Confusability

Banksy in Bristol on Google Street View

Now that Google have extended street view to Bristol you can see some Banksy Artwork whilst you are virtually walking through Bristol.

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And here is the view from the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
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Bin or Trash? - The Google Dilemma

I have noticed that my gmail account now displatys "Bin" as the link for my deleted items rather than "Trash".

I discovered that I could change it back by changing my "Google Mail display language" from "English (UK)" to "English (US)". It was apparent that Google had decided to respect my cultural differences and describe my deleted item container as a "Dustbin" rather than the americanized "Trash Can".

So why did Google make this change? I had assumed that they wanted to personalise the UK experience by replacing those pesky americanisms and make my feel a bit more cosy about using a google produce that cared about letting me know that they undertsand that us brits have different needs that our colonial cousins.

However, I really don't care if I call my deleted items "Trash" or "Bin", although if I was given the choice I  think that "Dustbin" would be more appropriate.

I thought that I would look at some other americanised google mail terms and see if these had been changed as well. On my gmail settings page I looked to see if the horrible "vacation" related options had been changed to the much more english "holiday". I was disappointed to see that I still had to experience the horrible vacation label.

Google, if you want to patronise me by renaming my "Trash"can as a Dust"bin" then please be consistent and change the other examples of US/UK alternatived. Or why not save us all a lot ob trouble and change the label to "Deleted" and change the "Vacation responder" to the "Gone Fishing" option instead.

To "Knol" The newest Google verb

Google is now a recognised verb. Perhaps Knol will take the same path.

Usage: You can "google" a person or a place. You can "knol" a thing or an idea.

Why don't you google "Chris McEvoy"?

You should Knol "Insomnia".

Simply Google - November Refresh

Just published my November Refresh for Simply Google.

I have added a YouTube search, a Facebook search and a link to the OpenSocial site.

Chris

Simply Google at Web2.0 Awards

Simply Google got an honourable mention at this years Web2.0 Awards.

Here is the screenshot from the awards results site.

Thanks to whoever nominated me!

Simply Google has also been recently featured on Lifehack, Read/Write Web, DMXZone, and Digg.

One Year On - Simply Google and Analytics

One year ago I published Simply Google, which was my attempt to expose  the hidden google information architecture. Since then I have been keeping the page up to date and have just added a co.uk version, so it seems like a good time to review the past year for Simply Google.

Simply Google was very popular on del.icio.us at the beginning and has just been added for the 3,000th time by nahtanoj04.

When I published the page last April I included the urchin code required for Google Analytics and here is the summary page from Analytics for the past 12 months:

The Visits and Page Views quadrant shows that I am currently getting 1,200 visits a day and my busiest period was when Charles Knight talked about SG in his Top 100 Alternative Search Engines list.

Over 50% of all visitors have been so the page before and this compares with a much lower rate of just 6% for this blog.

Geographically speaking, SG is most popular in the USA and UK, followed by Canada, France, Germany, Spain and Portugal. Over 3% of visits come from one location in Edinburgh in the UK and it seems that someone in the National Library of Scotland has put a link to Simply Google on their intranet homepage. If anyone can let me know how the NLS is using Simply Google then I would be extremely grateful.

Here is a list of the top 24 referrers and you can see that the NLS intranet appears at number 5. 

I have found the stats produced by Google Analytics very useful but it would be good if I could make them easily available publically.

So, Simply Google has now been here for a year and if people continue to use it I will ensure that it is still here in another year.

A to z of Google Information Architecture

Here are 26 different sets of menu items for different Google Services. There must be one Information Architect at Google who has got the determination to bring some consistency to this hodge-podge of menu items.

There is an attempt at being consistent in the menu designs, but someone needs to sit down a write a style guide. The Googlers can't even agree on whether they should be using "Sign Out" or "Sign out". The font sizes are almost the same. Apart from Analytics they all agree on the text colour. The only people using FAQ instead of Help are Alerts. AdSense use Log Out instead of Sign Out, and they put it before the Help item instead of after it.

The A to Z of Google Menu Options
	AdSense
	AdWords
	Alerts
	Analytics
	Base
	Books
	Calendar
	Co-op
	Docs
	Finance
	Froogle
	Google
	Groups
	History
	Mail
	Maps
	My Account
	News
	Notebook
	Page Creator
	Patents
	Personalised
	Photos
	Reader
	Video
	Webmaster Tools

And you may have noticed the new blue menu list that has started to appear in the left hand side of some Google pages.

	Mail
	Calendar
	Docs

They haven't even got the same entries. It is Mail or Gmail? Should it be more or all my services?

Is it so disorganised inside Google that they can't even get these basic items right?

Top 100 Alternative Search Engines

Ask anyone which search engine they use to find information on the Internet and they will almost certainly reply: "Google." Look a little further, and market research shows that people actually use four main search engines for 99.99% of their searches: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com (in that order). But in my travels as a Search Engine Optimizer (SEO), I have discovered that in that .01% lies a vast multitude of the most innovative and creative search engines you have never seen. So many, in fact, that I have had to limit my list of the very best ones to a mere 100.

But it's not just the sheer number of them that makes them worthy of attention; each one of these search engines has that standard "About Us" link at the bottom of the homepage. I call it the "why we're better than Google" page. And after reading dozens and dozens of these pages, I have come to the conclusion that, taken as a whole, they are right!

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_100_alternative_search_engines.php

Thanks to Charles for pointing a lot of people at Simply Google.

Google Video Player Makeover

Google released a new video player for the Mac today. Here is the screenshot that appears on the download page.

If you look at the screenshot for the older PC version you may spot a couple of differences.

The sample video is titled "Google Recruiting Video" in the PC version, but on the Mac version the video is called "An Inside Look At Google."

You will also notice a difference in the thumbnail images at the bottom of each video. On the PC version you will see that Sergey has got his eyes closed in the sampled frame, but in the Mac version this frame has been replaced with one that shows Sergey with his eyes open.

The Google PR Police have obviously extended their power base in Mountain View.

(I have added the latest Google accessories to Simply Google).