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May 1, 2005 - May 7, 2005

Google Says DNS Issues Caused Outage

It looks like someone or some group is not happy with a well-known search engine located in Mountain View, California. Earlier this afternoon, Google Blogoscoped reported that Google was down. Nice catch (as always ) to P.L.

Om M. has more in his post. In fact, Om was also able to grab a screen shot of a site called SoGoSearch that appeared when he checked Google.com a couple of hours ago. Interesting. Right now (7:35pm EDST) it looks like Google.com and Gmail are back working for me. However, I'm still unable to reach Google News and Froogle via the www.froogle.com address (this url for Froogle does work).

Update: At 8:00pm EDST, Froogle.com and Google News are back working for me.

Update: At about 8:30pm EDST, Google's David Krane sent SEW and others the following official statement:

"Google's global properties were unavailable for a short period of time earlier today. We've remedied the problem and access to Google has been restored worldwide."

Krane goes on to tell SEW Blog, "it was most definitely not a hack."

Via Om Malik, Krane adds:

?Yes, it was a DNS [Domain Name System] issue. We?re seeing things as fully restored as of more than 30 min. ago. You?re the first to send such a screen shot and report this kind of issue. I?ll bounce it to the tech staff and will keep you posted.?

It will be interesting to see if Google uses their official blog to shed more light on exactly what happened.

I guess Google is fortunate that this didn't take place during a weekday when their servers are much busier as compared to a weekend afternoon. During a brief weekday outage last summer, people didn't know just what to do. Of course, if Barry's relevancy test is accurate, those users could also get relevant results from other engines. From a Forbes article in 2003: "Even Google's engineers admit Fast and Teoma deliver results comparable to theirs."

A Few Other Recent Google Outages that Have Received Attention
+ In January 2005, Google experienced a brief outage in Australia.

+ A worm took Google and other engines offline last July.

+ Problems at Akamai on June 15, 2004 caused issues for Google users.

Posted by Gary Price on May 7, 2005, 7:44 PM | Permalink

Blogger Debuts Moblog Service

Word from Google this afternoon that you can now moblog (mobile blog) with Blogger. Simply send your post(s) or pic(s) from your mobile device to Blogger via e-mail or MMS (Multimedia Message Service). You'll need to create a new "mobile" blog but it's easy to then move your posts to any existing Blogger blog you publish. More about the new service here.

According to the help page, the service is presently only available in the U.S. for Verizon, AT&T, Cingular, Sprint, or T-Mobile customers.

No time to go over each and every moblogging tool now (hey, it's Friday afternoon) but I do know that Yahoo's new 360 service offers a moblogging option as does MSN Spaces.

As a Blogger user who has wasted plenty of time trying to get the service to work correctly over the past few months (I'm not the only one), I hope that more this new option doesn't cause more traffic and slowdowns.

Blogger has offered an option to post to your blog (text only) via e-mail for several years.

Posted by Gary Price on May 6, 2005, 3:01 PM | Permalink

Syndic8 Gets Outed for Spamming

Remember the WordPress spamming search engines story (some might use stronger terms) from a few weeks ago? Via Google Blogoscoped we read that RSS directory Syndic8 is now being dinged for doing something similar.

Charles Coxhead and Andy Baio say RSS directory Syndic8.com are using sub-domains with ?junk articles? which serve no other purpose than to lure searchers to their Google ads. As opposed to other similar cases, Syndic8 ? ?the place to come to find RSS and Atom news feeds on a wide variety of topics? ? openly links to these sub-domains, albeit only in the footer of their homepage in small-print. Syndic8.com is a large directory, and they could use their linking power to boost specific sites.

Postscript: I Was Really Stupid, and Greedy Too has a response/apology from Syndic8.

Posted by Gary Price on May 6, 2005, 2:23 PM | Permalink

SEO Inc Tries To Silence Google Blogoscoped Over Rankings

Last month, SEO Inc apparently fell out of the top rankings for the term "search engine optimization" at Google. I felt it was a non-story then. That's changed now that the company issued a cease-and-desist notice against Google Blogoscoped, implying that Philipp Lenssen there may have trade libeled them. More details and a copy of the letter from Philipp here: SEO Inc Sent Me a Cease & Desist.

Wow. What did he say? John Battelle has a reprint over here, but here's the key passage is this:

It?s kind of ironic that SEOInc.com, a search engine optimization company which for a while was on the Google number 1 spot for the highly competitive query "search engine optimization", is now nowhere to be found in the Google results. This is likely due to the recent PageRank update and even more algorithm tweaks implemented by Google. Enter ?SEOinc? into Google.com, and SEOInc.com is nowhere in the top 10; and the SEOInc.com PageRank has dropped to ?none?. Only by entering ?site:seoinc.com? into Google will you see the site is still indexed in some way.

And while a low or non-existent Google ranking is bad enough for sites outside the SEO industry, it hits everyone in the SEO business twice as hard: not only are SEOInc not being found with search engines anymore, they?ve also lost their biggest proof their services are worth paying for.

Of course, the fact this site has seen the Google death penalty hints that they?ve overoptimized using ?black hat? search engine optimization (such as linkfarms, for example).

Who is Philipp to say that SEO Inc lost the biggest proof that their services were worthwhile? Actually, SEO Inc. made this suggestion. Until recently, it had these claims on its web site, which Philipp's article lead off with:

?Search Engine Optimization Inc. uses our proven Search Engine Placement techniques to rank more sites in more top positions than anyone in the business. Our cutting-edge strategies are currently used by companies including AT&T Broadband, IGN, Sierra Trading Post, and Microsoft. (...)

The title of Certified Advanced Search Engine Marketing Strategist from the Academy of Web Specialists is your assurance that SEO Inc Search Engine Optimization incorporates highly effective, ethical and proven methods of gaining you top positioning.?

Those are now gone, though in a new development, the company appears to have recently become a member of the W3C. From its home page:

Search Engine Optimization Inc is the FIRST and Only search engine marketing firm to become a member of the (W3C) World Wide Web Consortium. Read Article here.

As said, I thought the company's drop in placement for "search engine optimization" was a non-issue when I heard about it a few weeks ago. I wouldn't have reported them as being "good" for having any type of placement, since placement for a term doesn't necessary mean good conversions.

In addition, top rankings can be meaningless. Was the term competitive or not? IE, does anyone actually search on it? And if you were top ranked, how long for? On which search engines? Ones people actually use? These are the types of reasons why I simply ignore any claims based on rankings.

Want to discuss or learn more? Check out these forum discussions:

• SEO Inc. banned from Google?, WebmasterWorld
• SEOInc ... they have forums!, SEO Chat
• SEOInc Sending out Cease & Desists, Threadwatch
• SEOINC.com Penalized in Google, Search Engine Watch Forums

That last thread we actually pulled from our forums back in mid-April. No, not because of a cease-and-desist letter or any message. Instead, our forums have a policy about public spam reporting. We don't allow it, unless a site is incredibly well-known or the issue has become discussed in a variety of public forums. Ironically, with the many blog comments now about the cease-and-desist, the thread that previously was pulled now qualifies for restoration.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 6, 2005, 1:58 PM | Permalink

Early Results from Search Engine Relevancy Challenge

Early results from Barry Schwartz's Search Engine Relevancy Challenge have just been posted. About 3,200 results have been rated so far and it's just about a dead heat between Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, Google, and MSN. More about the SERC in this post.

Posted by Gary Price on May 6, 2005, 1:28 PM | Permalink

Google's VP of Engineering Plans to "Pull Back"

Late last year Danny blogged about Google's vice president of corporate marketing, Google, Cindy McCaffrey, leaving the company.

Today, John blogs that Google's VP of Engineering, Wayne Rosing, is "pulling back" on his work at the Googleplex to focus on his passion for astronomy. Rosing was named VP of Engineering in 2001.

Posted by Gary Price on May 6, 2005, 1:12 PM | Permalink

Google Web Accelerator Raises Worries

The new Google Web Accelerator released earlier this week is raising concerns about data privacy and webmaster issues.

Much Controversy Over Google's Accelerator from Nathan over at Inside Google looks at how the Something Awful forums found that the tool seems to have cached forum pages personalized for a particular user. In other words, those using the software came into the site as if they were logged in as someone else. If true, that's pretty worrisome.

Inside Google also raises the specter of how the software is helping Google keep a record of what everyone does, which it might datamine in various ways. Sure, that's a valid fear. But Google hardly needs Web Accelerator to do it. It already has millions of people using its Google Toolbar. For years, the Google Toolbar has given Google records of what people are looking at all over the web. So monitoring what people do on the web isn't anything new, for Google.

The article touches on issues of how the accelerator might injure site stats, providing some links to disabling it if you are a webmaster. Nathan also suggests that people won't do this, because Google will probably use accelerator data to help rank sites. Ban accelerator, and you'll ban what Google knows about your site -- and potentially then lose rankings.

I wouldn't worry about that at all. Sites have already banned Google from caching their pages and still done well despite this potential big red flag. Don't want accelerator caching your site? Go ahead and ban it.

Nathan's had further posts touching on other issues:

• Web Accelerator Can Delete Your Account?
• Web Accelerator Changes Your 404 Page

Google Blogoscoped highlights another issue in Google Accelerator Deleting by Prefetching, while Threadwatch points to Fantomaster's How To Block Google?s Web Accelerator page.

Want to discuss? Visit our forum threads:

• Big Brother (More than just web accelerator)
• Google Web Accelerator Beta

Postscript: News.com's FAQ: Hard facts about Google's Web Accelerator does a Q&A on some of the issues involved with the software.

 

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 6, 2005, 12:27 PM | Permalink

Reuters Reports on the Google News Patent Story

This time around, Reuters takes a look at the Google News patent story that's been making the rounds over the past week. I find it interesting that most of the coverage has made no mention of the fact that the patent application was filed with the USPTO almost 18 months ago.

However, kudos to Lisa Batelein for including the fact in her Reuters article:

A Google spokesman confirmed that the company has applied for the patents but declined further comment regarding whether the company will use or is already using the technology. Google filed its U.S. patent application in September 2003 and it is in line for review by patent examiners.

Like I said last week, just because Google filed for a patent (in 2003) doesn't necessarily mean the company is waiting for the patent to be granted to begin using the concepts it describes.

I'm happy to see that Lisa went and talked with Rich Skrenta, the founder of one of my favorite new resources of 2004, Topix.net. Topix.net crawls and aggregates (also keyword searchable) material from more than 12,000 sources vs. Google's 4500. More about the Topix.net NewsRank algorithm here.

Bartlein ends her article by writing,

Yahoo gathers news from disparate sources via direct feeds and a Web crawler. But unlike Google News, Yahoo News employs human editors and carries advertising.

She's on target regarding how Yahoo gathers news and displays it on various Yahoo News pages. However, a Yahoo News search results page is built algorithmically, without the involvement of any human editors. This is the same way Google News search results pages are built.

Posted by Gary Price on May 6, 2005, 12:03 PM | Permalink

Google Gulp T-Shirts For Sale

No foolin', Google Gulp t-shirts are now available at the Google Store.

Posted by Gary Price on May 6, 2005, 11:00 AM | Permalink

Search Forums Roundup: May 6, 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: SES Toronto Live, Google Windows Web Accelerator, Where To Get Links?, AskJeeves Will Drop Ads by 31% - Yahoo To Test Banner Ads - SEO & The Zen Factor - and more.

Posted by Chris Sherman on May 6, 2005, 9:14 AM | Permalink

Let's Speculate: GoogleMusic.com

In Stefanie's article about a music search engine coming soon from Yahoo, it's worth pointing out that their is no mention of Google and what they might be doing in the online music world.

What are they doing? I haven't heard anything. However, since everyone enjoys speculating about what Google MIGHT or might not be doing (OS and browser are two examples), I'll point out that Google registered the GoogleMusic.com domain about two years ago after acquiring it from a somone in Curacao. (-:

Posted by Gary Price on May 5, 2005, 6:28 PM | Permalink

Report: Yahoo Developing Music Search Engine

News.com reports that Yahoo is developing a music search engine that according to the article:

The specialty engine will let people search on an artist's name, for example, and retrieve all the available songs from other music services, as well as album reviews and band information from Yahoo Music.

Yahoo's Jeff Karnes would not confirm the News.com report at this time. However, the article says that the service should be available in the next few months.

From the way the article reads, the new service sounds like (no pun intended) some type of federated search tool that will simultaneously query music availability from a couple online music services and their own MusicMatch service and merge results into one results list.

The News.com article mentions that along with song availability the service will also retrieve info about the artist, album, etc. from their Yahoo Music database. Here's what a bio of The Rolling Stones presently looks like via Yahoo Music.

I've said for a long time that federated search technology will be one of the "next" big things.

Yahoo purchased MusicMatch last September for $160 million. In February, Yahoo rebranded all of their music properties as Yahoo Music.

The Yahoo Music brand also includes the popular LAUNCHcast streaming audio music service.

When I posted the other day about music information retrieval research at Sun (cool stuff), AllMusic.Com is primary "go to" site for music/artist/performer reference information. This page lists some of what you can do with their powerful advanced search interface. I've also use the Tower Records online database and the web version of GraceNote, as music info research tools.

In addition to iTunes, Napster, Microsoft, and Rhapsody, Yahoo will also be competing with services like SingingFish and GoFish.

Finally, if you're looking for non-musical audio files (sound effects, music samples) on the open web this review of FindSounds.com by Chris might be of interest.

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

Reports from SES Toronto: Day One

If you're interested in learning about what's being said at SES Toronto, ace reporter Barry Schwartz (aka RustyBrick) has posted reports from 5 sessions that took place on Wednesday.

+ Cleaning Up Spam & Other Messes

+ Organic Listings Forum

+ Buying Search Engine Advertising

+ Balancing Paid & Organic Listings

+ Link Strategies 2005

Finally, in the InternetNews.com article: Google's Golden Triangle, Sean Michael Kerner offers highlights from panel the featured Gord Hotchkiss from Equiro, and Debbie Jaffe, product marketing manager at Google. Hotchkiss talked about the results of an eye-tracking study.

Just like the famed Bermuda Triangle that traps wayward travelers, there is a "golden triangle" on Google that "traps" users' eyeballs. The golden triangle is a triangle-shaped viewing pattern that reaches out from the top left of the search results page...Jaffe agreed with Hotchkiss' findings for the most part. But she added that the golden triangle, in terms of clicks at least, is more focused specifically on the top organic results as opposed to the whole top-left corner.

Posted by Gary Price on May 5, 2005, 4:58 PM | Permalink

Another Googler to Give University Commencement Address

Larry Page will not be the only Googler giving a commencement speech this year.

Margaret J. Thomas, a human resources manager at Google's Santa Monica, California office will deliver the commencement address to the undergraduate class at the University of Richmond on May 8th. Thomas is a 1992 U of R grad. We'll try to track down a copy of her remarks.

Posted by Gary Price on May 5, 2005, 1:27 PM | Permalink

DVD Software Company Announces Bundling Deal with Google

Dow Jones has a brief article about InterVideo, the company that develops and sells WinDVD Creator, DVD Copy, and Media One announcing a bundling deal with Google. According to the story and this news release, Google Toolbar and Google Desktop Search will be "incorporated" into their products.

Two other bundling deals that quickly comes to mind are
+ Google's deal with Real Networks
+ Yahoo and Adobe

Posted by Gary Price on May 5, 2005, 1:11 PM | Permalink

All About Content Based Image Retrieval

P.L. has a great summary of a Slashdot post concerning content based image retrieval (CBIR) and research from Penn St. University.

?CBIR? is the handy acronym for Content based image retrieval. Basically, it means instead of entering text to find images, you provide or click on an existing image to find related ones. This ought to be much more intuitive for certain tasks.

A CBIR research project of Penn State University has now been applied to an aviation images database, Slashdot reports. Click on ?Show me photos?, and then click on ?View similar photos? to get an idea of how well this works. This is not necessary related to actual image recognition (analyzing a picture to find out it contains, say, an elephant), but can be implemented using much more brute force pixel-by-pixel image comparison with some added mirror and scaling fuzzyness.

I was hoping to share another CBIR demo caled Image-Seek from LTU Technologies. It allowed you to search and find similar photos from a collection of Corbis images. However, according to the LTU site it's "temporarily unavailable." Oh well, you can still read about it.

Nevertheless, LTU Technolgies (the company was recently acquired) web site offers lots of interesting reading about content based image search.

Also, LTU presentations from the 2003 and 2004 Search Engine Meeting provide excellent intros to CBIR:

+ Organising personal pictures with content analysis technology
From the 2004 meeting. PDF file.

+ Finding the Right Image in the Corbis Collection
From the 2003 meeting. PDF file.

Posted by Gary Price on May 5, 2005, 11:13 AM | Permalink

Time Warner Sells 5.1 Million Shares of Google Stock

Both Searchblog and Reuters report that Time Warner has sold the remaining 5.1 million shares of Google stock the company owned. Time Warner made about $925 million from the sale of the GOOG shares. The sale of TW's Google stock is discussed on page 7 of this SEC filing.

Posted by Gary Price on May 5, 2005, 10:35 AM | Permalink

Now Available: Detailed Findings from Yahoo/Compete Financial Services Searcher Study

Yesterday I posted about the release of a new study from Yahoo Search Marketing and Compete about the financial services searcher.

If you're looking for more info, you can get it here. The YSM team was nice enough to share a presentation (27 pages; PDF) that contains the detailed findings, charts, etc.

Also, more about the study in this Media Post article.

Posted by Gary Price on May 5, 2005, 10:03 AM | Permalink

What Searchers Really Want

All search marketing requires making an educated guess about the needs of searchers and creating content—whether web pages or sponsored listings—that will attract clicks. Until recently, there wasn't a lot of hard data to support this process. There just wasn't much insight into the mind of the searcher.

That's changed, with a number of studies focusing explicitly on searcher needs and behavior. This reserach is gold mine for search marketers, writes Anne Kennedy in today's SearchDay article, What Clicks with Web Searchers, which recounts a recent Search Engine Strategies session that focused on searcher behavior.

Posted by Chris Sherman on May 5, 2005, 9:36 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Hires Cnet's Editor-in-Chief, Plans to Expand Technology Content

The Wall St. Journal is reporting (this link should work, otherwise WSJ subscribers only) that Yahoo has hired veteran journalist Patrick Houston away from Cnet where he served as Editor-in-Chief. His new title at Yahoo is general manager for technology.

...Yahoo expects to expand on its "hybrid" model of licensing content from other news providers [about 100] and featuring exclusive Yahoo content.

Yahoo News also offers a searchable database of more that 7,000 open web news sources.

Houston's hiring is yet another sign that Yahoo plans to develop more original material for various parts of their service. In November 2004, the company hired Neil Budde, a founding editor of The Wall Street Journal online, as Executive Producer of Yahoo News.

Late last week, Yahoo officially launched a new version of the Yahoo News site.

Posted by Gary Price on May 5, 2005, 12:36 AM | Permalink

New Content Added to Yahoo Video Database

Yahoo has just added a bunch of new content to their video search database as Yahoo Video Search leaves beta and moves to version 1.0. Material comes from a variety of new content partners.

What's New?

Content from:
+ Bloomberg Business Television
Here, Yahoo Video will allow you to keyword search every word spoken during Bloomberg Television broadcasts. This could be a great tool for the business researcher. You're actually searching both the closed-captioning and metadata associated with each segment. Material from Bloomberg comes via a deal Yahoo announced with TVEyes. Yes, they're the same company that just launched the Podscope search engine that allows you to keyword search podcasts.

Btw, to limit your search to only Bloomberg content, use the syntax
site:tveyes.com along with your search terms in the query string.

When you search material from the following new Yahoo Video content providers, you'll be searching metadata associated with each video file.
+ CBS
+ Discovery Channel
+ MTV
+ Reuters
+ Home & Garden Television
+ The Food Network
+ VH1
+ Moving Image Archive (via the The Internet Archive)
The Prelinger Archives is part of what Yahoo is indexing. Great Stuff!

Material from these content partners will be comingled with other material in the Yahoo Video database. This "other" material comes from other content partners and Yahoo's crawl of "open web" video files. When Yahoo launched Yahoo Video last December they also released Media RSS, an "enclosure" that any content producer can include in the metadata of their media files when submitting them to Yahoo.

As I mentioned the other day, BlinkxTV and Google Video also provide searchable access to video material including content from some of the same sources that Yahoo is now providing access to.

Unlike Google Video, Yahoo Video allows you to search and then view the full motion video online. At the present time, Google Video only provides thumbnail images of video content. BlinkxTV also offers the ability to search and view full-motion video online. More about video search in this News.com article by Stefanie Olsen.

Want more video search tools to demo? Check this post.

Posted by Gary Price on May 5, 2005, 12:02 AM | Permalink

New Google Software Attempts to Speed Up Your Web Browsing Experience

As I compose this post, a recent issue of Fortune magazine with Bill Gates on the cover is sitting next to my computer. Fred Voglestein's cover story says, "the darling of search is moving into software—and that's Microsoft's turf."

Let the turf war continue.

Google Labs has just released (beta), web accelerator software thats designed to speed up your online experience and make your surfing faster and more efficient. I'm sure it will also fuel plenty of additional speculation about Google's play in the OS and browser arenas.

If you're wondering, all of the technology was developed by Google.

Google Web Accelerator (GWA) is client software along with a plug-in (about 1.4MB) that's installed on your computer. It's only available for Windows (Win XP or Win 2000 SP3+) and works with Internet Explorer or Firefox. According to Google's Marissa Mayer, this is the first product that she knows of that's built and optimized for broadband web users. She added that dial-up users are also welcome to use the software.

How it Works
----------
Unfortunately, SEW wasn't given a pre-release version of GWA to test so we can't share any first-hand experiences using the product.

What we do know is that GWA uses a number of techniques to speed up web browsing. Mayer told me that some Googlers who have been testing the product internally have saved over an hour a month waiting for material to download. She added Google Web accelerator includes a clock that shows the user how much time they're saving. Note to Google: More info about how you're computing this time savings would be not only useful but also very interesting.

Unlike Google pre-fetch product that was released for Firefox about a month ago, GWA works to speed up the surfing process for all web sites NOT only Google by a combination of:

+ Prefetching material
In part, determined by an algorithm developed at Google that looks at
mouse movements and aggregate traffic to sites to try to determine what to prefetch
+ Caching of pages on Google's own servers
They will also try to determine how frequently material is updated and continuously have the latest copy available on their servers. Mayer said that GWA and Google's new search history product are completely independent of one another.
+ Parallel downloading
Download multiple parts of the page (images for example) at the same
time.
+ Differential fetching
Instead of downloading the entire page, GWA will try send only what
might have changed on the page
+ Compression
Mayer added however that GWA tries not to change the quality of images and other material.

Like many of Google's products and servers the company says it has no plans (for now) to monetize this service. However, you could let your mind wander and think about Google potentially working with ISP's to provide the technology to help market the product and perhaps optimizing the technology for specific ISP's. Right now, GWA is completely ISP independent. Enterprise sales are another obvious revenue stream.

Where This Fits In
----
When you look at Google's mission about organizing all of the world's info and make it universally useful and accessible, you would have to say that Google Web Accelerator fits into the making info more accessible part. According to Mayer, "the faster the web is, the better and more efficient the web is for all users."

Webmasters
-------
Mayer told me that when Google prefetches a page, webmasters will see a Google user agent in their user logs. In other cases, GWA will proxy the traffic of the GWA user. Much more for webmasters here.

Final Notes
------
According to the web site, the GWA is only available to users in North America and Europe during the beta phase. A Google Web Accelerator FAQ and discussion board is also available. You might also want to review the GWA privacy policy.

Postscript: I just installed GWA and reviewed the preferences page. Here you can select:
+ Connection Speed
+ Toggle pre-fetching on or off. You can also select to have prefetched pages highlighted with a double-underline.
+ Clear your history file
+ Tell GWA not to accelerate specific sites/domains.

Posted by Gary Price on May 4, 2005, 2:53 PM | Permalink

NewsNow Passes the 20,000 Sources Mark

A quick tip of my virtual cap to one of my favorite web-based and free news aggregators as it hits a noteworthy milestone today.

NewsNow, based in London UK, is now aggregating content from more than 20,000 sources. Wow! NewsNow offers access to material from both mainstream news sources and the blogosphere.

The service is not very searchable (NewsNow is a showcase for the company's fee-based offerings that provide more searchability) but as a browsing tool (yes, serendipity still can work) it's very useful.

NewsNow offers numerous pages that bring together news on various topics. Here's a page that offers Information Technology news. Pages also autorefresh every five minutes. NewsNow is also international in scope and next to every headline you'll spot a flag that shows what country the source is located in. If you're an out of your mind news geek, this page offers a continuously updated look at all new content as it hits the database.

Is NewsNow the only news tool you need? Of course, not. However, it's still a valuable service and one more than deserving of your attention.

Posted by Gary Price on May 4, 2005, 12:48 PM | Permalink

New Job Search Vertical Officially Launches

A news release let's us know that longtime business search vertical, Business.com, has officially launched another vertical, Work.com. The new engine provides job listings from "premium" employers via a direct crawl of employer web sites. I haven't had a lot of time to check the site out but I'll try to get to it soon.

The news release also points out that Work.com is offering a cost-per-click program.

Instead of paying the flat fee common with current job board ad listings, advertisers on Work.com pay only for the candidates that click to their jobs on their website.

Results page offer numerous "clickable" refinements including date, job title, company, and location. Ads from Google are also visible on the page. More about Work.com soon.

Posted by Gary Price on May 4, 2005, 12:30 PM | Permalink

Study: Don't Forget About Financial Services Searchers

The DMNews article: Financial Services ‘Searchers’ Shouldn’t Be Ignored from DMNews.com reports on the findings from a Compete/Yahoo Search Marketing study.

[The study] concluded that consumers reached with search are attractive for financial services companies since they are both wealthy and of strong credit quality. The finding contradicts the widely held belief that someone who is searching for credit information online may not be creditworthy or a good target for advertisers. Also, such financial searchers are not just searching simply to reach their online banking account. The study, conducted from September to February, tracked 265,000 financial searches from 76,000 searchers across Yahoo, MSN, Google, Lycos, Ask Jeeves and Hotbot. It is titled, "The Role of Search Marketing in Financial Decisions" and is Yahoo Search Marketing's first study since it dropped the Overture name."

Postscript: If you're looking for more info, you can get it here. The YSM team was nice enough to share a presentation (27 pages; PDF) that contains the detailed findings, charts, etc.

Also, more about the study in this Media Post article.

Posted by Gary Price on May 4, 2005, 12:10 PM | Permalink

NY Times Talks Mobile Search

Hey, this is cool. Lisa Guernsey has written an article in The New York Times: The Cellphone's Potential as a Search Tool Gets Tapped about one of my favorite topics, mobile search. Most of the services mentioned in the article have been reported on and linked to on this blog numerous times. Nevertheless, I'm thrilled to see mobile search getting attention in The Times, kudos Lisa!

Btw, I've also posted here about location-based sevices starting to come on strong. Word of two new services from Sprint that only requires a mobile phone and monthly subscription fee.

WirelessWeek reports:

Whether a customer needs roadside assistance or driving directions, Sprint is ready to deliver, thanks to a pair of newly introduced location-based services (LBS). The Roadside Rescue subscription runs $4 per month and gives Sprint customers the ability to request roadside assistance, as well as have their location pinpointed. Sprint said it has the ability to deliver turn-by-turn driving directions to a location based on a customer's whereabouts.

Posted by Gary Price on May 4, 2005, 11:56 AM | Permalink

New Google/Urchin Web Analytics FAQ

We posted yesterday that Google had reduced the price of their Urchin web analytics service. Today, we noticed that a Web Analytics FAQ has been added to the Google AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Gary Price on May 4, 2005, 11:30 AM | Permalink

Live Coverage from SES Toronto

Danny mentioned earlier that he was in Toronto for Search Engine Strategies that began this morning. Also in Toronto is none other than conference reporter extraordinaire, Barry Schwartz (aka RustyBrick), who is posting session reports (some might call it blogging but since his reports are not being posted to a blog is it blogging?) from various sessions. Barry's posts should begin shortly in this SEW Forums thread.

Posted by Gary Price on May 4, 2005, 11:19 AM | Permalink

UK: Local Directory Publisher Inks Deal With Google To Sell AdWords

Revolution reports that Google has signed an agreement with Thomson, a major player in the UK directory business to sell AdWords. According to the article, the Thomson sales force of more than 500 sales-reps will soon be hitting the streets selling AdWords to small and medium size businesses.

Google AdWords is an integral part of its ThomsonLocal.com online directory and WebFinder.com search engine marketing offerings...Thomson can send link click-throughs directly to a business's website or to a specially created information page on ThomsonLocal.com for businesses without a web presence.

Posted by Gary Price on May 4, 2005, 11:16 AM | Permalink

Burnett Productions to Yahoo: Your're REhired

Word that Yahoo has extended its deal Mark Burnett Productions, the producer of "The Apprentice," to produce the official site for the program. Additionally, Yahoo will also produce the official site for a new version of "The Apprentice" starring Martha Stewart.

The extension will include versions of "The Apprentice" with Donald Trump, as well as the highly anticipated "The Apprentice" with Martha Stewart. The agreement also allows for future versions of "The Apprentice" following the 2005-2006 television season. The agreement expands on the successful alliance between Mark Burnett Productions and Yahoo! that produced the official sites for the last two cycles of "The Apprentice" and the premiere season of "The Contender."

More about the Burnett/Yahoo relationship in this blog post from January.

Posted by Gary Price on May 4, 2005, 9:28 AM | Permalink

Setting A Date For Search Marketing Day

I'm currently in Toronto for our Search Engine Strategies show here and was at dinner with a number of other marketers last night. Everyone's tired. As usual, search continues to advance at a frantic pace. What we'd all like is a day off -- a truce, a period of no announcements, changes or major news. A holiday.

Talking more, everyone decided that we're over due to have Search Marketing Day. The idea behind it is that on that day, search marketers have some time off. Spend it with your family, friends, pets -- whatever, just have time off to celebrate being involved in a great industry.

Everyone was happy with the suggestion by marketer Laura Thieme that June 21 should be Search Marketing Day. She likes it because it is her birthday -- but it's also often the date of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. What better time to take a day off than the longest day?

The only problem is that this year, WebmasterWorld has a big event that begins that day. So declaring a day off doesn't work well for that same day.

So what do you think for alternatives? Please come discuss in a new forum thread I've started, What Date For Search Marketing Day?

I like July 15 as a middle of the year type of date. But maybe every first Monday of June should be the day? Third Wednesday of August. Come over and discuss when you think the date for Search Marketing Day should be set, plus suggestions on how it should be celebrated beyond taking time off.

I can tell you that whenever it's set, we'll be pushing for Google and any other search engine that does special logos for holidays to do one for the inaugural Search Marketing Day.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 4, 2005, 8:43 AM | Permalink

Google Faces Customer Satisfaction & Advertiser Trust Issues

Google: biting the hand that feeds it? from CNN Money shows Google slipping in some aspects of customer satisfaction among advertisers. An annual survey of 200 ad executives about customer happiness showed that Google rose overall from seventh place last year to fifth place this year. However, it had a dramatic drop from 11th to 18th in the "responsiveness and accessibility" subcategory. The story then goes beyond the report to survey several advertisers not happy about other issues. One big gripe? Google bigfooting search marketers by trying to grab accounts away from them. Some past reading related to this issue, for Google and others:

• Search Publishers Not Friends Of Agencies, SEMs
• Advertisers Fears That Search Buys May Help Competitors
• Google AdWords Professional Status Not Good Enough For Google
• Is Google ever going to figure out how to handle Ad Agencies?
• Google Adwords Professionals - First batch of qualified SEMs due this week
• Agency Commission Or Discount Offered On Search Ads?

By the way, Yahoo comes out better than Google in the survey, ranked second overall and seventh in the responsiveness subcategory. AOL comes behind Google, ranked 14th and 21st, respectively. MSN is further behind, 19th and 43rd. Ask is also behind, ranked 20th and 27th.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 4, 2005, 8:24 AM | Permalink

Searching for a Good Book

Google and Amazon both offer "search inside the book" features that allow you to explore the contents of printed books. Unfortunately, they both have limitations that prevent you from annotating, copying or printing content. And there's no explicit way to limit your searches just to printed book content with either service.

That didn't stop our intrepid news search editor from finding ways around these limitations. In today's SearchDay article, Going Under Cover with Book Search Tools, Gary shows you how to get the most out of Google Print and Amazon's Search Inside the Book programs, and provides a tour of a number of other full-text book services that don't have the limits of the biggies.

Posted by Chris Sherman on May 4, 2005, 7:53 AM | Permalink

Google Lowers Urchin Price, Continues Discounting Strategy

This afternoon the Googleplex announced that a monthly subscription to Urchin on Demand, a web analytics service, has been reduced by 60% to $199 per month. Google acquired Urchin about a month ago.

The $199 per month Urchin On Demand also now includes report profiles for up to fifty individual websites (Urchin's previous offering included reporting for only one site). The price includes up to 100,000 pageviews per month. Users can add one million more pageviews for only $99 more per month.

In addition to the reduced price and increased number of profiles, Urchin On Demand is now able to import -pay--per-click costs directly from Google AdWords accounts.

By the way, the lower Urchin price is a continuation of Google's trend of discounting products to win marketshare. The Picasa photo software it gave away for free after it was originally for sale at $30. Keyhole was reduced in price. This past post gives some more background on this Google strategy

Posted by Gary Price on May 3, 2005, 7:03 PM | Permalink

Profiles of a Few Seattle Area Search Companies

Spotted via Geeking with Greg, is this Seattle Times article: Entrepreneurs seek new ways to mine Web, that takes a look at a few Seattle area search companies including:

+ Nervana (enterprise search and a great name for a Seattle company)
+ SingingFish
+ Findory
+ Infospace
+ The Work of Professor Oren Etzioni at the University of Washington
Dr. Etizioni was the co-developer of Metacrawler and is now working on the Know-It-All project.

To address the problem of accumulating large collections of facts, we are developing KnowItAll --- a domain-independent system that extracts massive amounts of information from the Web in an autonomous, scalable manner.

More about KnowItAll here (a paper from the WWW2005 conference; PDF) and here (from WWW20004; PDF.

Posted by Gary Price on May 3, 2005, 1:15 PM | Permalink

Espotting Plans Pay-Per-Call Service in the UK

Netimperative reports that pay-per-call advertising is coming soon to the United Kingdom via a planned service from Espotting. SEM firm Think UK has been hired to run the service. The article says that the new service will be available in the "coming months."

Postscript: Espotting has denied any partnership or specific timing. More from Netimperative: Espotting denies pay-per-call link.

Posted by Gary Price on May 3, 2005, 1:13 PM | Permalink

Google Signs Deal for Content With InfoUSA

This Dow Jones story and a news release alert us to the fact that Google has just signed a content deal with Omaha-based InfoUSA to license their business database for use with Google Local.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

InfoUSA is a well-known and respected player in the business info marketplace. They provide a variety of databases to marketers, libraries, and others. They also offer a free online telephone lookups (white and yellow pages) for people and businesses.

Yahoo Local has been using data from InfoUSA for a long time. For example, note the "some business information provided by InfoUSA" at the bottom of this Yahoo Local results page.

In addition to compiling business listings, InfoUSA spends time verifying and updating each listing in their database.

Posted by Gary Price on May 3, 2005, 1:01 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Plans to Increase Number of Engineers at Software Subsidiary in India

Computerworld Singapore reports that Yahoo is planning to add 200 new product engineers and support staff at its subsidiary, Yahoo Software Development India, located in Bangalore.

Yahoo Software Development India Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary of Yahoo Inc. created two years ago, currently employs over 300 engineers, Venkat Panchapakesan, the subsidiary's chief executive officer, said on Saturday. The new staff will be added by the end of 2006, he added. The Indian subsidiary is the only Yahoo operation outside of its Sunnyvale, California, headquarters that does product engineering, Panchapakesan said. Yahoo's blogging software was built in India and first deployed in Korea in 2003, he said. The blogs platform is now part of Yahoo 360, a social networking and blogging service that went into beta testing in March.

Posted by Gary Price on May 3, 2005, 12:38 PM | Permalink

RustySearch: A Search Engine Relevancy Challenge

We all know that trying to define and measure search relevancy is quite a challenge. There are so many variables both human and mechanical) that can come into play. Nevertheless, it's important to try. Today, news of a new site from Barry Schwartz (you might know him as RustyBrick) that he calls RustySearch. The site is a search engine relevancy challenge to measure relevancy from one of four randomly chosen engines. Details on how it all works here.

You might also want to take a look at this SEW Forums thread: Coke vs. Pepsi Challenge for Search Engines from about three weeks ago where Barry and others (including Danny) discuss the idea of such a test. This thread has even more links to material about relevancy.

For many non-search geek types (the people who are not likely to take this test) their happy with whatever they find quickly, often not realizing that something else could better serve their needs. We can call it the principle of least effort. However, as I've said many times before, a little bit of user education (I'm talking minutes not hours) on how to create a query and use some of the features many engines offer can help the searcher create precise queries that might produce more relevant results. Perhaps Udi Manber said it best at PC Forum a few weeks ago when he told the audience that search engines are not mind readers. I would also argue that user education also extends to vertical engines and specialized tools. Sure, verticals can produce very relevant results but unless the searcher knows that the engine exists, they can't get these results. In this sense, user education is also how a vertical let's the public know that they are open for business. It's also important to consider the authority (where the info is coming from) and currency of the information being retrieved when looking at relevance. Critical info skills might be more important today than every before.

Posted by Gary Price on May 3, 2005, 11:34 AM | Permalink

Forrester: Search Engine Marketing Will Grow 33% in 2005

Forrester Research has just released a new forecast: Online Marketing Forecast 2005-2010, access to the full text report is fee-based but this news release provides a few highlights:

+ Search engine marketing will grow by 33 percent in 2005, reaching $11.6 billion by 2010. Display advertising, which includes traditional banners and sponsorships, will grow at the average rate of 11 percent over the next five years to $8 billion by 2010.

+ Total US online advertising and marketing spending will reach $14.7 billion in 2005, a 23 percent increase over 2004.

+ Sixty-four percent of respondents are interested in advertising on blogs, 57 percent through RSS and 52 percent on mobile devices, including phones and PDAs.

+ While marketers surveyed believe that online advertising channels, such as search engine marketing, online display ads, and email marketing will continue to become more effective relative to traditional channels, barriers that include a lack of online advertising standards and hands-on experience have kept marketers from fully embracing online channels.

Posted by Gary Price on May 3, 2005, 10:39 AM | Permalink

Fastclick Unveils Contextual Search Ad Program

The Media Post article, Fastclick Takes On Google With Contextual Ads, offers a look at the new FastClick program that launched yesterday.

As expected, online ad network Fastclick Monday began offering contextually relevant text ads--similar to Google's AdSense--to its publishing and advertising clients...Fastclick's entry into contextual search advertising and its initial public offering announced last month are directly related, analysts speculated. "Investors are now going to look to Fastclick to make sure they have a full quiver of arrows," said Gary Stein, a Jupiter Research analyst. "It's important that any company can round out all of their capabilities."

Posted by Gary Price on May 3, 2005, 10:29 AM | Permalink

Snap to the News

Searchblog turns us on to a new site for news search called Newsfilter.com. It could also be called Snap News Search (beta). Yes, Snap.com is now offering a news search tool that allows you to use their technology to search and dynamically modify your result sets from disparate news sources. Overall, an impressive start!

Snap News Search offers the user to dynamically modify their results with words in the title/headline, date and time (something we don't see elsewhere), and source.

Results pages contain two windows. One pane contains a list of results. Another window offers you the option to read the lead of the story and see a live image of the page as you browse the results list. Clicking the page image delivers the complete article. A third click opens the article in a new browser window.

Since Snap is into full disclosure it would be great if they could provide a list of all of the news sites they're crawling.

Postscript: G.L. points out a SiliconBeat post where Mike notes that NewsFilter is not using their own crawl of news sites but rather a feed from Moreover.

Posted by Gary Price on May 3, 2005, 10:14 AM | Permalink

Meet the Webfeed Search Engines

At a recent Search Engine Strategies conference, representatives from some of the major webfeed and news syndication services sat down talked about how to prepare, submit, and subscribe to the various webfeed search engines. In today's SearchDay article, Feeds: A New Channel for Search Marketing, guest writer Shari Thurow recounts the lively panel featuring Bloglines' Mark Fletcher, Feedster's Scott Rafer, Moreover's Jim Pitkow, Topix.net's Chris Tolles and Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny, discussing the opportunities webfeeds provide for both searchers and marketers.

Posted by Chris Sherman on May 3, 2005, 9:33 AM | Permalink

April 2005 Search News Recap Posted

The latest edition of my monthly Search Engine Report newsletter is now online, recapping tops stories in search from the past month. You can read it online or receive it via email for free by signing up here.

If you're a Search Engine Watch member, the latest edition of Search Engine Update newsletter has also been posted. That newsletter carries more items than the Search Engine Report newsletter and goes out twice per month.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 3, 2005, 12:35 AM | Permalink

Ask Jeeves Denies Adware Installing Charge & Other Accusations

Earlier I posted about various accusations made against software distributed by Ask Jeeves -- that it assisted other programs to install themselves unbeknownst to users, that it was tagged as spyware by Microsoft's anti-spyware tool and that it generated log referral spam. Ask Jeeves has responded to deny the accusations. John Park, senior vice president for desktop products at Ask Jeeves, emailed the following:

Ask Jeeves' toolbar products, including My Search and Fun Web Products, are not spyware or adware. Our products do not collect personal information, do not monitor the sites a user visits, do not monitor a user?s behavior on the Internet, do not log or track keystrokes and do not serve or facilitate contextual or pop-up ads. We also do not generate log referral spam. Anti-spyware/anti-adware programs do not flag us, including those from Microsoft, AOL, Norton, McAfee, Symantec and a long list of others.

Since Ask Jeeves acquired ISH we have been working diligently to follow the developing industry best practices with respect to spyware, adware and consumer disclosure. We don't allow our programs to be installed without permission or consent. We take clarity very seriously and even include a visual image of what the Fun Web Product application looks like on the install page (viewed prior to install) to make it perfectly clear what a user will see when they download our product. From what we have seen, this takes disclosure a step beyond the practices implemented by others in the industry.

The area of downloadable applications is rapidly growing and industry best practices will continue to be refined. Consumer and industry feedback continues to be critical as we work to weed out the bad apples ? it?s bad for the consumer and ultimately for business. In [Ben Edelman's] video he highlights an advertising affiliate that installed our toolbar through an unacceptable practice known in the industry as drive-by downloads.

We don?t endorse that activity and explicitly call this out as off-limits in our contracts. We terminated the relationship when it came to our attention. We want consumers to download our toolbars for the great functionality we offer and the volume of decidedly positive feedback combined with the millions of active users who have sent over 1 billion smileys to date seems to indicate people are doing just that.

We will continue to evolve our products in line with industry standards and appreciate the user and industry feedback that helps make our products better.

In my earlier post, I'd mentioned personally seeing one of Ask Jeeves' products flagged as spyware by Microsoft's detection tool. Had things changed since the end of February. Yes, Park responded.

You will see with the latest definition files that we are not flagged by Microsoft or any of the other products that are mentioned below. I personally checked the latest install from Microsoft this evening.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 2, 2005, 11:47 PM | Permalink

Gmail Web Clips: More On Google's Feed Aggregator, Plus Feeds From Google News

Checking my Gmail account today, I discovered that I'm apparently now one of the few with access to the new Gmail "web clips" feed reading feature I mentioned earlier. Here's how it works and some more details.

You'll see feed headlines shown at the top of the Gmail page, above all the messages in your Inbox, when viewing an email or anything within Gmail. Here's a screenshot:

In that example, "Reuters: Oddly Enough" is the title of the feed currently being viewed. Next to it is a headline from that feed, the hyperlink taking you to the article or post. Next to that is the time the article was posted.

See the words "Web Clip" and the little < > arrows next to it? Those let you move forward or backwards through headlines in the feeds you've subscribed to.

That's it -- a rudimentary feed reader, to say the least. Unless I'm missing something, that's all you can do to view your feeds. You can't click on anything to see all headlines from a particular feed. You can't see a single page with headlines from all sources -- much less headlines and descriptions. All you can do is keep clicking the little arrows.

Odd? Yeah, but I'm sure we'll see it develop. So far, it really seems designed as a serendipitous thing. As you read different email messages, the headlines keep changing -- so it's an easy way to read mail and also perhaps spot a new news item. Or ads! That's because AdSense ads sometimes appear in that area, as well.

Google's Default & Suggested Feeds

By default, you're already subscribed to three feeds:

• Ask Yahoo
• Engadget
• Reuters: Oddly Enough

Why these three? All Google will say is that they were hand-picked with a focus on a good user experience and high quality content.

Want more? Use the Settings option in Gmail, then the Web Clips option. Look below your subscribed feeds, and there's an "Add more clips" link. In turn, that lets you pick from choices in News, Business, Lifestyle, Fun, Tech and Sports categories.

How did the 10 or so feeds featured in each category -- such as ABC News, NPR, Slashdot and Yahoo News: Most Emailed -- get such favored status? Again, Google said only that the choices were hand picked with a focus on user experience.

Google News Gains Feeds

By the way, Google News has some of its own feeds in there:

• Google News - World
• Google News - Business
• Google News - Entertainment
• Google News - Health
• Google News - Sports

Yes, that's right. You can actually get Google News content through a feed without having to resort to workarounds. But bad news, non-Gmail folks. These feeds only work for those within Gmail. I can't find a published address for them. That's kept hidden within Gmail.

You can get Google News alerts for any keyword you wish to track, of course -- but that's sent via email. In contrast, Yahoo News offers actual news feeds to the public right now, as described more here: Yahoo Gains Financial Feeds; A Revisit To Yahoo News Feeds

Also noteworthy is that the feed reader functionality changes slightly when viewing a Google News feed. A new "related articles" link appears next to the posting time and the "Web Clip" text next to the arrows changes to Google News, as shown below:

Add Any Feed & When's This Coming To Everyone?

What if you want something beyond the feeds Google recommends? No problem. You can easily add any feed you like using the Custom Clips option. Just enter the URL of the feed, and away you go.

So I'm lucky in that my Gmail account is enabled -- how about everyone else? Google says it's just a small randomly selected test right now and there's no clear timing on when it will be rolled out to more people. In the meantime, the clipless such as Steve Rubel will have to read about web clips via the Google help pages that he spotted:

• What is 'Clips'?
• What are RSS and Atom feeds?
• Can I read news, blogs, and RSS feeds in Gmail?

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 2, 2005, 9:49 PM | Permalink

Search Engine Watch Forums Live Brings SEM Speed Dating To Atlanta

Search Engine Watch Forums is having its first official gathering, Search Engine Watch Forums Live! As editor of the SEW Forums, I'm looking forward to moderating and hosting this inaugural breakfast event. It's happening on June 28 at the Ritz Carlton in Atlanta, from 8:00am - 1:00pm.

Things will kick off first with a panel on the latest trends, hot topics and issues in today's SEM marketplace. Search marketers Stacy Williams of Prominent Placement, David Williams of 360i and one of Search Engine Watch Forum's own moderators, Christian Griffith aka "Sebastian" will be taking part in that.

After the panel, we'll have organized roundtable topics with discussion leaders to get into specific tactics and SEM strategies. In "speed dating" style, attendees will have a chance to move onto another topic they've indicated interest in during the registration process.

For more information or to register, visit the Search Engine Watch Forums Live site. And if you can't make it, remember that you're always welcome to meet up virtually at the SEW Forums site.

Posted by on May 2, 2005, 9:21 PM | Permalink

Your Logs May Show If You've Been Naughty

Been up to no good with your SEO? Your logs might give you a clue before your pages disappear! David Naylor's Things You Don't Want To See post gives a brief example.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 2, 2005, 8:56 PM | Permalink

Back To Basics: Web Analytic Terms & Log File Analysis

What's the Score? Basic Web Analytic Terminology from Scottie Claiborne at Search Engine Guide is a nice refresher on some basic terms related to web site statistics and analytics. Hits versus page views, what referrer strings can show and so on. When that's whetted your appetite, Log file analysis for search engine optimization from Kalena and Jerry Jordan at Pandia digs in a bit deeper into the basics of key stats you'll want to monitor.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 2, 2005, 8:45 PM | Permalink

Consumer Reports Holding Forum On Search Ad Disclosure

Trust or Consequence: How Failure to Disclose Ad Relationships Threatens to Burst the Search Bubble is the name of free one day conference being backed by Consumer Reports WebWatch on June 9 in Berkeley, California. It aims to explore in an open forum format if better paid ad disclosures on search engines are needed to protect those seeking general and health-related information. There's an impressive list of invited and confirmed speakers, so it should be a good event. Wish I could have made it myself, but my schedule didn't allow for making the trip!

Postscript: I've moved things around and will participating in the event.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 2, 2005, 8:30 PM | Permalink

Google To Open Office In China -- New Chinese Domains In Use

Google has the go-ahead from China to open its first office there, and new Google China web sites using the .cn domain name are also live at www.google.cn and www.google.com.cn. From Interfax, Approval of Google's plans to expand Mainland China operations will intensify local competition has more details, including that Shanghai is likely to be where Google sets up shop. Want to discuss? Visit our forum threads, Google expecting Chinese market and Purchased google.cn and google.com.cn at million dollars.

Postscript: John Battelle has a few more comments from Google directly on the operation in Clarification on Google and China. Also see the AP story, Google gets license to run China office, for some additional Google comments.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 2, 2005, 8:21 PM | Permalink

Google Ad Ranking System Tweaked

How are ads ranked at Google? Traditionally, it has been the ad's clickthrough rate (CTR) times its cost per click (CPC). Those with the highest resulting score came first. But Google Slightly Changes AdWords Ranking Algorithm from Search Engine Roundtable summarizes a WebmasterWorld thread about a relatively new change (and pretty much unannounced change). The clickthrough rate since January involves all the words of your ad copy, instead of solely being tied to the clickthrough rate of the particular word your ad is showing for. Changes in Google AdWords Ad Rankings Formula at WebmasterWorld has more.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 2, 2005, 8:10 PM | Permalink

Xtra-Google Puts Many Google Searches On One Page

Spotted via Google Blogoscoped, Xtra-Google offers what Google itself should -- an easy way to access Google's many specialty services and a few it doesn't even really offer (such as MP3 search) via a single page.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 2, 2005, 7:59 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Service Marks the Terms "Pearl Hunter" and "Cover Art"

I posted a week ago about a couple of new Google trademarks (technically they're called service marks) and I thought it would be interesting to see if I could find any new service marks that Yahoo had filed for with the US Patent and Trademark Office.
Here's what I found. What new services or programs (if any) they might be telegraphing is (of course) to be determined.

A selected list of words and phrases that Yahoo has filed for service marks with the USPTO, 2004-Present:

+ "COVER ART"
This filing was made with the USPTO less than a month ago.
+ "PEARL HUNTER"
Also filed for less than a month ago.
+ YAHOO 360
Filed for at beginning of March.

Selected 2004 Filings from Yahoo
+ "LIFE IS ALL AROUND YOU. YOU JUST NEED TO FIND IT"
+ "EVEN WHEN YOU'RE OUT, YOU'RE IN"
+ "DIGDIG"
+ "Y20"
+ "SMARTFIT"

Posted by Gary Price on May 2, 2005, 6:44 PM | Permalink

Local Search Means Small Business Motherload

In Online ad sellers think local, News.com revisits why search engines are interested in developing local search. It's a largely untapped vein of small businesses they hope to mine. It touches on things we've heard before, such the difficulty in getting small businesses going online, plus looks briefly at how online players are trying to convince them to make the leap.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 2, 2005, 6:40 PM | Permalink

CNN Accused Of Blog & Search Spamming To Improve PR

CNN gets accused of blog spam and search engine spamming. CNN on the Spam Attack? from Wired explains how blogger Nick Lewis spotted what he felt was a strange post that was pushing CNN programs. He spotted similar posts on other blogs.

That's the blog spam part, and pretty easy to see why you could think that's a guerrilla PR campaign going on, though CNN denies this in the Wired article. But the search engine spamming part? That's a bit more tricky.

Lewis claims that along with comments were a string of repetitive keywords, which he shows in his explanation of what was spotted. For example:

blog blog blog blog cnn cnn cnn blog blog cnn cnn cnn

He suspects this was placed on this blog to make it seem like he was keyword stuffing, to make his pages attract a spam penalty. The idea is that by doing this, his page would get knocked out of "the first hundred results for the google search 'CNN Blogs'"

Frankly, if he wasn't in the first 10 results, CNN wouldn't even care. No one would -- he's virtually invisible to anyone doing that search. More important, while possibly such a tactic MIGHT work, it was be far easier simply to fire up 10 official CNN blog and do optimization and link building to push whatever anti-CNN sites you disliked out of the top results.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 2, 2005, 6:35 PM | Permalink

Ask Jeeves Accused Of Pushing Adware

Anti-spyware writer Ben Edelman pokes at Ask Jeeves in his Does Jeeves Ask for Permission? article up today. He finds that the Ask Jeeves My Way and My Search software also installed programs without permission or consent.

These were programs gained by Ask Jeeves through its acquisition of Interactive Search Holdings last year. They've had a long history of similar acquisitions before the purchase, but it was something that Ask Jeeves denied. From our article about the purchase, Ask Jeeves: Why Buy Interactive Search Holdings:

Rumors that Interactive Search Holdings search toolbars contained adware or spyware have dogged the company for years. [Ask Jeeves CEO Steve] Berkowitz denies that current versions of the toolbars contain spyware, though he acknowledges that there were problems with policies of early distribution partners.

"[Interactive Search Holdings] policies are extremely clean," he said. "They're working very very hard to clean this stuff up. These guys don't even do an automatic update. They've spent a lot of time working with the spyware companies to make sure that they're not considered spyware."

The issue came up again earlier this year in the Is Ask Jeeves Behind Browser Hijackers? on the martinibuster blog, where the Ask tools were accused of generating log referral spam. The issue of them being spyware was raised as part of that.

I had a message out to Ask Jeeves about this at the end of February, because not long after seeing the post above, I noticed that the new Windows AntiSpyware tool had spotted my installation of one of the Ask tools and came back with a message calling MyWebSearch a "Toolbar Browser Hijacker" that installs adware, spyware and changes browser settings.

I was told MSN was supposedly clearing Ask Jeeves of these accusations but hadn't had a chance to follow up further. I've sent a message out for an update and comment about these new accusations.

Edelman also makes criticisms about the Ask Jeeves toolbar being pitched at kids and poor disclosure in a separate article: Ask Jeeves Toolbar Installs via Banner Ads at Kids Sites.

Postscript: Ask Jeeves has denied the accusations. See the Ask Jeeves Denies Spyware Charge & Other Accusations follow-up post.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 2, 2005, 6:00 PM | Permalink

SBC SMARTPages and YellowPages.com Announce New Flat-Rate Advertising Packages

According to a Clickz story, SBC's SMARTPages and YellowPages.com are announcing flat-rate pricing packages hoping to get more local customers advertising online. The program will be run by TrafficLeader.

TrafficLeader's role is to buy keywords on each search engine on behalf of advertisers, guaranteeing them a certain number of clicks a month. TrafficLeader also enables the Yellow Pages companies to aggregate reporting data and pass them along to the merchant.

More in this news release.

Posted by Gary Price on May 2, 2005, 5:06 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Plans Customer Service Center in Oregon

News from Oregon that Yahoo is planning to open a customer service center in the Portland suburb of Hillsboro. The story says that the center will employ about 170 people.

Last week, we blogged about Google's plan to open a tech center in The Dalles, Oregon.

Posted by Gary Price on May 2, 2005, 4:47 PM | Permalink

New Study Benchmarks Desktop Search Tools

The folks over at Pandia have alerted us to a new benchmark study from the University of Wisconsin's E-Business Consortium that looks at 12 desktop search tools.

The 15 page report: Benchmark Study of Desktop Search Tools, is available in full text as a PDF file.

The benchmark criteria that were used for the evaluation included usability, versatility, accuracy, efficiency, security, and enterprise readiness. When all the results were reviewed, it was determined that most of the desktop search tools were still too immature for significant business use due primarily to a lack of mature security and overall manageability.

Overall, Copernic Desktop Search gets the top ranking. At number two is Yahoo Desktop Search. Rounding out the top three is Wizetech Archivarius 3000, from a Canadian-based Wizetech Software.

Posted by Gary Price on May 2, 2005, 4:29 PM | Permalink

Summarizing The Search Engine Meeting

Gary blogged earlier about presentations being online from the annual and venerable Search Engine Meeting. Short of time? Search Engine Meeting Low-Down (Boston) from the Search-Science blog from Xan Porter is a nice read that hits the highlights of presentations.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 2, 2005, 4:09 PM | Permalink

Google Logo-Snubs England (& The US, California, ...)

The Register is mildly up in arms that Google failed to do a special logo for England's national day, St. George's Day, last month: Google in St George snub outrage.

To be fair, half of England seems to ignore the day itself. I took the boys up to nearby Salisbury where the promised festivities were less than thrilling -- though what was billed as the largest St. George's flag in England was hanging off the Salisbury Guildhall.

The Register's outrage isn't dimmed by the email it reprints from Google pledging to respect the diversity of users by perhaps rotating in a logo in the future.

For the record, Google did do a St. George's Day logo last year and in 2002. In fact, that's twice more than US-based Google has ever done a special logo for the national holiday of the United States, the Fourth Of July, from what I can see when viewing the Google logo archive.

In fact, while I proudly fly my California state flag outside the house every September 9th in honor of California's Admission Day -- California-based Google continues to snub the great state of my birth.

Perhaps one solution might be to let Google's country-specific web sites ease the burden. Google's UK web site could easily carry a St. George's logo every year -- along with logos for other events in the United Kingdom.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 2, 2005, 3:39 PM | Permalink

Google Video Adds New Sources

News from the Googleplex today that several new video content sources have been added to Google Video.

However, Google Video (beta) still only provides thumbnail images of video content. In other words you can search the video but can't view it via the service. No word on if/when full motion video will become available.

Today, along with the chance to keyword search video feeds from several Bay Area television stations, you're also able to search content from 12 new sources including:

+ CNN
+ Fox News
+ Discovery Channel
+ TLC
+ Animal Planet
+ Travel Channel
+ Discovery Health Channel
+ Others

It's worth mentioning that Blinkx.TV provides searchable access to content from some of the same sources including the Discovery Channel, Fox News, and \CNN. Blinkx.TV also provides the option to limit by source and VIEW the full motion video on your computer.

Posted by Gary Price on May 2, 2005, 3:07 PM | Permalink

Gaming Local Search Reviews: Part 2

Earlier this month, I pointed out an article about local search and the merchant review systems often offered in them. Will we see these abused or gamed? Yahoo! Local Reviews Biased has Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable doing exactly that, to give his company a positive review, in a test at how the system works. Barry then immediately turned himself in to Yahoo, and to its credit, the review was promptly removed. But down the line, will see campaigns to skew reviews that aren't easily spotted?

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

Barbara Bush Googles

Spotted via Google Blogoscoped, former US first lady Barbara Bush quipping to a college graduating class that "I can Google with the best of you."

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

Forget Desktop Search -- Tag Your Content With Longhorn

While Apple's touting its bundled desktop search as a leading feature of its new OS, Microsoft is downplaying the idea that many once had that desktop search would be a killer component of its next-generation Windows operating system, Longhorn. Will Longhorn Try to Rival Google? from the IDG news service write that Longhorn will instead aim to provide visualization and tagging tools to help people better organize information. While I've been dubious about tagging for web wide search, I'm a huge fan when it comes to desktop matters. My Photo Search: Google Picasa 2 Vs. Adobe Photoshop Album 2 looks at that in more depth.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 2, 2005, 1:21 PM | Permalink

New Apple OS Out With Bundled "Spotlight" Desktop Search

The new Apple operating system is out, "Tiger" OS X 10.4, featuring an integrated desktop search called "Spotlight" as a leading feature. Product Review: Apple spotlights hard-drive searches with latest OS from the Seattle-Post Intelligence gives it a thumbs-up.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 2, 2005, 1:06 PM | Permalink

Gigablast Gets Bigger and Adds Access to ODP

Over the weekend, Gigablast increased their total page count about 4 million pages from 1.5 billion pages to 1.504 billion pages. I also noticed that Gigablast now provides access to the Open Directory (DMOZ) database.

Posted by Gary Price on May 2, 2005, 1:02 PM | Permalink

Search: A Part Of Our Lives

How "search" is redefining the Web — and our lives from the Seattle Times has a nice look at how search engines developed into part of our everyday lives. Some history, observations and a look forward on how they might get even more personal with us.

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

Newspapers & Yellow Pages Selling For Search Engines

Ad Agents for the Search Engines from the New York Times looks at how newspapers and yellow pages are helping small businesses get online by selling them search ads.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 2, 2005, 12:43 PM | Permalink

Search Campaign On Hold, But Conversions Keep Happening!

Search Advertising and Conversion Lag Times from Fredrick Marckini at ClickZ looks at how a halted campaign still kept racking up conversions -- and why it's crucial to understand the lag time involved in a buying cycle, to better understand how well a campaign is working.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 2, 2005, 12:33 PM | Permalink

Yahoo and Local Directory Provider Dex Media Announce Partnership

Dex Media, the official provider of yellow and white page directories for Qwest Communications in 14 states, is announcing a deal with Yahoo that will make local content/listings from Dex Media advertisers available at Yahoo Yellow Pages and at Yahoo Local. Dex also offers its own online directory at DexOnline.com.

If Dex Media sounds familiar, it should. In November, we posted about a content sharing arragement they had just made with Google.

Here's a list of the 14 states where Dex Media is a local directory provider:
Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

More in the news release.

For a recent article on Dex, see also Online move not easy path for Dex to take from the Denver Business Journal.

Posted by Gary Price on May 2, 2005, 12:25 PM | Permalink

New Services Coming to Yahoo 360; Localized Versions of 360 Planned

Paul Brody, director of community products at Yahoo, tells the IDG News Service that new features are in the works for Yahoo 360, Yahoo's recently released (a limited beta) social networking/info sharing tool. For example, 360 users will be able to share RSS feeds from disparate sources and material (photos, music, etc.) from non-Yahoo applications. Brody tells IDG that 360 will become widely available in the next few weeks. Also, "localized" versions of Yahoo 360 in some European and Asian countries are coming soon.

More in the article: Yahoo Blogging Service Boosts Content. Thanks to S.C. at LS for the news tip.

Posted by Gary Price on May 2, 2005, 12:00 PM | Permalink

Seattle Times On MSN's Road To Finding Search

Seattle Times technology reporter, Kim Peterson, offers an in-depth review and history Microsoft's search efforts in the article: Microsoft learns to crawl.

Posted by Gary Price on May 2, 2005, 11:50 AM | Permalink

Clusty and Indeed.com Partner to Offer New Service

The new and impressive job listings metasearch database, Indeed.com and Clusty, the metasearch engine offering dynamic clustering of results from Vivisimo that debuted last September, have gotten together to offer Jobs.clusty.com. It allows the searcher to dynamically cluster job search results from Indeed.com several different ways.

The Jobs.clusty.com homepage presents all Indeed.com listings clustered by state. You can also keyword search the database and then cluster results by topic, company, cities (location), or source (the underlying database or site where Indeed.com gets the listing from). To change the cluster, simply use the pull-down menu option in the left column of a results page.

Jobs.clusty.com might not only be useful service for people looking for employment but also to business and competitive intelligence researchers.

About six weeks ago, Clusty launched another specialty search tool, Gov.clusty.com, that clusters results from U.S. Government "sources" including First.gov, an MSN search limited to .gov sites, and others sites and databases.

Posted by Gary Price on May 2, 2005, 10:29 AM | Permalink

Picsearch Images Come to Lycos

Picsearch, the Stockholm-based provider of image search results to several engines including Ask Jeeves MSN Search have just announced a deal with Lycos to include Picsearch image results on Lycos properties in the U.S. Image search at Lycos is found under their multimedia search tab.

Posted by Gary Price on May 2, 2005, 10:03 AM | Permalink

Searching for that Perfect Gift

Shopping search engines are great for finding just the right gift for special occasions—if you know what you're looking for. If you're still clueless about what to get Mom for her special day next Sunday, consider turning to a "gift recommendation engine," such as Yahoo's newly introduced Gift Finder.

Today's SearchDay article, Searching for a Mother's Day Gift, describes the new service, which is easy to use and returns some interesting gift ideas that you may not come up with on your own.

Posted by Chris Sherman on May 2, 2005, 9:17 AM | Permalink

Search Your Gmail with Google Desktop Search

If you've been wanting an option to keyword search your Gmail using Google's desktop search tool, your wait is over. A 105K plug-in was made available late last week on the GDS site called, "Larry's Gmail Indexer" (beta). It uses GMail's POP access feature to make your Gmail indexable. It's developer, Larry Gadea has more info and links to other GDS plug-ins on his site.

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

The Search for Music

I'm a frequent user of AllMusic.com, a wonderful specialized database full of musician bios, track listings and much more. One feature (similar services are available at ITunes and elsewhere) is the ability to browse/search for music by mood, genre, theme, instrument, etc. In other words metadata has been entered for each song title.

Now, word of a specific research project at Sun Microsystems that makes song recommendations by actually analyzing the audio. It's called "Search Inside the Music."

The [Sun] technology analyses features such as rhythm and beat strength to categorise the music. It then searches for files with similar attributes...Because the analysis is such a compute-intensive task, he [developer Paul Lamere] expects that users will acquire the data from a server or have it bundled with the song at the time of purchase. The analysis is further augmented by metadata concerning the tracks' genre

Music Information Retrieval is rapidly expanding area of IR research.

The VNUnet.com article: Sun unveils all-knowing music library, has more including a reminder that SITM is only a research project and at this point Sun has no plans to commercialize the technology. You can also listen to a presentation by Lemere about Music Information Retrieval here. Want to learn more about music IR? Here's a place to begin.

Posted by Gary Price on May 1, 2005, 1:25 PM | Permalink

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