Apparently Google has done one of their shifty updates without telling me personally about it. I am not sure if I appreciate that they didn’t inform me. I guess if they had, I probably would have blocked the email to the spam folder in my Gmail account….

The update that I am discussing is the new feature hidden under the “link to this page” link in the Google Maps site. It used to just link you to the page, so you could send someone the link and show them what you are looking at too. Now, however, they are giving bloggers, and more especially programmers, a leg up by providing the HTML for embedding the map directly into a website. This makes life alot easier when you are creating a web page that is just going to give directions from one place to the other, and doesn’t necessarily need to have the Google Maps API. Oh life is made one step easier for me!

Here is an example of what it looks like:

View Larger Map

This of course if from my favorite Sushi place in Chicago to Navy Pier, a place I have never been.

There are some problems with the new features, as I was not able to embed a map from the Lego Store in Chicago to Lego Land in San Deigo. It said I did not have permissions to view that link. Also, when I was playing around with it, I was not able to do the custom options with

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About David Naylor:

“More commonly known as DaveN, started working in the SEO industry over 9 years ago with three large corporations, releasing their database driven data, creating internal link structures and improving usability.”

David posts to his blog about tons of different things having to do with the SEO industry. Everything from sites with good SERP, search engines, and anything else SEO related it seems like.

David Naylor

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From the Search Crystal Home Page:

“searchCrystal lets you search and compare multiple engines in one place.
It is a search visualization tool that enables you to compare, remix and share results from the best web, image, video, blog, tagging, news engines or RSS feeds.

You can embed searchCrystal as a Widget on your site or blog to share personalized crystals, or use it to find out what is popular on Wikipedia or use the Search Analytics Toolbox in your browser as a powerful competitive intelligence tool.”

Despite the fact that I think that these guys are against using capitalization on their site, they have come up with a great tool that is fun and easy to use.  It will hit a couple of different search engines for your search term, and display the results in cool and different ways, that help you visualize what the most relevant result for your search term is.

Search Crystal

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