Here are three Google items that might be of interest to some of you.

1) Offensive Michelle Obama Image Returns, Google Buys Ad To Explain (via Search Engine Land)
Discusses how Google is using their own ads to explain an offensive image of Michelle Obama in the Google images.

2) Also at Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan chats with Marissa Mayer about Google testing a new look for their “search options feature.” At the present time only a small group will see the test but it might become something everyone will see and use in the new year. Danny’s post has screen shots that show what the “test pages” look like.

3) Finally, in “For Search, Murdoch Looks to a Deal With Microsoft” (NY Times) and “Microsoft May Pay News Corp to Remove its Content from Google” (The Telegraph) report that Microsoft is in “discussions” with Rupert Murdoch to remove his company’s publications (e.g. Wall Street Journal) from the Google database and make it available only to Bing. Danny Sullivan has commentary here.

Note from Gary:

One thing I’ve never been able to understand re: Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal is their continuing participation in Google’s First-Click Free program. If you’re unaware of it, here’s how it works from a user perspective. If you find an article from the Wall Street Journal online and it requires a subscription to view the full text, simply head to Google News and search using the words in the headline and in less than a second, you’ll have access to the complete article.

Also, blocking “crawlers” from indexing a sites is far from new. This item from 2007 discusses the topic as well as this post from the other day where Carl Malamud mentions several U.S. Government sites blocking all crawlers as well as a few that only allow Googlebot index their site.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 and is filed under Information Industry, Web Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.