Google Improves Local Search With Map Company Buy
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Google announced its purchase yesterday of Keyhole, a mapping company that uses satellite photographs to produce three-dimensional maps, in a move that could bolster Google&#39;s local search capabilities.
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Google Inc. has bought digital map maker Keyhole, extending the search engine with a toolbox that can catalog almost anything in the world.
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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. Online search engine leader Google has bought digital map maker Keyhole Corporation. The acquisition is a continuation of Google&#39;s efforts to broaden its horizons in the face of tougher competition.
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(InfoWorld) - Google Inc. plans to extend the product search capabilities on its main Google.com Web search engine in the fourth quarter, in time for the holiday shopping season. A Google official shared the news with attendees of the Professional eBay Sellers Alliance (PESA) Summit in San Francisco this week, according to people at the conference. When people search for products on Google.com, the system will present them with another search box so that they can refine their query, wrote Bear Stearns & Co. Inc. analysts in a note published Friday. After people refine their query, Google takes them to a second page populated with product results from the Google Base listings service, wrote the analysts, who attended Google official's presentation. "Ranking will be determined by the attributes that the sellers listed for the product as well as by relevancy," the analysts wrote. Currently, Google has no plans to monetize this product-search capability with display ads or listing fees, but that could change, they wrote. The plan also involves de-emphasizing Froogle as a destination Web site and moving its comparison-shopping capabilities to Google.com, because, as the Google official explained, most product searches happen on Google.com, according to the note. Google.com can already detect if someone is looking for real estate to buy, and asks users to refine their queries before delivering listings from Google Base. Thus, the plan outlined at the PESA conference would apparently be a significant extension of this existing feature toward multiple product categories. Jonathan Garriss, PESA's executive director, got very excited after learning at the conference of Google's plans. "Anything that improves product search and helps shoppers find what they want is always positive for a merchant like me," said Garriss, chief executive officer of Gotham City Online, an apparel store on eBay that also has its own site. Garriss already feeds product information from his store to Google Base. But after talking to Google officials at the conference, he plans to improve it. "It will make it a it smarter search. Google is giving us an opportunity to do that," Garriss said. PESA groups about 600 large eBay sellers that collectively generate over 70 million eBay transactions and US$1 billion in eBay gross merchandise volume annually. Google Base was introduced last November as a service for individuals and organizations to post content to the Google search index, including products for sale. From the beginning, Google said that Base isn't meant as a destination Web site, but more like a database to feed information to Google search sites, like Google.com. To stress this point, Google recently removed the search box from the Google Base site. Neither Google or the Bear Stearns analysts immediately replied to requests for comment. Â
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Local search is fast becoming one of the most important channels for marketers trying to reach consumers. Borrell Associates, an interactive advertising and marketing research and consulting firm, predicts that local paid search spend will grow by over 86% in 2007 to $1.8 billion.
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Google has bought digital map maker Keyhole Corp., extending the search engine leader's bid to fend off rivals with a toolbox that can catalog almost anything in the world.
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MONTREAL (CP) - Yellow Pages Group has signed an agreement with web search engine Google that will make Yellow Pages business listings available on Google Local Canada, a new local search service.
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(InfoWorld) - Google introduced a new service for small businesses that allows visitors to search within their Web sites on a customized search page. The product, Custom Business Search Edition, adds to Google'sÂ growing portfolio of paid servicesÂ for businesses. It builds on Google'sÂ Custom Search Engine, a free, ad-supported product launched last October for searching within a predefined group of Web sites. A key difference with the paid edition is that businesses can customize the search page with their own logo and color scheme. They can also modify results by manipulating an XML (Extensible Markup Language) feed of the raw search results, to guide visitors toward products the company wants to sell, for example. The service is priced at $100 per year for Web sites with up to 500 pages, and $500 for up to 50,000 pages, Google said on its Web site. Custom Business Search Edition uses the same index Google uses to deliver its other search results, and Google's own servers are used for searches. To set up the service, customers follow a set-up wizard and copy a small amount of code to their Web site. They get access to a reporting graph with daily and monthly views of how many times people used the search engine and what search terms they used. The service provides an option for businesses who want to bring Google's powerful search technology into their organization but without paying for more expensive products. The company already sells the Google Search Appliance, starting at $30,000 for 500,000 documents, which indexes material in file servers, content management systems, databases and other sources. It also offers the Mini Search Appliance starting at $1,995 for 50,000 documents. Along with English, Google's Custom Search Business Edition supports Bulgarian, simplified and traditional Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish. Â
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With its latest acquisition, Google is looking to move more deeply into the enterprise. On Monday, the search giant announced it has acquired Postini, a security and compliance services provider, for $625 million in cash.
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Google Acquires Satellite Mapping Firm Keyhole  After a tip from Andy Beal, I checked out Keyhole Satellite Image mapping and local search tool and absolutely loved it. Basically, with Keyhole you get a satellite image of the world and can view streets in the major cities, political hotspots, and towns (mostly ...
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Search company Google begins the global roll-out of an enterprise search tool that allows companies to "google" their own networks.
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According to Google, current Keyhole users will benefit from the expanded resources and operational scale made possible by the company&#39;s integration into Google.
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Google has updated its search engine for finding  source code, adding greater coverage and improvements in ranking and access.
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It's one of those announcements you just knew was coming: Magellan is reportedly partnering with Google to put Google Maps local business links on its Global Positioning System (GPS) units.
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Oracle is integrating one of its applications with Google's mapping service to help service providers locate customers more quickly.
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Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land points to a Google Blog posting that announces Google will be displaying local results with reviews and links to more detail in its OneBox position: From now on, you&#8217;ll see this every time you search for a place, business, or other local information. In addition to providing the basic contact [...]
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Google has invested in automatic translation as a way to improve search results across various languages.