Mozilla Releases New Version of Firefox for Bing Users

Building off the partnership that kicked off last year, Mozilla and Microsoft have just announced the existence of another joint venture with the rollout of the Firefox with Bing browser.  As the name suggests, the new version of Mozilla’s popular browser uses Microsoft Bing as its search engine of choice in the search box and AwesomeBar.  In addition, it sets the default home page to Bing.com.
Mozilla officially announced Firefox with Bing in a short blog post.  Microsoft’s Bing team did the same, noting that they were “excited to make it even easier for members of the Mozilla Firefox community to use Bing.”  Bing fans previously had the option to use Microsoft’s search engine by default through the Bing Search for Firefox add-on.  Adjusting Firefox’s configuration settings was another option as well, but the all-inclusive download that is now available is seen as much more of a user-friendly alternative.

Firefox with Bing does not mark the first time that Microsoft has teamed up with Mozilla.  When Firefox 4 debuted in October 2010, it came equipped with a variety of search box options to give users alternatives to Google.  Microsoft’s Bing search engine was just one of the options, with Yahoo, eBay, Wikipedia, and Amazon product search also thrown into the mix.  Bing had just over one year on the market at the time, and Microsoft saw the opportunity as a way to get expand its search engine’s presence. 
Microsoft can only hope that the introduction of Firefox with Bing will help to increase the popularity of its search engine.  Since its launch in the summer of 2009, Bing has generated $5.5 billion in losses for Microsoft, and recent reports show that it now loses the company an average of one billion dollars per quarter.  Bing is currently the default search engine on Microsoft’s Windows Phone and RIM’s BlackBerry phones, as well as the Internet Explorer browser.  Even Internet Explorer’s status as the most widely used browser in the world has not helped to boost Bing’s market share to a respectable level, however, as it sits behind Google, Yahoo, and China’s Baidu search engine with just 4 percent of the global market.

Firefox with Bing can be downloaded by visiting firefoxwithbing.com.  Users with Firefox already downloaded can get the enhanced browser by installing the aforementioned Bing Search for Firefox add-on.

First Facebook Data Center Outside of U.S. Will Be In…

The town is located about 62 miles south of the Arctic Circle. It will house Facebook’s first data center outside of the U.S and the purpose of this center is to improve performance for European users. Reports say Facebook chose this site because the chilly climate will help keep the servers cool even in the Summer. Huffington Post reports that Facebook will also have access to renewable energy from nearby hydropower facilities.
Facebook has 800 million users worldwide and operations Tom Furlong told the Associated Press, “Facebook has more users outside the U.S. than inside…It was time for us to expand in Europe.”
Some Interesting Data on New Facility

• There will be three 300,000-square foot or 28,000-square meter server buildings.
• The data center is scheduled for completion by 2014.
• The cost is estimated at $760 million and the Swedish government is going to contribute $16 million.
• This location will need 120 MW of energy and plans on getting this from hydropower. The hydropower stations in this area generate twice as much electricity as the Hoover Dam (Huffington Post).
• God forbid they lose power each building will have 14 backup diesel generators with a total output of 40 MW.

Facebook stores all your data in facilities located in California, Virginia, Oregon and North Carolina.

Google confirms Nexus One will not upgrade to Android 4.0

Google’s Nexus One has always made upgrades available to the latest version of the Android operating system. So far, however, Google has indicated that Nexus One will not upgrade to Android 4.0 in the future, as the storage capacity of its hardware is insufficient.

Google’s Nexus One, launched in 2009, has been upgraded from Android 2.1 to Android 2.3. More recently, however, some users were wondering whether Nexus One could be upgraded to Android 4.0, because the Nexus S had already been upgraded. However, according to Hugo Barra, director of mobile products for Google, Nexus One is not able to support Android 4.0 and may stick with Android 2.3.x for the moment. In addition, they are still working on release of the upgrade of Android 4.0 for Nexus S in a couple of weeks.

Google announces its new Music Beta service

Recently Google has announced its new Music Beta service that provides users with the ability to upload their music libraries to Google's servers for cloud-based hosting. It allows users to access content from any device. The recent announcement vies against Amazon's Cloud Drive and Cloud Player services and Apple's expected MobileMe revamp.
Music Beta is currently available via invitation to U.S. users and will allow users to upload up to 20,000 songs using software for Windows or Mac. The service then offers a web-based interface and initial app support for Android devices. Google has yet to announce pricing for when the service exits beta while the service is free while in beta.
Google has yet to achieve the cooperation of major music labels, forcing the company to rely on a "passive" system in which users are responsible for uploading their own content like Amazon's cloud-based system. Google had been working to reach agreements with record labels to compress a more strong service, but those talks had stalled with the two sides at an impasse.

With Apple reportedly having its own service ready to go and finalizing deals with record labels, Google has apparently shifted gears to more quickly launch the scaled back service without label support.

Google Ranking Algorithm Update 2011

Last week, Google released one of the biggest ranking algorithms updates of the last months. The update will impact 11.8% of all queries on Google.
Google has announced that they made a major change in their ranking algorithm:
"We launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking. 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, the officials said.
This update is an addition to the ‘scraper spam update’ that Google released earlier this month.
It has not been confirmed yet officially, this algorithm update tries to remove so-called content-farms from the search results. Content farms are websites that invest as little time and money as possible to generate a large amount of content created by authors who are usually not familiar with the topic they write about.

Google's anti-spam team is serious about eliminating spam from the search results. They announced that they are working on "many more updates that we believe will substantially improve the quality of the pages in our results"

Launching SEO Audits

Since search engine optimisation is becoming increasingly multifaceted, many businesses struggle to review if their SEO company and web design firm have done a proper job.
With the help of a professional SEO audit, previous SEO efforts can be reviewed in detail. SEO Specialist can review the main competitors, technical architecture, keywords targeted and missed opportunities. If providing an SEO agreement, the entire contract can be audited.
SEO Specialist’s bespoke SEO audits will be tailored for each individual customer’s organisation, timeline and needs.
There are three types of typical SEO audits.
Some customers are unhappy with their previous SEO company. Others want to find out what’s wrong with the website and get a detailed website and SEO health check. Finally, many companies are in the process of getting a redesign or preparing for a new website, where website optimisation audits can be very beneficial.
Any business having a website can benefit from a bespoke SEO audit. Our SEO Specialists will provide web content analysis, review technical site architecture, keywords targeted, inbound links and provide a detailed list of untapped opportunities.

SEO Migration Strategy

One of the most critical aspects of a search optimization campaign is to have a comprehensive and effective strategy to handle content migrations and URL changes. This can be especially challenging for large companies that produce a ton of content.
The main goals in creating an SEO migration strategy are:

• Maintain / Improve Search Rankings
• Maintain / Improve Search Traffic
• Maintain / Improve Link Connectivity
• Improve User Experience

If you don't give search engines exact instructions of where to find content as it moves (via 301 redirects), the engine has no way of carrying over the link metrics that point to the original URL to the new one.
Because link metrics are such an important part of search rankings, the consequences of not having a solid SEO plan for the change can lead to lost rankings and traffic as well as frustrated users who had previously bookmarked the old location of the content or try to find it through existing links. Therefore, it’s important to set up 301 permanent redirects from old pages to new ones in order to help search engines and users understand where the content has moved to.
Remember, if even a single character in a URL changes, including capital letters to lowercase, the content has moved and most likely the engines won’t be able to correctly transfer the link metrics.