Google released their +1 button for websites back in June, and since that time webmasters have eagerly been adopting the new social sharing button. Despite a fairly low user response when compared to Twitter or Facebook, Google has seen adoption of the button on more than a million websites. Those sites get more than 4 billion total daily views.

Those who’ve been involved in search engine optimization for any real duration know that there’s no one Google algorithm to keep up with. In addition to having a couple world-breaking changes per year (Google Instant and Panda being the most recent), there are constant minor changes that change how search works. However, Google recently discussed how those many minor changes are created, tested, and implemented

Facebook is backing off from the local/small business space — or at least parts of it. A few days after dropping its check-in service for Facebook Places, the company is now getting out of the deals business. In a statement reported by Reuters, Facebook says its Deals product will go away…

The sheer number of people potentially affected by the approaching Hurricane Irene means that the web is experiencing an incredible amount of traffic from those seeking information. Hitwise reports that searches for Hurricane Irene have increased more than 2300% since August 21. Thankfully, there…

Google announced they are retiring GoogleBot-News and will be now using exclusively GoogleBot for crawling Google News content. Google said: Google News recently updated our infrastructure to crawl with Google’s primary user-agent..

Voice search all began for Google several years ago with the now-shuttered, free directory assistance service GOOG-411. After the underlying infrastructure had matured Google introduced it on Android devices and in its iPhone apps. More recently, in July, the company put the same voice search..

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web…

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Signals Upcoming Algorithm Change, Asks For Help With Scraper Sites Google is calling for help in identifying a long-running problem: scraper sites in its…

Google is calling for help in identifying a long-running problem: scraper sites in its search results — and particularly scraper sites that are ranking higher than the original page. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s spam fighting group, put out the call for help on Twitter this morning:… Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

UPDATE: Important Information WNYC has posted a map of evacuation zones and threat level estimates for residents of New York City: Also here is map of Red Cross Shelters. With the rush to stock up on items to weather the storm, torches …