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January 30, 2005 - February 5, 2005

Google is a Loser in a French Court, Again

For the second time in about two weeks were blogging about Google losing a trademark-infrigement case in France. News.com is reporting that a Paris District Court today ruled against Google in a October 2003 lawsuit filed by high-end fashion deisgner Louis Vuitton.

Google has been ordered to pay $257,430 (200,000 euros) for trademark counterfeiting, unfair competition and misleading advertising.

Louis Vuitton applauded the ruling, highlighting the danger that some sponsored search results tied to its name can promote counterfeits. "It was absolutely unthinkable that a company like Google be authorized, in the scope of its advertising business, to sell the Louis Vuitton trademark to third parties, specifically to Web sites selling counterfeits," a company representative said in a statement via e-mail.

"This milestone ruling grants protection for the first time to both consumers and brand owners by finding that Google's Adwords and Premium Sponsorship services as misleading

More in the article, Google loses trademark case in France.

On January 20, we posted about Google losing a trademark case filed in France by Le Meridien Hotels and posted a translation of that decision a few days later.

Posted by Gary Price on February 4, 2005, 9:01 PM | Permalink

Search Advertising Comes of Age

John Markoff and Nat Ives from The New York Times take a two page look at search advertising in: Web Search Sites See Clicks Add Up to Big Ad Dollars.

The article says that web advertising has come of age since several Super Bowl advertisers are also Google advertising "regulars."

"In the past, advertising has been hard to track and hard to make accountable," said Tim Armstrong, Google's vice president for advertising sales. Now, he said, advertising has become a dialogue with the consumer.

Also, positive comments about search advertising from a Berkeley professor.

"You're seeing advertising move into advertising that people can seek out, and moving away from mass advertising," said Peter Sealey, a former Coca-Cola marketing executive who now teaches at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. "In the context of that shift, this little niche of Internet search will be a huge beneficiary."

Bill Gross, the founder of the first pay-per-click company, GoTo.com (which became Overture and now owner by Yahoo!) tells The Times that he never thought that keyword/ppc advertising would become as big as it is.

"I thought that the Internet was fantastic, and I was sure that it would become the ultimate direct marketing tool," he said yesterday. "But I had no idea that pay-per-click would ultimately be this big."

Gross launched his latest search effort, Snap.Com in 2004.

Posted by Gary Price on February 4, 2005, 10:36 AM | Permalink

Time-Warner Owns More than 5 Million Shares of Google

The Reuters article: Broadband boosts Time-Warner profit discusses the media conglmerates latest earnings and also points out that T-W is a major shareholder of Google stock. If you check the SEC filing you'll find a section about Google.

Further, in relation to Google, in May 2004, America Online exercised a warrant for approximately $22 million and received approximately 7.4 million shares of Series D Preferred Stock of Google Inc. Each of these shares converted automatically into shares of Google’s Class B Common Stock immediately prior to the closing of Google’s initial public offering on August 24, 2004. In connection with this offering, America Online converted 2,355,559 shares of its Google Class B Common Stock into an equal number of shares of Google’s Class A Common Stock. Such Class A shares were sold in the offering for $195 million, net of the underwriters’ discounts and commissions, resulting in a gain of approximately $188 million. Following this transaction, America Online holds 5,081,893 shares of Google’s Class B Common Stock...The Company does not consider its remaining interest in Google to be a strategic investment.

Two major "institutional shareholders", Fidelity Management and Capital Research & Management own approximately the same amount of shares.

Posted by Gary Price on February 4, 2005, 10:02 AM | Permalink

Search Marketing To The Hispanic Market

Nacho Hernandez, one of our forum moderators and a regular SES speaker, has preached for ages that the Hispanic market is a largely untapped one by search marketers. Gaining Web Site Traction With a Spanish Flare from MediaPost hands out some numbers to back the idea that online marketers need to be tapping into Hispanics. Meanwhile, also considering checking out hispaSEO -- a directory of SEM firms that deal with Spanish language web sites that was started at the end of last year. Also see our forum thread SearchInsider's "Gaining Web Site Traction With a Spanish Flare" to discuss that article, plus our SearchDay article from earlier this year, Search Marketing & the Spanish Speaking Internet.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 4, 2005, 9:04 AM | Permalink

Google Satire Times Three

Spotted via John Battelle, Through The Looking Glass Pt. II: The Google Guys is a satirical stream-of-consciousness style look at Larry and Sergey doing Davos. A sampling:

• I enter the chamber where they are holding court and survey a spread of the best chocolates, wines, cheese, pretty much anything. Come. Eat. Be a Shiny Happy Person...
• How about Sergey and Larry action figures, fighting the evil overlord Bill with their sunshine superpowers and mega Power Rangers dual mind...
• We're in GoogleLand, which is a higher level of dream than just Davos. It has its own reality distortion field, its own laws of gravity....
• It's actually not fair that there are two GoogleGuys. As a challenge, they should give Larry to Microsoft and play more fairly...

Meanwhile, The Onion predicts in infographic form what Google will be doing this year. A sampling:

• Google Good Men, as good men are hard to find
• Google Apartment, for finding lost shoes, wallets and keys
• A patent on the concept of finding things
• Add a "I'm Feeling Unlucky" button to the home page

Finally, at Fark.com, people with too much time and PhotoShop have been making things strange and wonderful with the Google home page. Winners so far:

• Google Zen
• Google People Who Will Sleep With You
• Google Treasure Hunt
• Google Security Wand
• Google Colon: Search your lower GI tract for things that shouldn't be there
• Smeagle, for finding precious
• Googel: Serch phonetically for werd you don't know how to spel
• Google Ex-Girlfriends

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 4, 2005, 9:02 AM | Permalink

Feeling Like Google Dance Time

The days of Google Dances, the monthly changes that used to shake up Google's index, have long gone. But that doesn't mean that the company doesn't keep tweaking and changing things that can have an impact on search results, sometimes in a big way. And one of those big ways seems to be happening, based on chatter on our forums. Here are a few threads you might wish to check out:

• Major Google Changes: Latent Semantic Analysis?
• Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
• Compilation of Anti-Sandbox Tactics

Also see:

• Google Assigning Less Weight to Links? where Barry Schwartz recaps chatter on other forums.
• Google Latent Semantic Indexing Technology from Aaron Wall trying to provide some background on LSI and what to do if it really is being used to some degree by Google. Not all agree on this.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 4, 2005, 8:47 AM | Permalink

SEO For Video Search

Spotted via SearchViews, Video Search and Online Marketing from Search Engine Journal is a brief look trying to rise to the top of Yahoo Video and other video search services.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 4, 2005, 8:36 AM | Permalink

Google Annual Shareholders Meeting On May 12

The Buygoogle blog has news that even though the Google Investors Relations FAQ doesn't yet have the date of its annual shareholders meeting posted, the first one will be May 12 in Mountian View. Nathan at InsideGoogle has a copy of an email sent out from Google confirming the date.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 4, 2005, 8:18 AM | Permalink

Safa Sez: Search Worth $14 Billion In 2007, But No One Amazed

Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy has been covering the paid search space for ages, offering one of the earliest independent predictions of future spending. Rashtchy's Golden Search Turns Platinum from MediaPost looks at how his March 2003 projection that search would hit $7 billion was greated with amazement, while his recent November 2004 estimate increasing that figure to $13.5 billion seems to have caused hardly a ripple. Why? "I think search is now accepted as a big business," Rashtchy said. In this article, a closer look at his latest estimates -- though as always, I dispute that "contextual search" is search or that those figures should be lumped in with search.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 4, 2005, 7:48 AM | Permalink

Deepy Aims For Broadband Searchers

Billed as a search engine for broadband users, Deepy provides access to Gigablast-powered search results along with a "View TextShot" feature that lets you preview a page before viewing it. It's somewhat similar to the binoculars feature at Ask Jeeves that lets you see a preview of a web site. Much more similar is the preview feature that Vivisimo offers. Pretty cool is the "Jump to keyword" feature that lets you jump to your keywords in the preview. Tabs at the bottom of the page also let you jump to the next page of results without a reload page delay -- or at least, much of one. To learn more, check out entries on Deepy's blog. Image results, by the way, come from Picsearch.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 4, 2005, 7:26 AM | Permalink

GoFish Multimedia Shopping Search: IceRocket Deal & Closer Look

Multimedia shopping search engine GoFish gained its first significant partnership this week, now providing the multimedia results for meta search engine IceRocket (this PDF press release has more details). Significant is a relative term, of course -- while IceRocket counts billionaire Mark Cuban as an investor, it has practically no usage or brand reach compared to one of the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo or even Ask Jeeves.

How about some more about GoFish? We've covered it briefly here, GoFish For Meta Music Searching, but I took a closer look for this post. On the site, you'll find Audio, Video, Mobile and Games tabs. Going in turn:

Audio: Dominated mostly by bringing back matches for online music stores or audio book information. Who are the providers? GoFish didn't provide a list as requested. Looking at the site, Napster, MusicMatch, iTunes and Buy.com are just some of the music partners I've spotted. There may be many more -- and a list explaining exactly what GoFish taps into would be very useful. Audio book listings seem to come from Audible.

In short, this seems like a nice way to meta search for music you may want to buy. For example, here's a range of options for purchasing Aimee Mann's I'm With Stupid album. But when it comes to buying individual songs, choice might get more restricted, as this example for Long Shot from that same album shows.

Video: Searches here seem to be dominated by places where you can buy DVDs online, so it feels like more of a DVD shopping search engine. But some multimedia videos that can be purchased are also shown.

The key thing is, unlike a Yahoo Video or AOL's Singingfish, the content here is not originally crawled nor for free. This is more a meta search for places where you can buy video content. What would be cool is if it did meta search of some of the many free video search sites that are out there. Gary has a roundup of these here: A Look At Other Video Search Tools.

Mobile: Ringtones, wallpaper, games for your mobile or cell phone -- searching here brings back matching results. So if I want the Thunderbirds theme for my phone? Here are matching results. And as with audio and video, the results are from places where I can purchase the content, not get it for free.

Games: Like the other categories, do a search here and you'll get back matching computer game products from various vendors for sale.

In the end, calling GoFish a multimedia meta search site would be a misnomer. This is a shopping site for multimedia search -- and very promising, if you're looking to purchase that type of content. I'd like to see a list of all the providers it taps into, or at least a sampling of major partners.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 4, 2005, 7:10 AM | Permalink

Search Forums Roundup: Feb. 4, 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: Yahoo Testing Contextual Search Tool - MSN Launches Search Engine - Turning AdWords On/Off - Does Adsense Help With Link Building? - Hand Coding vs. HTML Editors, and more.

Posted by Chris Sherman on February 4, 2005, 7:01 AM | Permalink

Expect Convera's New Public Web Engine by Mid 2005

In early December I blogged about Convera, a popular player in enterprise search, planning to launch a publicly available open web engine. Today, I spotted a news release from Convera with news that they will release the new service in the next two quarters.

Posted by Gary Price on February 3, 2005, 10:44 PM | Permalink

MSN Search's RSS Feeds

When I did my write-up on the new MSN Search site, I'd mentioned that RSS feeds of search results were available but clunky in how to get them. That's because at the time of the write-up, MSN had told me that they didn't have any special links you could use to get them. But that quickly changed once the launch actually happened. Do a search, and at the bottom of the results page you should find an orange RSS box. Use that to subscribe to a feed of that search.

What exactly do you get when subscribing? The top results for the first page of the query you are monitoring. The feed then checks back on whatever schedule you've set with your feed reader to recover any new entries. Say you check once per day. If two new sites rotate into the top results, then you'd get sent a post of each individually.

Important note! If you are outside the US, even if you subscribe to US results, you'll still get those related to the country you are in. For example, I'm in the UK. I can override MSN trying to force me to the MSN UK site as I've written before. But I can't do this within my feeds.

MSN says it's aware of this bug and hopes to correct it in the next few weeks.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 3, 2005, 6:05 PM | Permalink

Disabling Google Ads With Bots?

Botnets strangle Google Adwords campaigns from The Register looks at how bots might be used to generate views of ads on Google but not clicks. Why? A low clickthrough rate might get the ad disabled, making it easier for a competitor to then come in at a lower price.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 3, 2005, 3:58 PM | Permalink

How Much Are Top Rankings Worth?

How much is being in the top results of a search engine worth? Wired tries but doesn't really get an monetary answer to the question in Googling the Bottom Line. Yep, we know that top rankings can generate traffic. A Oneupweb study of 30 clients done for Wired found that getting on the second or third page of the results increases traffic five times in the first month, nine times in the second. Move to page one, and it's even better -- I think.

The study says traffic will triple in the first month, then increase six times in the second. So my traffic goes up five times if I'm on the second or third page but only three times for being on the first page. Yes, that's exactly right, according to the study. Here are the figures:

Traffic Increase	1st Page	2nd/3rd Page
First Month	337%	517%
Second Month	627%	942%

So when the report concludes:

Oneupweb performed this study hypothesizing that being in the top 10 results is better than being in the top 30?and being below the top 30 is like being invisible. Clearly, the study establishes that trend.

The figures seemingly say the opposite. Want more traffic? Get on the second or third page of results!

That flies completely against what every search marketer knows from seeing their own stats. Fall from the top ten, and your traffic falls off as surely as gravity pulls things to earth. So I called Oneupweb to try and better understand what is going on. Here are the caveats.

First, traffic is based solely off of natural search generated referrals. They looked at how much traffic a site got from non-paid Google search results one month, then compared to the next month.

Sites coming into the second and third page of results started out with less traffic. So when they arrived, the increase was more dramatic. That's the reason Oneupweb says the 2nd/3rd page results are higher.

Specifically:

• Sites entering the 2nd/3rd page started at 7 visitors per keyword on average, then rose to 36 visitors per keyword.
• Sites entering the 1st page started at 14 visitors per keyword on average, then rose to 46 visitors.
• Since the 1st page sites already started with more traffic, the gain on a percentage basis was less dramatic.

But here's another confusing aspect. The report also says:

When Oneupweb reviewed the list of sites achieving a top-10 position for a particular search term, we noted that more than 75 percent debuted there, without previous listings on Google pages 2 or 3.

and:

In keeping with the industry?s rule of thumb, Oneupweb confirmed that websites falling below page three don't sell. In our research, not one sale was recorded for a site below Google page three for the time period.

So...

• More than three-quarters of the sites that hit the first page of results "debuted" there...
• Which means they were originally buried below the first three pages of results where no traffic is generated...
• So how did that group of sites end up having more natural search traffic to begin with than the 2nd/3rd page group?

One more thing to complicate matters. Say you were a site that debuted on the 2nd or 3rd page of results. The next month, you move to the first page (as anecdotally can often be the case). The gain you get is still recorded as part of being in the 2nd or 3rd page of results -- even though you really were on the first page.

Given that, it seems no wonder you have a nine time increase in the second months. A number of sites making the jump onto the first page of results probably fueled this.

One more excerpt from the study I had to pull out:

Oneupweb's study demonstrates a clear benefit to being listed on the first three pages of Google results and may even prompt online retailers to target Google?s first page.

I don't know anyone period, retailer or not, who doesn't already want to be on the first page of Google's results. They don't need a study to prompt them :)

Back to the Wired article. Can this traffic a make-or-break an online business? Depends on the business. If you've built your business around getting only free search traffic, yes, it can be make or break, as many found during the big Google Florida Update in late 2003. If you do a mix of paid and unpaid listings, the unpaid listings save you money -- but they probably won't break you if they go away.

For another look at page position and visibility, see the iProspect study from last year. It found:

• 22.6 percent of search engine users end their search after viewing the first few results returned
• an additional 18.6 percent stop after reading the entire first page of results (41.2% cumulative)
• 25.8 percent more abandon their search after the first two pages
• 14.7 percent (81.7% cumulative) wait until they view three pages

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 3, 2005, 3:55 PM | Permalink

More Google & Yahoo Employee Blogs

I posted earlier about a list of Google and Yahoo employee blogs. Here are two more spotted via Nathan at InsideGoogle, one for Google, one for Yahoo. And Microsoft employee blogs? Nathan notes blogs.msdn.com is the place for them.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 3, 2005, 12:09 PM | Permalink

Google Pitches Blogger On AdSense; Blogger Not Amused

Spotted via Anil Dash, Google's AdSense spam from Overstated documents how Google's trying to enlist Blogdex and other popular blog sites to carry its AdSense listings.

You do have to chuckle, though:

They've been pushing really hard for me to put AdSense on Blogdex, presumedly because it has high PageRank.

No, they want the site because they think it's popular among people visiting it. PageRank is just how popular the site is in terms of links pointing at it. If they only wanted high PageRank sites, Google would just go out and make whatever sites they want to have high PageRank scores. That wouldn't mean people are visiting them, though.

There's also some confusion between a pitch to carry Google AdSense ads -- ads that actually appear on the site -- and the new Google Referral program that pays for leads to others who are willing to carry the ads.

Anyway, some fun reading of the actual letters Google is sending out, along with a marketing PowerPoint presentation that's heavy on the "we want bloggers" pitch.

You gotta feel a little sorry for Google. As Anil points out, first Google took flak for not letting bloggers into AdSense. Now they get flak for going after them.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 3, 2005, 12:08 PM | Permalink

SMA-UK Takes Flak Over Lack Of Updates

The honeymoon is over for SMA-UK, as SMA-UK get's a Kickin' in the Forums over at Threadwatch notes. The failure to update the site with information has drawn criticism. SMA responds in the thread above, saying things have gone slower than wanted -- but that the group only wants to update when it has real news to report.

Certainly an update on the kick-off meeting that was held back in December would be a good addition. I noted back in January that this happened but had yet to appear on the SMA-UK web site.

Posting the mailings that have gone out to the SMA-UK interest group would also help. That let me know that SMA-UK was at the halfway post, as I also reported in January. But visiting the site, you'd never know this.

There is plenty going on, as the Threadwatch comments reveal as various people within the SMA-UK working group respond to critics. Even better would be for this news to be on the SMA-UK site itself.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 3, 2005, 12:06 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Seeks SEM Manager

Nice mention by Barry of Yahoo wanting someone to do search engine marketing for its own properties. It's not the first search engine to do this. Others like LookSmart and Inktomi have, as well. It's not even that new for Yahoo. I've written before about it running ads on Google and a campaign on European search engines to drive traffic. Question is, will the Yahoo SEM person go black hat on getting traffic from Google?

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 3, 2005, 12:03 PM | Permalink

Australians To Gather And Talk Search Marketing

Search Engine Room being held April 12 in Sydney will cover various aspects of search marketing in an all-day agenda. Cost is $475 Australian.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 3, 2005, 11:57 AM | Permalink

Google AdWords Review 2004

Dave Krane, Google's acting vice president of corporate communications, has posted a link off his personal blog to what looks like an internal slideshow made up for Google employees celebrating and informing them about the Google Adwords program that pays the bills.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 3, 2005, 11:32 AM | Permalink

Gruuve Offers Multimedia Search

Got an email from GRUUVE, a multimedia search engine that says it crawls the web to find audio, video, image and text files organized by artists. Over 20 million files are said to be indexed, so far. Worth a look. Some things are impressive; some not. Gwen Stefani has no discography, it appears. Audio and video listings are sparse, to say the least. Showing PowerPoints files would have been cool if the Gwen that created them was Orange County's-own Gwen Stefani, but they aren't. But the photo listings were pretty cool, as were the Topix-powered blog & news listings.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 3, 2005, 10:58 AM | Permalink

Average Keyword Prices Drop For First Time Since September

The Keyword Price Index from Fathom Online for January showed a 3 percent drop from last month, the first decline since the index began in September. The average keyword price dropped from $1.70 in in December to $1.64 in January. The chart below gives a per category breakdown:

Category	Jan. 2005	Change From Last Month	Percent Change
Mortgage	$4.93	$0.14	3%
Broadband	$1.67	$0.04	3%
Investing	$1.73	-$0.03	-2%
Automotive	$1.34	-$0.07	-5%
Consumer Services	$1.29	-$0.07	-6%
Consumer Retail	$0.52	-$0.06	-10%
Travel/Hospitality	$0.88	-$0.09	-10%
Wireless	$0.79	-$0.30	-28%
Average	$1.64	-$0.05	-3%

The mortgage and broadband categories were the only ones to rise. Mortgage is now the only category to consistently show month-to-month rises since the index began.

The wireless category saw a severe drop. After months of being around the $1.09 mark, it dropped to $0.79. Fathom speculates this might be to do a drop off in giving phones as gifts, now that the holiday shopping period has passed.

Below, a graphical look at the prices over time. Prices for the mortgage category are broken out from the others, so that you can better see trends:

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 3, 2005, 9:19 AM | Permalink

SEM Firms Get Specialized

What to do when search marketing firms seem a dime a dozen? Specialize. Over a year ago, we saw Local Launch dive to focus on local search. SEO PR has been out for even longer focusing on search as a public relations tool. Here's a recent example, from ClickZ: Icrossing Moves Beyond Search. The company is branching out into reputation management and monitoring.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 3, 2005, 8:48 AM | Permalink

SciNet For Science & Tech Info

Looking for science and technology information? You might check out SciNet, a long standing service that provides search results focused to this area. It lists thousands of sites that have been submitted over the past years plus has a collection of photos in different scientific areas -- though unfortunately, you can review these via thumbnails all at once. This site also offers original content on various topics.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 3, 2005, 8:17 AM | Permalink

Search Engine Optimization For New MSN Search

In our SEO for MSN thread in the forums, members are looking at the new MSN Search site and discussing what seems best to improve rankings there. Looking for tips or want to contribute? Stop by!

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 3, 2005, 7:59 AM | Permalink

Google Local Moves To Home Page But Stays In Beta

News from Google that its Google Local service has now moved to the home pages of the US-based Google site and Google Canada. Previously, the service was only accessible to those who knew to go directly to the Google Local site or who saw Google Local results inserted into Google through a OneBox display.

Despite the move, the service remains in beta. First launched as a Google Labs project in September 2003, then released as a formal beta in March 2004, Google Local has been in development for between a year and two and a half years, depending on what start date you go with.

Either way is a long time and adds further fuel to the fire of Google not knowing how to get products out of beta. More telling is the fact that Google previously had suggested that Google Local would only make it to the home page when the beta process was over. From my story about Google losing its tab interface last year:

Google Local Search, rolled out earlier this month, does not appear as a search link on the home page. Google doesn't believe the service is yet developed enough for this type of visibility to be given.

"This is a long way from its lab launch, but it's still a product that's in beta," said Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer web products, when talking with Search Engine Watch editors about the local launch earlier this month. "When we are more comfortable taking it out of beta, I think then we'd be really look at adding a tab."

So why does Froogle, also in beta, get home page visibility? That product was launched well over a year ago, and recently Froogle was upgraded. Apparently, this tipped the scales in its favor.

For more on Google and its growing beta problem, see NYT On Yahoo's US Gains & Google's Endless Betas, More On The Endless Betas Of Google, and if you're a Search Engine Watch member, my Breaking Out Of Google's Beta Limbo that charts when major Google services were launched and how they they were (or still are) in beta.

For those keeping score, it's now 5 of 7 major services on the home page -- or 71 percent -- remaining in beta. That's if you're a Google Desktop user. If you're not, then it's 4 out of 6 major services in beta or 66 percent.

For more on Google Local, see these past articles from Search Engine Watch:

• Local Search Part 2: Google & Mobilemaps Bring Back Geosearching: On Google's local product that first appeared in September 2003.
   
• Google Pushes Local Search Into the Limelight: On Google Local moving out of Google Labs in March 2004.
   
• Google Enhances Local Search: On changes made to the service in September 2004 but problems that still remain.
   
• New Google Local Sites: On Google Local sites beyond the US and Canada
   
• More On FAST Beats Google For AOL Local: On major Google partner AOL deciding against using Google's local results.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 3, 2005, 7:16 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Testing YQ "Search By Example" Tool

Yahoo is launching a new tool that lets you submit all or part of a web page that you're viewing as a search query, rather than the traditional method of typing words into a search box. The tool, called Y!Q, analyzes the content you've submitted and extracts the most relevant terms from the page, and presents results accordingly.

It's an interesting idea. Northern Light used to allow searchers to cut and paste an entire web page as a search query, but you had no way to refine results. Y!Q allows you to tweak results in several ways, even letting you add subsequent search result pages into the mix with just a click of a link. Today's SearchDay article, Yahoo Offers New Contextual Search Tool, describes this cool new utility, available for both Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers.

Want to discuss? Would adding sponsored links make this a threat to Google AdSense? Join the discussion in our forum thread, Yahoo Testing Contextual Search Tool.

Posted by Chris Sherman on February 3, 2005, 12:01 AM | Permalink

Topix.net and NY Times Announce Deal

Topix.net has made a deal with the New York Times. The AP is reporting that The Times has purchased the right to have some headlines featured on various Topix category pages (aka channels).

The New York Times will have three of its story headlines featured at the top of 80 categories for an undisclosed price. All but a few of the topics are focused on New York City and New York state.

``This is significant because even if you are the biggest and best newspaper on the Web, you still want to increase your audience,'' said Topix CEO Rich Skrenta.

More in the article: New York Times buys featured position on Topix.

Congrats to Rich Skrenta and the rest of the Topix.net team. As I said a few weeks ago, Topix.net is a resource I visit and use several times a day.

Posted by Gary Price on February 2, 2005, 11:38 PM | Permalink

The Butler Now Has a Weblog

Ask Jeeves has launched a weblog. The AJ Weblog joins blogs from Yahoo, Google, and MANY other search providers. The first post shares some info about and photos of the new AJ offices in Oakland, CA. You'll also find links to the Bloglines popular feeds list as well as a weblog search button. A click on the Ask Jeeves weblog button sends the query to the Bloglines database. You'll find the Ask Jeeves feed here.

Posted by Gary Price on February 2, 2005, 11:19 PM | Permalink

Google's Stock Soars One Day After Earnings Announcement

It's likely you've heard about Google's earnings announcement that beat all estimates. Today, shares of GOOG closed up more than $14 (7.33%).

Here are some numbers:
+ Earnings Q4 2004: 204.1 million or 71 cents per share, compared to net income of $27.3 million, or 10 cents per share, at the same time in 2003.
+ Revenue Q4: $1.03 billion, more than doubling from $512.2 million in the prior year.
+ For the Year 2004: Revenues were $3.2 billion, resulting in net income of $399 million, or $2.07 a share.
More numbers in the article listed below. The complete SEC filing is summarized in this news release.

Press Review:
Google Hits Record Revenue Levels (via Clickz)

On AdSense: Co-Founder and President of Technology Sergey Brin would only say, 'We've obviously started in that market very, very recently and I think we're going to see big improvements -- we're working on big improvements -- which will improve the monetization rates there.
In the fourth quarter, the company spent just $76 million on both sales and marketing.

Google's Q4 Profits Soar (via Media Post)

"The fact that they're continuing to do so well emphasized their dominance in the paid search space," said eMarketer Analyst David Hallerman. "That the name has become a verb describes how strong Google has become. That gives them the traffic."

Google sees profits surge (via News.com)

"Google had an exceptional quarter," company CEO Eric Schmidt said in a statement. "Revenues and profits increased significantly, our execution was solid across the company, and, most importantly, our relationship with our users, partners and advertisers became even stronger."

Google Tops Views, But Big Challenges Await Search Giant (via Investors Business Daily)

"Historically, there has been demand for the stock," said Youssef Squali, an analyst for Jefferies & Co. "But you're talking about 100 million shares that could potentially hit the market. The stock could fall. The jury is out."

The company, which gets nearly all of its revenue from ads, continues to cash in on the growth of paid search, or ads strategically placed on search results pages.

Some say Google's service and its founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have become cultural icons. Add in the success of the stock -- it went out Aug. 19 at $85 a share and trades near 192 -- and Google shows no signs of slowing, says Squali. "These guys continue to benefit from unbelievable free publicity," Squali said.

Posted by Gary Price on February 2, 2005, 4:44 PM | Permalink

Visualize A Weblogs "Neighborhood"

Findory, the "personalized" news and weblog tool (yes, you can also search the database) has introduced a new service today.

It's now possible to "visualize" a blogs "neighborhood." In other words, you can see how "connected" or "related" a specific blog is to others. The more connected, the bigger the point size. The smaller the point size the less connected. You can click here to see the Search Engine Watch Blog neighborhood or here to see Boing Boing's neighborhood.

To find "neighborhoods" for other blogs:
1) Search Findory for the blogs title
2) Find an article from the blog and click on the "title" link
3) Look for the "neighborhoods" link on the right side of the page

How does Findory determine what makes up a neighborhood? Greg Linden tells us,

Findory's weblog neighborhoods are determined by a combination of overlap in what the blogs are writing about and overlap between readers of the blogs. It is based on content and aggregate reader behavior.

Posted by Gary Price on February 2, 2005, 4:03 PM | Permalink

Feedster's New Look

The Scott on Feedster blog notes that Feedster has just introduced a new and I must say sleeker looking user interface. It includes a list (updated every three minutes) with some of the latest search queries. If you want to compare the new UI with the old one, here's a cached copy of how Feedster used to look. Scott Johnson points out that a great deal of the development was done by FaganFinder's, Michael Fagan (he's interning at the Feedster hq for the next few months). Thanks to SC for the news tip.

Posted by Gary Price on February 2, 2005, 3:40 PM | Permalink

Big Company SEO Can Take Time

Corporate SEO Implementation: From the Inside Out from ClickZ looks at how SEO can be a complicated process when trying to push across search engine friendliness changes through a bureaucratic structure.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 2, 2005, 12:57 PM | Permalink

IBM's WebFountain Takes A Blow

IBM's WebFountain search engine has gotten some attention in the past as a potential Google killer, though it was never released to the public in that way. Instead, the company positioned it as a high-level tool for web data mining. That use just took a blow, given that Factiva has dropped its partnership to use WebFountain for reputation monitoring. Indexing refresh was said to be too slow.

More here from Information World Review: Factiva to drop IBM's WebFountain. Also see IBM and Search for some links to more information on WebFountain, Monitoring Super Bowl Ad "Buzz" for mentions of some competing reputation tracking tools and IBM's WebFountain Launched–The Next Big Thing? for a past write-up on the IBM-Factiva partnership.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 2, 2005, 12:47 PM | Permalink

Search Executives Talk Local

Local search initiatives continue to build momentum, and no wonder: By most accounts, between 20 and 40 percent of all search engine queries have some sort of local intent. In today's SearchDay article, Meet the Local Search Engines, Shari Thurow covers a recent Search Engine Strategies conference where executives from Overture, Ask Jeeves and AOL discussed their local search programs and the opportunities they provide for search marketers.

Posted by Chris Sherman on February 2, 2005, 11:45 AM | Permalink

Google Upping 101K Page Index Limit?

Tara over at ResearchBuzz notes that Google seems to have lifted the 101K limit on indexing HTML files that it has long had: Has Google Dropped Their 101K Cache Limit? Gary and I played some more yesterday to test this and found an example briefly that showed its true -- sort of.

I'd love to put up a live link showing this, but it disappeared almost as soon as we found it. Tara updated her blog to note the same strange disappearing act happened to her. But she also noted that what Google says it reports for a page in its search results listings may differ from what it shows actually cached.

Here's an example to explain more. This search at Google brings up a page I know is larger than 101K, the archive of all blog postings we've done in December:

Search Engine Watch Blog: December 2004 Archives
... I've compiled these lists of search patents and ... My first compilation on the SEW site
was posted on ... Applications Systems and methods for searching using queries ...
blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/0412 - 101k - 1 Feb 2005 - Cached - Similar pages

Look in the last line of the page's listing, and you'll see that Google says it is 101K long. In reality, it's 633K. That's how big it is if you were to save the file without images to your hard drive. For example, right-click on the link, save the file to your hard drive, and that's how much information is in there. The 101K figure is simply how much of the page Google has actually recorded.

Now let's go to Google's text-only cache of the page. If Google has only indexed 101K of the page, then it should end abruptly about one-sixth of the way down. In this case, it does.

Now here's another example where things get weird:

ResourceShelf
ResourceShelf, ... ResourceShelf is Compiled & Edited By Gary Price, MLIS Gary Price Library & Internet Research Consulting gary@ resourceshelf.com Gary's Bio ...
tinyurl.com/jnpm - 101k - Cached - Similar pages

That's 226K. And when Gary checked this page yesterday, briefly Google reported it nearly the same (actually slightly larger), as the screenshot below shows:

Now back to the cached-text version Google has of the page. If only 101K is actually indexed, then only about half of the page's content should only show in the cache. Instead, the content of the actual page looks to be the same as the cached page.

One more test. I looked for a string of text that only appears on this page and also near the bottom of the page. If Google is indexing all the text, it should have brought the page up for the query. That didn't happen. It found a page from Gary's research news site, but not the same one.

So...something's going on, but what exactly isn't clear. I did ask Google about it but haven't gotten back a formal answer yet. Instead, I got an informal "isn't interesting what you can spot" type of thing that typically means Google is doing something but isn't sure if they want to come right out and say it, because it might not last.

Examples? Barry notes that some are seeing the return of a Google "Search Harder" button that the company has never announced, or the Google Frequent Searcher counter feature that rolled out quietly in limited form, then disappeared.

For a rundown on how much of a web page each major search engine officially says it indexes, see my Search Engine Size Wars V Erupts. Note that for some other file types, indexing might be deeper. Google does PDF files up to 2MB, if I recall correctly. Fair to say they should all should index web pages up to their full amounts or at least much higher than is currently done.

Want to discuss or comment? Visit our forum thread, Has Google Dropped Their 101K Cache Limit?

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 2, 2005, 11:11 AM | Permalink

Escaping MSN Search's Country Redirection

Annoyingly, the launch of the new MSN search engine came along with a helpful "feature" forcing me to MSN UK, because I'm based in the UK. Even if I went to search.msn.com, I was redirected to search.msn.co.uk.

I sent a query to MSN about this yesterday and have yet to hear back. But someone clearly got the message, because today I found a new "Back to search.msn.com" link at the bottom of the MSN UK home page I was shown. Selecting that finally overrode the switching.

Those being switched to other country-specific versions of MSN should look for similar links. If you don't find it, then try this: http://search.msn.com/?noredir=1. That might solve it, if you really want MSN as based out of the US.

Why might you? For one, the results I see on MSN UK are often radically different than on MSN US, more aimed toward what MSN seems to think UK users want. That's great when it works -- but when it doesn't, you may wish to search at the US-based site.

FYI, other search engines like Google might also do such redirection. In this cases, you'll often find similar links that let you override it. Our forum thread Google forcing UK users to google.co.uk looks at this more, including the situation with Lycos where even if you use the "override" link, it stupidly still redirects you.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 2, 2005, 9:25 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Japan Launches Blogging Service

Yahoo Japan has launched a free blogging service according to the News.com article: Yahoo Japan launches blog beta.

Yahoo Japan Blogs users can post both text and up to 2GB of images. Yahoo Korea has offered a blogging service since August 2003.

"Yahoo has a deep history in the online self-publishing and communications space, and we continually evaluate market opportunities where we can leverage our assets to fill a market need," Yahoo spokesperson Mary Osako said. "We have not made any announcements specific to Yahoo offering blogging services in the U.S. to date."

MSN Spaces was available fin Japan prior to its December 2004 global release.

Posted by Gary Price on February 2, 2005, 8:53 AM | Permalink

New Google Referral Program Pays $20 Per Lead

Spotted via one of our forum threads, a new Google Referral Program that pays $20 for each advertiser or publisher that Google gains through links on your site. The program is open only to US sites, at the moment. Want to discuss? Join our thread: Official Google Referral: earn $20 for each referral.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 2, 2005, 8:49 AM | Permalink

Keeping Them On The Google Farm When The Millions Have Gone

Google's got a tough problem. Now that hundreds of its employees are struck new found wealth, keeping them around is going to be a lot harder, as covered before. After all, the new hires aren't going to be getting rich off an IPO that's already happened. Solution? One appears to be a new Founders' Awards program that can be worth millions to Google employees who've been deemed to do outstanding work. The New York Times has more in New Incentive for Google Employees: Awards Worth Millions.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 1, 2005, 2:45 PM | Permalink

Your Press Release Point Was???

The point of a press release is to let the world -- and in particular the media -- know something new that your company has done. In contrast, this press release Gary spotted does nothing of the sort. From an SEM firm, it's more a news article about Google's support of the nofollow attribute that any announcement about the company. Nice article -- but press release? No.

It's just another sign on how press releases, as I've written before, have become a trusted feed for Google News. Do a search for google at Google News and what do you get? This "press release" coming up to in the news results. It also does well for a query on search engine marketing, which ought to please the firm that put it out, given they make ample use of links within the release to describe themselves with those words.

The firm's not doing anything wrong, by the way. They can put out whatever they want as a press release, and plenty of other firms make use of them now purely as Google fodder. The fault lies with Google. It's come under fire for carrying press releases within its news service in the past, a problem that was largely solved by specially labeling press releases as such.

Now that more and more press releases aren't really releasing anything, it's overdue for another look at how the service carries this material. The same is true of Yahoo and other services that allow press releases to be injected into their systems. In the meantime, here's a post about another recent absurd press release, which in term links to more.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 1, 2005, 2:35 PM | Permalink

MSN Search Marketing Plan Prepares for Takeoff

Pamela Parker at Clickz gives offers an overview of the marketing/ad campaign MSN will utilize for the new MSN Search. The article says this will be MS's biggest online campaign ever. In addition to online advertising, you also see TV, print, and billboard advertising.

"It's the biggest global campaign since the introduction of the MSN butterfly," said Chris Cocks, director of global campaigns for MSN.

The online media plan includes intense exposure across the MSN network, as well as buys on sites inclucing CNET, Weather.com, USAToday.com and CBSSportsline.com.

"We tried to select sites where there's a high degree of usage by MSN users," said Cocks, explaining that the campaign was initially aimed at reaching those who already used MSN.

Parker also reports that TV and online advertising will drive most of the U.S. campaign but billboards and print will be used elsewhere.

More in the Clickz article: MSN Campaigns For Search Share in Integrated Effort. We first blogged about what MS was planning in November: Microsoft Prepares Massive Marketing Campaign for New Search Engine.

Posted by Gary Price on February 1, 2005, 12:29 PM | Permalink

Another Web Search IPO in the Works

The Reuters article: China search engine eyes IPO informs us that Chinese search provider Baidu.com has plans for a U.S. IPO sometime this year looking to raise $200 million. In June 2004, Google became a minority investor in Baidu.com.

Posted by Gary Price on February 1, 2005, 12:05 PM | Permalink

Register with Google

Another new service from Google. Could more "business" services be on the horizon? Word from several sources that Big G is now an ICANN-accredited domain name registrar. Google will be able to register domain names in seven top-level domains (TLDs) including .com, .net, .org, .biz., info, .name and .pro.

Yahoo has offered domain name registration since May 2000 (in conjunction with Network Solutions) and currently charges $4.98/year to register a domain for one year. Yahoo also offers web-site hosting via their Yahoo! Small Business.

The Netcraft article: Google Is Now A Domain Registrar, offers more details and speculates that Google might be considering a domain name registration/web hosting service for Blogger users.

UPDATE: An article from The Register includes a comment from Google as to why they became a registrar.

The reason it paid a $2,500 application fee and $6,500 to cover six top-level domains is that it "wants to get a better understanding of the domain name system [and so] increase the quality of our search results". The email address it gives with relation to its new registrar status is dns-admin@google.com.

The article also mentions that Google has no plans "at the moment" to begin selling domains.

We also have discussion going in our forums here: Google becomes Domain Name Registrar.

Posted by Gary Price on February 1, 2005, 11:12 AM | Permalink

MSN Search Switches Engines

Two years after saying it would create its own search engine from scratch, MSN Search has officially released its new technology on its main sites around the world. Today's SearchDay article, MSN Search Officially Switches To Its Own Technology, looks at what's new since the beta came out last year and what may come.

Many MSN Direct Answers Now Online from Gary looks more closely at how with this launch, MSN is increasing the number of direct answers it provides -- something other search engines are also doing.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on February 1, 2005, 12:01 AM | Permalink

Many MSN Direct Answers Now Online

When MSN rereleased their search beta last November, they joined several other general purpose web engines offering direct answers on search results pages. At that point, these types of results seemed to appear for very few queries but with today's official launch, I'm noticing many more direct answers.

Direct answers and search shortcuts continue to gain momentum as way that can an search engine can save the searcher effort while at the same time delivering them an answer or a direct link from a trusted sources. In many ways, this is a prelude to search engines becoming answer engines for certain types of "ready reference" queries.

Shortcuts and direct answers were first introduced by AltaVista in 2002. Since that time, Ask Jeeves (they regularly add Smart Search options), Yahoo, Google, and most recently AOL have joined in. We have an overview and links to what each of these services offer in this blog post.

MSN offers direct answers for several types of queries on search results pages. Material comes from their Encarta encyclopedia. Here are a few examples:

+ Mathematical (via their web calculator)
5x2
cos 45 degrees
Btw, the first web engine calculator was introduced by AllTheWeb in April 2003.

+ Definitions
Define baseball
What is a dog

+ Conversions
How many feet in one mile
How many pints are in 18 quarts?

+ Geographical Data
Capital of Canada
What is the mass of Pluto?

+ Sports
Who won the World Series in 1979?
Who is Barry Bonds?

+ History
Who was Jimmy Carter's Vice President?
What was the Battle of Waterloo?

+ Popular Culture Biographies
Who are the Rolling Stones?
Who is Donald Trump

+ Nutrition
How many calories in a strawberry?
How many carbohydrates in peas?

Finally, for many pop music solo artists and groups, MSN will place bio info on the serp along with direct links to MSN Music.

Posted by Gary Price on February 1, 2005, 12:01 AM | Permalink

Audio: Interview with Blinkx Co-Founder and CTO

Network World Fusion has posted a 5 minute interview (streaming audio or MP3 download) with Blinkx co-founder and CTO, Suranga Chandratillake. Most of the discussion focuses on BlinxkTV, a video search tool that has been available with their client app for several months and officially launched as a standalone site and service in December. If you're looking for more video and audio search tools, we've listed several of them in the blog post: A Look At Other Video Search Tools.

Posted by Gary Price on January 31, 2005, 3:10 PM | Permalink

Google's Top Brass Talk Search

In the past few week's, a couple members of Google's leadership have been sharing their thoughts and views in public forums.

First, Google's VP of Engineering Adam Bosworth, spoke to The Gillmor Gang (you can listen online) about future search engine architecture, personalization, and RSS. Findory's Greg Linden responds to some of Bosworth's comments with his take on the value of personalization.

Second, Google Blogoscoped points us to a transcript of a presentation by Peter Norvig, Google's Director of Search Quality. Norvig discusses semantic web ontologies, automation, and other issues.

Posted by Gary Price on January 31, 2005, 1:43 PM | Permalink

NYT On Yahoo's US Gains & Google's Endless Betas

We've had nearly a year of full-blown search wars, but the New York Times notes in Search Sites Play a Game of Constant Catch-Up that despite new releases and "me too" matching of products, Google has still increased its share of searches worldwide from 44 percent in November 2003 to 47 percent in November 2004.

So all's great for Google? Not at all. Yahoo had a gain too, from 25 to 27 percent. And in the US, it was much more dramatic. Google rose from 37 percent to only 38 percent. Yahoo leaped from 29 percent to 35 percent, not that far behind Google's share.

What's behind the gains? The article has lots of quotes from me commenting on how Yahoo shows a desire to define a project, deliver on it and move on. In contrast, I remark how Google delivers something in beta form, then moves on to something else without seeming to finish the job.

Whether this operational style is behind Yahoo's growth or if there are other factors, I don't know. Google responds that it's hard to say it's dropped the ball on any major releases. With respect, I beg to differ:

• Google Images -- one of only two NON-beta products out there -- was allowed to be nearly a year out of date with images. Only now is it showing signs of being updated.
   
• Gmail remains both still in beta and invite only mode nearly a year after its rollout. How about finishing it up and making it public before moving into other things?
   
• The Orkut social network service? Ditto.
   
• Google Desktop still doesn't support Firefox indexing. We've had some notable Firefox developers get hired by Google recently -- perhaps they could take a minute or two to help make what we view in Firefox searchable?
   
• The Google Toolbar that has been out even longer than Google Desktop still doesn't support Firefox.
   
• Google is literally years behind providing query refinement support to searchers. Google Suggest is Google catching up on this front with the other major players. It was a "20 percent" free time project that one of its engineers cooked up and still hasn't come onto the actual site. It should have been an 80 percent time priority to happen years ago.
   
• Google Catalogs? Another beta project rolled out then apparently abandoned. The most current Ikea catalog is from 2003. Just kill it, already.
   
• Google News nearing its third year of beta? Google cofounder Sergey Brin has said before that it will come out of beta when it's ready. If it's not ready after three years, when will it be?
   
• Similarly, in the NYT story, Google says it will keep the beta label on things until time can be found to add "important features" to these products. Three years for Google News, over two years for the Froogle shopping search engine -- if time hasn't yet been found to put needed important features on these products, then pull them off the home page.

The reality is that Google seems to have no distinction between what makes a "beta" product versus a "final" product. Even the story notes that some of the beta products from Google have been upgraded with new features over time. Any of those times would have been a time to take them out of beta.

How about this roadmap to follow:

• Alpha: You release a product in limited form to a select group of users. Gmail, Orkut are alphas.
   
• Beta: You release a product to the general public with the expectation that feedback will be taken over a short period of time (two to three months) before a final release happens.
   
• Final: You put the product out on the Google home page or accessible via the More link on the Google home page. Anything out in front of the public in this way is no longer a beta. If it is still a beta, then get it off the main site and back into Google Labs.
   
• Point Release: After the final, this is when you add substantial new features to a product. Froogle today is arguably Froogle 2 or Froogle 2.5, given that it has had several major enhancements.

As for point releases, these needn't be labeled for the general public. Froogle doesn't have to be called Froogle 2, for example. But it is useful to use the terminology for those who are commenting on the changes. It lets us say things like "the second release of Froogle" and know there are substantial alterations that have happened.

Google Groups is a classic example of this. Google Groups was a final product. A new Google Groups 2 came out in limited beta. Then it was deemed good enough to replace the original Google Groups. That happened -- but what DIDN'T happen was removing the name beta from what really was a final product.

Believe me, I love that Google has a fun, creative process -- something I did mention as part of my interview for the NYT story but which didn't make the cut. That's probably because I was much more negative about being frustrated by the lack of completion Google has shown.

At this point, Google is well overdue for an operational pause. Don't roll out anything new until you bring stuff out of beta or declare it dead and no longer supported. Then please give me a wealth of new, fun, exciting and technologically disruptive things in the way you do so well -- as well as a firm timeline as to when those things will either receive official, final support or get rolled back out from public view.

More more on this topic, also see More On The Endless Betas Of Google and if you're a Search Engine Watch member, my Breaking Out Of Google's Beta Limbo that charts when major Google services were launched and how they they were (or still are) in beta.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 31, 2005, 1:13 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Local & Product Placement On The Apprentice

How A Product Placement Strategy Works from AdAge looks in depth on how Yahoo is promoting its Yahoo Local service through The Apprentice television show.

Apparently, one episode last season got a ton of people to try searching at Yahoo for "apprentice ice cream," though it's unclear if the did this on Yahoo or Yahoo Local.

Yahoo Local is mentioned even more as part of the current series. How much for the placement? Yahoo's not saying. See also The OC Arrested By Ask Jeeves, Too for more on product placements in television for other search engines, albeit unpaid ones.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 31, 2005, 12:17 PM | Permalink

Loquine Glupe SEO Contest Begins

In the spirit of the nigritude ultramarine and seraphim proudleduck SEO contests, the latest one is for being tops on Google by March 1 for the term loquine glupe. More details here. Checking Google, there's 1,230 pages already listed for the term.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 31, 2005, 11:42 AM | Permalink

Tsunami Ads For Gift Cards? Google, Where's the Review?

Danny's item about Google Adwords, reminded me to post something I'm noticing more and more, ads that have little to do with what the keyword(s) being purchased and/or the text of the ad.

We've heard many times that Google eventually reviews all ads. However, I'm beginning to wonder how long this review process takes. Here are two examples:

+ The search for: "tsunami asia" shows an ad (screen capture) that tells me I might be eligible for a $250 gift card if I enter personal info, complete a survey, and fufill other requirements. Hmmm. What this has to do with the tragedy in Asia is beyond me. This ad does not appear on Yahoo.

+ For the past 6 weeks I've noticed an ad (screen capture) for "disturbing ghost footage" appearing on results page for various search terms, many that don't include the term "ghost." When you click the ad, you'll find an online poll asking for an email address. The first page of the ad says that the "video" is on the second page. However, the second page offers no information.

Want more? No problem. The same set of results also includes the following ads:
+ "Ghost & Paranormal Proof?"
Again, claims that you can register (with an email address) to see videos. The ad offers no info about a video.
+ "View Ghost Pictures Here"
Again, just looking for an address. This is the same ad (minus a few words) that appears when clicking the "disturbing ghost footage" ad mentioned earlier.

Finally, last week I pointed out a "silly" Google ad offering a dating service for "Sexy but Dead" singles. If you look at the last ad listed in today's search, you'll spot an another ad for singles. This time, the singles are still sexy but they've become ghosts. (-:

Posted by Gary Price on January 31, 2005, 11:29 AM | Permalink

Scoble On Anti-NoFollow & Blogs As Not Search Kryptonite

Robert Scoble takes a stab at what he calls a "anti-nofollow religion" that has sprung up in The "no nofollow" religion. To be fair, there's also a "pro-nofollow religion" as well.

As with most debates, the truth is at neither extreme. Nofollow isn't a perfect solution to blogging comment spam, but neither is it a waste of time. It's nice that web authors (not just bloggers, everyone!) have more choices over what will get indexed.

Interestingly, the NoNoFollow site that Scoble is reacting to was apparently started by some well known German bloggers in part worried that nofollow tags might work against bloggers, such as by robbing them of links they see as helpful with search engines.

As I've written before, such arguments bring the bloggers making them much closer to the comment spammers they despise. So this comment from Robert's post echoes with me:

Discriminates against legitimate users as spammers? Huh? Since when did writing a comment mean that you deserve the full search engine juice of getting linked to by someone else?

Robert also touches on the whole "blogs are superpowerful with search engines" topic that I disagree with:

Could be used to further discriminate weblogs. Um, weblogs are actually showing up too high for their real-world relevance. Here, why am I the #3 "Robert? [on Google]"

Why? Not because you're a blogger, Robert. It's because you're a person that lots of people link to with the word "Robert" in your name. Look at the other things coming up tops for "Robert." Most of them are not bloggers.

Heck, here's a new page just up with tips for those using the Blogger system that continues this type of myth of blogs as some type of search kryptonite, able to bring the mighty search engines to their knees:

Blogs rank well in the search engines by their very nature. They are regularly updated with keyword rich content. Most blog writers stick to a main theme for their blogs making relevance easy. Because of the blog?s versatility, the blogger can add more themes to the blog and tie them together, enabling a blog to maintain several strong themes.

Actually, many blog writers are all over the place in what they write about in publishing on their home pages. That dilutes what the home page is about and can cause what its relevancy is for to a search engine to constantly change.

As for "themes," the search engines have consistently said that keyword relevance is done on a page-by-page basis. So have all the pages on a particular topics you want -- that doesn't somehow make the entire site more relevant for a particular term. If having a site be all about a particular topic were crucial, then Amazon would never rank well for anything. Instead, you constantly stumble upon it for a variety of keywords in search results.

Blogs can certainly quickly attract links that search engines depend on, and that can help them more than other sites that don't have the ability to easily generate new links. As more and more content is published through blogs, it's also natural we'll see more of them in search results. But content just being on a blog is not a guaranteed rocket to success.

A search on Google for "cars" doesn't give me any blogs about cars in the top results, despite the fact we've got car blogs out there. A search for "movies?" The same thing.

For more on blogs and search engines, see my older article, Loving Each Other More: Search Engines & Blogs. For more on the nofollow debate and how nofollow goes beyond blogs, see my recent post More On Link Condom & Blogger Worries Over Nofollow.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 31, 2005, 11:22 AM | Permalink

Google Employee Advertises Blog On Google?

Dirson has a screen shot of Google employee Mark Jen apparently advertising his blog on Google: Mark Jen Shows AdWords In Some Searches. Jen's blog received much attention after it disappeared for a few days after he made some critical remarks about his new employer.

Why advertise a blog that itself appears to generate no revenue? Conspiracy theory speculation is renewed again that this is some type of Google PR stunt, especially given that the text of the ad used the verboten word of Google in it. How could that happen, without Google's help, InsideGoogle wonders?

Well, Google definitely does prevent ads that use its name in ad copy from going through automatically, at least inintially. However, making use of the exception request, I got a copy of the ad in question up and running within a few seconds.

First, I copied everything in the original ad, submitted, and got this warning back from Google:

Due to trademark reasons, we do not allow advertisers to use 'google' in their Google AdWords ads. This term may be trademarked either for a certain product or service category and may apply only in certain countries.

However, I was also able to request an exception using links provided. I put nothing but the word "test" into the exception field, then submitted. This apparently sent my ad off to Google's editors for review. And despite being active, it didn't show. That made me think that the ad definitely wouldn't show until the review was finished.

Not so. I made a second ad, this time with the only difference being the initials SEW added to the title. This way, if it worked, it would be clear that I got the ad up. And voila, it went live:

So -- proof I could get an ad up with the word "google" in it and make it seem like it was done by Jen because I used his domain in the "display" URL. Had you clicked on it, you would have gone to Search Engine Watch.

In a further change, I then edited the ad to remove the SEW from the title, leaving me with an ad exactly like the one assumed to be from Jen:

The point of this is that anyone can make an ad for anything and point anywhere, at least for a short period of time until Google's editors review the ad -- a process that can take from hours to a few days. So seeing an ad isn't proof that anyone is advertising on anything.

Having said this, it could be Jen's ad. A comment at the InsideGoogle post notes that Google employees all get a limited delivery AdWords account. So perhaps he did decide it was worthwhile to drum up some publicity for the journal.

Meanwhile, Jen blogs onward, explaining that he works on the Google AdSense program as an associate product manager and thrilled that features can move out the door quickly. A feature advertisers have wanted for ages is the ability to pick and choose exactly what sites carry their AdSense ads. How about that feature getting out the door quickly! In another post, he also denies that his blog is a PR stunt.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 31, 2005, 10:30 AM | Permalink

Issues With A9's Yellow Pages

The USA Today's Jefferson Graham writes about a few problems he's noticed with a9's just released yellow pages plus + images database. You can read his findings in the article: Oops! Amazon's new online Yellow Pages pictures Rockefeller Ice Skating Rink as a bus. Graham also touches on privacy concerns that some people might have with a9's new service.

Like Graham, I've noticed images that don't match to the correct address. Additionally, I've comes accross many businesses I've searched for not even listed in their telephone directory. For example:
+ Movie Theaters, Silver Spring, MD. There are many to choose from in a 10 mile radius and zero are listed.
+ Chicago Cubs in Chicago didn't return up a phone number or address.
+ Fluky's, a famous Hot Dog joint on Western Ave. in Chicago, is not listed. Other locations are listed.
+ Yahoo HQ in Sunnyvale, CA is not listed.

Posted by Gary Price on January 31, 2005, 9:58 AM | Permalink

Microsoft: No Plans to Integrate Desktop Search into OS

During a panel about search at the Harvard Business School Cyberposium, Mark Kroese, general manager of information services and merchant platform product marketing for MSN, told the audience that MS doesn't plan to integrate desktop search in the operating system.

"'...there's no immediate plan to do that as far as I know,' Kroese said. 'That would have to be a Bill G. [Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates] and the lawyers' decision.'"

The remainder of the eWeek article: Microsoft Won't Bundle Desktop Search with Windows, offers more coverage of the http://www.cyberposium.com/index.asp with comments from Yahoo!, Google, and Xerox representatives. Topics include local, paid, desktop, and enterprise search.

Here are a couple of key quotes from the article:

At Yahoo, we think of local search as an extension of vertical search," [Bradley] Horowitz said. "It reaches into a different business model and provides a tremendous amount of value."

Microsoft's approach is a bit different, Kroese said. "At Microsoft our heritage is being a platform and our approach to search will not be a lot different."

"Today, paid [search] is a great business model," said Microsoft's Kroese. "But we're also pursuing other business models."

Google's [Deep] Nishar emphasized that "advertising is not necessarily evil." He noted that 40 percent of Internet search queries are commerce-specific queries. Charging advertisers for placement is not unethical, he said.

For additional coverage of Cyberposium, see the News.com article: Future of search rides on relevance.

Posted by Gary Price on January 31, 2005, 9:22 AM | Permalink

Search Forums Roundup: Jan. 31, 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: Google to Open Up API to AdWords Customers - AOL Expands Advertising Opportunities for Local Businesses - Google Adds Video Search - Google Loses Trademark Dispute In France - Google's Supplemental Index - Google Now Allows More Than 10 Words Per Query, and more.

Posted by Chris Sherman on January 31, 2005, 9:18 AM | Permalink

The OC Arrested By Ask Jeeves, Too

Earlier, I posted how A9 got a mention on The OC. Ask Jeeves got an OC-related plug on TV this week, as well.

OK, it wasn't the hip kids of The OC talking about Ask Jeeves but instead the crazy family of Arrested Development -- also set in Orange County's Newport Beach, that mentioned Ask Jeeves. To be specific, it was family lawyer Barry Zuckerkorn (actor Henry Winkler), even better known to many people as The Fonz from Happy Days.

Paid product placement? Nope. Instead, Ask Jeeves senior vice president Jim Lanzone emailed me to say a good college friend of his is the agent of the creator of Arrested Development. He uses Ask Jeeves, so that's apparently worked its way higher. No money was spent, and the mention was a surprise to Ask Jeeves.

"We didn't know about it in advance. We sent them some T-shirts to say thanks," Lanzone said.

All in all, a good opportunity to try out new Google Video (aka Google TV) service, as someone over at InsideGoogle did when commenting there on the A9 mention. Here's a rundown. First, the Ask Jeeves mention:

It's a private Stock, so you cannot just buy up the shares unless someone is willing to sell. Are you sure? That's what they said on Ask Jeeves. All right, who's the majority shareholder now?

The A9 reference is here:

Why, why happened? Did he call you? No, but I a9.Com'd him last night, and according to the O.C. Weekly, he's pretty much everything that's wrong with Western civilization, all wrapped up in one Guy..

For the record, A9 told News.com that it didn't pay for the mention:

"We didn't even know it was going to air," A9 Chief Udi Manber said. But "it shows people like...A9...and that they are telling their friends and family."

Meanwhile, how common is "googled?" Only three mentions: Conan O'Brien, Carson Daly and PBS. But extend it out to Google, and there are nearly 100 mentions of the company. Most are news realted, but looks like Regis is in the "did you Google that" camp.

Yahoo has many more mentions, but many of those see ads for the SBC Yahoo access service. Ironically, Yahoo is the most aggressive of all the services in terms of gaining product placement mentions. None of the above services has ever claimed to pay for these. Yahoo just struck a deal to get it into reality shows of The Apprentice and The Contender.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 31, 2005, 9:09 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Plans to License Financial Data

It looks like Yahoo plans to open up a new revenue stream by licensing stock quotes and other financial data.

ZDNet's story: Yahoo to feed its own stock ticker service and the Marketwatch.com story: Yahoo Finance builds licensing biz, offer details.

Yahoo! has been using financial data (quotes, charts, etc.) supplied by Reuters. Now, Yahoo will collect and disseminate this type of data using direct feeds from various stock exchanges and other sources. The service will be called "Quotes from Yahoo Finance."

"This is just about our taking control of the data business ourselves and extending that to other platforms," said Craig Forman, Yahoo's vice president of information and finance.

Forbes has said that they will license data from the "Quotes from Yahoo Finance" service.

Posted by Gary Price on January 31, 2005, 8:40 AM | Permalink

More Gbrowser Talk

If you want some more discussion of a possible Google web broswer, Eric Hellweg's new Technology Review article, Project Googlefox, offers some analysis of last week's news about two Firefox developers who recently joined Google.

Neither Goodger nor Fisher [the two Firefox engineers] is commenting on their new roles, and Steve Langdon, a spokesperson for the company, has also maintained a relative silence on the specifics.

"I'm not able to share any information on what Ben's going to work on," Langdon says. "Many of Google's products aim to enhance browser products, and we're interested in exploring interaction between browsers and Google's services."

Posted by Gary Price on January 31, 2005, 8:30 AM | Permalink

Revamped Yahoo! Malaysia Launches

According to the article: Yahoo! Launches All-New Yahoo! Malaysia Site, the revamped site was officially launched today. You can find Yahoo! Malaysia at http://www.yahoo.com.my.

The new Yahoo! Malaysia site is the first in Asia to feature the new look launched in the United States (http://www.yahoo.com) in September 2004.

The article also points out that Yahoo! Malaysia will launch a new contest called Y! 10 Search. Contestants can win prizes by guessing the most popular search terms each week for a theme selected by Yahoo!. The contest will run for three weeks beginning February 7.

Posted by Gary Price on January 31, 2005, 8:12 AM | Permalink

Don't Waste Time On Web's Biggest

A new search engine "Web's Biggest" has come out claiming they are bigger than the other major search engines. Wow, rush on over! Don't waste your time.

First, I highly doubt the claim. The search engine provides no count numbers with its results, so there's no way to run comparisons. Doing comparisons always is problematic anyway, but counts are a basic starting point.

It does provide a page that purports to show how it is bigger than the others. Enter a number, and it supposedly generates a random list of sites that supposedly have no or few pages listed at Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Oddly, no matter what number I enter, I get the same sites listed. And the links showing results at the other search engines? They don't use the right commands to bring back accurate results. And when I do use the right command? Over at Google, I get signs that the sites may have been banned. For comparison purposes, this "proof" shows nothing.

But let's assume that this site really was bigger than the others. Time to roll out the trusty haystack analogy of why bigger is better. How can you find the needle in the haystack if "small" search engines hunt through only half of it? That's something we used to hear in the early days of the search engine size wars.

I have my own haystack response that I've long used in these situations. If I dump the entire haystack on your head, can you find the needle then?

Going back to this site, we get plenty of proof on why having the entire haystack is no help if you don't have a powerful magnet to pull the good needles to the top. A search for "movies" brings up a list dominated by porn sites (OK, I suppose they ARE movies). "Cars" brings up travel search engines and give away sites. "US patents" fails to find the US Patent Office.

All in all, I find a good use for the nofollow attribute for the first time. For more on size issues, see my recent Search Engine Size Wars V Erupts post.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on January 31, 2005, 7:56 AM | Permalink

A Directory of Over 12,500 Search Tools

I don't think I've mentioned Michael Wong's directory of search tools since I started blogging here. "Search Engines 2" offers direct links to more than 12,500 search tools that are organized into several categories (topic, location, ppc engines, etc.) Worth a look and very possibly a bookmark.

Posted by Gary Price on January 30, 2005, 5:08 PM | Permalink

Google Ousted from Top Spot in Global Brand Rankings

A Reuters article: Apple Edges Google as Top Brand, reports that Apple is now the "most influential global brand" in a survey just released by Brandchannel. Google is now at number two on the Global list and North American lists. The complete results are posted here.

From Brandchannel:

Largely based on functional attributes, which offer clarity in a complex field, Google is by no means invincible. It faces competition on many fronts including Yahoo’s Overture search engine and other solutions like Vivisimo’s Clusty, and MSN Desktop Search, all of which hope to build a better mousetrap.

Most Influential Brands
GLOBAL
1. Apple
2. Google**
3. Ikea
4. Starbucks
5. Al Jazeera
** A move down from the 2003 rankings

North America
1. Apple
2. Google*
3. Target
4. Starbucks
5. Pixar
* A move up from the 2003 rankings

Posted by Gary Price on January 30, 2005, 1:11 PM | Permalink

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