Microsoft has enabled HTML5 videos for its Bing search engine.

Both the search engine giants, Google and Bing always tries their best to entice the users by bringing in new features to their homepages. Earlier, what was a simple search form on both these search giants homepages, has now became very lively and interactive. Google lets their users set custom backgrounds while Bing displays a new wallpaper in its background everyday. Competing with Google to bring out the best user experience, Bing has added another new feather to its cap with the new HTML5 videos which play in the background of their homepage.

Microsoft revealed the change in a blog post on Friday. According to Bing homepage team member, Stephanie Horstmanshof, as of yet, you will not see a new video everyday, but the videos will change on special occasions or moods. Although the new HTML5 video enabled Bing homepage is U.S. only, Microsoft plans to roll this out to international markets in the next few months.

We won’t be programming a video every day, just when the mood strikes us.
While this first video is US-only, we’ll begin rolling the video homepage out to international markets in the next few months – so stay tuned.

If you are using a modern latest browser like Firefox, Chrome, IE9, Opera etc, you will be able to play the videos without any problem. If you are not using a HTML5 capable browser you will instead see the static wallpaper image. If you are not in the US and want to check out the new HTML5 video enabled Bing homepage, simply change your region to United States – English by visiting this page.

The first HTML5 animated homepage features a video of the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

Microsoft has created a video that gives us a look behind the scenes of the Bing homepage.

We really liked it and found it very lively. And we didn’t notice any lag in the page load too. Visit www.bing.com now to experience it yourself. Do you like the new HTML5 video enabled Bing homepage or like the static wallpaper based homepage much more?

Google Instant is a new type of search enhancement provided by Google that shows results as you type. Instant will help you get better search results, faster and can save 2-5 seconds per search. It predicts the most likely completion and streams results in real-time for those predictions – yielding a smarter and faster search that is interactive, predictive and powerful.

Google Instant is available to signed-in users in over 50 countries and for signed-out users in select regions who use the following browsers: Chrome v5 or higher, Firefox v3/4, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8/9. In this article, we will show you, how you can get Google Instant search results right in the Chrome’s omnibox (the address bar).

Features

Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.

Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction shown in gray text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.

Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.

Enable Google Instant in Chrome web browser

1. Click on the spanner icon to get access to Tools menu, select Options/Preferences.
2. Under Basic, look for “Enable Instant for faster searching and browsing” check box in the Search section.

   

3. Select the check box to enable Google Instant.
4. You don’t have to do anything else, simply start typing in the omnibox. If Google is set as the default search engine, you will start getting suggestions by Google.

Disable Google Instant in Chrome web browser

To disable Google Instant in Chrome, simply follow the above first 2 steps. For the third step, simply deselect the check box and Instant will be disabled.

Blekko is the new search engine to compete with Google and other search engines with its unique features. It is basically a vertical search engine that offers results on specific topics. Google is there to search the entire Web, so Blekko have focused on topical search. Bing from Microsoft on the other hand has search pages dedicated to travel and entertainment, and Yelp is popular for searching local businesses.

Blekko’s unique features are filtering out spam search results, “slashtags”, and automatically editing certain marketing-saturated results. Blekko is definitely worth a look since it is now open for public. I am using it since it was in private beta and I must add that I’m impressed at what it does.

Blekko automatically edits and then displays results on certain search areas that it considers polluted with spam search results, like health, recipes, autos, hotels, song lyrics, personal finance and colleges. Blekko’s unique “slashtags” is the main weapon against spam results. Slashtags are powerful, category-defining tags. You can use them to narrow down your search, you can also follow the slashtags, even subscribe to the RSS feeds of the particular slashtags, and embed them to your site. You can also add new slashtags.

Blekko is a free search engine and is now in public beta version. You can create a free account to save your preferences and get credit for creating your own slashtags!

Tell us what you think about this new search engine. Have you tried it out yet?

Google recently announced encrypted Google search over Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). If you want to access the SSL encrypted Google web search page, then point your browsers to https://www.google.com/ https://encrypted.google.com/. SSL encrypts the information that travels between your computer and Google secured search service. This encrypted information cannot be read by third parties who may try to access the connection between a searcher’s computer and Google’s servers.

The new Google secured service includes a modified logo to help indicate that you’re searching using SSL and that you may encounter a somewhat different Google search experience, but as always, remember to check the start of the address bar for “https” and your browser lock indicators.

How to make Google secured search default in Chrome?

• Open Google Chrome web browser.
• Click on the Wrench icon and then select Options.
• Under Google Chrome Options dialog box, click on the Basics tab and then click on the Manage button under Default Search.

• Click on the Add button, and type the following:

  Name: Google Secured Search
  Keyword: gssl
  URL: https://www.google.com/search?hl=all&sourceid=chrome&ie={inputEncoding}&q=%s

  URL: https://encrypted.google.com/search?{google:acceptedSuggestion}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}sourceid=chrome&ie={inputEncoding}&q=%s

  

• Click on the OK button and then click on Make Default to make this new search engine your default Google Chrome search engine.

• Now, when you will type gssl in the Google Chrome address bar and press tab, it will automatically use Google secured search engine.
  

After you make a search query using the custom Google secured search engine in Google Chrome, you will the results displayed using the new https Google secured search page as shown in the screenshot below:

P.S. Just a small tip: Regarding the custom search engine keyword, it is fully customizable and you can use your own keywords which you are comfortable with. Here, I have used gssl as I found it short, easy to type and remember. You can use anything like googlessl, googlesecure, etc…

Without doubt, Google SSL search is a step in the right direction. I suggest you give it a shot, and please leave your opinion in the comments!

Update: Article updated. Thanks to Anonymous for the tip.

Google Search Engine users must have noticed the new Google home page and search results look. At the official Google Blog, Jon Wiley, Senior User Experience Designer, posted a brief information about the new re-design. He said:

We made hundreds of prototypes and gathered feedback from user studies, Googlers and through experiments – including one of our largest visible experiments ever. In the end, we came up with a design that provides dynamic, relevant search tools on the left, while lightening and updating the aesthetics all around. [...] The logo was the foundation for new icons and hundreds of tiny alterations designed to accommodate and seamlessly integrate the expanded functionality of the left-hand panel.

Personally I like the new look of Google, but many Google users were not very happy with the new look and wanted the old classic Google back. Some discussions are also going on at the official Google web search help forum. Here we are highlighting some of the solutions that will come handy to get back the old classic Google search page and Google search results.

The new look of Google search page looks something as shown below in the screenshot:

If you don’t like the new look and want the old classic Google search back, then follow any of the method below:

1. The first and the most simple method is to open Google using the link below, you’ll get the old Google search page instead of the new one. Bookmark the link below to get the classic Google look.

Classic old Google search or Alternate link to get classic Google search back.

(tip by official Google web search help forum users)

2. Another method specially for Google Chrome users is as follows:

Click on the Wrench icon and then select Options. Under Google Chrome Options dialog box, click on the Basics tab and then click on the Manage button under Default Search.

Click on the Add button, and type the following:

Name: Google Classic Search
Keyword: google.com
URL: {google:baseURL}search?hl=all&sourceid=chrome&ie={inputEncoding}&q=%s

Now, click on the OK button and then click on Make Default to make this new search engine your default Google Chrome search engine. (tip by ZippyDoDa at the official Google web search help forum)

After you make a search query using the link above or using the custom Google search engine in Google Chrome, you will see the old Google search page results as shown in the screenshot below:

If you have used some other method to get back the good old classic Google search back, do share it below!

Also, don’t forget to share your views about the new Google re-design. Do you like it? Should the new design be made optional for the users? Share your views through your comments below.

Google’s search engine is the world’s favorite search engine, the reason for its popularity is because it returns relevant results faster and with a no-frills, simple user interface. It became popular not by the traditional means of advertising but via recommendation by its users to their friends, relatives and colleagues to use it.

Google rarely used any traditional means of advertising to promote its products and services, but this policy started changing, when Google used billboards to promote GOOG-411 service. Google also aggressively promoted it’s Chrome browser using different advertising schemes. This changes are very much understandable in the sense that Google wants its users to know that Google is more than Google Search now. But what is more surprising for everyone is that Google has decided to promote Google Search Engine at the Super Bowl.

If you watched the Super Bowl this evening you’ll have seen a video from Google called “Parisian Love“. In fact you might have watched it before, because it’s been on YouTube for over three months. We didn’t set out to do a Super Bowl ad, or even a TV ad for search. Our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos about our products and our users, and how they interact. But we liked this video so much, and it’s had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience.

explains Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google the reason behind this at the Official Google Blog.

Below you can watch Google’s Super Bowl Ad:

You can also check out more similar videos here.

Google’s redesigned interface is not available to the public and it is not confirmed when it will be available but now anyone can test this interface using the following simple trick. The guys at Gizmodo have found out this trick by which anyone can temporarily activate the new search interface and test out the features.

1. Visit google.com
2. Once it finishes loading, enter the following code into your web browser’s address field:

javascript:void(document.cookie="PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/; domain=.google.com");

Note: There shouldn’t be any http://google.com, you just need to paste that code as shown below.

3. Now Press Enter to execute the JavaScript. You will not get any confirmations as such.
4. After pressing enter to execute the JavaScript code, reload or open a new google.com page and you will have access to the new user interface.

The new interface is fast and looks smooth, what are your feelings about this new interface?