rankings

Bing falls to 5th global search engine, surpassed by Yandex

Yandex is probably the biggest search engine few people have ever heard of.

The Russian search engine has surpassed Microsoft's Bing in the world's top search engine rankings, according to Search Engine Watch, which got its data from ComScore.

Coming in first place is Google with 114.7 billion search queries and 65.2 percent of the market share. China's Baidu ranked second with 14.5 billion queries and 8.2 percent share. Third was Yahoo with 8.6 billion queries and 4.9 percent share. And, fourth was Yandex with 4.8 billion queries and 2.… Read more

How does Facebook decide which posts you see? Let Yoda explain

Facebook's been under a lot of scrutiny lately to explain why some brands' posts haven't been reaching as many users as usual, so it brought in a big name to shed some light on the process: Yoda.

Facebook Product Manager Will Cathcart channeled the fabled Jedi Master to explain how the network's algorithm, called EdgeRank, works to keep irrelevant content off a users' feed. If Yoda continually tells Facebook that he doesn't want to see updates from the Death Star, the algorithm makes sure he won't.

"What would Yoda do if he sees this … Read more

Google delivers 'disavow links' tool to help combat link spam

Google launched a new tool today that allows Webmasters to eliminate links to their site that they believe might be hurting its search rankings.

Announced at the Pubcon conference in Las Vegas today, the "disavow links" tool is designed to help sites that have already been warned by Google of manual spam actions based on "unnatural links." The tool is recommended as a last-resort solution to link spam -- disreputable or irrelevant links that may hurt a site's search engine results ranking.

"By removing the bad links directly, you're helping to prevent Google (… Read more

App Store rankings rejiggered in move to iOS 6

Maps weren't the only thing to get a tweak with iOS 6. Apple appears to have changed how it determines the rankings on its App Store as well.

In a new post today (registration required), BTIG Research notes what it calls "dramatic" differences in the list of Top 25 free apps on Apple's App Store between yesterday and today, a period of time that also brought the release of iOS 6.

iOS 6 comes with complete redesigns of all Apple's digital stores, from iTunes to the iBookstore to the App Store. But there might have … Read more

Apple vaults past Google to top Japanese brand survey

Apple is the top brand in Japanese consumers' minds, according to the results of an annual survey that was published today.

Japan's Nikkei business daily released the results of its 2011 survey on brands, and Apple came out on top. Trailing it was Google, which was last year's leader, as well as other tech brands like YouTube and Panasonic. On last year's list, Apple came in 11th.

The online survey, which was done by Nikkei's consulting business, polled around 52,000 people 18 and older, and ran during the last two months of 2011. Besides consumers, … Read more

Why each Google+ comment should get its own Web address

It's time for Google, as it works feverishly to improve the capabilities of Google+, to add one particular feature to its social-network tool: permanent Web addresses for each comment.

I'd like this ability, and I think it would help expand the Google+ utility to its users. But it's for Google's own sake that I think comment permalinks are important.

Google+ offers what has become a pretty standard interface for social networking: members can post updates, then hold discussions in the comments below. But if you want to direct attention to a particular comment--forget it. Your best … Read more

Awwwk-ward: Google Chrome pay-for-post promo misfires

A Google effort to promote its Chrome browser misfired with the appearance of some blog posts that fly in the face of Google's own attempts to discourage low-quality Web content.

The campaign, spotted yesterday by Aaron Wall at SEOBook, is apparent in several blog posts from late December bearing the label, "This post is sponsored by Google Chrome." But there appears to be some backtracking now that the campaign is under scrutiny, and Google itself is disclaiming responsibility while trying to prevent anything similar from happening again.

The theme of the posts is evident in their titles: &… Read more

Facebook bumps up privacy controls

The new iPhone may land on Sprint by mid-October, developers can start submitting apps for Windows Phone 7 "Mango" due out next month, and Facebook has announced new privacy controls.

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

New BlackBerry Curve arrives

RankMyHack.com lets hackers brag about their latest endeavors, the iPhone 5 is rumored to be a dual-mode device, and Research In Motion has released a new BlackBerry Curve.

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

Site ranks hackers, top online targets

An online service has cropped up in the past month that enables people to earn points by hacking Web sites.

Dubbed Rank My Hack, the hacker community site assigns point values to hacks. "Welcome to RankMyHack.Com," the site reads. "The worlds first elite hacker ranking system. Submit proof of your website hacks in exchange for Ranking Points that earn you a place on the leaderboard of legends. The bigger the site, the bigger the points."

According to The New York Times, Rank My Hack was started by a computer science student in Great Britain, going … Read more