According to a press release form Google, the surge in Michael Jackson related searches on Thursday, as news about the singer’s death first began to circulate, was originally interpreted as an attack on Google News. People who typed ‘Michael Jackson’ or anything related into Google News were confronted with this message, “We’re sorry, but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.” Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week the Chinese Government appeared to have reconsidered their controversial policy of requiring their ‘Green Dam Youth Escort,’ internet filtering software to be installed in all computers sold in Chine. However now, US computer makers are saying that they have done no such thing and that they have seen no change in policy from the Chinese authorities, though Hewlett Packard and Dell, amongst others, have reportedly attempted to get them to reconsider the policy. Read the rest of this entry »

Across the tech blogs, not least this one, recently you’ll have seen a lot of information about the Palm Pre and the cool touchstone charging device that works with it. In case you haven’t been about recently, the touchstone is a piece of kit that can charge your Palm Pre wirelessly, all you have to do is rest it on top and it uses something called ‘inductive charging technology’ to top up the juice on your phone. Read the rest of this entry »

With so much of the world now poking, tagging and micro blogging their way across the social networking landscape, you’d be forgiven for thinking that social networking didn’t have much room to grow. Well, apparently not. According to Nielsen Online, the amount of time the USA spends on social networking sites has risen by a whopping 83 per cent over the last year. Read the rest of this entry »

Yep, that’s right. This week Top Click Media reached the grand old age (in SEM terms anyway) of six years old, which means that we’ve been running PPC and SEO accounts since the early days of those industries. Read the rest of this entry »

You’ll probably know by now, whether from this blog or one of the hundreds of others that have been covering this, that Microsoft have named their new search engine ‘bing.’ Now, to some that name may seem like just a random title picked out of the air at great expense by a marketing firm, however, to Mr. Steven Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft it is a clever marketing ploy rich in potential to become a household name. Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, we all know that email spam is a big problem. We realise that a large percentage of the messages we receive these days are going to be spurious mail-shots, scams or adverts. However, you might be surprised to realise exactly how much. According to a report released earlier in the week by Symantec, the percentage of email that could be classified as spam is over 90 percent (90.4 to be precise). Read the rest of this entry »

For several months Microsoft has been testing a new search engine, the working title up till now has been Kumo, though Microsoft were always keen to stress that this was not a final name. According to reports the name is indeed set to change ahead of the rumoured $80 – 100 million dollar advertising push that Microsoft has planned for the new venture. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s looking like April to June could be the worst quarter ever for the mobile phone industry as demand for the devices continues to stagnate. The blame has been laid partly at the door of the recession but mostly the consensus is that market saturation is behind the decline in demand for mobile phones. It stands to reason, when the world and its five year old daughter find themselves already owning a mobile phone, how are you going to sell many more? Read the rest of this entry »

Paying yet more lip-service to Twitter, co-founder Larry Page has today stated that Google is losing out to Twitter in terms of real time search. “People really want to do stuff real time and I think they [Twitter] have done a great job about it, I think we have done a relatively poor job of creating things that work on a per-second basis,” Page stated at Google’s Zeitgeist conference. Read the rest of this entry »

Google has courted huge controversy amongst the world’s brands by announcing a relaxation of its trademark policy. The search engine giant has essentially lifted the ban on companies using competing brand names as keywords in their campaigns, meaning that companies with deep pockets will basically be able to force their competitors out of first placed ad positions even for their own brand names. Read the rest of this entry »

That’s right, Apple have become the latest company in a (very) long line to be linked with a move to buy twitter. Read the rest of this entry »

The European Union has set a rough date of June the 3rd – 5th for an oral antitrust hearing to allow Microsoft to defend their practice of bundling Internet Explorer with their Windows package.

The EU have been investigating whether or not the practice is anti-competitive since last year, if they find in against Microsoft then, it is though the company could be in for yet another sizable fine from the European regulatory body. Read the rest of this entry »

As anyone who’s ever tried to get a job at Google can tell you, the company is not the easiest place in the world to find employment. They tend to require flawless qualifications and a proven track record of excellence in the industry before your CV even get s a second look.

That however, was not the case for Google’s latest intake of employees. Not only do these new Google workers not have any qualifications at all, they’re not even human… Read the rest of this entry »