This week many American’s found it hard to access their Google services. Apparently this caused a 5 percent reduction in internet traffic. That says a lot about the role of Google in modern day society.

Here is more about the outage and other search engine news stories of the week:

• Google’s Outage Caused 5% Internet Traffic Decline

  Web sites that depended on services like Google Analytics took twice as long to load on average and were twice as likely to fail (Silicon Alley Insider May 16 2009)

• Perspective: Google Earns $210k Per Employee; Yahoo Just $32k

  Pingdom reports that Google made a stunning $209,624 profit per employee in 2008. (Marketing Pilgrim May 15 2009)

• Google Hurdles Headlong Into Real-Time Search

  Google has introduced a feature to allow you to set the results to display “past 24 hours” (similar in a way to the feeling you would get searching Twitter, or Google News by recency). (Traffick May 13 2009)

• This is your pilot speaking. Now, about that holding pattern…

  Google’s response to this week’s outages (Google Blog May 14 2009)

• Google Shows Survey Questions on Some Health Searches

  Google announced that they’re starting to show survey questions at the bottom of a small percentage of health-related search queries. (Blogoscoped May 14 2009)

• Barcode Scanning Now Available for Google Product Search on Android

  Now, you can use Google Product Search on your phone and do Barcode Scanning. (SE Watch May 14 2009)

• Hulu Grows 490% in 1 Year, According to Nielsen

  US video search/view site shows explosive growth (SE Watch May 14 2009)


Google Street View Car in the UK.
photo credit: byrion.

• Google Streetview stopped in Greece

  The Hellenic Data Protection Authority, Greece’s privacy watchdog, decided to stop Streetview and block them from getting more images until Google provides guarantees on privacy. (SearchCowboys May 14 2009)

• Google reshoots Japan views after privacy complaints

  Google said in a statement on Wednesday it would lower the cameras on its cars by 40 cm (16 inches) (Reuters May 13 2009)

• AOL Launches New Search Toolbar

  Users also have the option to customize this toolbar with their favorite content. (PageTraffic May 14 2009)

• The Problems With the (Great) Wayback Machine

  Too many errors to make it a useful tool for historians? (Blogoscoped May 14 2009)

• Gmail Doesn’t Want You to Ever Use Another Webmail Provider Again

  Google is providing you with a simple way of migrating your contacts and email from other webmail service to Gmail. (SE Journal May 14 2009)

• Another Cool Backlink Checker: Page Inlink Analyzer

  Most sites have plenty of links, you risk missing a bunch of them when checking only one source. (SE Journal May 15 2009)

• Search engines now part of browser war

  A case, started in 2007 by Opera, reaches its peek in June when the hearings take place in Brussels, Belgium. (SearchCowboys May 11 2009)

• Twitter: Multiple Revenue Streams Being Explored

  Twitter is looking at search, content partnerships and mobile carrier-based deals (sharing in data revenues). (SE Land May 15 2009)

• Wolfram Alpha Live Review: The Un-Google

  Chris Sherman May 15: Wolfram Alpha’s interface allows you to enter queries in natural language. It then tries to disambiguate your query and present relevant facts, charts, illustrations and other tools.

• Google News Redesigns, Adds YouTube

  There are new color frames around each section of the page. (SE Watch May 15 2009)

• Quietly, Google Updates Its Blog Search Algorithm

  Doing a better job of choosing the blog posts to include in clusters (SE Land May 15 2009)

• More details emerge on Wolfram Alpha

  Alpha seems like the moral equivalent of LinkedIn while Google is decidedly MySpace-esque (ZDNet May 10 2009)

• Wolfram Alpha and Beta PR

  Why are observers so keen on finding an alternative to Google? (Beyond Search May 12 2009)

• Google Goes Searchology, Offers Options, Clusters, and More

  Researchbuzz takes a look at all the Google news from the event (May 12 2009)

• Scoopler: Real-time search

  It aggregates and organizes content being shared on the internet as it happens, like eye-witness reports of breaking news, photos and videos from big events (P Bradley May 12 2009)

• Google results page just gets messier!

  Results are all over the shop, searchers have to scroll down the entire page hunting for the information that they’re interested in; the whole thing is a disaster area! (P Bradley May 13 2009)

• Ask.com CEO leaving, president to take over role

  The chief executive of Internet search engine Ask.com, Jim Safka, is leaving for personal reasons (Yahoo Tech May 12 2009)

• Does Dmoz Still Have a Place in Search?

  Looking at Compete data, Dmoz has declined sharply in unique visitors, visits, and page views over the last six or seven years. (WebProNewsMay 15 2009)

• Recording Industry Tries To Shut Down Search Engine In Spain Without Allowing It To Defend Itself

  In the case against the torrent search engine Agujero.com, the local recording industry reps demanded an immediate injunction (techdirt via Beyond Search May 14 2009)

• Using Google’s New Features to Get Twitter Information

  Use Google to search Twitter profiles (ResearchBuzz May 14 2009)

• Behind the scenes of the Google Search Options panel

  Google Blog May 14 2009: Confident about a handful of concepts, we began to seek out user feedback using eye-tracking and usability studies.

• Wolfram Alpha Goes to R Systems for Horsepower

  the story will super-boost the hopes that Wolfram Alpha’s search system will crush the Google. (Beyond Search May 16 2009)

• Google Creeps Toward 73% of US Searches in April

  This share is up 7% from 67.93% last April, and up from 72.39% in March 2009. (Marketing Vox May 11 2009)

• Baidu staff strike over new salary system

  Employees from Baidu’s South China subsidiary went on strike protesting changes to the new salary system (Multilingual Search May 16 2009)