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Google Businesses The Internet

Google Local, Definitions, & Registrar 218

Posted by CmdrTaco from the whole-lotta-the-g-stuff dept.
A few Google bits in the bin this morning starting with Philipp Lenssen writes "Google Local has now moved to the Google homepage. The service, while still in beta, has been around for quite a while as one of many Google tools in the Google labs." Mr. Anonymous noted that "In the past, when you clicked the [definition] link after a Google search, you'd be taken to the Dictionary.com page for the word. Now, Google has jumped aboard GuruNet's Answers.com, which not only provides definitions, but encyclopedia articles, etymology, medical defnitions, legal definitions, and word translations all on one page." And lastly, several folks noted that Google has moved into the Domain Registrar Biz which we mentioned monday.
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Google Local, Definitions, & Registrar More

Google Local, Definitions, & Registrar

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  • Slashdot 3 Google (Score:5, Funny)

    by TedCheshireAcad ( 311748 ) <ted@fUMLAUTc.rit.edu minus punct> on Thursday February 03, 2005 @12:20PM (#11562926) Homepage
    I swear, we're gonna see it on Slashdot when Google's HTTP header changes.
    • we start seeing VH1-esque celebrity profiles of Page and Brin.

    • The interesting bit is why... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Mr. Underbridge ( 666784 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @12:57PM (#11563364)
      I don't imagine this has anything to do with MS putting a local search ("Near Me") on their new search.msn.com, would it?
    • Ever wonder what happens when you drop a Google ad? Your sites completely disappear from the Google search results.

      Is there a Googopoly game to reflect their monopoly status yet? I'll bet Google determines the rules.

      • Ever wonder what happens when you drop a Google ad? Your sites completely disappear from the Google search results.

        I don't know if that's true. We ran ads with Google for a while and decided that there are changes that need to be made on my end to make that a profitable choice.

        We have always ranked very high for specific product name searches first page if not first result, until a recent tweak on Google, now they are around page 4. The generic terms for us are pretty competitive and we haven't focused o

      • Ever wonder what happens when you drop a Google ad? Your sites completely disappear from the Google search results.

        This is totally bogus. Google advertising per se doesn't affect the search results at all - this is stated over and over again in the AdWords terms of service and I can personally attest that it doesn't happen. It's possible that the added popularity of a site advertised in AdWords could affect a site's search ranking if other people started to refer to it, but the effect certainly wouldn'

  • All these rumors.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by SlongNY ( 766017 ) *
    I can definally see google hosting happening now... So many other rumors like the VOIP and the "GooGLeOS".. The hosting one seems it could be legit, expecially now since they are domain guys now.

    • Google's 2005 Plans (Score:5, Funny)

      by corporatemutantninja ( 533295 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @12:33PM (#11563087)
      Here's the inside scoop [theonion.com].

    • Re:All these rumors.... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      sounds interesting..
      looks like google wants to be a one stop shop for all their services. think about it.
      a)You buy a domain and a site from google.
      b) The site runs on GoogleOS
      c) The customized firefox browser (GBrowser) has direct hooks to the different services google provides.
      d)uses gmail as your hosted mail service and directly intergrates with Gbrowser.
      e) Could have a file store directly integrated with Gbrowser.
      f) Charge 9.95 for the package..

      In the end they could capture all your information and stil

  • US Only (Score:5, Informative)

    by dorward ( 129628 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @12:21PM (#11562938) Homepage Journal
    It looks like Google Local is still US only ... and they keep ***ing redirecting me to the UK site so I can't even see the link to click it. (I'm not planning a trip to American in the near future - but I might have been).
  • I have used google local for a while now, and I have to say that it has performed great, usually giving accurate results. There was this one time however where it gave a wrong location, and I was prepared to walk about a mile or two to get there, before I called the actual place and confirmed it. Google's stuff, even when in "Beta" has worked great 99% of the time for me, especially gmail.

  • google betas... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dAzED1 ( 33635 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @12:25PM (#11562995) Journal
    there's another google beta product called "gmail."

    I, and many other folks, recently got set to having 50 invites left. While before it was already close to true that anyone that wanted one could find one, it is now REALLY true.

    Seems their "beta" stuff works better than the first, or even second revision of released code from some other company...

    • speaking of invites... why does google keep on moving that invite notice back and forth? i've had mine for about a year now and it switched from being on the top, then to the left column, then back to the top, now back to the left column. granted the latest change is actually nice because you can directly send an invite by putting in an address, but still. why fuss and move it so often?

      • Re:google betas... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by xtracto ( 837672 )
        why does google keep on moving that invite notice back and forth?

        Well, that is the price to pay for a "beta" service/software. Maybe they are looking for the less obstrusive way of puting there, btw I also like it as it is now.
      • i've had mine for about a year now
        You've had gMail for a year already? Pretty impressive, considering it wasn't publicly available until April 25th of last year...
        • i guess not. i don't really keep track.

          that makes my point even worse - they mucked around with this invite thing more often in shorter period of time then.

    • gmail-o-matic (Score:3, Interesting)

      by me at werk ( 836328 )
      When I saw my 50, I started handing them out to the gmail o matic [isnoop.net], its easy, paste the address, invite, repeat. no fake name creation or clicking 'invite another', just keep pasting and hitting enter. its nice.

      eventually everyone will have one and they'll launch gmessenger.
    • I, and many other folks, recently got set to having 50 invites left. While before it was already close to true ...

      Okay, look, I'm not deliberately going out of my way to be a jerk here, but when you typed that, a thousand English teachers cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

      A piece of advice, particularly for those who don't speak English as their native language: Stick to simple sentences. Noun-verb-object. It might not be as florid, but you're way more likely to be actually understood by you

  • Local (Score:5, Funny)

    by wombatmobile ( 623057 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @12:26PM (#11563009)

    Google local looks good for people who live in Poughkeepsie New York.

    We have a lot of pizza here in "Australia" but Google local doesn't seem to get it.

    Unable to understand address australia. Please try another address.

    Maybe it's just me and my stubborn reluctance to relocate.

    • I only got one irrelevent hit when I tried "vegemite" and "Las Vegas, NV" on Google Local.

      I guess that's fair.
    • I tried every form of my address I could think of, and it just said "Unable to understand".

      It needs a help page saying what its valid address types are and what countries/states it covers.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @12:28PM (#11563020)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • "I'm no expert, but could this lead to 'problems' down the line similar to the way Microsoft has cornered the PC market."

      "Have" has been corrected to "has" in the above sentence. Last time I looked at PCs being sold, many were Dells and "E", but none were Microsoft. Unless you want to count the Xbox as a mutant PC, they don't even sell PCs, let alone corner the market.

      You are right about Google. If they fixed their bogus result problems, I'd never have to use another search engine again.

      Google has a pr

      • It's not a bug, it's treating the linked text of links to a page as additional metadata. Which is a very useful feature if the page is about a subject yet hasn't used that exact keyword in its content.

        For example you might search for "horror author" and a page on Stephen King comes up, even though the page itself calls him a "horror writer".

        • Una Persson? Great nick. I'll mark you friend (despite the disagreement on search results!), just as I did "Gaf the Horse in Tears". I have never found it useful, as I only search looking for pages containing what I asked for. The "horror author" turns to "horror writer" sounds like an even worse case of sloppy irrelevant results!
      • Google has a problem of returning many results that do not even contain the phrase being looked for. See "miserable failure" for a famous example. 3 of the top 10 results for "to be or not to be" do not even contain the phrase.

        Usually, this is because pages that link to it contain that phrase. Maybe not always, though. I searched for my name [google.com] recently and was unable to account for the top link (lamblion.net). A search for link:www.lamblion.net scott [google.com] showed no matches. Maybe there used to be a page that had

    • You raise an important issue, and one that people don't pay enough attention to. However, it doesn't begin with Google. For a long time we've been seeing media conglomerates monopolize print and broadcast channels by buying up independent providers. They tried to do the same thing on the web by buying search engines and turning them into "portals". Fortunately, this attempt was a total disaster; unfortunately it destroyed some perfectly good search engines through mismanagement and loss of credibility. One
    • Male Nibblonian: For a thousand years, the evil brains have been constructing the giant Infosphere, a giant memory bank twice the size of three ordinary memory banks.

      Fry: What's so evil about that?

      Female Nibblonian: They plan to collect all the information in the universe and store it in the sphere.

      Fry: So they're trying to learn things?

      Female Nibblonian: Right.

      Fry: Those bastards!

      Nibbler: Being brains, they feel compelled to know everything. And soon they will.

      Fry: I'm as mad as I've ever been.

      Male

  • Translation... (Score:5, Funny)

    by oliana ( 181649 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @12:29PM (#11563037) Homepage
    There's no Google Local link on my Bork, Bork, Bork! language page.

    I feel slighted.
  • *Insert biatching about moderators here.*

  • More breaking Google news (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 03, 2005 @12:36PM (#11563115)
    Today Pete Smith who is the janitor at the Google offices stubbed his toe as he got out of bed.

    Expert industry analysts agreed that was a significant evolution in Google's services.

  • Hit Men = Attorneys (Score:5, Funny)

    by waynelorentz ( 662271 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @12:38PM (#11563139) Homepage
    When I put in "Hit Men" in the search box and "Chicago, IL" in the location box it gives me listings for attorneys.

    Looks like it works!

  • One Step Closer... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by redivider ( 786620 )

    ...Googlezon is imminent [halorising.com]

    It's all part of the Google Grid.

  • Interestingly, if you search for the Lebesgue Integral [answers.com] in answers.com, you get an article from Wikipedia.

    Now, the question is whether this is good for Wikipedia (more people see its contents) or bad (fewer people even know that they could/should improve Wikipedia)?

    • Now, the question is whether this is good for Wikipedia (more people see its contents) or bad (fewer people even know that they could/should improve Wikipedia)?

      The results are always labeled as being from Wikipedia, which should increase awareness of the WIKIPEDIA brand, prompting Google searches for Wikipedia, and then people would find the English Wikipedia main page [wikipedia.org] and learn what it's all about. In addition, at the bottom of the article:

      This article is licensed under the

    • Good. Definitely good. Honestly, Wikipedia is running one of the world's most popular websites (80 million hits/day) on a shoestring donation-based budget, and mirrors like this help them save bandwidth and server power. Most people who would be inclined to seriously contribute to Wikipedia have already heard about it anyway.
    • Cool that they aren't even afraid to include Wikipedia's vulva picture.

  • damn - slashdotted. (Score:5, Funny)

    by flacco ( 324089 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @12:42PM (#11563180)
    does anyone have a mirror of google they could post?
  • Google Local seems to work in Canada as well as the US, but I don't find it the best way to find a local business. Rather than offer a complete listing of businesses it looks for other sites referring to that business. While the technology is remarkable in how it takes something like an online forum post and turns it into a reference for that business (check out the list of references after clicking on a business name), if I'm looking for something in my hometown I probably want ALL listings like the yellow
    • "if I'm looking for something in my hometown I probably want ALL listings like the yellow pages."

      The yellow pages don't list all businesses, you have to pay for an add.

      This informational message brought to you by:

  • I have a non troll question (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 03, 2005 @12:44PM (#11563206)
    Why is everyone so hard up for Google?

    IBM has a lot of cool technologies, so does Apple. Yet there is more press on Google than on the Iraq war.

    Is Google really God?

  • IMHO "suggest" is the coolest thing to come out of google labs in some time. I know everyone who saw that seemed pretty impressed, myself included. I found it very useful.

    I'd love to see that make the homepage.

    Then again, I'm still waiting for firefox and thundebird support for google desktop.
    • I think at the moment, putting the suggest on the main front page would put a large strain on the system.

      Granted its a strong network, but its certainly not invulnerable. gmail has knocked itself out a few times, and recently the DOS and associated splattering in the media took them off the map for a day ("clicky, "is it back up yet?", "dang! no", clicky, clicky, clicky, "nope, still not working")

      I guess one or two of the PHDs at google have crunched the numbers and found out how much bandwidth would be

  • local been available for a while (Score:3, Informative)

    by milgr ( 726027 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @12:48PM (#11563247)
    For the past several weeks (if not months), you could access google local via any google web search.

    For example, to find Pizza parlors in zip 10023, search for:
    pizza, 10023

    Hit the first link which is "Local results for Pizza near 10023".

  • Google Local versus MS Search (Score:4, Informative)

    by MrWa ( 144753 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @12:50PM (#11563271) Homepage
    It is about time. The other day when the new MSN search [msn.com] launched, I noticed that the Near Me button already knew where I was. Looks like Microsoft got this feature better - the results are initially based on your IP address which, in most cases, can be backtracked to your physical location. Of course, this can be changed via cookies as Google does it but it is quite impressive to make the local search work right, mostly, without being told.
    • Let's be clear about which feature Microsoft got better... Yes, they discovered my location accurately. However, any local searches I do on msn return absolutely useless results. I live in Nebraska, and the first result I get for "pizza" is a radio station from northern Alabama? Where's the sense in that?

      I'll admit that my location is relatively rural, and that Microsoft may not want to bother with indexing businesses in a community of ~40,000, but apparently Google had no problem doing it, with their beta
    • Yes, I was just thinking this might be search engine competition at work. Seems a bit of too much of a coincidence that MS introduce their web search with local searches just days before Google introduce theirs. However, I believe MS is actually doing a better job at local searching, since it had working news search for my country, which news.google.com lacks, and also a yellow pages feature that worked very well for me too. Meanwhile, Google's thing don't really even work internationally.
    • I live in Toledo, OH and msn serach "Near Me" puts me in Southfield, MI which is 67 miles from me, hardly "near."

  • Google Searching for a Bubble? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Sundroid ( 777083 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @12:50PM (#11563275) Homepage
    Speaking of the Big-G, CNET is reporting that Google, now with a market value north of $56 billion, is equal to Starbucks, Nike and Southwest Airlines combined! I have the link to that article on my blog at: http://sundroid.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com], in case you haven't checked your portfolio lately.

  • My hope for Domains and Searches... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 955301 ( 209856 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @12:51PM (#11563285) Journal
    I sincerely hope that google breathes new life into the locality domains for the US. The use of domains such as computers.boulder.co.us or flowers.boaz.al.us would do a lot for partitioning the flood of information that now exists on the Net.

    Imagine the possibilities of the supporting searches such as "pizza site:atlanta.ga.us". And actually getting pizza places in the area? Top that with a simple UI on Googles page and the ability to add your local to firefox's url box (typing pizza tries pizza.atlanta.ga.us first)

    If this becomes or is already a part of their plan, I'd pay a premium. The flattening of the DNS namespace is to me the second most tragic side effect of the Internet's adoption. The first of course being spam.

  • google local sux (Score:5, Funny)

    by OglinTatas ( 710589 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @12:54PM (#11563328)
    I did a search for horny Asian wives in my town, and it found squat.

  • You Can Also Text Google (Score:5, Informative)

    by ras_b ( 193300 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @12:57PM (#11563361)
    you can get definitions and local listings (and a few other services) by sending a text message [google.com] to 46645 (GOOGL on most phones). Not totally worthwhile but i've used the definition feature to settle stupid debates with friends over words when no dictionary or computer was nearby. got my reply within like 30 seconds.

  • Google local is very useful (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bigberk ( 547360 ) <bigberk@users.pc9.org> on Thursday February 03, 2005 @01:03PM (#11563426)
    I don't even live in a particularly large city, and I have been regularly using Google local to find businesses. If you're not really sure what it's for, here is what I have used it to find: nearest branch locations, taxi services, pizza order lines, etc.

  • Google: Size doesn't matter? (Score:5, Funny)

    by xXunderdogXx ( 315464 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @01:04PM (#11563440) Homepage Journal
    When will we know Google has gotten too big?

    1. Wal-Mart and Google merge to form a new country
    2. Google's CEO buys Canada
    3. Google employees start wearing more bling than most rappers
    4. Google TV starts broadcasting the Google main page 24/7
    5. When wearing Google underwear stops being cool
  • I'm still interested to see how Google makes use of Keyhole [keyhole.com], a satellite imaging company that Google aquired [slashdot.org] a while ago.

    It'd be fairly slick to see those street maps generated by Google local make use of actual satellite imagery, wouldn't it?

  • People talking about google (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SteveX ( 5640 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @01:35PM (#11563824) Homepage
    I put together this site a while ago that tracks blog postings (for all major services that ping blo.gs), tries to parse out nouns, and then displays the top 100 nouns encountered in the last hour scaled by frequency.

    Google is almost always a big one.

    http://www.stevex.org/longtail/hottopics.aspx [stevex.org]

  • Since there are a relatively small number of memorable domain names, most of which are only applicable to a small physical area, I'd like to see a local-forwarding service. This system would know your physical location, or have a decent guess from your IP, and forward domain name requests (or more likely just do a HTTP redirect) to the registered "local" version.

    For example, Moe's tavern in Springfield could register moestavern.springfield.usa.global, which is annoying to remember or write down. It would

  • Shame... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by generationxyu ( 630468 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @01:56PM (#11564122) Homepage
    I just renewed my domain Tuesday. I'd have done it with Google if I could have.

  • The google-branded browser (Score:3, Interesting)

    by glassesmonkey ( 684291 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @02:11PM (#11564310) Homepage Journal
    Anyone notice that some of the google spiders report like Mozilla User Agent strings. Could it be that Google plans to shift some of the marketshare through it's bot army?
  • According to Datamonitor [datamonitor.com]

    :

    Google said in a statement sent to reporters: "Google has become a domain name registrar to learn more about the internet's domain name system... we believe this information can help us increase the quality of our search results."

    Hopefully this will reduce the number of domain parking portals that end up in their search results from now on. One idea put forth is that Google intends to use its new capability to help more accurately index second-hand domains that exploit the ran

  • Home page is way too crowded now. Switching back to yahoo.
  • Why is something that is still in "Beta" on their homepage?
    Google tends to [google.com] do this [google.com] sort of thing [google.com] a bit too often...
  • It seems Google has been linking to answers.com for a little while for select users. Over the past few weeks, I was occasionally sent there. It appears to have started in January, judging from the Alexa data [alexa.com].

    They are still experimenting with putting Google Image search on the front page. I experienced this last night when Google showed me this page [andrewhitchcock.org].

    Finally, I don't really like the new Google invite text box, I think it makes the interface a little ugly. And why must they switch it every month? I swear, th
  • Comparison search: Bakery in San Mateo,CA

    I like the little javascript trick Yahoo does when moving the mouse over a result, the location is highlighted on the map.

    Pretty close features I'd say.

  • Haha I typed in "blowjob" and then my city but all that was returned were politicians and lawyers! Pretty damn funny...
  • It's about time! Dictionary.com was so slow that it literally took 20 minutes to get an answer. The new site is much faster.

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