Google Squared is a new tool that puts search results into a spreadsheet-like list. It essentially organizes the results into facts, so users don’t have to click on multiples sites to find what they need. Cutts refers to it as a “sideways query” and points out that it could provide new information for users that they would not have previously found using traditional search.

When we spoke with Cutts earlier this year, he mentioned the growing obsession that SEOs and webmasters have with PageRank. We asked him about it in the above video, and while he did say it was important, he was quick to point out that it was only one of the more than 200 signals Google takes into consideration. He says content, title, url, and proximity are a few of the factors that have additional influence.

Users have also probably noticed the new redesign to the search results page. Cutts says the left-handed navigation was present for a while before the company decided to surface it for all search results.

Interestingly enough, the options are different based on each query. A search for Tom Cruise, for example, would probably return image results in the navigation. On the other hand, a search for President Obama would return real-time results and updates. Cutts says it creates more opportunities for webmasters and SEOs.

Lastly, Cutts did say that Caffeine was coming along nicely and indicated that there would be some announcements regarding it coming soon. Keep watching WebProNews for all the latest details on it.

The first principle is transparency. Bing wants to be 100 percent transparent to all its users. Secondly, Bing wants to provide a richer toolset to empower users. The third important principle Bing wants to be certain that its Toolbox provides is a means to get customer feedback.

Speaking specifically in regards to the Bing API, Alessandro Catorcini says it allows users to extract data from Bing’s core engine and then use it to benefit their own tool or website. In addition, developers are allotted an unlimited number of queries.

On the webmaster side, Srivastava says Bing is most excited about the intangible features such as customer engagement. Bing wants to interact with its users to better meet their needs.

Have you checked out Bing’s Toolbox?

In an exclusive video interview with WebProNews Yahoo and Google announced a collaborative site called sitemaps.org. Tim Mayer states in the video, “This is something we are announcing tonight at around 9 PM tonight (Las Vegas) Google and Yahoo have gotten together to provide webmasters and publishers a unified way to send their content … let our search engines know about new and existing content.”

Vanessa Fox of Google added, “So we are launching a new site, Sitemaps.org and that will be jointly supported by Yahoo and Google and it will have the sitemaps protocol there. Over time as we evolve it as sort of a collaborative effort all of the information will be there. We are really hoping that this will help webmasters to have an open standard and make it much easier so that they don’t have to worry about one type of feed for one engine and another type of feed for another engine.”
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There are certain partnerships you cannot ignore and if Google and Yahoo are involved, jointly, then most of the free world will take notice. With that in mind, Tim Mayer of Yahoo and Vanessa Fox of Google have announced, exclusively to WebProNews, they have combined forces to launch Sitemaps.org. This service gives webmasters and siteowners a sitemaps.org tool that will be usable by all the search engines willing to participate.

Not only are Google and Yahoo collaborating on this project, they’ve also issued an open invitation to the other search engines willing to join. Microsoft accepted that invitation and will jointly support Sitemaps.org and its efforts.