Every week, our search news round-up brings you the latest web marketing developments in everything from search engine optimization to pay-per-click advertising. Here are the biggest stories this week:
According to Study, Users Spend More Time on Facebook than Google and Yahoo
A new study from comScore reveals that web users in the U.S. devote more time online to Facebook than Google and Yahoo.
In August, the average U.S. web user spent 41.1 minutes on Facebook, about 9.9 percent of all Internet usage. In comparison, the average U.S. web user spent a total of 39.9 minutes (9.6 percent) on Google sites such as Gmail, Google news and YouTube, and 37.7 minutes (9.1 percent) on Yahoo.
At the same time last year, time on Facebook and Google only accounted for 5 percent each, while users spent 12 percent of their time on Yahoo on average. And in 2007, users spent less than 2 percent of their total Internet time on Facebook, 4 percent on Google and more than 12 percent on Yahoo.
Mozilla Firefox 4 Beta Offers Audio Interpretation Feature
Mozilla released a new audio feature in Firefox 4 Beta that will help users “visualize sound.”
“With this new API,” reads a post on the Mozilla blog “developers can read and write raw audio data within the browser, presenting audio information in completely new ways that could allow, for example, for people to visually experience a speech or a song through Firefox.”
Powered by HTML 5, Firefox 4 Beta can interpret audio into waves, abstract animation, streams of numbers and various other visual interpretations.
Firefox 4 Beta developer David Humphrey has prepared this video to give users a better demo of the browser’s new audio feature.
To check out just what Firefox 4 Beta can offer, download it for free here.
Google Instant Displays Search Results as Users Type
Wednesday Google unveiled Google Instant, a search enhancement that predicts, then displays results as users type. The new AJAX-powered search feature is intended to make searches faster and more intuitive. Watch this video from Google to find out more about how Google Instant works.
Currently, Google Instant is available on Google domains in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia to users with the following browsers: Chrome 5, Chrome 6, Firefox 3, Safari 5 (for Mac) and Internet Explorer 8. Google Instant will be rolled out to new domains and languages over the next several months.
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