Google Increases Search Query Data in Webmaster Tools

Google has significantly increased the amount and depth of the data they provide for in the Top Search Queries feature in their Webmaster Tools. The data was previously limited to the top 100 queries, it now displays a much larger sampling of queries.  The data previously only provided the percentage of impressions and clicks that each query had. The data now includes the number of impressions and clicks broken down by the position of the query in the search results. The data shown can now be restricted to specified periods of time instead of set intervals set by Google. Finally, they have also added a chart that displays impressions and click for the currently active data set.

Google Begins Factoring Site Speed into Rankings

Google today announced that several weeks ago they began factor the speed that a website responds to web requests into search rankings. Site speed is not currently a significant factor with “fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed signal” according to Google. Site speed is also only currently factored in searches preformed on Google.com in English. Google did not say exactly how they determine page speed, only saying that they use a “variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites.”

Bing Gains US Market Share In February

According to Nielsen’s US search share data for February, Microsoft’s Bing search engine gained 1.6 point of search share during the month. Bing gained a point of market share in the previous and their market share reached 12.5 percent this month. Google’s share was 65.2 percent, 1.1 points of search share less than the previous month. Yahoo’s share was 14.1 percent, a decrease of .4 points from the previous month.

Google Adding Hacking Notification to Webmaster Tools

Google has announced that they will begin displaying “Notice of Suspected Hacking” messages in their Webmaster Tools when they detect that a website has potentially been hacked. The messages will provide example URLs of the hacked pages, next steps for fixing the issue, instructions on getting back into Google’s search results after the issue has been fixed. Google will also being added notifications of spammy or abused user-generated content and abused forum pages or egregious amounts of comment spam. Once you have signed up for Google’s Webmaster Tools you can instruct Google to forward these messages and other messages, including malware notifications, to an email address you select.

Bing Gains Point of US Search Share in January

According to Nielsen’s US search share data for January Microsoft’s Bing search engine gained a point of search share in January, increasing its share to 10.9 percent. Google’s share was 66.3 percent, a point of search share less than the previous month. Yahoo’s share was 14.5 percent, an increase of a tenth of point over the previous month.

Yahoo and Microsoft Receive Regulatory Clearance for Search Pact

Yahoo and Microsoft announced today that they had received regulatory clearance from US and European regulators. Under the pact Microsoft’s Bing search engine will power Yahoo Search and Microsoft’s AdCenter search advertising service will provide search ads to Yahoo Search. The companies had announced the pact in late July and reached a finalized agreement in December. The companies have set a goal of serving results from Bing in Yahoo Search in “at least the United States by the end of 2010”. The transition to serving ads from Microsoft’s advertising service in Yahoo Search is planned to occur “prior to the 2010 holiday season, but may wait until 2011 if they determine that the transition will be more effective after the holiday season”. They expect a full transition by early 2012. According to the companies, Yahoo will build its own “search experience” on top of Bing’s search results by “integrating rich Yahoo! content, enhanced listings with conveniently organized information about key topics, and tools to tailor the experience for Yahoo! users”

Google’s Chrome Continues to Gain Market Share

Google’s Chrome continues to gain market share according to Net Applications data. It market share has increased 3.7 percentage points to 5.22 percent from the year ago period. Last month it surpassed Apple’s Safari as the third most popular web browser behind Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox. Internet Explorer market has continued to decline. In the last year it last 7.2 percentage of points, though it continues to have the highest market share with 62.12 percent share. January mark the first month that Internet Explore 8 was the most popular version of Internet Explorer. It had a market share of 22.37 percent, version 6 had a market share 20 percent and version 7 had market share of 14.53.

Google Increased US Search Share In December

According to Nielsen’s December data Google share of US searches was 67.3 percent, an increase of  1.9 percent from the previous month. Yahoo’s share dropped .9 percent to 14.4 percent and Bing’s share dropped .8 percent to 9.9 percent. Nielsen also reported that there were 9.9 billion searches performed during the month.

WordPress 2.9 Released

Version 2.9 of WordPress was released on Saturday. The new version includes a trash feature, a built-in image editor, plugin compatibility checking, and support for the embedding content using the oEmbed standard. With trash feature posts and comments that are deleted will be placed in a trash folder instead being completely deleted. The image editor allows images to be  cropped, edited, rotated, flipped, and scaled and the post announcing the new version indicated that this is the first of “many planned media-handling improvements”. To help the users planning to upgrade to newer versions, WordPress will now present data compiled from other users as to whether installed plugins are compatible with the new version. Support for oEmbed standard allows for embedding of images, video, and other content by pasting an URL into a post. The standard is supported by YouTube, Flickr, Hulu, Scribd, PollDaddy and other websites.

The new version requires that your server run MySQL 4.1.2 or higher, previously versions only required 4.0 or higher. WordPress will check if the server has a supported version of MySQL during the auto upgrade process.

A full lists of changes in 2.8 is available at the WordPress Codex.