Google Acquires Keyhole Corp.

A recent press release revealed that Google has purchased Keyhole Corp., a 3D digital mapping company. Is it only a matter of time now before Google Local Search starts incorporating 3D mapping? One thing is for sure, Google is definitely making moves to bring search technology into "real world" applications.

Overture's New Budgeting Options

Overture is now offering new features within the money management tab of the Overture DirectTraffic center. Advertisers can now set options that will enable listings to run throughout the entire month, even on a capped monthly budget. Similar to Google AdWords' daily budget, this new service can keep your company listings from being knocked offline until the monthly budget refill date, meaning no extended absences from the PPC ad space. You can learn more with one of Overture's always slick flash tutorials.

Google SMS

After some real world usage of the new Google SMS feature over the weekend I think Google hit something with unlimited potential. Finding a specific restaurant address or even a type of restaurant in my general vicinity was a snap and my answers came to me almost immediately. Essentially this little service lets you get the same Google Local results that appear at the top of any regular Google search that incorporates a location along with keywords right on your cell phone. There's a host of other little tricks, like getting unit conversions and dictionary definitions, and I'm guessing pretty much any of the little known additional features that the Google site already has to offer right through the search box. It will definitely be interesting to see where this might lead.

Google Desktop Search

Google released a startling new Beta version of a desktop search tool that makes searching for files on your hard drive as easy as searching Google. In fact, it's just like searching Google, all the way down to the interface . Integration into your regular Google web searches is the first thing you may notice, now you get sample results for matching local files in the same space you find Google Local and Froogle results. This is most certainly only the tip of the iceberg, the WebmasterWorld Forum is teeming with discussion on all the features and even an attempt to see what can be gleaned from this tool's algorithm and how it may yield secrets to the top secret formula Google uses to rank web pages throughout the internet.

Viewer Behavior and Online News Sites

This site contains a great study that was conducted on how people's eyes traverse across an online news site, how underlined and linked headlines affect how people read the rest of a news item and other useful tidbits. This is a must read for anyone who runs a news oriented site, or any site for that matter.