They decided to kick things off by analyzing Google.com, and the surprise piece of info that caught my eye was their HTML code validation, or lack thereof. Take a look at Google’s 35 errors and 2 warnings (as of today 5/16/2011) on the W3C validation site.

In their defense, Google did follow many of their own recommendations by having basics like robots.txt and xml sitemaps. Can’t wait till Facebook steamrolls Google search with Facebook SocialSearch and Google struggles to get ranked, playing by FB’s rules.

The updates involve tracking the change in amount of impressions and clicks and the change in rankings for each keyword and can be found in “Your Site on the Web” under Search Queries. It doesn’t replace my rank tracking software or some good digging in Google Analytics, but it definitely helps me see more information at a glance about each keyword. Thanks for the early Christmas present Google.

1. The Onion’s Apple Spoof – Announcing the Macbook Wheel

2. Google’s April Fools joke from 2000 – the MentalPlex

Personally – Instant Search is annoying and visually overwhelming. But I guess when Google’s only hindrance is us in speeding up search – whats left to do but annoy us into “faster” search behavior.

But if you’ve been spending any time working on legitimate local listings in Google Places… (and by legitimate I mean you didn’t buy an address downtown and list your 3 keywords as the business name – when I find you I flag you ruthlessly) then you should instantly benefit from Instant Search. Here’s why:

As a searcher is searching for the product or service that he needs – lets say movers – the instant results will most likely pull up a map of close results based on the geo-location of the searcher’s IP address. The listings on that map, according to some random tests I’ve run, change as the searcher continues to type in more letters for his search. The order and possibly even the location change as the search term(s) get more detailed – giving more local and maps options within one search, than a normal searcher would’ve ever seen or considered before Instant Search.

Notice the Map is the top result, and note the local listing ranking order...

Now notice that the map is the 4th result and that the rankings have changed, just by adding a space after the first word of my search.

After certain Bing looking filters were added to Google’s results, it looked like Google was falling into the trap of copying their neighbors (aka Bing) for ideas, and while I’ve read some rumors that Yahoo had Instant Search 5 years ago, and ditched it. It’s nice to know the search-game-changers are still trying to change the game.

I got an email from Twitter this morning letting me know that the millions of apps that access and update the Twitter API will no longer be doing so via a request for your password. Instead they’ll use a new form of authorization called “OAuth” – which will still request your permission before accessing or posting to your Twitter account. I like that I can now see a list of the apps that I’ve permitted to access my Twitter profile and can revoke any of them at anytime (see the “Connections” tab in your profile).

Also announced in the email was the eventual roll out of t.co – a new URL shortener that Twitter lovingly calls a URL wrapping service. The new “wrapping service” can be opted-in by individual users but will be rolled out to all users by the end of the year. The upside for users is that where the link points to will be more clearly displayed – the wrapped link will sometimes display the page title and most of the time display the actual domain and part of the address of the link. The SEO downside is Twitter will now be redirecting all links through itself – killing the link juice love. As the email says:

When you click on a wrapped link, your request will pass through the Twitter service to check if the destination site is known to contain malware, and we then will forward you on to the destination URL. All of that should happen in an instant.

I understand the benefit of the safety this provides, but hopefully rolling this out “to all users by the end of the year” doesn’t mean a forced roll out – leaving the option open to leave your tweets “unwrapped”.

—photo credit to http://www.thisnext.com —

The almighty Facebook – the entity responsible for guarding our private and personal contact information, profile photos, and network affiliations – almost shattered this sense of security. Jason Kincaid reports that a security hole in the new instant personalization partnership between Yelp and Facebook, opened up any facebook user to instant personal information sharing.

Yelp is the only partner in the Instant Personalization roll out allowed to personalize itself for you if you’re a Facebook member. No login or Facebook connect required. Yelp instantly gets access to most of your personal data from your Facebook profile, including your email address, without asking you permission.

The security hole involved a potential impostor website capturing Yelp’s browser cookies, get the key needed to make API requests to Facebook, and pose as Yelp simply collecting personal info as part of their Instant Personalization.

I’m all for real time search and ideas like Instant Personalization. But what we have to watch is – as speed and personalization increase, do quality and security decrease? Does the Twitter bug from yesterday where Twitter was forced to reset everyone’s follower count to zero not scare as many people because it was handled quickly? If  progress is well thought out, there doesn’t need to be a compromise.

Just a quick update for some of you that might have heard that Facebook commandeered a user’s vanity landing page  (/harmon). After much outcry produced by TechCrunch on the issue surrounding the handing over of the landing page url to Harman International, Facebook sent TechCrunch and Harman Bajwa… emails letting them know that the vanity url would be returned to Mr. Bajwa.

It’s interesting that the concern used to be about what the government could take from normal citizens. Now that are whole lives are stored in a few online places (Google accounts, twitter pages, Facebook profiles, etc.) maybe we should be worried about how much of that info is and will continue to be safe? I mean no-one thought in a million years that a bank as big as Washington Mutual would fail… who knew Copeland Sports * would close their doors?… and what about Mervyns, Circuit City, etc? What happens when one of these internet giants starts to falter and in an attempt to survive sells their soul and my info to some other corporate conglomerate with a looser definition of privacy in their policy?

* the Copeland Sports reference is just a little shout out to the nationwide sporting goods store I worked at while in college all the way through the closing of the doors. RIP Copeland Sports.

I feel like this app will only really work if everyone gets on it. But on the other hand I feel like if everyone is on it, there will be too many useless “Chalks” (aka notes according to TC) for it to be fun or useful.

I almost thought my search bar in IE had directed me to a different Engine just based on how different the page felt. I quickly realized this was in fact a list of Google search results, but formatted slightly differently and providing different filtering options on the left… filtering options that appeared vaguely familiar…

One of the things I’ve started to fall in love with about Bing as a search tool is it’s filtering options. Apparently our friends at Google thought they were pretty nifty too and is trying to catch up on the idea.

I tried the search in Firefox and Chrome and got no filter options and then tried searching again in IE and lost the filtering options, which leads me to believe that Google is testing this new option out before a complete roll out.  Keep your eyes peeled – let me know if you’ve already seen this and I’m writing old news or if this is a new tweak to the Google “mastery” of search. And apparently they’ve been dedicating some of their uber resources to Global Good.

Anyone out there relate with similar experiences? Enter WakeMate to the rescue! Launching today, the startup WakeMate manufactures a Bluetooth wristband that connects to your smartphone. Once you set your alarm, the wristband tracks your sleep patterns throughout the night.

Twenty minutes before your alarm goes off, the wristband will sense your lightest sleep moment and wake you up by setting off your phone’s alarm.

The wristband will send all the data about your sleep patterns to your phone and then to your WakeMate account where you can review your sleeping patterns and ideal amount of sleep.

Genius! I love it! I’m going to go buy one right now… Wait a minute. They’re  not out yet. The first pre-orders are being accepted and get $5 the $50 price tag. However, they don’t ship till January. Another cool feature – power nap and regular nap settings to help you get the most from your mid-day snooze.

Apparently ♫ the best part of waking up is WakeMate in your cup ♫ (…or on your wrist).