sites

There are now more than a trillion web pages...and those are just the ones Google knows about. Google's index of web pages has grown from 26 million in 1998 to a billion (one thousand million) in 2000 and now to a trillion (one million million) in ... 2008. The search engine firm announced the statistic as a way of publicizing its position as the market leader (ahem, gloating). Writing in a post on the company's blog, software engineers Jesse Alpert said that the Google system reprocesses the entire index several times a day, each of which is equivalent to checking every road intersection in a ... (view more)

Yahoo is to follow Google's leads in highlight potential security risks in sites which show up in its search results. There are several differences between the two systems. Google highlights the most serious cases -- sites which exploit flaws in ... browser software and automatically download viruses -- with a warning. In Yahoo's case, the sites will automatically be deleted from the list of results. Yahoo will also highlight pages which appear to include downloads which are likely to include viruses, spyware (programmes which collect information from a user's computer without their knowledge) ... (view more)

Is "racial profiling" the best way to compete with Google? It would seem that InterActive Corp (Nasdaq: IACI), the owner of Ask.com, thinks so. The company has introduced a new search engine site called Rushmoredrive.com to provide more relevant ... search information for the African-American searcher. The new search engine was created using behavioral targeting techniques. Researchers analyzed the results of the most popular search terms used in geographic areas that have large black populations. The site then catalogues the 'click-throughs' from those results to determine the sites of most ... (view more)

Gotta get your Milwaukee Bucks score every morning? Apparently, so do hackers. MSNBC Sports' web page was recently the victim of a major hack attack, compromising more than 26,000 pages. It's set off alarm bells for legitimate web sites, and ... highlights a new trend being forged by the web's most elite hackers. The MSNBC attack was reported this past Tuesday by San Diego-based Websense Inc. The security company has been tracking the exploit for about a month, stumbling upon the MSNBC invasion while performing one of their many web scans. Other major sites that appear to be hit include TV.com, ... (view more)

The body which regulates British newspapers is considering guidelines to restrict journalists from using social networking profiles as sources. It follows increasing complaints from people who have become the subject of stories and find details from ... sites such as Facebook included in newspaper articles. Tim Toulin, director of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), said "It's down to the PCC to set the boundaries in a common sense way about what sort of information it is acceptable to re-publish". The PCC is an industry body made up of newspaper editors and independent representatives which ... (view more)

Internet users are spending less time on social networking sites. Why? Because they are fed up with excessive advertising; although sites like Facebook and MySpace are still increasing their audience, the average time each user spends on the site is ... falling overall. The average MySpace visitor now spends 203.9 minutes on the site each month, while Facebook visitors are logged in for an average 172.1 minutes. Though Facebook has had more 'online buzz', its users appear to be getting bored with the various applications. Meanwhile, MySpace has copied some of the more popular Facebook features, ... (view more)

Online video sites are reaping the benefits of the ongoing writer strikes, with television viewers switching to their PCs to find new programming. Nielsen Online, which surveys and measures Internet use, says YouTube's audience has risen 18% since ... the strike began. Rivals DailyMotion and LiveVideo have both seen similar increases, while Crackle, an offshoot of Sony Pictures, has seen traffic double in the same period. Visitor figures across all video sites have gone up by 10% during the strike. Analyst Alex Burmaster says such rapid growth is far higher than normal and suggests the strike is ... (view more)

A company specializing in niche social networking sites has launched an online Christian community. That's not so strange; what is raising some eyebrows is the nature of that new meeting place. New York based Community Connect has launched ... Faithbase.com, described as "your place to meet and connect with Christians around the country". The company, which is now 10 years old, already runs social networking sites for the black (Blackplanet.com), Asian (Asianavenue.com) and Hispanic (MiGente.com) communities. However, it's their remaining site that is causing eyebrows to raise. GLEE.com serves ... (view more)

Google has removed more than 40,000 sites from its index after discovering they were fronts for malware (software that infects a visitor's computer). The sites used the fake codec technique. This is where a message appears on the user's screen ... saying they need to download an update to their system in order to view an image or video. For instance, it may claim they need a newer version of ActiveX, which can be used to show animations on web pages. Unfortunately, the link actually downloads a virus. It appears the people behind the scheme were deliberately flooding search engines with the sites ... (view more)

The New Jersey Assembly has taken another step closer to passing a law to govern Internet dating. The Internet Dating Safety Act has passed its committee stage (where proposed laws are debated in detail) and will now go to the full assembly for a ... final vote. The law would affect all dating sites with customers in New Jersey. The key requirement of the bill is for sites to inform customers whether or not they run background checks, and whether or not people who fail such checks are still allowed to sign up. This information would appear on every email sent to or from a customer in the state on ... (view more)