Google Responds to the Japan Earthquake With an Online Crisis Center

Google Responds to the Japan Earthquake With an Online Crisis Center.

Google has reacted to the devastating 8.9 magnitude earthquake that hit Japan on Friday with a tool that helps you find a person or provide information on missing persons. The site also aggregates important resources, maps and other related information.

Google has previously used the Person Finder tool, for example, during the Christchurch earthquake and the Egypt protests.

The Japan earthquake version of the tool currently lists about 5,500 records, but the number is rising quickly as news about the catastrophe spreads around the world. Although the tool can be useful for finding information about a friend or a loved one, Google warns users that it doesn’t review or verify the accuracy of the data. Furthermore, all data entered will be available to the public, as well as viewable and usable by everyone.

Google’s Crisis Center also shows a map of the earthquake, the latest related news and lists link to warning centers, disaster bulletin boards, and train and blackout information.

The Google Crisis Center is available here, but it also shows up on top of searches for “Japan earthquake” and similar phrases. During these times of disaster, it’s good to see Google taking swift action and leveraging its vastly popular search engine to help people cope and find information.

What tools are you using to track the Japan quake? Tell us in the comments.

Google Declares War on Content Farms

Google has announced a major algorithmic change to its search engine, subtle in nature and perhaps unnoticeable to many users, but one that should dramatically improve the quality of Google’s search results.
With this move, Google is targeting content farms – a common name for low quality sites whose main goal is to attract search traffic by piling up (mostly) useless content, usually by either producing large amounts of low-quality text or by copying it from websites with original content. Google does not go into details of the change which should impact 11.8% of Google’s queries (currently only in the US, with plans to roll it out elsewhere over time), but it does say that it will affect the ranking of many sites on the web.

“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,” explain Googlers Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts in a blog post.

While the change will surely have many website owners up in arms, complaining that their website was unfairly ranked lower than before (we’re sure that in some cases they will be right), it’s a very welcome one.

The popularity of Google’s search engine is still second to none, but Google has been plagued by black hat SEO practices and content farms for a while now, with the complaints from users slowly mounting over time. If Google manages to put an end to content farms or at least significantly reduce their influence in search results, it will be an important step in regaining the trust of its millions of users.

Google Unveils Delicious Bookmark Importer

Google has just rolled out a convenient new tool for importing your Delicious bookmarks to Google Bookmarks.
The simple importer takes your Delicious login credentials (or lets you use a one-click OAuth button) and imports all your bookmarks, preserving labels or tags.
Considering Google’s rather broad reach as a company, the importer is likely more than just a friendly bid for more Google Bookmarks users.

Bookmarks was launched in 2005, but it’s never been a huge hit — or a money maker — for the company. Last year, Google launched Lists for Bookmarks, a more social feature for bookmarking that put the product into direct competition with Yahoo’s Delicious. At the time, Delicious founder Joshua Schachter was still a Google employee. However, what makes the Delicious importer timing so interesting is Yahoo’s recent decision to “sunset,” i.e., to sell, Delicious. As more startups and other web companies have promoted their own Delicious importers, a successful sale of the once relatively popular web service grows ever more unlikely. Google’s importer may be the nail in the coffin, in fact.

This isn’t the first time Google has made overt overtures to Yahoo services users. But it’s definitely a direct stab at Yahoo’s bottom line.

But Machiavellian maneuvers aside, Google’s importer is a pleasure to use and will likely be a good fit if you’re a user of other Google apps, such as Reader or Gmail. Here are some screenshots: