Google - traveling without moving ...

I love Google's location detection system... it takes me to places I've never been before !

Couple of weeks ago, Google decided to switch my default search language to Russian, I said: "Oh well" .... and I switched to typing "google.ro" in the address bar instead of using Firefox's search box.. Yeah, I know, the search box can be customized, but I'm too lazy for that ( yes, I am THAT lazy! ). Then, at some point, I wanted to sign up for some service that asked me about my location but also gave me the choice to detect it automatically using Google's service, and here I find myself in the middle of nowhere ... Yekaterinburg, Russia!


One day, I accidentally searched something using the search box again, and BOOM, the Russian language is gone. I thought it's fixed, but then I see on the right bar of my Google page: "detected location: Chicago, Illinois", as long as it's English or Romanian, I can live with it.


But wait, it gets even better ! After a couple of days, the usual "Google Search" and "I'm Feeling Lucky" were saying: "Penelusuran Google" and "Saya Lagi Beruntung" ....

 

The address bar happily stated: http://www.google.co.id - Google Indonesia!

It could at least send me to Thailand,  give me a nice massage too ;-)

Luckily, one day, I stumbled into the Report IP Problems form ! "Victory", I yelled! Filled the form, hit the submit button, thanked God and waited. 

And here I am, today, back to my sweet home - Google România!

 

It was a long journey, Phileas Fogg knows the feeling, I enjoyed it(NOT!!), and it's so good the be home!

Thank you Google!

Welcome Yahoo.ro!

Yahoo launched its Romanian version. It's not much, just a collection of Romanian news, written in Romanian, obviously.

@yahoo.ro email domain is available, people can create email accounts on it, but the user base is the same with @yahoo.com , so if you want to create some_user@yahoo.ro, but the "some_user" alias is already take on yahoo.com, then it won't be available for .ro either.

It isn't much, but it's a start, so, welcome yahoo.ro!

Things are changing ...

Google changed their search algorithm, this is supposed to be a hard to take hit for the content farms. Google's official blog states:

"This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on."

We've seen this coming since over one month ago, as Matt Cutts, Google's Principal Engineer also stated:


" As “pure webspam” has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to “content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. In 2010, we launched two major algorithmic changes focused on low-quality sites. Nonetheless, we hear the feedback from the web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content."

Now Facebook announced new comments system, aside they will provide a form of comment moderation, the most interesting part is that  the new plug-in will allows comments you make on a website to appear in your Facebook news feed. Obviously, this will drive traffic from Facebook to that specific site, as your friends will want to see what are you commenting about and maybe read the full story.

So, as Google's move will make it harder to get easy traffic to your website, Facebook is trying to help you. So maybe you should go get some more Facebook friends and fans for your page ....