We are all anticipating the arrival of the Google Buzz icon in our gmail inboxes.  Google has announced that it will be rolling out its new product within the next few days and if you already have a Gmail account, you will automatically have a Google Buzz account.  Buzz will also start following the people you chat and e-mail with the most.  Search Engine Land has a thorough article about everything the new product will offer, but here are some key features that are exciting us for Google Buzz:

No sign-up or setup.

Sharing pictures, websites, status updates, messages, etc. can be completely public or limited to just your friends.

Buzz can display updates from other sites like Flickr, Picasa and Twitter.

Buzz will recommend other people’s updates and put them in your feed according to your interests (and it has a ‘not interested’ feature).

Buzz Mobile will have all of these features, but additionally, will focus on more location-specific updates.

Check out this demo on YouTube:

What do you think about the addition of Buzz to your social media arsenal?  Is it going to be a Twitter or Facebook killer?  For location-specific posts, it will be very interesting to see how it interacts with the blogging world.

Photo courtesy of Google

What’s the scoop with the Nexus One Google phone?  We read Bobbie Johnson’s minute-by-minute updates on Guardian UK from Google’s Android Launch to find out just that.  Google announced the arrival of the Nexus One and, although it is another Android device (running on Android 2.1), Google has been more involved with getting it off the ground (ie: it was still designed by HTC).  You can go to Google’s Phone site to see demos of the phone’s standard applications and purchase one with or without a plan.  Unlocked phones are $529 and $179 with a plan.  The phone works with T-Mobile currently and Vodaphone in Europe, but Googlers say it will be expanding in America in partnership with Verizon.

The most exciting feature to be expanded on this phone is the voice technology.  You will be able to speak a destination (Target, for instance) and the phone will link with your GPS navigation to send you (turn-by-turn) to the nearest Target.  The voice feature has also been expanded to work with text messages and e-mail.  Bobbie Johnson says that it is “accurate, at least in these (the conference) conditions.”  For more information about the phone and it’s plans, check out Google’s Phone website.

Source: Bobbie Johnson, Guardian UK

Photo courtesy of Yelp! Atlanta

According to Search Engine Round Table, Google might be “swallowing” Yelp! for 500 million dollars.  Yelp! is “arguably the best of its kind” of search, with local listings and endless amounts of reviews.  Google might be forced to integrate the service into Google Maps and Local services, which would effectively end the Yelp! brand.  However, Google kept YouTube as is instead of incorporating it into Google Video, so the matter of how Google would handle Yelp! could still be up in the air.

Source: rustybrick at SERoundtable

Photo courtesy of Bing

Bing has had a deal in place for the last week to integrate Facebook status updates and tweets from Twitter into Real Time Search Results.  Google announced their deal with Twitter last week as well, also announcing that Facebook updates would also be made available soon.  However, today Google released their deal with Facebook and revealed that only status updates from Facebook pages would be available in their search results (ie: not personal pages, but company pages).  Bing will also have the personal status updates, not just public Facebook pages.  The reason?  Facebook says, “The terms of the Google deal were specifically related to public updates on Pages. But our conversations with both companies are continually evolving regarding ways in which we might work together in the future.”

Sources: Search Engine Land, Bing.com

Photo courtesy of Search Engine Land

Yahoo! announced that they were adding tweets to News Results, but now are putting them in organic search results as well!  The tweets might be minutes or hours old, depending on which tweets the algorithm finds the most relevant to the search terms.  This becomes important for companies with social media accounts to maintain their feeds, since this traffic from Twitter could drive more traffic to your site.  Google announced that it was instituting this same practice just this week with its Real Time Search Results.  Both search engines are attempting to provide customers with up-to-the-minute results while also maintaining relevancy.

Yahoo! has just announced that they have started a beta called the Ad Interest Manager.  This program will allow customers to look-up the list of interests that Yahoo! has placed them under because of their recent online activity.  Then the customer will be able to redesign this list or turn off Interest-based Advertising altogether.  Yahoo! says that this will help them gain users’ trust as well as give their advertisers the most up-to-date information.  If a user has searched for Christmas gifts for other people or news articles for a project, it won’t be stuck in his/her interests forever.  Keeping users in charge of the interests allow advertisers to, hopefully, show ads when they will be most relevant.

Google has something similar with Privacy Ads.  It allows you to see the interests Google has categorized for you and lets you alter the list.  To see more information about Privacy Ads, click here.

Photo courtesy of seroundtable.com

Google has expanded their Personalized Search Results.  Previously it was only offered to signed-in users.  Now it is offered to signed-off users as well.  If you use Google to search topics about your favorite sports teams or easy recipes, it is likely to show the website that you have clicked on the most higher in the search results.  Google says that it may take up to 180 days of search results compiled from “an anonymous cookie attached to your browser” and that you will know when it happens because a “view customizations link” will appear in the upper right-hand corner (when this happens, you will be able to disable customization as well).  For the full story, go to Google’s Blog.

It is important for SEO Marketers to remember to disable the customization as they want to see the results like a first-time searcher on Google.  If not, your site may appear higher in the organic search results than on the “normal” person’s results because of your own frequent visiting.

Within the next few days, the company announced that it will start displaying real time search results about midway down the results page.

Photo courtesy of SearchEngineLand.com

There is a “Pause” button if you wish to stop the news from streaming but you cannot remove the tool all together.  Instead, let’s discuss what you could utilize in the search to filter what you want to see.  There is a “Latest” toggle which will give you tweets from Twitter.com, news results and web pages as they come in.  The “Updates” toggle will allow you to filter even more, simply receiving tweets.  In the future, Google plans to also release Facebook updates (for those who have public profiles), but not just yet.

Visiture is excited to see the even further exposure of social media into the Google Real Time Search results.  This can only benefit your company if you update your Twitter pages, Facebook fan pages and LinkedIn pages consistently.  We have the tools, especially with this onslaught of social media and Google Real Time Search results to market your brand effectively and improve your ROI.

Source: Danny Sullivan, SearchEngineLand.com

Photo courtesy of HungTruong.com

I read this article titled “7 Ways to Own Your Google 10″ (or the first 10 natural search results in Google) and thought it was worth sharing.  They are easy to implement and will yield great benefits in a world where “you are what Google says you are.”  Read this article from SmallBizTrends.com.

Happy Holidays from Google (via Google Press)!

47 Airports will be featuring free Wi-Fi for the Holiday season, ending January 10th, thanks to Google.  Google is teaming with Boingo Wirless, Airport Marketing Income, Advanced Wireless Group and others to provide this free service for all the flustered travelers of the season.  

“We’re very happy to extend our Holiday Wi-Fi gift to the millions of people who will spend time in airports over the next few months,” said Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience at Google. “We know that this is a very hectic travel season for people, and we hope that free Wi-Fi will make both traveling and connecting with friends and family a little bit easier.”

It is sure to make the people who have to travel over the Holidays for business happy as well!

Here is a list of airports where the free Wi-Fi service will be available.

-source: google.com/press