Google Hotel Finder pushes results off the screen

Last week I had a quick outburst at Google for managing to take up most of my screen real estate with adverts. This previous posting was based upon a search for car insurance, which left only one organic search result on my 1366 x 768 laptop screen.

So, with the dark launching of Google's Hotel Finder application yesterday to much of the UK's searching traffic, I was keen to try it out. The subject of this particular functionality will probably be discussed in a later post, but for now I couldn't get past one obvious fact...

... that Google's new hotel search tool takes up a lot of space on the page. 

Just take the screen shot above as an obvious example. Here, following a search for "hotel in glasgow" I get a page displaying: pay-per-click adverts, a map showing the location of some hotels in Scotland's fair city and now the sponsored zone that allows me to enter my required date range and 4 price-based links.

But a quick image edit later, you can see what this page looks like if you remove all the adverts.

And this is being gracious, considering the map is a link to another page that has several PPC links in pole position on the page.

So, well done Google, for managing to completely push all organic results off of the screen of my pretty high-specification laptop. Are you trying to do away with the search engine optimisation industry entirely?

Mapping my own Foursquare checkins

Here's a nice little Foursquare / Google mashup I've created that plots on a map where I have checked in on Foursquare:


View Larger Map

Thanks to Lifehacker : http://goo.gl/0jOk

Social Networks World Map

Vincenzo Cosenza from Italy has put together an updated version of his Global Map of Social Networks, 6 months on from producing his first one in June.

This map collated with data from Alexa & Google Trends shows the ongoing domination of Facebook as the main Social Network in 100 out of 127 countries.

UK Crime map having its own issues

An initiative by the National Policing Improvement Agency has placed maps online that show UK crime statistics.
As well as being able to compare overall crime rates, visitors to the site can view figures for: burglary, robbery, violence, vehicle crime and anti-social behaviour.

However,the voice of the Police Federation (the police 'union') that said this could help criminals, by letting them find specific crime hotspots, looks to be unlikely as the service is repeatedly unavailable today.

The reason "Due to very high popularity users may experience temporary intermittent issues accessing this site".

Either the Home Office never anticipated this level of traffic in its first week of launch (strange, given the curiousity around such a subject) or gangs of 'ner-do-wells' are using the service to plan their next set of heists, muggings and anti-social behaviour online.....

in reference to: Crime mapping for English and Welsh police forces (view on Google Sidewiki)