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Every year Google release Zeitgeist which highlights the most popular searches carried out over the year. This year Google have split the data into different categories like Fastest Rising, Entertainment, Sports, People, Health and the Fastest falling…

The results are a like a snapshot of the year 2010. With the fastest falling being Swine Flu, The fastest rising iPad and chatroulette. In entertainment it is a young Justin Bieber a name I had not even heard about this time last year!

It is interesting but not surprising to see the social networks Twitter and Facebook appearing in the top 10 fastest rising. Yes, people really do go to Google and search for Facebook! I am never surprised that people do perform the strangest Google Search!

Finally in the news it was Haiti and Chile dominated the search queries for news this year. You can find more about Zeitgeist at http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2010/

Google has seen massive changes itself in the latter half of this year with “Instant Search” – Predicting our query as we type and “Instant Preview” showing a snapshot of the webpage before we click.

My thoughts on this are-

· The page quality and design can be seen prior to visiting the site and this will hopefully improve the design of websites so they can look good in the preview.

· It can be slow to load, This is quite a big factor considering how quickly results are delivered  with Google Instant Search and Google’s passion for delivering results quickly.

· Longer pages may have an increased click through rate as the preview displayed is bigger and more eye catching to the user.

The main down side is paid search. All the ads that appear in the right hand column are obscured by the preview. The paid adverts are Google’s main source of income and I find it hard to believe that Google is happy blocking a paid ad with a natural search results page.

I am sure that Google have carried out thorough research into this but it appears they have favoured the “searcher” over the “advertiser” and this may become something Google regrets if it sees a drop in advertising revenue. If so I am sure Google will be quick to drop the preview.

The only upside for Google is advertisers will need to spend more money to see their advert is displayed in the top 3 spots that are not obscured by the preview pane.

Watching this year’s Challenge has been different to previous years, OK I will re-phrase that! “radically different!” It used to be called The Thirty Day Challenge. It is no longer called that and is simply called The Challenge. Ed Dale who presents the opening video for each module this year he has recorded all his videos outside.

Now previously Ed has said that one of the most important factors of video is “Audio” and he is right! Would you sit back and watch a video with poor audio? Previously all his videos were recorded at his desk, great audio but it got a bit mono tone on day 30 seeing the same man in the same position in front of his Apple Mac.

So why record the video outside? Where there is background noise, 101 different things that can go wrong! So I asked him the question on Twitter.

You said that audio is the most important factor in video. Why film all this year’s challenge videos outside with background noise?

His reply was simply atmosphere.

I thought about it and again the self confessed “Tubby Nerd” is right!!!

It is not just audio, visual and content it is about creating the correct atmosphere. For example Lauren Luke recorded video of herself putting on make-up, to help her eBay customers and placed them on Youtube. The video was her, in her bedroom and sometimes with her little dog in the background!

The video was watched by millions. Why???

Because she had created  the right atmosphere that appealed to her target audience. Now roll forward a couple of years she launched a proprietary signature cosmetics line called By Lauren Luke, she launched the line in 135 stores across the USA and Canada. Not bad for a young girl from South Shields in England with an interest in make-up.

So to summarise, Video is all about creating the right atmosphere!

The mystery around Google Doodle deepens. Today we are faced with a blank grey silhouette of its famous colourful logo.

However once a user starts typing in to the search box, the logo letters return to their full colour one by one……….

Today’s doodle follows yesterdays interactive doodle, which used a collection of coloured balls bounce around the screen in a Particle Motion Simulation. The changes has sparked debate across the internet as to what the homepage takeovers signify, with some suggesting it is in anticipation of Google rolling out a streaming live search feature. Yesterday was Google’s 12^th birthday and it appears to coincide with the timing of the release. This also follows Googles Tweet on Twitter ‘Our doodle is dressing up in its brightest colors for something exciting coming very soon…’”

Whatever the answer to the mystery, all looks likely to be revealed an announcement Google is planning at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art later today relating to its search products - suggesting that they might well be unveiling a new ’search as you type’ feature, in which the results page you see change as you type your search term.

Hopefully we will soon see Google’s new live search features in action and it will be interesting to see what impact it has on how we search the internet. No doubt Google have got this “spot on” and searching will be more interactive and intuitive delivering the latest and best results it can find.

Google have just launched their new search called Google Scribe and we may see an end to the search button!

My first thoughts are it is very intuative and predicative, however using AJAX to constantly update the page based on key presses causes a slight delay and whilst in the search box Google sponsored ads do not appear straight away and this could be an issue for advertisers and in turn Google.

This is now on Google UK and will be rolled out globally within the next 24 hours. You need to be logged in to see this effect. Users that are not logged in will see the standard Google with the search button.