I noted it last week but didn't have a chance to post it - Google bought PostRank Analytics - the price of the deal wasn't revealed. It's one of the acquisition's I did not expect Google to make but it makes sense as Postrank developed a way to cut through noise and rank blogs.
Almost anything that Google does to improve it's filtering content, intelligently, should improve search results - though it's possible to over filter results, as I have found my6sense.com does (it learns what I like to see and just shows me that first - but after a while, it gets boring and 2 dimensional to see only the information you want - it's like only ever seeing the foods you like to eat - after a while, you just see the same few menu items).
Also heard that Google's software infrastructure is obsolete - ha! Well, at least, I signed up for piloting Google WebMaster Tools with Google Analytics pilot that is now underway. Before leaving the subject of Google - there is a contention that the number of Facebook Likes on a page is a ranking factor (a strong one). It's actually more of an ongoing argument according to SearchEngineLand(see below):
Facebook Shares & Search Engine Rankings
I moderated our morning panel, The New Periodic Table Of SEO, where Rand talked about findings from the latest SEOmoz ranking factors survey. Facebook Shares, he said, were the top factor that correlated with high search engine rankings. From his presentation:
But Rand never said this meant that Facebook Shares were causing top rankings.
But some people carry Facebook likes and Friends too far ... see the video that got posted in Gawker the other day....
Also saw the notice about SocialFlow - I saw SocialFlow at ReadWriteWeb's Real Time Summit last year and it looked interesting then (time a company's twitter communications to have maximum effects, and at the time they had but a few clients who were paying heavily for their services). I guess it's all in the timing - in life and in social media.
Finally, a post in TechCrunch about Corntextica looks interesting as a way of replicating how people see. Hmm.