal favorite is Collecta. This is a powerful search tool, yet it is easy to figure out and navigate. The front page holds boxes, each containing a hot topic represented with both images and text, so you have a feeling of reading a real time newspaper.

When you do a search, the screen is split into three columns: The main column shows a live stream of fresh items matching your query. These are updated in real time and the stream can be paused if you want a closer look. The stream contains:

• Microblog updates from Twitter, Jaiku and Identica
• Blog posts and blog comments
• Photos from Flickr, TwitPic and yFrog
• Videos from YouTube and Ustream

When you select an item, it expands in the right column, where you can get a closer look at it. Unfortunately, there is no way to play videos on the results page, you have to click through to the source, e.g. YouTube.

In the left column, you can sort your results by type (updates, images, stories etc.). In the same menu, you can share the results: You can send them directly to Facebook, Twitter, Mixx, Delicious, Reddit or StumbleUpon or you can grab the URL to the page or the feed.

Topsy

Topsy has no fancy front page like Collecta, but the search results page holds plenty of options. By default, the results include news, tweets and photos (no videos). You can sort the results by type in the left menu. You can also sort by time: Choose between news from the last hour, day, week or month, or see all hits for your query from Topsy’s index.

Experts is a feature unique to Topsy. Click this link and Topsy will present you with a list of people on Twitter who appear to be authorities on your query. This can be very useful for research purposes or when you seek to expand your Twitter network.

Topsy’s sharing options include Twitter, Facebook, RSS and email alerts.

48ers

48ers is a new contestant in the real time search race. The search results display hits from Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, Digg, and Delicious. A tiny icon next to each result shows the source. If you want to see the results for each network separately, you can filter the results from a menu on the left.

I love that 48ers search Delicious. This is my most indesposable web tool. I use it not only for storing bookmarks, but for finding vetted web resources and sharing them with others.

There is no RSS, but a button at the top of the search results list lets you share your search with friends through a large number of channels or networks (choose from a list of 287).

There are links to trending topics and a list of recommended searches help you make the most of your search.

Leapfish

Leapfish is a search destination with a lot to offer. If you log in, you can customize the front page to display your favorite news sources (you can log in with your Twitter or Facebook ID). And Leapfish is both a regular search engine and a real time search engine. Enter your query and choose the Real Time button.

The main column displays the results. LeapFish does a good job of sorting and presenting them: The latest from the news corporations tops the list. Then comes the most tweeted links related to your query. Below this is a list of the latest related tweets. To the right are boxes for video and image results.

On the far right there is a set of links that lets you do your search on a sub set of the index: Images, videos, news and blogs along with options for web search and shopping search. Very convenient. There are also links to related searches and trending topics.

Scoopler

Scoopler is a powerful search tool. The front page displays top stories, top videos and hot searches to give you a feeling of what’s going on. There are also links that give you one click access to popular categories: entertainment, technology, sports, world, science, gaming, and politics.

The search results page holds a lot of information. The main list of results contains the most relevant stories from all the sources. A menu on the left lets you sort them to display links, images or videos. You can play the videos without leaving your search results. On the right you can see new tweets matching your query and the list is updated in real time.

The only option for sharing is through RSS.

I also want to mention Sency

Sency is not among the top 5 because it doesn’t meet all the criteria for our list. It only searches microblog updates and displays no videos or images. Still, I want to draw your attention to this swiss army knife of Twitter search. The list of features include local search for a number of US cities and some international destinations, search in French, Spanish, Italian and German, and an easy option to respond to tweets in your search results + much more.

A World of Friends!

SMX West: March 2-4
Go to California!

If you are an avid user of social networks or if you want to monitor the hive mind for news about, say, a brand, a sports team or a celebrity, you know it can be hard to keep up across the different networks. Here’s a solution.

48ers is a new search engine in public beta. It lets you search Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, Digg, and Delicious all at once. All you do is enter the search term and hit Search. By default, results from all five networks are displayed. The search results are entire entries (tweets, updates etc). A little logo next to each result lets you know the source. If you want to see the results for each network separately, you can filter the results from a menu on the left.

There is no RSS, but a button to share search results with friends through a large number of channels.

I am particularly happy that Delicious is included among the sources. For years, it has continued to be my most indesposable web tool, not only for storing bookmarks, but for finding vetted web resources and sharing them with others.

(In case you are wondering: The name 48ers refers to the pioneers of the California gold rush.)

Facebook, Twitter and Youtube Marketing.
Hourly rates $15 to $25.