Google, in response to the increasing competition to its search engine dominance from Microsoft Bing and other search engines, is raising the stakes with their work on a new web search technology that will speed up the indexing of search results.

Some web developers have been invited by Google search to test a new search engine and give their input. The graphical layout of the new search engine hasn’t changed, but the underlying search technology is getting upgraded. Google engineers hope the new search technology will index new content faster and reduce delay between the time new web content is published and the time it appears in a Google search engine results.

According to a Google spokesperson: “”Google is always working on new technologies to improve the quality of our search services. We hope this new system will improve search in the areas of speed, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.”

Google’s new search engine technology has been dubbed “Caffeine”.

Google is also improving the freshness of its search results by including real-time results and more current news, along with updates from social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Source: UK Telegraph

A recently launched Google search engine can search, find, graph and compare public data and public records statistics.

According to the official Google blog, the new public data search tool makes it simple to find and compare public record data.

For example, users can compare regional and national unemployment statistics, along with accompanying graphs.

If you go to Google.com and type in [unemployment rate] or [population] followed by a state or county, you will see the most current unemployment numbers for the regions that you specify.

Clicking on the results will take you to an interactive chart that allows you to add and remove public data for different geographical regions.

You can watch a short YouTube video of the new Google public data search below:

The data used in the first launch of this public information is somewhat limited to information published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Division.

However, no doubt, as the public data search becomes more popular with people, Google will likely add to the amount of searchable public information that can be searched by users.

Source: Google Public Data Search

A recent article on Search Engine Watch asks whether or not keyword tracking of Google search terms could predict who the next US president will be.

The article looks at some regional and candidate name searches from Google Trends to get some insight into who the next president may be.

So who will the next US President be? Well, it will either be Barack Obama or John McCain.

The article doesn’t give a definitive answer, but nevertheless is still interesting for people who may want to use Google search trends to get some insight into how people are using the Google search engine and how the popularity of some search terms changes over time.

You can read the entire article @ Search Engine Watch.

Internet statistics show that people “Google” a person’s name around 50 million times per day.

Atlanta resident Brandyn Briley is a frequent “Googler”. She uses various web search engines like Google and Yahoo to lookup information on potential clients, her children and even herself.

Web 2.0 sites like Naymz.com and Ziggs.com now give people like Briley a tool to keep track of when another person is doing a web search on them.

Tim Demello, from Ziggs.com, says, “What it does for the individual is it really gives them a strong sense of who is out there tracking them.”

Demello compares the Ziggs technology to caller ID for the world wide web.

Whenever a person searches for and clicks on a Ziggs.com profile, the site sends the profile owner an email alert, detailing the searcher’s location, the web search engine that was used, and the search phrase that the person used to find the profile.

Demello noted, “If someone types their name into Google, we track that through and send them a real time e-mail saying you are being searched from Chicago at 8:52 on a Friday.”

Ziggs can trace web searches of its users’ profiles down to the street and block level.

However, Ziggs won’t give you information about the name or address of the person doing the searching.

Demello said, “We don’t provide the name of the person searching, and the primary reason is that we believe very strongly in privacy.”

Source: CBS46.com

Filmmaker Jim Killeen is the producer of a new documentary film called Google Me.

Most people have googled their names, but how many people go to the extreme of actually meeting their “google twins”?

That’s the whole idea behind Google Me.

In the video below News.com reporter Kara Tsuboi interviews Jim Killeen and learns about the six other Jim Killeens he’s met through the Google search engine.