Omar Kattan - search in a nutshell

Google has bought Panoramio Photo Sharing for an undiscosed sum (but probably for a few billion $$$)

Panoramio lets users publish and locate photos via Google Maps and Google Earth and allows other users to view them based on location.  Panoramio’s database already contains over one million photos.

Here is the statement on Panoramio’s homepage:

“Today, we are pleased to announce the planned acquisition of Panoramio by Google. This acquisition is a great opportunity for Panoramio uploaders to leverage Google’s reach, increasing the exposure of their photographs to photophiles around the world and for viewers to choose from a larger universe of photographs as Panoramio becomes more widely known. We hope to close the acquisition in mid to late June of 2007. Got questions? Go to Q&A to learn more.”

The purchase of Panaromio allows the Google to ramp up its’s photo sharing technology and strategically repositions the search giant to regain some battle ground lost to Yahoo  as a resut of it’s purchase of the popular photosharing site flickr.

I’ve given Panoramio a try and its actually a very cool tool.  Its very easy to register an account, with no email verification required (although the big G will soon change that).  The interface is also very user friendly, allowing you to  upload, tag and map images in seconds.

Try it out if you haven’t already. 

Did you know that you can now use Google’s search technology to add custom search to your site? 

Google has launched its Google Custom Search (Co-op Beta) which allows you to “Harness the power of Google search technology to create a free Google Powered Custom Search Engine that reflects your knowledge and interests - and make money from the resulting traffic.”

 I’ve already started using it to build an internal search engine for one of my sites and I must say, I’m very impressed with the results (pun intended).

In order to maximise the benefits of having the Google Custom search engine as your default internal search engine, Google should have indexed your entire site (even if some of the results are in the supplemental listings.)

You can also “let users integrate your information or services into their Google search results with Subscribed Links.”

The Google Co-op tool also allows you to “use your expertise to help improve Google web search for specific subjects by labeling the best sites with topics.”

I think its great that Google is allowing webmasters from all over the world to use its search technology to create specialised search engines.  Its also great for Google because it allows them to extend their reach and maintain their dominance in the search market (some might say thats a bad thing, not me)

I’ll be posting more about my experiences with this great tool, stay tuned…