According to Neustar Metrics, Google recently announced they will be taking site speed into account in search rankings and will be using "...a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites."
As Neustar officials say, "search engine optimization efforts just got a little more complicated, and your site's performance optimization got a lot more important."
The Google Webmaster blog does, indeed, say that "we're including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests."
Speeding up websites "is important," the blog notes, "not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we've seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there."
Read more here.
Some of you more Redmond-cynical types out there might just be losing some bets here soon.
The Inquisitr thinks Microsoft "may finally be coming to the Social Media game in a big way." Maybe not in a way that the current reigning trinity -- Facebook ,Twitter and Google might notice - but probably not as embarrassing as Google Buzz either.
Okay, we admit we still have trouble writing "Microsoft" and "social media" in the same sentence, but still, as Inquisitr notes there was the announcement at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam about Messenger Connect "which in contrast to past efforts by Microsoft is being built on the maturing standards used by an increasing number of Social Media services."
These standards are described as OAuth WRAP, ActivityStreams.ms, and Portable - "which are the wrapper around this new Messenger Connect API that in itself is the merging of all of Microsoft's previous API (Windows Live ID, Contacts API, and Messenger Web Toolkit)."
What's the big deal? As Inquisitr says, "Microsoft is coming to the Social Media game as a partner rather than a big bully dictating how things should be done," by agreeing to use the same standards as everyone else.
Did you think Google was stretching itself with Wave and Buzz, two ventures which didn't exactly pan out the way Google was hoping? Not to mention their approach to cell phone customer service?
Well, according to The Wall Street Journal (via CNN), Google "now wants bring the Web to your living room."
Google will, in June, "unveil a new software package to help developers better display the internet on TV sets," according to the Wall Street Journal, which quotes unnamed sources familiar with the announcement.
Google TV is an Android-based software platform, and according to the Journal "has drawn interest from TV makers."
National Airline Passenger Rights Advocate and Executive Director of FlyersRights.org, Kate Hanni, has announced the launch of an application that provides real time data on the status of flights via GPS.
Hanni also expressed concern impact of a proposed ban on cellular communications and Voice Over Internet Protocol in the House version of the pending Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization legislation that could, she said, "curtail the rights of passengers to use new technologies while on board" commercial aircraft.
The House of Representatives version of the FAA bill, passed last year, would ban the usage of cellular communications and VoIP on commercial aircraft in U.S. airspace. The recently passed Senate version of the FAA legislation contains no ban.
"It is essential that airline passengers are empowered with the latest applications and in-flight technology to ensure that the airlines are accountable and full compliance with the new 3 Hour Tarmac Rule, going into effect today at the Department of Transportation,' said Hanni.
Beagle Research Group Principal Denis Pombriant returned from open source CRM provider SugarCRM's tenth user group meeting in San Francisco, terming it a "great success."
The meeting attracted more customers than ever before, Pombriant noted in a postmortem on the Beagle site, "some from as far away as India and the vendor ecosystem was well represented too."
If you wanted sessions you got your money's worth, evidently: "There were eight [count 'em] tracks with a total of 88 sessions over two days." And they offered quality as well as quantity, Pombriant noted - "Paul Greenberg gave the Day 2 keynote and he was brilliant as usual. Dan Lyons from Newsweek was very funny as he forced us to look critically at the warts on our industry."
The hoedown aside, Pombriant finds that "by most objective measures you have to say that Sugar is on track and gaining altitude in the CRM market. The company is aided by the fact that it is the biggest dog in the open source CRM space."
