Google Search has recently updated its “Suggest feature” which suggests the user keywords independent of where the user types in the box. While previously the user was suggested various keyword entries on the basis of how the keyword would be ending up, Google now suggests keywords on the basis of where the cursor is.

An example of this is if I am searching for “car insurance” on Google then Google will suggest combinations like “car insurance”, “car insurance quotes”, “car insurance groups”, “car insurance comparison” and many more as I am typing but that is what has been up for a long while.

The innovation in the suggest feature comes for lets say if you are searching for “insurance” and then think oh wait I should have been searching for “car insurance” and not just “insurance”.

So you move the cursor before insurance and as soon as you type “c” it shows suggestions on the basis of your entry in relation to other words that have already been entered.

This has been a very recent update in Google Search and I have found it extremely useful.

I was just trying to access a video chat website on Google chrome and noticed a new error. What was supposed to be either a possibly 404 error or a request timeout was shown as “Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to site.com” and additionally it also mentioned that “Other users are also experiencing difficulties connecting to this site, so you may have to wait a few minutes.”.

This is a new addition into Google Chrome it seems as I have been regularly using the browser and have noticed this notification for the first time. Google is working hard for sure to offer a lot of features to users and make web browsing a pleasant experience.

One of the best things about this error is that the user is made aware that its not his connection that is the problem but the server hosting that specific website is the source of the problem. This can save a lot of time to those who sometimes can’t figure out what is the problem that the website is not loading.

I just noticed a while ago while going through some pages of my website that whenever I hovered my mouse on an adsense ad, it would play an audio and a small box appearing to enter my number.

This is the first instance of hover to play audio ad by Adsense that I have noticed. Hover to play audio ads can be annoying and this one took me by surprise as I was just moving my mouse on the screen.

I am not sure if this advertisement is a cost per impression ad or cost per action ad or a combination of both but recently have noticed many advertisements that involve user engagement rather than the usual click format.

Adsense has recently been rolling out many “user action” based advertisements. While some advertisements ask the user to put up his question, others ask travel relation information. There are also insurance related advertisements going around.

One thing that is for sure is that they definitely will pay the publisher more than what they would be expecting from the pay per click scheme. As more and more advertisers move to the new format, publishers will be having a bigger impact on their earnings.

Google has released an updated beta version of its popular Google Chrome Browser. There have been a couple of updates in the latest version of Google Chrome which includes new functionalities which seem to be introduced by Google using data that is received from user activities on its browsers.

It seems that Google has tried to focus on giving maximum space allocated for the webpage that needs to be accessed through its browser. That means less scrolling and also web publishers can expect users to have more focus on advertisements. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox browser seem to take a lot of space unlike Google Chrome.

What I noticed instantly was that the favourite button has been moved from left to right position. Also the bookmark shortcut button does not seem to work anymore which was the only shortcut feature of Chrome that I had been using.

There has also been a zooming functionality added for the ease of users. Many users do not know how they can zoom a web page and this will be very convenient for them.

The Google Chrome team has been quite quick in releasing updated versions of the Google Chrome browser and an interesting thing is that the browser updates itself automatically. So in case your worried about security issues then its worth to move to Google Chrome.

So today while browsing through the pages, I noticed there was a new adsense adformat that I have never seen before on websites using adsense. It seems that Google is now testing a new style in order to help web publishers increase their adsense earnings.

Usually the ads are divided vertically for views for a 728×60 ad unit however as can be seen in the new format, the ads have started appearing vertically. It is expected that the Click through rate for adsense publishers will be higher cause otherwise Adsense would not be rolling out these changes.

According to what I have found is that the ads are quite attractive at the moment than the previous format which was being used and puts more focus of the visitor towards the ads. I think that the main reason why this change has been implemented is that Google felt that much of the focus of the visitors was towards a particular side of the ad unit.

I was just searching for meaning of “traction” on the Google search engine and came onto something interesting. Google has now started showing related advertisements alongside the searches. I am guessing that the related advertisements are decided by Google on the basis of what terms containing your search are popular.

The related ads feature will help Google increase revenue through searches performed on its search engine since it enables the search engine to show advertisements for those categories where the search engine might be failing to meet the requirements for the advertisers. In other words, it helps the search engine to efficiently sell its ad inventory.

According to me, this could be a good news for advertisers since now they can have a bigger, wider audience however in case their advertisement is really not targeted properly – it could dramatically affect their sales.

For the term ”traction” I was not actually looking for the orthopaedic version of the term but how its related to business. The ads in this case were related to spinal and neck traction and not relevant to what I was actually looking for.

Google has received the final shipment of its Nexus Ones and will discontinue selling the devices once they are sold out. Even though Google has been successfully able to dominate the mobile operating system arena, the android based nexus one failed to garner the sales that Google was expecting.

What we can speculate out of this move is that either Google has pulled out from the phone hardware arena or is coming out with something new that has not been revealed at the moment.

Reasons for the failure of Nexus One -

• Launch Date – The phone was released in January after the new year. Since December has more sales because of the Christmas and New Year, people had already got the things they wanted as their gift (iphone??). Perhaps Google failed to realise that their launch date could have affected their sales significantly.
• Features and Specifications – The phone did not really had to offer anything out of the box for the users, what was already in the market. Even though highly anticipated among the people, it did not offered much reasons to especially iphone users to switch to Google’s new phone.
• Lack of Support – There seemed to be a lot more limited support for the Nexus One. Since Google provided support mainly through its online forums, it seemed a lot more frustrating for the user when he could not find the solution to his problem. The Nexus One had a relatively new operating system – Android and it is expected that many people will be having problem migrating to a new operating system or with technical concepts of the phone. People like to get their issues resolved fast and in case they don’t then they would prefer getting a replacement or a new phone.
• Pricing – The phone’s pricing had been relatively higher than other HTC phones available in the market. As in my case I preferred to have HTC Desire rather than Nexus One because the price difference was relatively huge and there is hardly much difference in the specifications of both the phones. I simply ended up saving more than a hundred pounds by getting the HTC Desire and not the Nexus One. Though this can be attributed to Google’s branding and commission they were getting on sale of each phone, these things do not really matter to the consumer.
• Marketing – Even though Google dominates the web, it failed to use its strength in order to employ the best marketing tactics for the phone. Even though the data from trends is not accurate, it gives a good idea of the popularity. As in the case of iphone versus nexus one, the nexus one had less popularity and reach than what iphone managed a few years before Google. Considering that the reach among internet users is higher than the previous years, and dominance of Google on the internet – it should have shown a lot more for their product.

Google’s Nexus One demonstrated the abilities of what Google’s Android could do and even though the phone has failed, the android os is gaining popularity among the phone users.

Just a while ago, Kevin Rose put an update on his twitter account – “Ok, umm, huge rumor: Google to launch facebook competitor very soon “Google Me”, very credible source.” and the news regarding Google’s new social product is now buzzing on the internet.

Though there has been no official word yet from Google regarding a facebook competitor, the chances seem quite dim regarding a launch of Google Me. Social network “Orkut” was previously competing well with facebook however facebook introduced new features that pushed back Orkut from its top position that it had held.

So what I believe is that even though Google has a variety of services with a decent user base, it is trying to put new products in the market while losing focus on the previous ones. Many products like Orkut, Google Waves and many more have been introduced by Google which garnered huge attention however failed to meet the company’s long term goals.