On the eve of Microsoft’s long anticipated launch of MSN Search, Google is reporting on its home page that its index size has nearly doubled. Google now claims that it is now “Searching 8,058,044,651 web pages.” Earlier today, a search for the word “the” returned nearly 11 billion results, a far larger number than officially reported on the home page. No matter which numbers you believe, it’s a significant expansion of Google’s web database.

Will this big increase in Google’s index make a difference to searchers? Perhaps. Traditionally these volleys in the search engine size wars have meant little, but have been picked up by the media because they are tangible and easy to report.

Graeme Wearden and Stephane Olsen
ZDNet UK

Popular Internet search engine Google has doubled the number of Web pages in its database and given Gmail free POP support

In a posting on the company’s own blog on Wednesday, Bill Coughran, vice-president of engineering, announced that Google’s index now exceeds eight billion pages.

Some critics have claimed in the past that one of Google’s flaws is that a search will return hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of pages, even though a typical Web user won’t look beyond a couple of pages of results.

SEATTLE - Microsoft will later today launch its long-promised internet search engine, which will compete directly with market leader Google, sources close to the company have said.

The world’s largest software maker had promised to enter the search market with its own technology by the end of the year, as it seeks to attract more users to boost advertising revenue for its MSN internet division.

Earlier on Tuesday, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer told shareholders at the company’s annual meeting Microsoft would beat Google’s technology and double its advertising revenue in the next five years.

With XML and RSS being thoroughly embraced by the web community, capitalizing financially from content syndication is the next logical step. In what would seemingly follow the Moreover.com format, Yahoo has announced that they are planning on offering an advertising service that will allow for sponsored links to be placed within syndication feeds.

With RSS advertising becoming a more viable option, would you consider displaying PPC ads in RSS feeds? Discuss at WebProWorld.

Now that the long-awaited PR update has come and gone, there are reports of the Google’s indexing spider continuing to perform comprehensive site scans. Recently, WebProNews ran an article discussing these types of scans and the majority of the speculation pointed towards the upcoming PR update. Now that this quarter’s update is complete, why is the Googlebot continuing to bombard sites?

The Googlebot deep scans continue. Have you had experience with multiple deep site scans? Discuss at WebProWorld.

“Blogs and participatory journalism are impacting the practice of public relations.” That line was taken from one of my favorite blogs and I couldn’t agree more.

Have blogs been effective in providing your business PR? Please provide your comments, experiences, and tips to help others in utilizing blogs to gain business. We’ve started a thread in the eBusiness forum WebProWorld to discuss this topic. Click below to provide your insight:

Discuss blogs and business here.

The blog I’m referring to is called Micro Persuasion and is written by Steve Rubel, a self styled public relations guru. Today’s article will help you get started using blogs as your leap pad to more effective PR.

Google has launched a UK beta version of it’s shopping search tool called “Froogle” that the company claims is the most comprehensive product search engine available on the web.

Visit Froogle UK here.

Searches are done by use of keywords (as with normal Google serches) and results are limited to one product per store. Each result displays a thumbnail image of the product to the left, with the product’s name, price and description listed to the right of the thumbnail. The store where the product is available is also listed, along with a link to see all results related to your keyword that are available at that particular merchant.

Internet advertising is often thought of as direct marketing, unlike magazine ads. Of course, this concept makes zero sense and advertisers are finally beginning to come to terms with this reality.

Gives your thoughts and experiences with the effects of branding in Internet advertising.

It’s not just about clicks and immediate response, it’s about noticing the ad, becoming interested in the product, wanting the product and then taking an action that leads to a purchase of the product.

Here is a link to Google showing where WNW Design currently features for the search phrase ‘web design devon’.

Google Search: web design devon

This was added using the bookmarklet function of the WNW Design blog.

Advertisement drives the revenue of the Internet industry. Learning about the science associated with successful ad campaigns can only benefit you and your site. With this in mind, a study performed by Eyetrack III attempted to determine which sections of a webpage the human eyes focus. Eyetrack accomplished this by creating mock pages containing text and advertisements. Test subjects then reviewed the documents while Eyetrack monitored where their eyes focused.

What parts of a web page receive the most visual focus? Discuss at WebProWorld.