New feature helps drill into people's expressed interests

Another addition to Google provides some extra details about search behavior on the dominant search engine.

The latest update at Google aims directly at the company's revenue stream. An advertiser-friendly feature called Google Insights for Search should help those visitors glean a little more information out of Google.

"It provides more flexibility and functionality for advertisers and marketers to understand search behavior, and adds some cool new features like a world heat map to graphically display search volume and regional interest," Elan Dekel and Niv Efron said on the Inside AdWords blog.

"Like Google Trends, you can just type in a search term to see search volume patterns over time, as well as the top related and rising searches. You’ll also have the ability to compare search volume trends across multiple search terms, categories (commonly referred to as verticals), geographic regions, or specific time ranges."

Insights for Search enables the viewer to enable various filters, to better drill down into activity around a keyword or phrase. As an example, a query for the forthcoming release of the movie Pineapple Express, filtered to look at the US, shows how much interest there is, state by state.

While Rhode Island tops the list for interest in the movie by Google's reckoning, fascination with its actress and Maxim cover girl Amber Heard is heaviest in California and other large-population states, less so in others.

That's a light-hearted look at what Google Insights for Search offers. We think the ability to look at the seasonality of queries will be helpful for our e-commerce readers, as it should help with the planning of ad campaigns throughout the year.

About the Author

David A. Utter is a staff writer at WebProNews.com

Google updated the toolbar PageRank over the weekend and already several webmasters, seo's and conspiracy theorists are pulling out their hair trying to make sense of it all.

Page Rank updates have a habit of getting everyone riled up and upset, but when you begin to understand the calculation, the method and the relationships between PR and SERPS, or lack thereof, you'll feel a little smarter, depending on whether you took a hit or not.

Matt is dealing with the usual barrage of questions, but has decided to put together a post that will demystify the whole PageRank thing a little further. So if you are looking for information about Google's PageRank update, read on as Matt Cutts, the head of Google's spam team explains:

Every few months we update the PageRank data that we show in the toolbar, and every few months I see a few repeated questions, so let me take a pass at some of them. Note: I wrote this kinda quickly, so I think this is pretty good, but if I spot something incorrect later, I’ll change it.

More info on PageRank

After months of speculation and two "preview" releases, Microsoft has taken the wraps off of its new MSN search engine, the first major competitor to join the big leagues of web search in nearly a year.

The new engine, available at beta.search.msn.com is an algorithmic search engine built from scratch by Microsoft engineers. "This is our new engine that we've built from the ground up," said Justin Osmer, product manager for MSN Search. Released in beta form, it's expected to replace Yahoo search results still in place at MSN sometime later this year or early next year.

Google increased its U.S. dominance in search in April, extending its lead over rivals Yahoo and Microsoft, according to comScore.

Google's search properties grabbed a record-high 61.6 percent of the U.S. market in April, up from 59.8 percent in March.

Out of the top five search engines, Google was the only company, that saw an increase in the number of searches in April. Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and Ask all had a decrease of 5 percent or more.

It must be Google week in Washington because representatives from the company were involved in at least three separate policy discussions. Fortunately, for the most part, the search company's lobbying efforts didn't seem entirely self-serving, unlike some other major corporations and their help-us-make-more-money demands.