If you have ever gotten lost in an airport, the mall (during Black Friday) or any other public building, then Google Maps’ latest app will put a smile on your face. On Tuesday November 29, 2011, Google announced the release of Google Maps version 6.0 for Android applications (apps). With Google Maps you can now negotiate both the outdoors and the indoors, making it harder to get lost in malls, stores, airports, and more.
The indoor mapping navigation is similar to Google Maps for outdoors. Users can zoom in on any public building where indoor map data is available. Google Maps for indoors will automatically generate detailed floor plans on Android smartphones and tablets. The “My Location” blue dot shows your location in a building with multiple floors and will automatically update as you move from floor to floor.
“When you’re inside an airport, shopping mall or retail store, a common way to figure out where you are is to look for a freestanding map directory or ask an employee for help,” Google said via its Lat Log Blog. “With the release of Google Maps 6.0 for Android, that directory is brought to the palm of your hands, helping you determine where you are, what floor you’re on and where to go indoors.”
The goal of Google Maps Indoor is to help people navigate public spaces. Google has partnered with 60 businesses in both the United States and Japan for the initial roll-out. Here is a partial list of where indoor mapping is currently available: Read more…
Bing and Yahoo will be merging their search results by next year. This merger will be a game changer for Bing. The unified search user base will give them a new stronghold on the search engine market and a motive to provide more features for current website owners.
Keeping this in mind, Bing has already added huge improvements and details to Webmaster Tools for website owners to have stronger metrics for Bing SERPs, ad monitoring and keyword valuation. Bing promises to share more data, to increase transparency and to bring users more useful tools.
Per the Bing Team Read more…
What do Kit from Knight Rider, Sonny from the movie IRobot , David from the movie A.I. and local search all have in common? The answer – Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence is defined as being the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. Thanks to Apple, you can now use A. I. in the form of voice search to perform local searches on your mobile phones.
For those of you who don’t know, local search is when a search engine is used to find a local business listing within a specific geographic area.
On October 4, 2011 Apple introduced Siri, an intelligent assistant that helps you get things done just by asking. It responds to voice commands and questions.
Apple explains:
Read more…
Google has recently reclassified link data in Webmaster Tools. The latest update is designed to closely align your backlinks with how you define internal and external links. Due to this major change, many sites can expect to see a decrease in external links and an increase in internal links, depending on how your site is arranged.
Previously, links that were categorized as internal had to start with your site’s exact URL. If they started with something other than your site’s exact URL then they were considered external links. For example, if you entered your site as www.prominentplacement.com/bestSEMfirm/Google , links from www.prominentplacement.com/bestSEMfirm/Google/Professionals would be considered internal, but links from prominentplacement.com/bestSEMfirm would be considered external. As such, links from www.prominentplacement.com and prominentplacement.com would be considered external.
Here is a quick lesson on how Webmaster Tools views different types of domains Read more…
