ReadersZone

I find some real good search results of last month while searching the web. I am sharing all of those search engine data with our reader.

Top search providers, ranked by total searches. Searches represent the total number of queries conducted at the provider.
Top 10 Search Providers for June 2008, Ranked by Searches (U.S.)

Source: Nielsen Online, MegaView Search

In June, Google Sites retained its lead in the U.S. core search market capturing 61.5 percent of the searches conducted, down slightly from 61.8 percent in May. Google was followed by Yahoo! Sites (20.9 percent, up from 20.6 percent in May), Microsoft Sites (9.2 percent, up from 8.5 percent in May), Ask Network (4.3 percent), and AOL LLC (4.1 percent).

Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in the core search numbers.Americans conducted 11.5 billion searches at the core search engines, representing a 7-percent increase versus May. Google Sites handled more than 7 billion core searches (up 6 percent from May), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.4 billion (up 9 percent), and Microsoft Sites with more than 1 billion (up 15 percent).

Source : comScore Core Search Report

NEW YORK, NY – July 15, 2008 – Google accounted for 69.17 percent of all U.S. searches in the four weeks ending June 28, 2008, Hitwise announced today. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 19.62, 5.46 and 4.17 percent respectively. The remaining 42 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.70 percent of U.S. searches.

Note: Data is based on four week rolling periods (ending /28/08, 5/31/ 2008, 6/30/2007 from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.  * - includes executed searches on Live.com and MSN Search but does not include searches on Club.Live.com.

Source: Hitwise

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Google once again tops the top web brands in United Stated of America. Google attracted more then 120 million users while Yahoo holds the second place with approximately 113 million users.List of top 10 brands is as follows

1. Google.
2. Yahoo.
3. MSN/Windows Live.
4. Microsoft.
5. AOL Media Network.
6. YouTube.
7. Fox Interactive Media.
8. Wikipedia.
9. eBay.
10. Apple

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Gmail automatically contact adding feature some times these contacts can lead to too much address book clutter. One of the advantage of auto adding contact list is that Gmail users don’t have to worry about to add contacts manually but this week Gmail team come up with a new concept of "My Contacts" and "Suggested Contacts." 

My Contacts contains the contacts you explicitly put in your address book (via manual entry, import or sync) as well as any address you’ve emailed a lot (we’re using five or more times as the threshold for now).

Suggested Contacts is where Gmail puts its auto-created contacts. By default, Suggested Contacts you email frequently are automatically added to My Contacts, but for those of you who prefer tighter control of your address books, you can choose to disable usage-based addition of contacts to My Contacts (see the checkbox in the screenshot above). Once you do this, no matter how many times you email an auto-added email address it won’t move to My Contacts.

Source : Gmail Blog

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Ratproxy is a semi-automated, largely passive web application security audit tool. It is meant to complement active crawlers and manual proxies more commonly used for this task, and is optimized specifically for an accurate and sensitive detection, and automatic annotation, of potential problems and security-relevant design patterns based on the observation of existing, user-initiated traffic in complex web 2.0 environments. The approach taken with ratproxy offers several important advantages over more traditional methods:

• No risk of disruptions. In the default operating mode, tool does not generate a high volume of attack-simulating traffic, and as such may be safely employed against production systems at will, for all types of ad hoc, post-release audits. Active scanners may trigger DoS conditions or persistent XSSes, and hence are poorly suited for live platforms.

• Low effort, high yield. Compared to active scanners or fully manual proxy-based testing, ratproxy assessments take very little time or bandwidth to run, and proceed in an intuitive, distraction-free manner - yet provide a good insight into the inner workings of a product, and the potential security vulnerabilities therein. They also afford a consistent and predictable coverage of user-accessible features.

• Preserved control flow of human interaction. By silently following the browser, the coverage in locations protected by nonces, during other operations valid only under certain circumstances, or during dynamic events such as cross-domain Referer data disclosure, is greatly enhanced. Brute-force crawlers and fuzzers usually have no way to explore these areas in a reliable manner.

• WYSIWYG data on script behavior. Javascript interfaces and event handlers are explored precisely to a degree they are used in the browser, with no need for complex guesswork or simulations. Active scanners often have a significant difficulty exploring JSON responses, XMLHttpRequest() behavior, UI-triggered event data flow, and the like.

• Easy process integration. The proxy can be transparently integrated into an existing manual security testing or interface QA processes without introducing a significant setup or operator training overhead.

Visit Ratproxy Website

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Gmail team seems to be working very hard to make their E-Mail service more secure. Recently Gmail team has introduced two new security features in Gmail. Gmail developers introduced Remote Sign out  and Better support for Phishing messages.

Remote Sign Out : Gmail users can sign into their Google account from different locations at different time. There might be possibility that users may forget to sign out from their Google account. At the bottom of your inbox, you’ll see information about the time of the last activity on your account and whether it’s still open in another location:

By clicking the details link users can see more details about their recent activities. Gmail users can also sign out all their active sessions.

Phishing Messages: Gmail does its best to put a red warning label on phishing messages but sometimes it’s very difficult for users to find the phishing E-Mails. Gmail supporting email authentication standards including DomainKeys and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) to verify senders and help identify forged messages. Now any email that claims to come from “paypal.com” or “ebay.com”(and their international versions) is authenticated by Gmail and — here comes the important part — rejected if it fails to verify as actually coming from PayPal or eBay. That’s right: you won’t even see the phishing message in your spam folder. Gmail just won’t accept it at all. Conversely, if you get an message in Gmail where the “From” says “@paypal.com” or “@ebay.com,” then you’ll know it actually came from PayPal or eBay. It’s email the way it should be. Gmail can easily reject as a fake anything that doesn’t authenticate.

Technorati Tags: Remote Sign out,Gmail,Ebay Phishing,Paypal Phishing

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On July 2, 2008 Microsoft announced that it will release an all-in-one software subscription package Microsoft Equipt offers consumers Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, Windows Live OneCare, Windows Live tools and Office Live Workspace. Microsoft Equipt customers will get the version upgrades as part of their subscriptions. This is the first time when Microsoft come with the concept of of Software as Service. Now Let’s compare both Google services and Microsoft Equipt.

Email and Online Storage: Both Microsoft’s Hotmail and Google’s Gmail offers a sufficient amount of storage. Both E-Mail services are easy to use and have most of the features common in each other. Gmail offers online storage via it’s E-Mail service while Microsoft offers online storage service via it’s SkyDrive service. So while using Google you get around 5 GB of online Storage but with Microsoft services users get 5 GB Storage for E-Mail and 5 GB online storage space.

Office Applications: Google offers office application through it’s GoogleDocs and Microsoft with it’s Microsoft Office Suite. Microsoft Office suite has more features as compare to Google docs but collaboration is missing in Microsoft office. Google docs offers only basic functions but  GoogleDocs collaboration features is best as compare to Microsoft office. Microsoft Office Live adds some collaboration but the online editing feature is missing and GoogleDocs offers a better services here.

Security: Google services as of now does not offer any security services and here Microsoft has added it’s OneCare security programs. OneCare offers a number of services like Firewall, Backup, system tuneup and many other services to it’s users.

Price: Google docs and its application yearly subscription for a single employee is cost you around $50. Microsoft Equipt offers it’s all services with just $69.99 per year.Anytime a new version of Office or Windows Live OneCare is released, Microsoft Equipt customers will get the version upgrades as part of their subscriptions.

Download Microsoft Equipt Products and Services Guide

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The annual RQ shows that Google is NO:1 among the most visible companies to American consumers. List of top 10 companies is as follows

1. Google

2. Johnson & Johnson

3. Intel Corporation

4. General Mills

5. Kraft Foods

6. Berkshire-Hathaway Inc

7. 3M Company

8. The Coca-Cola Company

9. Honda Motor Co.

10. Microsoft

About the Annual RQ

The Annual RQ is an assessment tool that captures perceptions of corporate reputations across industries, among multiple audiences, and is adaptable to countries outside the United States. The RQ provides information critical to the strategic decisions that companies make every day.

RQ research evaluates stakeholder perceptions across 20 attributes that are grouped into the six dimensions of reputation:

• Products & Services

• Financial Performance

• Workplace Environment

• Social Responsibility

• Vision & Leadership

• Emotional Appeal

Source Harris interactive Annual RQ

Download List of The 60 Most Visible Companies in America

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On Tuesday June 24, 2008 New York Stock Exchange partnered with Google and CNBC to provide real-time stock quotes on Google Finance. This services will help Google Finance users to get a real-time updates without any delay. You can also get it in widget form, either in iGoogle or on your phone with Google’s mobile-alerts service.

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Google is no 1 search engine and people use Google’s AdWords program to promote their business. Google Adword can help publishers to get a good traffic as well as good business but not using it properly you may also loose your money. If you are planning to start a campaign with Google AdWords please try to avoid these mistakes.

Turn Off the Content Network Option

By default “Content Network” option is enabled in Google AdWords.  This option helps Google to put your ads on websites like About.com, New York Times and many other content rich websites. Advertisers see a high impression and some times high CTR also, but visitors coming from these websites won’t help you to increase your business they are just wasting your money.

Not using Proper Keywords

People often think that using to many keywords helps them to get more number of visitors as well as more business but this is not the case. Targeting a particular set of audience is key to Adword campaign success. Try to use more specific key words instead of general keywords.

Read the rest of this entry…

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On Friday 20 June 23, 2008, Google open up it’s Webmaster tools for third party web developers. This is the initial version of Webmaster toolkit from Google to third party developers. The supported features in the first version of the Webmaster Tools API are the following:

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