Google released a list of the top 1,000 most visited sites on the internet based on unique visitors, as measured by Ad Planner. The list will be updated monthly as new Ad Planner datasets are released.

Interesting to note that Google.com is not listed at all – they state the following: “Keep in mind that the list excludes adult sites, ad networks, domains that don’t have publicly visible content or don’t load properly, and certain Google sites.”

Last Friday Google announced searching over SSL at https://www.google.com. This new feature which is good for users in regards to privacy, but not so much for website owners. The reason being is that no referrer (search term) is passed when coming from a link on https as a security measure – meaning that as a website owner you see nothing in your analytics.

Getclicky is calling it the death of search analytics which seems to be true if it was the standard for all Google search users.

Another Google product update this week, this time Google Webmaster Tools has updated the amount of viewable data and added charts in the Top Search Queries report.

The update includes:

- Detailed data for each search query – including position, impressions, clickthrough
- No longer limited to the top 100 queries
- Data is visualized with graphs similar to Google Analytics
- Historic data by date
- Ability to search and filter by keyword

Google has launched a new beta version of its popular AdWords keyword tool. Overall functionality appears to be the same, seems like it takes more clicks to get it to display the same results as the older version that only needed a single drop down changed. All the data appears to be the same, just a different interface that is very similar to the DoubleClick Ad Planner by Google.

With the release of Google’s new Nexus One phone I saw it was interesting that Google is showing a new style of sponsored links for related keywords in search results. Not only is Google showing multiple links similar to site links but it also is showing a video in the ad. Is this something coming out soon for AdWords customers? Only time will tell….

A feature of Google that I used quite often to see how many advertisers that were bidding on a keyword previously located here: http://www.google.com/sponsoredlinks disappeared and now redirects to a Google AdWords help page stating the following:

What happened to the ‘More Sponsored Links’ page?

As part of our continuing efforts to optimize search experience for our users, and due to the fact that it was a very low usage feature, we’ve decided to remove the “More Sponsored Links” page from Google.com

This page was a very helpful tool for determining buy and sell prices for domain names. Now that it no longer exisits it’s time to find a new resource for this information and to update my domain evaluation tools page.

Google Product Search has rolled out some updates in time for the holiday shopping season. The list of new features include:

- A new gallery view that shows larger, higher resolution images and prominently displaying the domain name/store name of the website – check out some metal wallets.
- Product reviews and summaries.
- Video product reviews from YouTube.
- Nearby store locations with Google Maps.
- Mobile phone compatibility.

Google announced that they are now showing site hierarchy in search results instead of the actual URL. The image above outlines the changes to the search engine results page. When the site hierarchy is displayed those are additional links to the website too. The official word from Google is below:

The information in these new hierarchies come from analyzing destination web pages. For example, if you visit the ProductWiki Spidersapien page, you’ll see a series of similar links at the top, “Home> Toys & Games> Robots.” These are standard navigational tools used throughout the web called “breadcrumbs,” which webmasters frequently show on their sites to help users navigate. By analyzing site breadcrumbs, we’ve been able to improve the search snippet for a small percentage of search results, and we hope to expand in the future.

Now it’s even more important to structure your website with properly named breadcrumbs to achieve the best results in Google search.

I just ran across a Google search query that resulted in showing three listings (1 main, 2 indented) for a single domain. This may be a new feature as Google has normally only showed results with a maximum of two listings (1 main, 1 indented) or a main listing with site links in the past.