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January 16, 2005 - January 22, 2005

More On Link Condom & Blogger Worries Over Nofollow

Earlier, I posted about the Link Condom site that went up, which pokes some fun at the new nofollow attribute. Six Apart's Anil Dash didn't find it funny, as he deconstructs in Anti-Nofollow FUD. Instead, he interpreted as a blog spammers attempt to discredit the attribute.

News flash for anyone who doesn't yet realize it. Nofollow will NOT stop blog spam. Want to understand more about why? See my previous article on it, Google, Yahoo, MSN Unite On Support For Nofollow Attribute For Links.

The site is more about the fact that there's a host of other non-blogging issues that the tag raises that people will want to be aware of. So it's not anti-nofollow. If anything, it deserves a little praise for helping people easily understand a concept of what nofollow does -- prevents links from actually touching another site for search ranking purposes. Link condom? Great name -- because that's what nofollow is.

I posted a long response to Anil's worries on his site, but I'll reproduce those comments below for my readers. In addition, I'd encourage everyone to look at some of the discussion within our The New Nofollow Link Attribute forum thread especially for a non-blogger view of the attribute.

Also look at Anil's The Social Impacts of Software Choices, which looks at how bloggers are now wondering if the impact of nofollow will hurt how they link between themselves for search purposes. I have a long response I posted to that, as well. The main bit that struck me was the comment that some bloggers worry nofollow will hurt their chances of ranking well when they comment on other blogs:

There's also some resistance from real bloggers, who are fretting now that their comments won't confer PageRank on their blogs.

 To which I responded:

This sounds very much like bloggers with an SEO complex. I need links for ranking? How about you write good stuff, and people will comment on it within their own posts that will help -- not that you need to be able to comment behind a post and get respect that isn't necessarily earned.

Again, see that post for Anil's full look, my comments and responses for others. And below, my full comments on the non-blogging issues about nofollow that Link Condom highlights:

Anil, the site's a light-hearted joke. Believe me, Todd Friesen who threw the site up isn't trying to spread FUD about nofollow through that site. It's more an inside things for those who know search engines and are talking about the issues of nofollow OUTSIDE blogging. Want a taste of that? Then check out this thread at our forums that goes into the non-blogging issues more.

No time for that? Then let's go back and look at the main points highlighted on that page about "uses" of nofollow:

• Hoard your PageRank
• Hide your outgoing links
• Screw your reciprocal link partners
• Add code bloat to your page
• Find out today if people are buying links for the right reasons
• Yet more to obsess about
• Freely link to bad neighbourhoods
• Far easier to use than JavaScript, perl, php, robots.txt etc

Where's the mention of comment spam in those? The word "blog" isn't on the page once and "comment spam" is down in small text as a joking aside. If this were a rant against nofollow being useless at combating comment spam, why bury it like that?

Answer? Because it's not a rant on nofollow as it relates to blogs. It's a joke having fun at the issues of nofollow that those OUTSIDE of blogging are contemplating in the wake of the tag. I'll take up some of the bigger points and explain them:

Hoarding: Some people want to get tricky and not let anything outside their own web site get link credit. It's not a blog thing -- it's a link thing. Personally, I think it's a waste of time. But for those who do worry about it, nofollow gives them a nice, new approved tool to hoard link credit.

Hiding: Some people want to link out so search engines feel they have a "natural" site but don't really want to show those links. Nofollow may -- or may not -- allow that. It's a new thing they'll try.

Screwing: Well, some people swap links for reasons good and bad, and for reasons before we had blogs and even before the search engines did much with links. And that link swapping -- again, completely outside of blogs in many cases, may now be impacted. Because if someone links to you, they might not really link in a way that gives you search credit. If that's what you wanted, you'd better know they've put a "condom" in the form of nofollow around that link.

Buying Links: People buy and sell links outside of blogs, often times for reasons of getting better rankings in search engines. Nofollow means that you can now sell links but say to the world, "Hey, I'm not doing this to mess with search rankings." That's nice if you're a big site that might want ensure you aren't going to be tainted as some type of search evil-doer. Then again, if you are someone buying links and doing it for just search reasons, you'd better make sure you don't buy them with nofollow on.

Bad Neighborhoods: Google and gang will tell you not to link to bad neighborhoods. Do you know what those are? I don't -- they didn't publish a list along with that advice. Maybe it's a porn site. Maybe it's a link farm. Maybe a porn site like Playboy is OK though. And maybe you are some newbie web author freaked out that anything you link to might get you into trouble.

I know those people because I have to deal with their questions and worries after the search engines have unleashed the fear factor. So the point is -- are you freaked out? Hey, use this new link condom and you can link safely. And by the way, it's another non-blog specific issue. It has an impact on all web authors. It's actually a great tool for anyone to use.

Easier to use: Yeah, it is easier to use. You and Todd seem to agree on this. Having easy options is good.

Now, I know you've got generally a bad view SEO, that it seems populated with scumbags like the supposed scumbag behind this site -- and being on the sharp end of blog spam, its understandable. But let's get personal a moment about the scumbag in question for this site.

Who published it? Someone who definitely does black hat SEO, yep. Someone who does white hat SEO, as well. And someone who knows a heck of a lot more about how search engines work -- and how this tag will and will not have an impact -- than the vast majority of people out there.

Scumbag? Then Yahoo -- who joined you and the other major search engines  on nofollow -- is hanging out with scumbags, because Todd and I and several others all had a nice dinner recently with key people from Yahoo's search team last month.

Oh, and Todd's good friend Greg? One of MSN's search champs that got invited up with a few months ago along with key bloggers that MSN itself talked about in its post on adding nofollow. Why invited? Because despite being black hat at times, he also knows search intimately.

Let's not leave out Google. Todd and Greg have better contacts with Google's search engineering teams than the vast majority of people. Why? Because those scumbags know search so well they're respected for it. That's why I myself have them talk on search issues. There's a lot to learn from them regardless of what hat you wear.

Now for some of your points:

Nofollow Gives Choices: Yep!. I love it for that. Bring on more choice with what search engines do and don't index, so people like Brad Choate don't have to cloak and violate search engine guidelines. Brad, cloaking. Yeah, my How About An Indexing Summit! explains why he ended up doing this without realizing it. And by the way, that also puts Brad on the same exact page as people like Greg and Todd, who feel like they should be able to control their content as fed to search engines as much as Brad wants to.

Rankings From Blog Posts Won't Be Impacted: Oh yes they will. Hey, Jeremy says he's just put nofollow on the link to Todd's site in his post about it. Hey, that's a ranking impact. If someone links to you (on a blog, in blog comments, in a blog post, on your personal home page whatever) and now uses nofollow, you aren't getting the credit for that link. That's their choice, and I'm glad they have it. And they've had it before, but not as easily as nofollow makes it now. But you'd better believe it will have an impact. Whether it's good, bad or very little remains to be seen. For most people with quality content, probably very little.

PageRank Is Not A Contest: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Geez, I beg and plead for you, someone with such high standing in the blogging community, to stop making such bad mistakes and spreading misinformation about search. Perhaps you should be forgiven, given that the PR-meisters themselves at Google often make the same mistake. But to clarify:

PageRank is how Google calculates the popularity of a page, based on looking at all the links across the web. But you don't want PageRank alone. Go on, search for "cars." Did you see Amazon come up? No -- because despite having incredibly high PageRank, it's not got anchor text with the word "cars" pointing at it. So PageRank does not equal how Google ranks pages in search results. It is one key component, with the other two being the link text itself and the words on a page itself.

PageRank is also a Google-specific thing. Nofollow has an impact with ALL three major search engines participating, so talking about PageRank just reinforces the notion that it's all-Google or nothing world, when it is not. In fact, Ask Jeeves is specifically not supporting nofollow at the moment because they use a radically different ranking system that they feel might not be impacted by blog spam, link spam, link bombing and so on.

What you're really saying is that search rankings are not supposed to be a contest but instead be an objective decision of a mix of factors that the search algorithm uses to determine what's relevant. And it's a nice goal, but it's not true.

Even if we had no blogs -- no SEO -- no spammers, search algorithms wouldn't get it perfectly right. That's because people still make unintentional mistakes, create non-search engine friendly sites, rely on graphics rather than text, Flash rather than text and a host of other issues that ensure there's no such thing as a "level playing field" on the web. That's also, by the way, where plenty of SEO firms that you'd like come into play. They can help clear up many mistakes that the search engines themselves suggest fixing.

As for being a contest, search rankings are indeed one. And PageRank specifically itself is definitely a contest. Remember, when Google talks about counting links as a key component of what it does, it talks about relying on the web's "uniquely democratic nature." Democracy -- that's a popularity contest. In fact, to quote Google:

Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

Not a contest? If it's not a contest, then what are all those votes being counted? Maybe nofollow will help ensure that we don't have a lot of chads polluting the election, but then again, maybe not.

What is clear is that nofollow will NOT stop blog comment spam. Not at all. Don't believe it? Then right now, all bloggers can stop making use of blacklists, registration schemes and other tactics used before nofollow emerged. Sit back and see if the spam goes away. It won't. Nofollow is a nice new tool that we can use, one that as I've said many times before is welcomed for giving us choice and more options, but it's not a magic bullet. Well, it's a magic bullet for one thing. It now lets the search engines say to bloggers, we gave you want you wanted, stop blaming us for the problem!

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 21, 2005, 6:22 PM | Permalink

Special Logos, Smart Search, Ask Jeeves, and Google

Have you noticed a "special" logo on Ask Jeeves this afternoon? You'll see Jeeves "thinking" about a visit to the slopes to do some snowboarding. If you click on the logo, you're taken to a Smart Answer with current ski conditions for Squaw Valley, California. I think it's more than worth pointing out that Squaw Valley is where Google is currently having their big ski trip and party . Yes, it's Friday afternoon and this is some good fun.

Btw, I've noticed that conditions for other ski areas are now also available as Smart Search results.

Posted by Gary Price on January 21, 2005, 5:52 PM | Permalink

SEO Versus SE Ads

When I do my introductory talk about search marketing at our Search Engine Strategies shows, I explain that search marketing it is the combination of SEO and search advertising.

SEO is like getting PR -- with a little appropriate effort, you might get some nice free publicity, but no guarantees. Search advertising is guaranteed -- and that's why you pay so much for it!

In Compare and Contrast: SEM and SEO from ClickZ, Kevin Lee does some comparing of his own. SEO for many sites is mostly about clearing the hurdles that can make a site non-search engine friendly. Fix the problems, and the free listings tap might start flowing with relatively little need to watch over it on a daily basis.

Search advertising -- what he calls paid SEM -- isn't a fire-and-forget activity. It needs lots of watching and may involve skills completely different than SEO.

SEO and search ads do have some things in common, as he outlines -- but he predicts that the two may diverge even further down the line.

I agree -- and it's also why you might find yourself employing two completely different companies. Concerned about your free listings, especially in terms of how they might have an impact on your company's reputation? Turning to a company skilled with paid search but not organic might not be helpful. Think of it back in the "real" world again Plenty of companies have both PR firms and advertising firms.

Meanwhile, Gord Hotchkiss points out at MediaPost in The 70/30 Rule of Search how despite the fact that searchers pay the most attention to free listings on search engines, marketers spend the most money on getting positioning through search ads. That mix, he argues, should change to better reflect positioning in the real "prime" part of a search results page.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 21, 2005, 3:20 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Filtering Search For China

There's no end to stories about how Google either does or is suspected to filter its results for China (with news, it does; with web search, China itself does). Nice to see it getting a break and Yahoo instead taking a slam for doing search filtering. That's covered at the end of this News.com article, When blogging can get you locked up, spotted via Dave Winer.

It's not a new discovery -- just one that generally is overlooked due to the usual "It's an all-Google-world obsession."

Neither search engine makes disclosure of filtering, when it happens. They ought to. Got To Censor Search Listings? Why Not Disclose?, China Blocks Google News -- So Bring On The Disclosure and Revisiting Google Censorship In Germany & France explain more about how and why they should do so.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 21, 2005, 3:01 PM | Permalink

Threadwatch Has UK Pub Meet

Into SEO? In the UK? Threadwatch is having a get-together. Details here: SEO Pub Meet - 28th May London Stansted.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 21, 2005, 2:46 PM | Permalink

More On FAST Beats Google For AOL Local

Our AOL Search: Playing In the Big Leagues Now on the new AOL Search release commented on FAST being selected over Google to power upcoming changes to AOL's local search service. Google bypassed in search deal from the Boston Globe takes a closer look at the win by FAST.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 21, 2005, 2:29 PM | Permalink

Yahoo & Reality TV Product Placement Deal

First Yahoo does Broadway, and now it does reality TV. The company will produce and sell ads for The Contender and The Apprentice, which in turn is getting Yahoo into the shows. You're Fired? Well, here's a taxi to take you away with a Yahoo HotJobs sign. Other Yahoo properties are going to be placed in the show, including Yahoo Search. More details from MediaPost, Yahoo!: You're Hired, and ClickZ: Yahoo Touts Success, Expansion of Mark Burnett Deal.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 21, 2005, 2:11 PM | Permalink

Page Sells Shares, Joins XPrize Board, Honored at Demo@15

Here are a couple of items about Mr. Page and Mr. Brin that have recently crossed our desks.

+ If I added it up correctly, Larry Page sold about 330,000 GOOG shares (filings here and here) in a planned sale on Tuesday. Shares sold in the $202-$204 range for about $67 million.

+ Last week, Page was named to X Prize Foundation Board of Trustees.

+ Larry and Sergey will be recoginized at the DEMO@15 conference next month as two of the top innovators of the past 15 years. Six Apart, TiVo, and Marc Andreessen are some of the members of this group.

Posted by Gary Price on January 21, 2005, 12:43 PM | Permalink

Call for Papers: Spam, Blackhat & Adversarial Information Retrieval

Word comes from Brian D. Davison of Lehigh University of the upcoming First International Workshop on Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web workshop, to be held at the 14th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2005), 10-14 May 2005, Chiba, Japan.

The workshop is intended to bring together researchers and practitioners that are concerned with the on-going efforts in adversarial information retrieval on the Web (aka search engine spam, cloaking, link bombing and other black hat techniques). The program committee features an impresive lineup of both academics and representatives from many of the major search engines.

Brian's looking for all serious SEO researchers to submit papers and, of course, attend the workshop. We'll keep a close eye on this and report back on the efforts of this ad-hoc committee pursuing a very worthy cause.

Posted by Chris Sherman on January 21, 2005, 12:42 PM | Permalink

Update On New MSN Search Going Live

Yesterday, I noted that when I visited the regular MSN Search site, I got the look and results that also show at the beta MSN Search site like a growing number of others. So what's the deal. Is the beta gone? Am I just one of the increasing number of those being shown the beta as MSN has promised would happen this month. And if and when the beta site really is out of beta, won't it stop saying beta on the site?

From Microsoft, this statement:

MSN has been recently scaling up and scaling down the MSN Search beta service. This continues to be part of the testing process as we near the final version and incorporate user feedback. Until we fully launch the site, you may expect to see various changes occurring. Once the service is final, the "beta" label will be removed.

In other words, it's not out of beta yet. Even if you see the "beta" site now showing up when you visit the main site, others may not. But when the word "beta" disappears, then it'll be official for everyone.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our forum thread, IMO – New MSN Search is NOW LIVE!

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 21, 2005, 10:46 AM | Permalink

Search Forums Roundup: Jan. 21, 2005

Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: AOL Search Moves Up to the Big Leagues - Google's New "Nofollow" Attribute - We Are Seeing A Rollout of MSN New Search - Organizing a Multi-Language Site - 7 Steps To Identifying Click Fraud, and more.

Posted by Chris Sherman on January 21, 2005, 10:41 AM | Permalink

New My Yahoo Ticker For Windows Taskbar

Using My Yahoo to track stocks or read feeds? Now there's a little My Yahoo Ticker you can get that will stream material to you via your Windows taskbar. Email notifcation, weather forecasts and more are also provided. There's also some search capabilities built in. My Yahoo! on Your Desktop from the Yahoo Search Blog provides some more details.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 21, 2005, 10:35 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Comes To Broadway Via Spamalot

Spamalot, a new musical comedy coming to Broadway and based on Monty Python And The Holy Grail, will be featuring Yahoo's logo during a musical bit called "The Spam Guard." Yahoo will be placed on flags that a military troupe carries, plus on signs and perhaps on costumes.

Yahoo's also purchased all 300 seats for the March 1 performance. Hmm -- right smack in the middle of our Search Engine Strategies New York show. Why do I sense some of Yahoo's top advertisers coming to the show are going to be getting some Spamalot tickets?

A few more details from MediaPost: Yahoo! Takes A Turn On Broadway.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 21, 2005, 10:10 AM | Permalink

Blogger.com: Where's the "Nofollow" Info?

I'm a bit surprised that almost three days after Google announced the "nofollow" attribute that Blogger users (Blogger is a a Google service) still haven't been told about it. As of today, I can't find any news about it on Blogger.com (how it works, how to implement it) or even a link to the Google Blog post about the attribute. The only thing I can find is this info that has been in the "Blogger Help" section for some time. It states that links embedded in blog comments have never received a PageRank boost.

Posted by Gary Price on January 21, 2005, 9:06 AM | Permalink

Link Condom: The Nofollow Parody

While debate over the usefulness of the new nofollow link attributes continues, a parody site called Link Condom has just gone up to stress some of the issues beyond blogging that the attribute raises.

Will people use it to link freely to "bad neighborhoods?" Will it be used to promise a reciprocal link but not really provide one with search engine credit? Will people use it to "hoard" PageRank?

Different issues -- but with all of them, nofollow becomes a way to link to others without actually touching them from a search engine perspective. In other words, nofollow works as a link condom -- the name of the new site from Todd "Oilman" Freisen.

For more on the nofollow attribute, including some of the non-blogging issues it raises, see my Google, Yahoo, MSN Unite On Support For Nofollow Attribute For Links article and our forum discussion The New Nofollow Link Attribute.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 21, 2005, 9:02 AM | Permalink

Google Loses Trademark Infringement Case in France

On December 15th Google was victorious in a trademark-infringement lawsuit filed by GEICO in a U.S. Federal Court.

However, as Stefanie Olsen reports on News.com, it was a different story the next day for Google in France.

In a blow to Google's keyword-bidding engine, the French court ordered the company to stop linking ads to Le Meridien-trademarked terms by Monday or face a daily fine of $194 (150 euros). The company must also cease linking ads related to Le Meridien brands within 72 hours of whenever Le Meridien notifies it of listings in violation, or face a daily fine of 150 euros. Finally, Google must pay all court fees and a fine of $2,592 (2,000 euros). Google will appeal the decision.

More in the article: Google loses trademark dispute in France.

This is not the first time Google has been taken to court over trademark infringement issues in France.

+ In October 2003, Google was fined after losing a case filed by two travel agencies.

+ Also in October 2003, it was first reported that Louis Vuitton was suing Google. Google eventually was fined and told to stop the practice.

Posted by Gary Price on January 20, 2005, 7:15 PM | Permalink

Hotmail Users Can Now Subscribe to MS Outlook

The AP is reporting that Microsoft is introducing a fee-based e-mail service that lets users, "organize e-mail, contact lists and calendars in their online Hotmail accounts using the Microsoft Outlook program."

The service is called Microsoft Office Outlook Live and will offer 2GB in storage and permits users to send attachments of up to 20 megabytes.

A subscription to Microsoft Office Outlook Live costs $59.95/year (a 25% discount is currently available) and is the first Microsoft Office product to be made available as a downloadable subscription service. Additional details on the Outlook Live web site.

Posted by Gary Price on January 20, 2005, 11:52 AM | Permalink

iFrontier, Rawhide Absorbed

Some updates on old SEM names we're finally losing due to past acquisitions.

First, i-FRONTIER is to be no longer, as least as a brand name. It's being fully integrated into into sister agency Avenue A/Razorfish (which itself needs a much better name!). Some more details from ClickZ: i-FRONTIER Brought Under Avenue A/Razorfish.

Meanwhile, Rawhide -- acquired by eXact Advertising last September, now has been absorbed completely into the company, though it will be known as eXactSearch. More details in the company press release.

FYI, I've added an updated my chart on various search marketing firm acquisitions. You'll find it here: Will 2005 Bring More SEM Acquisitions?

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 20, 2005, 11:28 AM | Permalink

Interface Tweaks to Search.Yahoo.com Interface

I've noticed a tweak to the clutter-free and ad-free Search.Yahoo.com interface this morning. Now included on the page, directly below the search box are:
+ Three news headlines (and a direct link to Yahoo News)
+ A direct link to Yahoo Finance along with Dow Jones and NASDAQ Averages
+ Yahoo Mail users can login and have direct links to their inbox (along with the number of new messages). A direct link to compose mail is also visible.

Removing these features from the interface can be easily accomplished by simply clicking them closed.

For about a year, Search.Yahoo.com users have been able to personalize which search tabs are visible on the page. Look for the "edit" link directly above the search box.

Posted by Gary Price on January 20, 2005, 10:15 AM | Permalink

Answers.com Now Supplying Dictionary Definitions and More to Google

Google is slowly switching from its long-standing use of Dictionary.com definitions to Answers.com definitions. The migration began on Jan 18. Some may still see Dictionary.com definitions, but this example shows how Answers.com material is coming into play. Why the change? "We're always experimenting with new services to gauge whether they are useful to users," said Google spokesperson Nate Tyler.

What does this mean for the researcher in terms of results?
+ Both Answers.com and Dictionary.com supply results from the The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. The only difference is that the edition Answers.com uses has a 2003 copyright date.
+ Answers.com also offers free access to an audio pronounciations (click on the speaker icon) of terms. Dictionary.com charged for this service.
+ Answers.com pages can provide you with more than just a dictionary definition. You'll also find encyclopedia entries, translations, and content from other ready reference tools. Here's a complete list of the sources included in their database.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that a9 has offered Answers.com content since it launched last year.

Posted by Gary Price on January 20, 2005, 9:17 AM | Permalink

MSN Search Beta May Now Be On Main Site

People in our forums are reporting that the main MSN Search site is now looking the same as the beta MSN Search site. I see the same. We could all be among the growing number of people being shown the beta even though we go to the main site's URL as part of the broader rollout that MSN promised earlier this month. Or, it could be that MSN has flipped the switch and formally dumped the old Yahoo-powered site with their new MSN-powered one. I'll check and come back. Want to comment or report what you're seeing? Visit the IMO – New MSN Search is NOW LIVE! in our forums.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 20, 2005, 8:26 AM | Permalink

AOL Search Playing with the Big Guns Now

AOL Search is rolling out some new enhancements to both its proprietary client software and to AOL Web Search as part of its relatively recent efforts to transform itself into a web portal. The new features are nothing revolutionary, but are useful and powerful, and effectively differentiate AOL Search from the other major players—including AOL Search partner Google.

Today's SearchDay article, AOL Search: Playing In the Big Leagues Now, covers the new enhancements, including search personalization features, result clustering using Vivisimo technology and local search results drawn from (among other sources) a customized crawl of the web by FAST Search & Transfer.

Postscript: John Battelle also has a nice write-up over here: AOL Puts A Stake In The Ground

Posted by Chris Sherman on January 20, 2005, 12:18 AM | Permalink

Googlers Hit the Ski Slopes

It's going to be a challenge to find Googlers working at the Googleplex for the next few days. Why? The entire staff (more than 2000 plus staff members based in the Bay Area) are heading for a blow-out weekend party at the Squaw Valley ski resort in California. A few more details in this News.com blog post.

Update: Google's ski bash is over. Here's a Washington Post report about the festivities. At Google, Not Quite Partying Like It's 1999.

Posted by Gary Price on January 19, 2005, 4:10 PM | Permalink

MSN Releases Australian and Canadian Versions of Newsbot

New from MSN today are a few more local versions of their Newsbot news search beta. Online today:
+ Newsbot Australia
+ Newsbot Canada
+ Newsbot Canada (French)
You can find a listing with all of the local versions of Newsbot here. What is Newsbot all about? Take a look at the SearchDay article: MSN Previews Personalized News Search.

Posted by Gary Price on January 19, 2005, 1:50 PM | Permalink

Program For 2005 Search Engine Meeting Now Available

The program for the 2005 Search Engine Meeting that's scheduled to take place in Boston (April 11-12) is now online. A very very impressive list of speakers.

Sessions Include (make sure to review the program, this is just the tip of the iceberg):
+ Internet Search Engines: Past and Future (Jan Pedersen, Yahoo!)
+ What We Know About User Behavior (And What We Are Not So Sure of)
(Carol Tenopir, Univ. of Tennessee)
+ Content Management on the Web: the Next Killer App for Search (Tom Wilde, FindWhat.com)
+ Personal Information Retrieval: Helping Finders become Keepers (Susan Dumais, Microsoft Research)
+ Data Discovery on the Intranet (Avi Rappaport)
+ Next Generation Search Technology Advancements (John Lervik, Fast)
+ Combining Desktop & Web: Building a Seamless Search Solution across Multiple Platforms (Tuoc Luong, Ask Jeeves)
+ Arguments for Clustering and Meta-Search as a Universal Norm for Information Retrieval (Raul Valdes-Perez, Vivisimo)
+ Structuring the Unstructured Web for Specialized Searching A (mmy Vogtlander, Scirus/Elsevier)
Thanks to Intelligence Center for the link.

Want to review presentations from past Search Engine Meetings? They're all linked here.

Posted by Gary Price on January 19, 2005, 12:24 PM | Permalink

"Hack" Google and Get a Job Interview?

Alan Docherty from The Independent tells the stories of Jon Barker, Elias Torres, and Mark Lyon. All three wrote Gmail "hacks" and were then promptly contacted by Google to ask if they were interested in working for the company. After phone interviews and for one person, a visit to the GooglePlex, none of these "Gmail hackers" were offered jobs.

More in the article: Google is watching you

Posted by Gary Price on January 19, 2005, 9:30 AM | Permalink

Feedster Launches Database of Job Feeds

News from Feedster that they're now adding more than 5,000 job listings each day from a variety of services and companies that offer employment announcements in RSS format. A specialized interface to acccess these listings is also available at:
http://jobs.feedster.com. The news release also points out that more specialized interfaces (aka verticals) are coming soon.

Posted by Gary Price on January 19, 2005, 8:45 AM | Permalink

The Universal Library and Other Book Digitization Projects

Although Google's recent announcement to digitize the contents of several large libraries got most of the press coverage, I'm glad to see that other book digitization projects (many that have been around for years) are now also getting some press attention. We mentioned several of them in our first story about Google Print library project and in this post a couple of days later.

A new article from the Hackensack Record offers more details about The Universal Library (from Carnegie Mellon University, The Internet Archive and others) and Project Gutenberg.

"Our objective is to ultimately take the works of man... digitize it and make it free to everybody," said Michael Shamos, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, which created the Universal Library.

Google Print, for example, will provide only a few lines of works published since 1923, because they are still under copyright. But the Universal Library displays the entire text of some books still under copyright.

The Universal Library will try to meet with Google to suggest cooperation. For starters, he said, Google can save itself the trouble of scanning the 100,000 books that are already part of the Universal Library's collection.

"To the extent that our books are free, then it would seem to be a waste of Google's time to redigitize those," [Michael] Shamos, [a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University] said. "They ought to go digitize other ones that we haven't gotten to -- or that we might never get to -- because they have a lot more funding than we do."

If you're interested in making use of full text books currently available online (most free) the blog post: Searching for Digital Books, offers links to several excellent databases.

Posted by Gary Price on January 19, 2005, 8:33 AM | Permalink

Google, Yahoo, MSN Unite On Support For Nofollow Attribute For Links

In the first cooperative move for nearly ten years, the major search engines have unveiled a new indexing command for web authors that they all recognize, one that they hope will help reduce the link and comment spam that plagues many web sites, especially those run by bloggers.

The new "nofollow" attribute that can be associated with links was originated as an idea by Google several weeks ago and pitched past MSN and Yahoo, as well as major blogging vendors, gaining support.

The Nofollow Attribute

The new attribute is called "nofollow" with rel="nofollow" being the format inserted within an anchor tag. When added to any link, it will serve as a flag that the link has not been explicitly approved by the site owner.

For example, this is how the HTML markup for an ordinary link might look:

<a href="http://www.site.com/page.html">Visit My Page</a>

This is how the link would look after the nofollow attribute has been added, with the attribute portion shown in bold

<a href="http://www.site.com/page.html" rel="nofollow">Visit My Page</a>

This would also be acceptable, as order of elements within the anchor tag makes no difference:

<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.site.com/page.html" >Visit My Page</a>

Once added, the search engines supporting the attribute will understand that the link has not been vetted in some way by the site owner. Think of it as a way to flag to them, "I didn't post this link -- someone else did."

By the way, should you be one of the few using other types of rel attributes within your links (a way to show the relationship between your page and the page you're linking to), Google advises that you should separate them with spaces.

For example, Google cited this page, which provides one example of multiple rel attributes in action, like this:

<a href="http://jane-blog.example.org/" rel="sweetheart date met">Jane</a>

If you wanted to add nofollow to the existing one, you'd just put a space between it and the other attributes of sweetheart, date and met, like this:

<a href="http://jane-blog.example.org/" rel="sweetheart date met nofollow">Jane</a>

Google also said upper or lower case is usage of the attribute is fine and that the creation of this new attribute is believed to meet W3C standards on markup, as they allow for anyone to create new attributes.

Causes Of Link Spam

Why would you want to use the attribute? Blog publishers, forum operators, sites with guest books and others who allow anyone to contribute in some way to their web sites have suffered when people have used these systems to spam them with links.

For search engine purposes, getting a link to your site from someone else's site can serve as a "vote" that your site is seen as good. In Googlespeak, getting a link increases the PageRank value of your page -- sometimes a tiny bit, sometimes much more.

In addition, getting a link may help better ensure that your page is indexed by the major search engines. Finally, getting a link with words you want to be found for embedded in the anchor text can help you not just be seen as popular but also help you rank better for particular words.

Here's an example of comment spam in action. I did a Google search for texas holdem comment to find some candidates and focused on this page as an illustration. From PoliPundit.com, it's a blog post from Nov. 2002 about a political development.

Below the post is the comment area. The area has been link spammed heavily -- 30 entries containing links to web sites promoting casinos, poker, dating and other topics, like this (I've removed the links):

http://www.-texas-holdem-poker.us holdem poker texas holdem poker
Comment by texas holdem poker | Email | Homepage | 12/26/2004 - 12:31 pm

Your blogg is smashing! Payday Loans http://www.payday-express.com
Comment by Payday Loans | Email | Homepage | 1/15/2005 - 4:04 am

Your blogg is full o information. HGH http://www.hgh-express.com
Comment by HGH | Email | Homepage | 1/15/2005 - 12:40 pm

Great article and great website. I wish you could update if more frequently.
You?re also welcome to visit my websites: Checks, Cigarette, Dating, Honda,
Insurance, Las Vegas, Lawyers, Lexus, Online Poker, PDA, Toyota.

It's not just a Google problem. Do a Yahoo search, an Ask Jeeves search, or a search at MSN Search. All bring up examples of pages that contain link spam, which have been indexed by these search engines. As a result, they also might find their ranking systems impacted by the activity.

Google, nevertheless, often gets the blame -- which is why it was under the most pressure for coming up with something for the problem. The hope is that by allowing web authors to flag links in this manner, it will make blogs, forums, guest books and other places accepting contributions less attractive to spamming.

What Nofollow Means

Below I'll cover what Google says it does, if it sees a link with the nofollow attributed associated with it. Yahoo and MSN are likely to react in a similar fashion, though I haven't yet spoken with them to get exact details since news of their support only just emerged.

If Google sees nofollow as part of a link, it will:

1. NOT follow through to that page.
2. NOT count the link in calculating PageRank link popularity scores.
3. NOT count the anchor text in determining what terms the page being linked to is relevant for.

That's the situation at the moment. Google is going to evaluate how the attribute works, and it could decide to make other changes down the line, it says.

Now let's look at the impact of each action:

1) Not following the link to the page it points at means that potentially, Google might not index the page at all. As said, the more links that point at a particular page, the more likely it is that Google (and generally the other major search engines) will include that page within its index.

The nofollow attribute DOES NOT mean that someone will prevent a page they do not actually control from being indexed, however. If Google finds even one ordinary link pointing at a page, it may then index that page.

In addition, people can submit their pages directly to Google (and most major search engines). So it's crucial to understand that just because someone might place nofollow in a link pointing at your site, this WILL NOT prevent your page from getting indexed.

2) As for PageRank calculations, it's important to remember that PageRank is a pure popularity score (other search engines have similar scoring mechanisms, just not catchy names other than Yahoo's Web Rank). The nofollow attribute means that a link will not be counted as a "vote" in this popularity contest. That can have an impact on ranking, in cases where the impact of other factors beyond pure popularity come into play.

Huh? Say there are two pages, one with a PR score of 6, the other a PR of 7. Even though the PR7 page is more popular from a link counting point of view, it could still get outranked by the PR6 page if other factors such as the words on the page, or the anchor text pointing at the PR6 page, make it more relevant for a particular search.

It's also important to note that nofollow DOES NOT mean you are flagging a link as being bad in some way. Google isn't going to say, "Aha -- nofollow is on this link -- that's a bad link." Or as Matt Cutts, a Google software engineer who helped develop the attribute, said:

"It doesn't mean that it is a bad link, or that you that you hate it, just that this link doesn't belong to me."

Instead, nofollow effectively will cause Google to ignore the link, to pretend it doesn't exist. This also means you shouldn't worry that people will link to you and use nofollow as a way to hurt you -- Google says that won't happen.

3) This leads to anchor text. Generally much more important in ranking well for a particular term is to get the words you want to rank well for put into a link that points at you. With nofollow added to a link, Google won't associate the anchor text in the link with the page the link is pointed at. This, more than anything else, will sour things for link spammers.

Stop Spam? No. A Start, Yes!

The new attribute won't stop link spamming. Many people may still spam simply because they hope human beings will see the links, click through and perhaps convert. As with email spam, maybe only an incredibly tiny number will do so. But since there's no heavy cost to the spamming, that might still be enough.

In particular, much blog spamming is done through automation. So even with the new system in place, some of that automation will keep rolling along. It will no doubt even evolve to spot blogs and other areas that aren't making use of the nofollow attributes, just as smart spammers currently focus on blogs that have been abandoned, rather than irritating active bloggers.

This means other types of systems of blocking spam will likely still have to be used, such as forcing people to input characters from graphics (captchas), registration and so on (The Solution To Blog Spamming at ThreadWatch has a nice rundown on these, and also see Six Apart's Guide to Comment Spam).

While link or comment spamming isn't going away, it's still heartening that it will be less attractive. Site owners have been given an important new tool that lets them control indexing -- something they've not had offered for years. Perfect or not, I'm glad it's emerged.

Vendor Support

Google started developing the idea of a nofollow attribute several weeks ago and quietly shared it with a number of the major blogging vendors. Many of them have now signed on, pledging to support and implement the tag in the future, if they've not already done so now.

As a result, those using systems provided by one of the major vendors such as Blogger or Movable Type (see here for support news) should find that implementing the tags to be associated in links in comments is a matter of flipping a switch. OK, maybe clicking a radio button or drop-down box! Google provides a list of those supporting it here.

Google said it will soon begin talking with other companies, such as those that making forum software. But makers of these packages or any packages could implement support when they are ready.

Uses For The Attribute

The tag can be used by anyone anywhere, of course. It's not just for use with blog comment areas or forum posts. For example, Cutts said people might use it if they publish dynamically generated referrer stats and visitor information.

"Wherever it means that another person placed a link on your site, that would be appropriate," Cutts said.

Because of this, some page authoring tools will likely add support in the future, if it is widely adopted as will likely be the case. Some tools may allow adding it right now -- and those who know HTML code can do an easy insertion.

That might be handy if you need to link to a site but are worried that a search engine might consider it a "bad neighborhood," as they've often described them. In reality, the chances are very small that the typical person might link to a site that would actually hurt them with a search engine. But if in double, nofollow could offer peace of mind.

Of course, those who are swapping links with other sites now have a whole new thing to look out for. If someone offers to link to you, you'll want to make sure they don't make use of the nofollow tag -- at least if you were hoping for some search engine gain. Otherwise, the link's not going to count.

Don't forget -- there are other good reasons to still get links even beyond search engines, of course. My Golden Rules Of Link Building article covers this more.

You definitely DO NOT want to use the attribute on links to your own pages. Do that, and you'll deprive your own pages from the chance of influencing how your other pages rank.

Having said this, I've no doubt some people will try playing with the new tag as a means to "hoard" PageRank that's passed on to only a few pages in your site. For example, your home page might link to 25 of your internal pages. Using the new attribute, you could exclude all but five of these pages. Do that, and you might possibly cause Google to give those five pages more credit (see the Link Building & Link Analysis article for Search Engine Watch members for more about this).

Maybe. Perhaps. And perhaps the search engines may make other changes down the line. Rather than get tricky with this tag, I'd recommend using it as intended for now -- as a means to flag that there are certain links on your web site that you didn't place there.

Support From Other Search Engines

How about the other search engines? MSN and Yahoo are onboard. In fact, Yahoo beat Google out of the gate in blogging its support of the new tag first. A Defense Against Comment Spam offers a few details, an example and news that the change will be implemented in the coming weeks.

As for MSN, Working Together Against Blog Spam explains how the company made a snap decision today to support the tag, though the idea was something it had considered during its Search Champs meetings with bloggers and search marketers several months ago. It promises that its crawler will begin respecting the attribute in the coming weeks.

Google, of course, has been onboard from the start. It provides more details on its blog in Preventing comment spam.

So how about Ask Jeeves, the remaining major crawler? They're still looking at the new option and weighing it up.

"We'll consider it for the future, but because we use local [link] popularity and not global popularity, we are not going to rush into anything today. It has more impact for Google and Yahoo because of their similar methodologies. The upside for us is much more modest," Lanzone said.

By local popularity, Ask Jeeves is referring to how its Teoma search engine will calculate the popularity of pages and do ranking only after culling a subset of pages deemed relevant, rather than looking at all links from across the entire web. My Make Room For Teoma article explains this more.

More Info

Google To Add "Nofollow" Tagging Of Links To Fight Spam? is where I explain more about how the news of the new attribute emerged, plus provides some background on the difference between it and the nofollow attribute of the meta robots tag.

Comment Spam? How About An Ignore Tag? How About An Indexing Summit! is my post wishing for an "ignore" tag similar to what's emerged here and how others have been wishing for this even longer.

It also looks at how it has been literally years since we've had an advancement in the type of indexing control given to site owners. This new attribute -- whether you love the idea or hate it -- is welcome move for at least giving site owners themselves some choice in the matter.

The New Nofollow Link Attribute is a thread in our forums where you can discuss the new attribute.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 18, 2005, 8:47 PM | Permalink

For Your Google Video Archive: A 2003 Lecture by Eric Schmidt

Since I know many of you like having a complete record of "all things Google," I just tracked down this video of a keynote presentation by Google CEO Eric Schmidt from the March 2003 "Berkeley in Silicon Valley Symposium" conference. Enjoy!

Posted by Gary Price on January 18, 2005, 7:51 PM | Permalink

Yahoo, MSN Join Google In Supporting Nofollow

While we wait for Google to post official notice of its support for the new nofollow attribute, Yahoo's already chimed in on its blog that it will do so as well. And apparently, the Google announcement may come here, as Yahoo is already linking to it. MSN tells me directly it also will support the tag, and plans to post on its blog as well. As with Google, Yahoo's linking to where that will likely show up. Ask Jeeves tells me it is still considering the tag. More to come in a long story I'm about to post!

Postscript: Support has now been officially announced by everyone. See the Google, Yahoo, MSN Unite On Support For Nofollow Attribute For Links for further details.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 18, 2005, 7:03 PM | Permalink

Dogpile Adds New Features

I spotted this news release today announcing that Dogpile has added a few new features that build on the IntelliFind technology that launched last November (see: Dogpile Enhances Search Results). What's new?

+ The integration of yellow pages entries (beta release) on web search results pages if the yp info is relevant to a query.

+ Web Site Match
WSM matches every query against a database of the most popular Web sites and "suggesting" exact matches at the top of serp.

Posted by Gary Price on January 18, 2005, 5:59 PM | Permalink

Yahoo's 4Q Profit Nearly Triples on Ads

Yahoo! has just released their Q4 2004 earnings. You can find the numbers and highlights in this news release.

Bambi Franscisco at Marketwatch.com reviews the numbers and more in this AP article: Yahoo's 4Q Profit Nearly Triples on Ads.

Also available:
Slides from the Yahoo conference call.

Posted by Gary Price on January 18, 2005, 4:40 PM | Permalink

A Look at a Few Boston Area Search Companies

Robert Weisman's article in the Boston Globe: In the shadow of Google takes a look at a few Boston search area companies including:
+ Eliyon
Note: This tool uses open web data (be careful) and AI to build profiles about people. Although Eliyon still has a ways to go, I've seen a great deal of improvement over the past few months. Some of their services are free, while others are fee-based.
+ EasyAsk
+ Dotomi
Endeca, Fast, Northern Light, and iPhrase are also briefly mentioned.

Key Quotes:
"There's a lot of business to be had in search in the next few years, and it's not all going to Google," said Susan Aldrich, senior vice president at Patricia Seybold Group, a technology research and consulting firm in Boston. "I think several of the local companies have the potential to become wildly successful and get very big."

"Some of the things that Google does so well, like page rankings, are irrelevant in the enterprise," said Sue Feldman, vice president and search analyst at International Data Corp., a research firm in Framingham.

Posted by Gary Price on January 18, 2005, 4:18 PM | Permalink

Microsoft Tells Google To Cease and Desist

It's always interesting to review the collection of Cease and Desist Notices sent to Google (and others) via the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse. Today, a few new C&D letters were made available including several from Microsoft that request Google remove several posts on Blogger weblogs that are hosted by Blogspot. In addition to browsing the list of letters, you can search for all of the notices sent to Google (451 as of today) by using this search engine, and search for the term "Google" in the "Recipient" field. Some notices deal with Google Groups (Usenet archives) and Google Images.

Posted by Gary Price on January 18, 2005, 2:12 PM | Permalink

Confirmed: New Google Nofollow Link Attribute Is Coming

Robert Scoble has posted confirmation that Google will introduce a new link attribute. OK, then I'll confirm it as well -- I've been told the same by my contacts at Google. Since official confirmation has now been leaked out, I see no need to hold back.

As Robert notes, the information is supposed to come out later today on the Google Blog. What will be the new attribute? Well, I could say "wait and see," but Dave Winer already leaked that part out. He didn't say it came from Google (it did), but he provided enough clues and follow up confirmations for people to know this is the nofollow attribute that will be introduced.

Exactly how Google will interact with the nofollow attribute remains to be seen. I'll be posting a follow up with those details. For background on it, see my Google To Add "Nofollow" Tagging Of Links To Fight Spam? post.

Postscript: Support has now been officially announced. See the Google, Yahoo, MSN Unite On Support For Nofollow Attribute For Links post for more.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 18, 2005, 2:06 PM | Permalink

An In-Depth Look at Ask Jeeves UK

The UK publication Internet Works has published an in-depth look at Ask Jeeves UK. The article is titled: The Butler Speaks. It features comments from Tony Macklin, Ask Jeeves’ UK director of product and Aylin Sakvan, VP of marketing.

Posted by Gary Price on January 18, 2005, 1:05 PM | Permalink

A Controlled Vocabulary to Assist in Describing Images

Tagging photos for your own personal use is both a great idea and a must do. Danny shares plenty of examples why in his SearchDay article: Photo Search: Google Picasa 2 Vs. Adobe Photoshop Album 2.

It's one thing to create a set of terms for your own personal use. However, when creating and using tags to build a shared database of images or text, problems can quickly come into view. Synonyms are a problem (ie. pop vs. soda, torch vs. flashlight, bag vs. sack) Another example, if I tag an item "Treo" does it mean images taken by a Treo camera? Images of Treos? What do the tags "From" or year mean? As categories grow larger, can they be subdivided? What are the subdivisions? What about pluralization? Vocabularies should quickly bring like things together, help the user conduct a thorough search, and hopefully help save the searcher time.

I believe controlled vocabularies still have plenty of value especially when trying to add verbal subject access to materials (both image, video, print).

Are controlled vocabularies the perfect solution? No. First, they can be expensive to build and maintain. Second, they take time and effort to update (add new terms, remove old terms, map old to new, etc.) Second, localization can still be an issue. Third, scalability can pose problems. Finally, it's one thing to build a vocabulary, but it's another thing to apply the terms it contains properly. Deciding the "aboutness" of an item in just a few words can be a real challenge.

Ask working librarians and library school students what they found the most challengeing part of their MLIS education, and you'll likely here that cataloging (aka adding metadata) was it.

With that out of the way, I thought some of you might be interested in learning about a few of the many controlled vocabularies out there.

Let's begin with a look at the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials II: Genre and Physical Characteristic Terms (TGM II) from the Library of Congress. This searchable thesaurus contains more than 600 agreed upon terms to describe graphic materials.

The terms in the TGM II provide the cataloger (who chooses to uses this thesaurus) with agreed upon terms to describe both the genre and physical characteristics of an image or other type of graphic material (posters, line art, etc.) For example:
+ What does a "birds eye view" mean?

+ Is the image a portrait? Is it a cityscape?
+ Who created the image?
You can read more about how terms were selected here and review changes/additions made to the thesaurus here.

Spend some time browsing and searching TGM II and you'll see how terms relate to one another plus find "scope notes" to explain what certain terms mean.

Finally, if you want to see the TGM II in action, check out the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog. All of the records contain subject access and more than 65% of the holdings in this database have been digitized.

Much more on controlled vocabularies (both pluses and minuses) and many more examples of tools to visit, coming soon. Again, my reason for sharing is not to say that one specific tool or method (controlled vocabulary vs. folksonomy) are better than the other but rather to introduce resources you might not know about and perhaps promote some thought and discussion.

Posted by Gary Price on January 18, 2005, 12:34 PM | Permalink

Building Roomba's Brand Through Search

Roomba Cleans Up With Search Engine Marketing from AdAge is a good read on how the makers of the Roomba automatic vacuum cleaner helped built their brand through search. The company became the seventh most popular brand name search on Google in 2004. The company didn't rely on search alone. Heavy TV and radio ads were run, with the assumption that this would drive consumers onto the web to do research. There, search-targeted ads awaited them.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 18, 2005, 11:14 AM | Permalink

Google Heading Into Telecommunications?

A job ad for a fiber optic contract negotiator has some wondering if Google's planning a jump into telecommunications. Details in Google wants 'dark fiber', from News.com.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 18, 2005, 11:08 AM | Permalink

Report: Paid Search Still Hot In 2005, But Growth Will Slow

MediaPost's Report: Rich Media's The New Paid Search looks at eMarketer's predictions that 2005 will see rich media overtake paid search in terms of growth. But paid search spend will still dwarf rich media, $4.7 billion predicted versus $1 billion for rich media. Paid search will make up 42 percent of the predicted online advertising spend this year.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 18, 2005, 10:55 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Doesn't Need Six Apart Or Blog Ownership For Ad Purposes

It's kind of obvious that Yahoo will gain some type of blogging solution in the future. It's the only major portal not to offer this, as I've written before: MSN's Third Portal To Gain Blogs; Where's The Blog Search?

David Jackson has a write-up in Yahoo to acquire Six Apart? on why he thinks Yahoo will gain blogging capabilities by acquiring the makers of the popular Movable Type platform.

MovableType's great -- we use it ourselves -- and so would be of interest to anyone who wants to own blogging technology. But the idea Jackson has that Yahoo needs blogs to fuel its pay-per-click growth? Nah.

Google bought Blogger because it was cheap and it figured it could make money but putting its contextual ads out on many of the Blogger sites. But Google later pulled those ads and make them optional. That's wise, because you aren't going to make friends by forcing anyone to carry your ads. So much for needing to own the platform to build ad revenue.

In addition, blogs can be hard to target with ads, given that they often have different types of content mixed onto the same page. MediaPost just had an article looking at this: Blog Ads Hit Rough Patches.

Google's real success with AdSense hasn't been in owning the blogging platform. First, it has signed partnerships with major publishers. Second, it offers an easy-to-use self-serve system that anyone can tap into. Google rolled that out last year, and now you all but stumble over its AdSense placements.

If Yahoo really wanted to turn the web into its billboards, in the way Google does, it would make more sense to have a similar type of paid listings program that any publisher could use.

The downside is that in doing so, advertisers have less control over the targeting of their ads. Kraft wasn't happy to find itself showing up on a pro-white web site recently: Kraft Supports Pro-White Groups? Lack Of Search Ad Targeting Makes It So. Open the flood-gates of self-serve, and problems like this for Google could hit Yahoo as well.

Cory Kleinschmidt over at Traffick takes another swing at the targeting problem in his recent AdSense Faces Extinction -- Unless Google Shakes Things Up post. In it, he points out how uneven targeting is an issue that threatens AdSense. He also notes there are other programs out there to tempt bloggers and other publishers -- which means again, owning the platform doesn't guarantee you the billboard space.

There are good reasons for Yahoo to own a blogging platform, and maybe it will be Six Apart. But the assumption that paid ad placement as a key reason to do so isn't a major factor, from where I sit.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 18, 2005, 10:45 AM | Permalink

Shame On You: Tsunami Search Spammers

From Silicon.com, Tsunami scammers manipulate Google rankings explains that an alleged phishing site is ranking higher on Google than the actual China Charity Federation web site, potentially causing people donating to tsunami relief to send their money to the wrong place.

The site in question, www.chinacharity.cn.net, is still ranking tops at Google despite the web site apparently having been closed down. The site is also ranked first and second at Yahoo, third at Ask Jeeves but not at all at the MSN Search beta.

Kudos to MSN? Well, the official web site of www.china.org.cn is second at Google, tenth at Yahoo and Ask Jeeves but not in the first page of results at all over at MSN. So MSN doesn't send you to the wrong place -- but neither do you get to the right one.

FYI, the story reports that the real site is at www.chinacharity.cn, but that domain isn't working for me. My assumption is that the correct address is the one shown above.

Postscript: A reader tells me chinacharity.cn is the correct site.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 18, 2005, 10:06 AM | Permalink

Googlefone: Fast Way To Use Google's Phone Book

Google has a phone book search service, but you might not realize it. A new site, spotted via Google Blogoscoped, makes it easier to tap into it Google PhoneBook.

Visit Googlefone, and you can enter a name of a person or business, plus some location data, and you'll be shown any matching publicly-listed numbers that Google knows about.

Tara Calishain has a long-standing interface that works similarly. It will only check business listings, but the drop down box with US states is nice.

Courtesy of Tara, another write-up from her explains how you can also use some power commands or search syntaxes to tap into the phonebook. Do a query like:

phonebook: edwards california

That will show all business or residential listings that match. Use bphonebook to just check for business listings and rphonebook to just check for residential listings.

Meanwhile, Gary reminds that Argali is his current favorite tool for doing phone lookups. You'll find his review here: A Multi-Faceted Phone Directory Lookup Tool.

He also notes that Yahoo provides a way to check its own phone service, Yahoo People Search. Unlike Google, Yahoo conveniently provides its own direct interface right on its site, rather than leaving it for others to create.

The idea that people might find your phone number freak you out? Get an unlisted number, as these services pull from public sources. But you can use special forms at Yahoo and Google to get out of their listings, if you're currently showing.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 18, 2005, 9:44 AM | Permalink

Revenue Model For Free Products? We'll Figure It Out Later, Says Google

The new version of Picasa that Google rolled out today is offered for free -- and the old version lost its $30 price tag soon after Google acquired Picasa. So how's it making money? That's not something Google's worried about, for the moment.

Free-for-All Could Pay Off for Google from the LA Times looks at this Google model of building a quality product and figuring out how to monetize it later. Locking people into an array of Google services may prove profitable for Google's current ad-driven model, down the line.

Covering similar ground, Entrepreneur lets Google fly with his creation from USA Today looks at how Picasa general manager Lars Perkins was freed by Google not to worry about the revenue side of things. Google units include social networking, photos, maps from USA Today also recaps some of Google's many services that don't cost users but also don't necessarily earn money for Google right now.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 18, 2005, 9:16 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Profits To Rise On International Advertising

Bloomberg looks at how Yahoo may announce higher profits due to international expansion, in Yahoo May Say Profit Doubled on International Advertising Sales. Exactly what's the primary driver is unclear. Overture expanded to Brazil, Canada and China in the fourth quarter, but most of its European activity happened last year. The article itself looks at display ads, the Yahoo purchase of the European Kelkoo shopping search engine and online auctions.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 18, 2005, 9:01 AM | Permalink

Google Releases New Interactive AdWords Demos

I've noticed a couple of changes on the Google Adwords Demos page today.

First, most of the demos have new "blurbs" describing what they're about,
Second, new interactive guides that discuss Account Navigation and Understanding your Billing Statement are now available.

Posted by Gary Price on January 18, 2005, 8:34 AM | Permalink

Google Releases Picasa 2 Photo Software

Last year, Google purchased the Picasa photo software company. Today, Picasa's now released the second version of its software. The SearchDay article Photo Search: Google Picasa 2 Vs. Adobe Photoshop Album 2 now posted looks at how the latest release measures up from a photo search and management perspective, with me pitting it against my current favorite, Adobe Photoshop Album.

It's still Album for me, though I'll be upgrading to Photoshop Elements for IPTC keyword export capability. IPTC what? Check out the story and get organized with your pictures!

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 18, 2005, 12:00 AM | Permalink

Google To Add "Nofollow" Tagging Of Links To Fight Spam?

NOTE:Support has now been officially announced. See the Google, Yahoo, MSN Unite On Support For Nofollow Attribute For Links post for more.

Dave Winer posted a cryptic Watch This Space post yesterday, pointing at a page that many have interpreted to mean that Google will be providing support for a "nofollow" attribute that can be added to links.

For example, the HTML code for an ordinary link might look like this:

<a href="http://www.site.com/page.html">Visit My Page</a>

HTML specs (3.2, 4.0, XHTML 2.0) allow for links to have additional information associated with them. The rel attribute is designed to allow authors to express particular relationships about the current document to the page it is linking to.

In Winer's post, he makes use of a nofollow rel attribute in links that appear in the comments of his post, such as like this:

<a href="http://www.site.com/page.html" rel="nofollow">Visit My Page</a>

The speculation of those who spotted this (see Robert Sayre with a supportive comment from Dave, Simon Willison, others) is that Google will be providing support of the nofollow attribute in some way to help combat comment spam on blogs (and by extension, anywhere people may find publicly-contributed links to cause problems).

Why Google? In the past, Dave has suggested that comment spam is a Google problem -- and earlier this week, he also posted a note saying he'd heard from a the "only" that could solve a "big" problem on the internet.

What might the nofollow attribute do? The closest thing we have to it at the moment is the nofollow attribute for the meta robots tag. That attribute is a way to tell search engines not to follow links from a page they may have found.

It's important to note that the attribute was intended for site owners who wanted to prevent search engines from indexing other pages they link to from within their own sites, not as a mechanism for preventing the indexing of pages of sites outside their control. No does it allow this. If there was another way to find a page (on the site owner's site or not) -- and if the page itself is not blocked somehow from being indexed -- then it would still get listed.

So a nofollow attribute associated with a link itself isn't likely to prevent the page the link points at from being indexed. After all, search engines will likely find those pages in other ways, and those pages probably won't have spider blocks placed on them.

Instead, a nofollow attribute is likely to be treated as an "ignore" or "don't count" flag. It's the way for a web author to say, "I don't care about these links -- nor should you."

How might Google react to it? That remains to be seen. It might decide not to index the link at all -- so it wouldn't record the text of the link, nor the fact that the link points at another page -- depriving that page of a possible PageRank rise. Or, it could decide to index the information but not weight it as heavily.

Whatever the case, it won't stop blog comment spam -- nor other types of link spamming across the web. But it's a start, and more important, it gives authors more control over their pages. I'm all for that.

My main disappointment, should the mechanism emerge, is that it would have come unilaterally from Google. Despite what Dave thinks, comment spam is not a Google problem. It's a search problem in general, and it would be nice to see the search engines work together to solve the wide range of issues that web authors (not just bloggers) have.

More on this in my past Comment Spam? How About An Ignore Tag? How About An Indexing Summit! post, where I talk about the idea of an "ignore" tag or more important, an indexing summit to discuss publisher needs and controls. We're doing that at our SES New York show, by the way. I hope to get some search engine reps to come hear and discuss what publishers of all types are looking for.

Also see Nick's Rumour - Google About To Kill Comment Spam post and comments at Threadwatch. I've chimed in along with others about what might happen, how it might fit in with things and what may or may not work. Also some nice thoughts also from Peter Van Dijck and a summary from Steve Rubel.

Postscript: We've also got a thread going on the topic now in our forums, where you can comment or discuss: Discussion on 'Google To Add "Nofollow" Tagging' blog

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 17, 2005, 8:51 PM | Permalink

10GB of Free Storage Space

Since the beta launch of Gmail, its 1GB of free online space, and several hacks that can turn the space into a virtual hard drive, many of the other online email providers have increased the amount of space available either for free or for a small fee making online storage another area for competition.

I thought I would point out this recent News.com article: Company offers 10GB of Net storage, for free, that discusses a new and free offering from Streamload where you're given (registration took me all of 20 seconds) 10GB of remotely accessible storage space for free. That's the good news. The virtual desktop is getting closer. The bad news (actually, it's not all that bad) is that with Streamload's free service there are monthly and yearly download limits of 100mb/month and 1.2GB/year. Of course, Streamload also offers several fee-based storage/download plans that allow the user unlimited storage and additional download bandwidth beyond 100mb/month. Btw, you can even drag and drop files from your computer and stream audio/video material directly from your storage area. This one is worth a look. I'm looking forward to spending some time with this one.

Posted by Gary Price on January 17, 2005, 7:40 PM | Permalink

Yahoo! and Verizon Announce Partnership

This just announced partnership is similar to one that Yahoo! has had with SBC (a telephone company) since 2002. Yahoo will provide Verizon's DSL customers (as well as users of their upcoming fiber-to-the-home service) with, "greater e-mail storage, video and radio as well as access to a cobranded home page." Btw, MSN also has a similar deal with Verizon. However, this summer Yahoo! will become the "preferred" (aka "default") provider. Additional details in this news release.

Posted by Gary Price on January 17, 2005, 7:03 PM | Permalink

Google = Pornking? Fun With the Google AdWords Keyword Tool

As some of you already know, I'm a librarian and come at web search with the background of a researcher. I've always monitored SEM to some degree but I've still got plenty to learn. Some of my education comes from reviewing sites and trying different resources aimed at web advertisers. Just the other day I was checking out the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. I tried various terms and was interested to see what terms it tossed back at me for the search term "Google." I had a chuckle when reviewing the list. Why? One of "expanded broad matches" was the term "pornking." I have a screen capture here.

Posted by Gary Price on January 17, 2005, 6:31 PM | Permalink

Mainstream Press Tells Clickfraud Story

Looky here, we're now seeing the topic of clickfraud hit the mainstream press.

An article in the new issue of Newsweek titled: When Mice Attack, tells the story of one ppc customer who claims to have, "lost $50,000 in potential business" due to clickfraud even after complaining to Google.

Despite new efforts to stop click fraud, the temptation for scammers is growing. Advertisers once bid pennies to place their links prominently alongside searches for words like "refinance." With traffic to the search sites skyrocketing, last week's bid for that word was $12 a click. Fraudsters have to generate only a few fake clicks to make a day's pay.

The story mentions that the search engines, through the IAB, have formed a "measurement task force" looking at the problem and trying to develop a standard of what's a "real" click. Both Google and Yahoo are asked -- and decline -- to state how much they have refunded due to clickfraud.

Posted by Gary Price on January 17, 2005, 6:04 PM | Permalink

Questions When Hiring An SEM Firm

Over in our forums, the Outsourcing SEM FAQs – Be Prepared to Answer! thread gets kicked off by forum moderator Nacho Hernandez with a variety of questions he thinks those seeking to hire an SEM firm should ask. Work for an SEM firm and have your own questions you think clients should ask? Drop by and add to the list. Have you hired an SEM firm (or two, or three)? Even better -- come contribute the questions you ask!

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 17, 2005, 9:50 AM | Permalink

Security Issue With Google Accounts Cookie Said Fixed

Google says it has now fixed a security problem with its Google Accounts service, which provides a cookie-based way for people to log into various Google services.

Last Thursday, Google Blogoscope pointed to a forum discussion (and also here) that suggested Google's Froogle service in particular might inadvertently let people access Gmail accounts, because account information embedded in the Google cookie could be hijacked.

I emailed Google about this on Friday and received back the following statement:

Google was recently alerted to a potential security vulnerability affecting Froogle. We have since fixed this vulnerability, and all current and future Froogle users are protected.

Spotted via Organized Shopping, eWeek has a nice write-up in Google Plugs Cookie-Theft Data Leak on what happened, with quotes from Nir Goldshlager, a security research who spotted the hole. He also warns that anyone who had their cookie stolen would still be at risk.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 17, 2005, 9:45 AM | Permalink

Tips On Google's One Ad Per Merchant Per Query Policy

In Dealing With Google's New Affiliate-Linking Policy from ClickZ, Kevin Lee looks at the changes Google is making to limit the number of ads that can show up per query for any one web site, either from the web site itself or through affiliates. He offers some tips for marketers and affiliates both, as well as pointing out that Overture has long had similar restrictions.

The past post from SEW, Google To Restrict Affiliate Ads, also provides an overview of the changes. Up Close On Google Affiliate Ad Changes article for Search Engine Watch members provides additional details, along with some illustrations and examples of how things are supposed to work, according to Google.

Postscript: Kevin Ryan over at iMediaConnection provides a similar look for marketers in Google on New Listing Guidelines.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 17, 2005, 9:35 AM | Permalink

Search Advertising: Strong Growth Ahead

After a dry spell of several years, online advertising rebounded sharply in 2004, with paid search ads leading the way with a 34% increase in growth. Jupiter Research expects this growth to continue, albeit at a slower pace, through the end of the decade, with paid search solidifying its dominant role.

Today's SearchDay article, Online Ads & Search: Looking Back, Looking Forward, covers a recent Search Engine Strategies conference panel where Jupiter Research shared its findings about the paid search market. A longer version of this story for Search Engine Watch members goes into detail about the specific drivers of growth for online search ads, including demographics, searcher behavior and other factors. The longer article also details eight "things to pay attention to" that Jupiter Research believes will be crucial for successful search marketing campaigns in 2005.

Posted by Chris Sherman on January 17, 2005, 9:28 AM | Permalink

Revisiting Google Censorship In Germany & France

Google Blogoscope updates sites previously identified as censored by Google in Germany and France in its Sites Google Censors post. You can see how many pages are shown in Google.com then compare to what's isn't showing at Google Germany or Google France.

The sites are all removed due to national laws in those countries, I believe. Google Blogoscope asks for Google to tell people when material has been removed, in the way they do for copyright reasons. John Battelle and I both asked for the same thing, in the past.

For John's views, check out Google News And China. From me, Got To Censor Search Listings? Why Not Disclose? explains how Google disclosure of copyright-driven removals in the US works, how no disclosure of spam removals is noted and how Google and all search engines have removed material for various reasons and should come up with a way to identify this. My China Blocks Google News -- So Bring On The Disclosure also coves the issue.

By the way, my usual refrain for "Google problems" like these is that they are often "search problems" and so people should also ask what's the situation with Yahoo, MSN and so on. But in this case, it really does look like a Google problem.

I went to Yahoo Germany and Yahoo France and compared to the main Yahoo site, doing some spot checking of how they handle domains where Google has censored. In five checks, I found no or very little differences in the counts that came back -- differences so minor that they likely have to do with factors other than censorship.

Is Google overzealous? Maybe. Or it could be that like too many people, national governments also assume that it's an all-Google world and send censorship requests to Google while overlooking other players like Yahoo.

The exact situation is uncertain because we don't really know how the sites came to be removed from Google. The 2002 Harvard study Localized Google search result exclusions assembled a list of sites heard about, reported about in a few cases and guessed at in others. A follow-up article Censorship of the Internet listed sites working from the Harvard list. Google Blogscope's post was inspired by that follow-up.

In all cases, they give a glimpse into censorship but not the complete picture of all pages removed, nor how and why.

Postscript: Also see Seth Finkelstein's long-standing Google Censorship - How It Works page for a look at how Google has implemented censorship on a country-by-country basis in the past.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 17, 2005, 9:06 AM | Permalink

Google Domains For 10 More Countries Now Available

A note on Google Blog points out that 10 new Google's are now online for ten more top-level domains. Now available are:
+ Indonesia
+ South Africa
+ Tonga
+ Bolivia
+ Krgyszstan
+ Jamaica
+ Belize (English)
Spanish version also available.
+ Seychelles
French version also available
+ the Virgin Islands
+ and the Cook Islands

Posted by Gary Price on January 16, 2005, 2:51 PM | Permalink

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