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June 26, 2005 - July 2, 2005

Good News -- Ian Turner Found!

Search marketer Ian Turner, missing since last Sunday, has been found. More details to be found on this Threadwatch thread, as they emerge.

Postscript: Dave Naylor has details sent via Ian of what happened here: Ian Turner Last Update.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on July 1, 2005, 6:14 PM | Permalink

New Web Engine From China Now Online

Word that Chinese portal provider Sina has launched a new search engine named iAsk.

According to an AFX story the engine was developed internally and will retrieve both Chinese and English language material.

Additional details in this news release.

If you visit the iAsk home page, you'll spot a set of graphical icons located directly above the search box that point to various iAsk services. If you mouseover these icons you should see them expand. I wonder if iAsk is paying homage to the short-lived "Google X" tool or just to Mac OS X? (-:

It's also interesting that Sina decided to use iAsk as its English name. It sure sounds very similar to another search engine based in Oakland, CA. Of course, Mr. Jeeves might be changing his name soon. Sina is a publicly traded company in the U.S. In fact, both Sina and Ask Jeeves are traded on the NASDAQ.

Posted by Gary Price on July 1, 2005, 10:10 AM | Permalink

Amazon Sued Over Copyright Infringment In Google-Powered A9 Image Search

Amazon Sued for Copyright Infringement from the Associated Press covers how Amazon is being sued by Perfect 10, an adult magazine and web site, over Perfect 10 images apparently appearing in Amazon-owned A9 image search results. Those results are powered by Google, which we've previously blogged about being sued by Perfect 10 back in November.

Posted by Gary Price on July 1, 2005, 9:22 AM | Permalink

Search Forums Roundup: July 1, 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 Sued For Click Fraud - SEW Live in Atlanta - New Yahoo MyWeb 2.0 & MyRank - Google Getting New Personalized Search - Does Advertising Make Sense If You Have Top Organic Listings? - Google launches Video Player, and more.

Posted by Chris Sherman on July 1, 2005, 9:20 AM | Permalink

Happy Canada Day; Ask Jeeves Posts Holiday Logo

To Our Canadian Readers, Happy Canada Day!!!

Here's the holiday logo posted on Ask Jeeves. I didn't spot a holiday logo when I visited other engines this morning.

AJ Canada

Posted by Gary Price on July 1, 2005, 8:52 AM | Permalink

News of a Google "Premium Content" Program Begins Surfacing

Word of a "deep web" initiative that will make some premium content accessible on Google is beginning to leak out.

According to the Beta News story: Google Indexing Subscription Content, Google is currently testing a service that will allows publishers with restricted (aka fee-based or subscription) content to have their material crawled and indexed. Searchers will then be able to view free previews on Google results pages.

Premium content will be indexed and tagged as paid, and will be displayed in a special content area on the right side of Google's search results underneath the AdSense advertising links.
Some paid articles are "first click free" and will appear within Google's "natural" aggregated search results - if the participating publication decides that the content should be accessible when Google is the referrer.

As Danny points out in the BetaNews article, Google already has "limited agreements" with content providers to make some of their "deep web" material accessible. The fact that Google is testing a premium service is no surprise. Let's also not forget that Yahoo recently launched their Yahoo Subscriptions service that provides access to premium content.

Use Your Google Wallet
I don't think it's a stretch to think that Google Wallet will eventually be used to pay for premium content. For example, a searcher finds a "premium" article and then is able to use their their Google Wallet account to pay for immediate access to the full text.

Online info providers like LexisNexis, Dialog, and Factiva offer services where you can search some of their databases for free and then pay for individual articles or files with a credit card. These "pay as you go services" have been available for several years.

Get Some Premium Material for Free
The same day that Yahoo Subscriptions was launched, database publisher Thomson Gale announced the release of a service called called AccessMyLibrary.com that will make some premium content discovered via both Yahoo and Google available for free via your local library.

If you're interested in accessing numerous specialty databases full of premium content, check out my story about the resources that many public libraries make available for free via the web. All you'll need is a library card.

Want to discuss? Visit our forum thread, Google's First Click Free.

Posted by Gary Price on June 30, 2005, 6:08 PM | Permalink

Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves, AOL, A9 Agree To Release Everything At Once

Worried that one of their competitors might release something that hasn't yet been released this week, major players have agreed in principle to unveil all products currently in development as of 6pm Pacific Time tonight.

Called the "Piñata" plan, because of how searchers are to be showered with new search products of all types in one go, the deal was brokered early this morning by tired public relations officers at the major search engines, after equally tired reporters lost the energy to answer further email, phone calls or even blog an additional sentence about anything.

One fear in arranging the deal was that after everything that's already come out this week, there were no search goodies left. But Google checked on a little known feature of its marketing department. There's a big gumball machine usually kept brimming with products in development. Whenever it looks like someone might not write something about Google, in goes a penny and out comes a nice new product to announce, in beta of course.

Fortunately, while Google's product gumball level was lower than usual, it still had plenty left. But even informing its competitors that it was good to go on Operation Piñata was fraught with the usual competitiveness.

On hearing of the Google product gumball machine, Yahoo immediately announced that it had its own gumball machine full of products, but one that was better due to the social aspect of allowing anyone to operate it, not just selected people. It had even been tagged *.* by many in the know, to represent how it covered everything.

MSN then responded that it had a gumball machine in development. But MSN self-admitted that it was the third horse in the gumball machine race, with Robert Scoble adding further depression when he blogged that "Google's gumball machine is kicking our ass."

MSN then bounced back with confidence:

"Give us six months, and our gumball machine will be so full of products that no one will doubt us," replied several top level executives, speaking to various children in various parts of the world.

As expected, AOL was easily able to come aboard after having dropped the walled garden around its own machine. As for A9, it announced Open Gumball. In this plan, anyone with product launches can easily integrate them into A9, relieving it of the burden of developing stuff itself.

I know, it's not April Fool's. But I thought we could use a little break. And people scoffed at the idea of search marketing day. Hey, if you'd all just have picked a date, you'd be relaxing right now. Well, you can still comment and suggest at the forums: Vote On Day For Search Marketing Day!

Anyway, after getting a zillion emails as reported by The Onion of search blogs, Gray Hat Search Engine News, I'm a bit punchy. Then again, Chris has apparently been spending all the money I've been giving him for fine liquor and whole-grain snacks on other things, degrading my mental health.

Huh? There's a diagram that explains it all: Danny Sullivan Will Eat Himself. Geez, there's even a forum thread, which makes Gary depressed. He blogs and blogs but doesn't get on the diagram and doesn't get a thread. Someone, please illustrate something about Gary. As for Elisabeth, she's cool. She found a mountain with snow on it still somewhere...

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 30, 2005, 5:19 PM | Permalink

Earnings Season is Just a Few Weeks Away

Today is the final day of the second quarter which means that we're just a few weeks away from another round of quarterly earnings. Here's a small list of when earnings will be released and the time of the conference call (if available) for a few of the companies we follow. As you'll see, several have yet to post the info on their sites. Yahoo goes first and a couple of days later it will be time for Google and Microsoft.

Yahoo
July 19, 2005
Conference Call: 5:00pm EDST

Google
July 21, 2005
Conference Call: 4:30pm EDST

Microsoft
July 21, 2005
Conference Call: TBA

Ask Jeeves
TBA

Gurunet/Answers.com
TBA

Looksmart
TBA

Posted by Gary Price on June 30, 2005, 4:14 PM | Permalink

Possible Copyright Violations Found in Google Video Database

Via our colleagues at Inside Google and Google Blogoscoped, we learn of several examples of copyright material apparently being distributed without permission via Google Video.

Peter Chane, senior product manager for Google Video, told Danny earlier this week that Google conducts a "very superficial review" of video that people upload to the service. He said they're primarily looking for porn and copyright violations and would remove violations they don't catch if reported.

Well, it seems like Google's review process has some kinks in it.

As Nathan documents, he was able to find and view for free, all 130 minutes of Matrix Revolutions, epsidoes of The Family Guy, and a clip from The Daily Show.

Meanwhile, Now playing on Google: 'Matrix,' 'Family Guy' from News.com today points out that some of this content has been in the Google database for several weeks, as submissions have been allowed before the new live video feature opened to the public.

For example, Matrix Revolutions has an upload date of June 9th.

Posted by Gary Price on June 30, 2005, 2:06 PM | Permalink

The Illustrated Google Master Plan

I've had a laugh when I've seen the marker board "master plan" in one of the lobbies at Google with its copious notes of "do not erase." It covers everything from creating a super portal to low flying aircraft spying on the world. If I remember right, way at the end not shown are some bits about spam detection. I think mind control is on there, also! Andy blogs that a photo of it is now online, so have a look. There is, of course, a real plan as we blogged here. And the next week, there wasn't.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 30, 2005, 1:16 PM | Permalink

A Search Marketer's Look At Yahoo My Web 2.0

For Search Engine Watch members, I've posted A Search Marketer's Look At Yahoo My Web 2.0, which looks at how search marketers may -- or may not -- have an impact on Yahoo's new My Web 2.0 system that Chris Sherman covered yesterday. Among the topics I address:

The difference between "regular" Yahoo versus Yahoo My Web 1.0 and 2.0 from the perspective of what a searcher sees.
A revisit of how My Web 1.0's block and save links work.
How My Web 2.0 pushes down "regular" results, making it important to understand My Web 2.0 better. A screenshot from the story speaks volumes about this. Regular Yahoo is on the left, and Yahoo for a My Web 2.0 user is on the right:

How My Web 2.0 users are more likely to detour into My Web 2.0 results.
How My Web 2.0 result listings are generated uniquely for each user based on what they and their community saves.
How the MyRank system uses a person's community to rank keyword-driven search results, along with other key factors.
How tagged results are the way to see what "everyone" is interested in and how searchers will probably end up in the most popular tags.
How the tags currently seem extremely vulnerable to tag cloud bombing, with an example of me pushing the two highlighted tags below into the top results with little effort:

How Yahoo might solve the problem, along with how it says more defenses are going into place (see also this article I've posted for everyone today on tagging issues).
An long-term strategy to ensure your fresh content is feeding into tag areas in an appropriate, searcher-friendly manner.
How the tags are effectively about to become the world's largest collection of Free For All link pages but how that might also change.
More tips on how to import and feed content into the system, including the need to use RSS 1.0 rather than RSS 2.0 currently, if you want to import categories to become tags.
The wish for Yahoo to roll out a "Save To My Web" button that you can feature to your visitors similar to the Add To My Yahoo button already offered that site owners can display to visitors and tips on getting saved until that happens.
How to appropriate extend your network or reach others who may want to see your content.
Making use of notes for reputation management
How the trust network will grow to impact ranking of all Yahoo results, not just My Web ones.

Though written for marketers in mind, anyone interested in more about how the My Web 2.0 system works should find the article useful. As said, it's offered to those who support Search Engine Watch by becoming members -- support that's greatly appreciated by your hard working editors over here!

Also posted on the blog are these related articles today:

Plus there's Chris Sherman's overview article from yesterday, Yahoo Integrates Personal & Social Search with My Web 2.0. Want to discuss or comment on any of this? Visit our forum thread, New Yahoo My Web 2.0 & MyRank.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 30, 2005, 12:32 PM | Permalink

Have You Seen Ian Turner?

NOTE: Ian has now been found safe. More details as they emerge here.

Search marketer Ian Turner, pictured above, has been missing since Sunday after attending the WebmasterWorld Conference in New Orleans last week.

-- contact details now removed, as no longer necessary --

Where is Ian Turner? at Threadwatch is where Ian's wife Ali Turner is providing updates and news.

Ian Turner Missing has discussion at WebmasterWorld, where Ian is a moderator.

Ian Turner Missing has discussion at our Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 30, 2005, 11:32 AM | Permalink

AOL Begins Rolling Out New Video Search Engine

Today, AOL begins rolling out their new, improved, and free video search service (beta) and so far, pardon the pun, I like what I see.

The new AOL Video search provides access to two databases of multimedia content.

First, you'll find more than 15,000 licensed and originally produced video assets that come from various AOL services, other Time Warner properties (CNN for example), and many content partners like the Associated Press. I've already come across news clips, movie trailers, music videos, and television programs. This material is labeled "Featured Videos" on a search results page.

Second, an AOL Video Search results page also includes listings of open-web video files. This content comes from SingingFish, a multimedia engine that's owned by AOL. This material is labeled as "Video Results from the Web" on a results page.

AOL Video Search offers several new features including:

Inline Playback of Video Clips via the AOL Video Player

A New Relevancy Algorithm

Dynamic Clustering of Video Search Results

Ability to Sort by Results by Relevance, Video Quality, Duration, and Release Date

Preview Video Clips With Animated Thumbnails

Search Every Word Spoken in a Video Clip (Transcript Search)

SingingFish

User Created Playlists

Some video content requires a free AOL Network login to view. If you use AOL Instant Messenger, you're login and password should work here.

Finally, another feature for AOL Network members allows you to have AOL Video Search recommend video clips you might find interesting in a box on the video search homepage. I've noticed that most of the recommendations I've been given today are movie trailiers. This makes sense since I clicked the "Improve these Recommedations" link at the bottom of the box and was asked to complete a very short survey (three questions) from MovieFone, another Time Warner service.

More about AOL Video Search when I have more time to test it out.

The full text of the AOL Video Search announcement is available here.

Posted by Gary Price on June 30, 2005, 10:59 AM | Permalink

Behind the Scenes at the Major Engines

All of the major search engines, to one degree or another, provide insights into what they're working on in their research and development labs. The quality and quantity of what's shared varies widely, but you can get a good sense of what to expect in the future by spending some time with what's available. Today's SearchDay article, What's Cooking in Search Engine Labs shows you where to find the best sources of inside information, both official and unofficial.

Posted by Chris Sherman on June 30, 2005, 10:28 AM | Permalink

Yahoo My Web Tagging & Why (So Far) It Sucks

Yahoo My Web: An eBay For Knowledge

dubious

Where to begin? I could let Gary run lose with a litany of complaints. In fact, he probably will share his own perspectives in the near future. But I'll dive in on the problems as I see them.

Double Duty

Most important, the tags are in the impossible position -- one that even Yahoo admits when I talked with them about this -- of trying to do two things at once that aren't compatible. They are:

Trying to show the freshest content on a topic
Trying to show the best content on a topic

At the moment, neither situation is happening. Freshness is determined by when a document was saved. So if I save the iPod home page under the tag of ipod (link viewable only to My Web 2.0 users), there's nothing "fresh" about it except that I've just added it. The page has been around for ages. The mere act of saving it didn't make it fresh.

In contrast, the new iTunes 4.9 software with support for podcasting is new. If someone adds that, it's a nice way to alert others monitoring this topic to the latest about iPods.

Fresh Versus Best

Tagging at a specialized search engine like Technorati doesn't face the double-duty challenge. Technorati is dealing primarily with feed and blog content. That content by its very nature is fresh in some way. In other words, no one is blogging, "Hey, here's the iPod web site" and feeding it as fresh news via the Technorati ipod tag. People are for the most part -- aside from spammers -- saying something new or offering a fresh opinion about iPods and things related to iPods.

As a result, if you want to tune into the latest stuff about iPods, the relatively specialized and fresh content that Technorati gathers can be found via tags. The new Live 8 area is a good example of this.

In contrast, if you want to find a general good resource about a subject, the tags at Technorati suck. Where's the official Live 8 web site? It's not at the top of the recent blog posts for the Live 8 page. The only reason it's on that tag page at all is because Technorati made a customized, special page for the event. For a regular page, go back to the ipod tag page and try to find the official iPod home page. You won't.

Directories Were For Categorized Best Stuff

Showing a list of the best content on a categorized topic -- as opposed to the freshest content -- is the role traditionally filled by directories such as Yahoo's own Yahoo Directory. Look at the Live 8 category there. It's sparse, surprisingly so (or perhaps not given Yahoo's general abandonment of its directory, but at least it has something at all, unlike the Open Directory). But nonetheless, you have no problem finding the official site and top resources about the event, including Technorati's page!

iPod? When I looked at the Technorati tag page for this, one of the top things listed was someone spamming to sell me sunglasses using a gibberish page which was tagged as being about iPods. Meanwhile, Yahoo's iPod category shows the official site first along with a bunch of resources that look good and are focused broadly about iPods.

Well what about del.icio.us? People are bookmarking general information over there, right, not just fresh stuff! Are they? Whenever I look, it seems like people are busy bookmarking a lot of new stuff.

Looking at the google tag today, I saw bookmarks about the new Google Earth service or the new Google Maps API. How about ipod? Some new stuff, some old stuff -- and the same result you get with Yahoo. Stuff that's "fresh" isn't necessarily so, while the popular view shows me only "recently" popular stuff rather than what I'd call "always popular" such as the iPod home page.

Tagging In The Verticals

How about Yahoo-owned Flickr? Yahoo talked to me this week about how 70 percent of all items on Flickr are tagged, but then it immediately qualified without prompting that because Flickr is a photo service, tagging is much more essential.

Indeed -- if you don't tag a picture, you pretty much have no good way of finding it. Tagging makes much, much sense in a photo space. And I love photo tagging. Check out my Photo Search: Google Picasa 2 Vs. Adobe Photoshop Album 2 article from earlier this year. I tag like a madman with Photoshop Album. I live to tag!

You know what? I'm weird. And people tagging on Flickr? They're weird as well. Weird in a good, organized way. Go talk to people you know who have digital cameras -- not your net happy friends but relatively ordinary people or don't work in some net-related industry. They aren't tagging, not on their computers and not with Flickr. Maybe they will eventually, but it's far more likely it will only happen among the masses in areas where tagging is really useful and essential. For general web search, it's not.

Tagging -- like spontaneity -- has time and a place. For some verticals, as I've written, it may make more sense. That's especially so for relatively little services that aren't going to be spam targets. But tagging web listings in general so far makes me think Yahoo's not going to please anyone.

Stepping Backwards

It gets worse, by the way. Tagging will help you keep all your My Web content you're saving organized, right? But what happens when you've created hundreds of tags for thousands of pages? Are you going to browse pages? Everyone largely abandoned browsing directory categories ages ago because keyword search was like a warp drive to zip you to what you wanted, as I've explained.

If you really do save thousands of pages over time, you're not going to want to rely on tagging to locate things. You'll probably just keyword search. Even more so, that will be essential, as the tags you initially created probably won't hold up as things change over time. Do you retag everything? Chances are, you won't.

Another backwards step example? We've had automated clustering technology for ages that will put content into categories, or tag them, if you prefer that term. Check out Clusty, an example using Vivisimo's long-developed tech.

Yahoo bought two different search engines -- AltaVista and AllTheWeb -- that also had clustering that no longer gets offered. Yahoo's own current technology is even used to create the Yahoo News Tag Soup "tag cloud" that I wrote about last month, tech you can now apply to any site or collection of sites you'd like.

Why not use this tech to organized My Web automatically into tags? At the very lest, it would avoid problems like the "important bookmarks" tag being so large in My Web's current tag cloud, something that annoys Gary to no end.

It might also help with the short term tag cloud bombing problem I'm sure that's going to emerge. Look at this:

That's from the A Search Marketer's Look At Yahoo My Web 2.0 article I just posted. In about 15 minutes of work, I popped up "rio karma" and "mp3 player" into the cloud. They won't last, but neither was I working particularly hard to make it happen. Tag cloud spamming at the moment seems incredibly easy.

Yahoo says it has defenses in place that will stop this, stuff that will ramp up as needed. We'll see. But just having just having to have those defenses at all reeks of another step backwards. Rather than tags solving the search spam problem, an entire new way to eliminate tag spam is going to be developed -- just as search spam has had to endure an arms race of defensive measures.

One more step backwards example. As mentioned, some people are looking to tags to keep up with what's new. There's another way to do this. You create keyword-based news alerts to monitor new stuff.

The problem with the major search engines is that keyword-driven news alerts they offer aren't tapping into blog and feed content. That could be fixed over night. And news alerts help ensure that if you're looking for information on podcasts, you might get it even if someone "tagged" what you wanted in the completely different "podcasting" category.

I still miss Excite's awesome NewsTracker service that we had way back in 1997. But there are plenty of good replacements that will automatically scan for stuff on the news sites, and I covered a few here recently. Hopefully we'll see the majors come up with ways for you to flag keywords you wish to monitor in blog and news content, in the way Technorati's Watchlists work or as PubSub allows, to name only two such services.

Nice To Have, Just Don't Expect Much

It's important to note that the long term plan for Yahoo ISN'T to use tags to refine web results. As my other article out today discusses, Yahoo is depending on trust data to improve results. That will be applied to the keyword data primarily inherent in the pages themselves, as well as link data. Tagging will have a role, but not the dominant one. It certainly won't take over for organizing.

That's one reason my long term view isn't to worry about it. Tags are there for those who want them, which is good -- very good. They will be useful to some people, especially so when limited to particular communities. When Yahoo introduces popularity sorting, general tags viewed by everyone might even get better. But as long as they have to do double-duty, I suspect they still won't fulfill either role particularly well.

In contrast, an alternative would be for Yahoo to experiment with some type of social compilation of its actual directory, similar to what I suggested about an Open Directory alternative last month. Let me tag the "best" stuff on a particular topic separately from something that's just fresh, new, cool but not the best in the long term. It would be interesting to see how those two different lists developed.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 30, 2005, 10:17 AM | Permalink

The Birth of A9 Maps; Block View Imagery Added for More Cities

With the release of API's for Google Maps and Yahoo Maps, non-developers might be start thinking that there is nothing new in the world of online maps to talk about. WRONG. Greg Linden has an overview on his blog about the new online maps from A9.com.

I've only had a short time to use A9 Maps but will try to spend more time using the service over the weekend. However, after just using A9 Maps for a few minutes, I have to agree with Greg, they've has done an impressive job of integrating the maps with the "block view" imagery they began offering in January as part of their visual yellow pages service.

and speaking of the A9 Visual Yellow Pages...

I've also noticed that A9 has added "block view" imagery for several more cities.

Here's a list of the new locations:

Austin, TX

Detroit

Philadelphia

San Diego

San Jose (previously listed with San Francisco/Bay Area)

Posted by Gary Price on June 30, 2005, 10:16 AM | Permalink

Yahoo My Web: An eBay For Knowledge

Yesterday, Chris wrote about the new Yahoo My Web social search network. I expect many will be excited over the tagging component, but I remain dubious for many reasons which I cover in another article I posted today. But whether tagging works is beside the main point. What deserves the most attention, the real key development, are the trust networks for knowledge Yahoo hopes to create.

I got a tour of the new system while it was in development, when I was visiting at Yahoo last month. After seeing what was planned, I remarked to Yahoo senior vice president of search Jeff Weiner sitting next to me that they were building "an eBay for knowledge." Jeff was already literally bouncing at times with excitement in showing the new system, and the remark made him smile even more broadly.

He smiled because that's exactly the Yahoo goal. My Web is Yahoo's community rating system for information. Just as you buy things on eBay depending on ratings to know if you'll trust a seller, My Web is what Yahoo hopes will help you choose more wisely the information you receive, whether you actively check reviews, contribute or remain an ordinary searcher who completely ignores the tagging and social search components.

In short, Yahoo's not banking on tagging -- the categorization of material -- as a way to help people find things better. It's banking that the mere act of saving things at all, even without tags, will give them a clue about what are trusted pages across the web. By looking at patterns of saving, Yahoo will have trust networks to tap into.

Searching Everyone's Pages, Trust Networks & Public Experts

Chris's Yahoo Integrates Personal & Social Search with My Web 2.0 article explains how searchers can seek information posted into the My Web system. My new A Search Marketer's Look At Yahoo My Web 2.0 article posted today for Search Engine Watch members drills down in depth about what exactly you can and cannot locate in the system and how various components work.

The big missing component is that there's no way currently to search against the "Everyone's Web" content, pages saved by everyone using the My Web 2.0 system. In other words, despite there being around 20,000 pages now saved by everyone in the community (and growing fast), you can only keyword search against content saved by those specifically within your "community" of contacts.

That's going to change in the future, once Yahoo's ready. Trust networks are the missing piece to make that happen.

"Eventually, we'll have 'search everyone' enabled," said Eckart Walther vice president of product management at Yahoo. "In the future, you will be able to see what others share. You can choose to add others to your trust network."

By adding others, Walther means that you can choose to add other people's choices to your own My Web collection of documents, even if they don't wish to network formally with you. It's an important point, because it leads into the public experts system that Yahoo wants to see evolve in the system.

Right now, the only people impacting what you search for are those who have agreed to be in your community -- your friends and friends of friends. But what if you see that there is someone you really respect on a particular topic participating? Consider:

If Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the World Wide Web, is tagging content relating to the web, you might want to have him added as an expert to influence what you see.
Like Oprah Winfrey? Then you might want her to have an influence on your results, if she's tagging and saving pages in all her spare time.
Into business with a rebel attitude? If Virgin's Sir Richard Branson were in the system, he might be attractive as an expert for you to add.
Interested in internet and technology law and like what Lawrence Lessig has to say? Then you'd probably like him to help influence your results.

In the current system -- assuming such celebrities were taking part -- you couldn't tap into them unless you knew them directly or were connected by a friend or friend of a friend.

That will change in the future. Not only will you be able to add anyone to your network, but Yahoo wants to evolve the system to help you better spot and use people they'll consider "public experts" you can tap into. Chances are, they won't be giant celebrities. But there will be a range of people regarded as knowledgeable in their areas that you'll likely be able to trust.

In addition, the company will be able to watch how networks begin to expand and rate content. It expects that there will be all sorts of data that can be mined to help rank results better, for when people are doing searches against "Everyone's Web" saved pages.

"We can figure out what all these people have in their trust network. We expect to have several thousand networks emerge immediately. We can then overlay those," Walther said.

Trust Networks As The New Link Analysis

Trust won't just be used against My Web content. Yahoo is going to use trust networks to refine all of its web search results -- in other words, searches on "regular" Yahoo.

In October, I explained to Search Engine Watch members that My Web data was something Yahoo was "considering" using. It isn't considering any longer. The company says My Web data will definitely be used to refine results for everyone in the future.

Why? Yahoo knows that despite all the saving that will go on, people will never save all the billions of pages on the web that it already indexes. Instead, what Yahoo accumulate a lot of information on what various trust networks within My Web seem to like. That can be applied to improve the rankings of all pages it indexes, not just those within the My Web area.

We've had a generation of search engines that depended on on-the-page factors such as word location and frequency. We've had a current second generation that tapped into link analysis, looking at how people are linking and what they say in links.

Personal search is that third generational jump, and Yahoo's flavor of personal search is a social network one that it hopes will improve relevancy in web wide results in the way that link analysis helped drive back spam and improve relevancy years ago.

"We're creating personal anchor text for pages, but by having a trust network, we can actually pretty much eliminate spamming," Walther said.

Will Trust Get Spammed?

Hmm. Link analysis has degraded over the years as people learned how to manipulate links. Aren't there going to be plenty of spammers and people trying to mislead the trust networks? Aren't there going to be a lot of well-meaning people who will nonetheless save horrible pages that they love for all the wrong reasons and categorize them terribly?

Sure. Yahoo admits all of this readily. But Yahoo is confident that these types of extremes will be lost among the overall quality it expects to dominate.

"Even if some there are some false positives in an extended trust network, the odds are much better that you won't get spammed compared to the wide web," Walther said.

Social Search Faces More Trust Vulnerabilities

The trust idea makes a lot of sense. Having a set of trusted pages that a search engine can depend on is at the core of the TrustRank system described in a paper written by both Google and Yahoo employees. If you know which pages you can trust, then you can boost them plus let them boost other pages by weighting what they link to more heavily. But to know those trusted pages, you ultimately need human beings to give you a collection.

MSN's new Neural Net / RankNet system which emerged this week seems to tap into a small set of humans doing trust training. Trust there is hard to influence -- hard to spam -- given you don't even know who is creating the core trusted documents.

The new Google Personalized Search service taps into trust by just looking at what you personally select in your searching activities. Influencing or all-out spamming trust there is even harder than with MSN, in that every individual is creating their own set of core trusted documents.

Advice to marketers looking to do better in both systems above? Very little. Have good content and hope for the best. Be trustworthy. There aren't entry points for you to directly influence the systems.

Yahoo's new My Web 2.0 system is ambitious. By virtual of being a social search network, it has various places where trust can be influenced or potentially spammed. In fact, I've been shaking my head a bit over all the time it's taken to closely examine the Yahoo system to figure out where and how things might go wrong.

Advice to marketers looking to do better in the Yahoo system? Lots and lots, as A Search Marketer's Look At Yahoo My Web 2.0 covers.

Different Paths, Same Goal -- Better Relevancy Through Personalization

All of search marketing lives with a poor reputation that isn't completely deserved. SEO -- and SEM by extension -- took another slam today from Matthew Haughey of Metafilter, who puts us on par with cockroaches.

But search marketers have long influenced search engines in good ways to help them locate quality pages that might otherwise not get found, as I covered recently in Worthless Shady Criminals: A Defense Of SEO. In fact, search engines themselves refer people to companies that do SEO, and some have even hired firms to help them. It's not something that would happen if influencing results was always bad.

So, too, influencing trust isn't necessarily bad. Yahoo's system is vulnerable in being ambitious, but it's also strong in being able to tap into things the other systems can't.

Google depends solely on what you like, but that means your more hip and knowledgeable friend that you trust in other aspects of your life can't have an impact on you when it comes to search. Moreover, want to enlist a trusted expert in a field, as described above? You need an ambitious system like Yahoo's that allows that.

It's also noteworthy that Google isn't ruling out social search. On Tuesday -- before Yahoo rolled out its new service [which I have no doubt Google knew was coming] -- I asked Marissa Mayer, director of consumer products for Google, if its new personalized service might evolve into a social search model down the line.

Marissa talked about having worked on a web recommendation tool project in her pre-Google days and was pretty positive about the upside to such systems, I felt. But her experience also taught there are a lot of nuances that need to be taken into account, she said.

"I think there's a lot of potential there, but there's a lot of infrastructure that need to get built there and built well," she said.

Yahoo certainly feels it has the infrastructure. Vulnerabilities? Yahoo says it has this covered. Defenses, plans, self-correcting systems are all supposedly ready to go. Yahoo says it's not being naive about the attacks both overt and unexpected that its system will face.

As Chris wrote yesterday, "We'll see." That's not a cynical statement, either. It's just a fact -- we'll see if it works, and I hope it does.

As Chris also wrote, Google and Yahoo are on "very different paths" in tapping into trust for personalization. So's MSN, and we'll no doubt see Ask Jeeves bring trust into its personalized system as well.

Everyone's heading for that same goal, unique results that give you the best relevancy. Whatever path they take, let's hope they all get there.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 30, 2005, 10:13 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Maps API Released

It's about six months until the holiday season but web developers who like to work with maps have already been given a couple of gifts. Yesterday, Google released an API for Google Maps and today Yahoo has released an API for Yahoo Maps.

According to the news release the Yahoo Maps API is free, backwards compatible, and builds on the GEORSS standard.

Posted by Gary Price on June 30, 2005, 9:27 AM | Permalink

Google Targeted With Second Class Action Suit On Click Fraud

Google sued over "click fraud" in Web ads from Reuters brings news that Click Defense has filed a lawsuit against Google involving click fraud a few days ago and seek to have it made into a class action. The click fraud detection company says it has found rates of fraud reach as high as 38 percent. Yahoo is not named in this suit. Click Fraud Suit Names Google, Yahoo & Other Search Companies covers the first widely known suit of this type which involves companies beyond Google. Thanks to SEW Forums moderator Nacho who spotted the story -- he's also already got a thread up for people who wish to comment or discuss: Google Sued In Second Click Fraud Lawsuit.

here (PDF; 18 pages)

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 30, 2005, 6:12 AM | Permalink

Downloads of Google Earth Temporarily Halted

P.L. points out that if you're out of luck if you're trying to download the Google Earth software this afternoon.

Why? Here's what a Google spokesperson told SEW:

We decided in advance to limit the number of software downloads in order to provide users with an optimal download experience. We recently reached that limit so we have temporarily paused additional downloads. We expect to offer downloads again very soon.

Posted by Gary Price on June 29, 2005, 7:21 PM | Permalink

Google Maps API Now Available

Google has just announced that they've released an API for web developers who want to create applications with Google Maps.

I'm sure this will spawn even more resources like ChicagoCrime.org and Housingmaps.com.

A paragraph from Google's announcement also notes that Google is considering (no surprise) placing advertising onto Google Maps in the future.

The API is open to commercial and non-commercial websites that are free to consumers. Google will include the Google logo on the map, a link back to Google Maps and may show ads in the future on the maps.

Full Text of Google Maps API annnouncement.

Posted by Gary Price on June 29, 2005, 1:33 PM | Permalink

Spanish Company Prepares to Launch New Web Engine

AFX News has a very brief item today about a web engine from Spain that's preparing to launch.

According to the article, Telefonica Publicidad e Informacion SA (TPI), a leading provider of telephone directories in Spanish and Portuguese, will launch an algorithmically built engine named Noxtrum. The article goes on to say that Noxtrum will utilize technology developed by TPI. The company has a presence in Spain, Brazil, Chile and Peru. Here's a recent WMW thread about visits from the Noxtrum crawler.

Posted by Gary Price on June 29, 2005, 12:16 PM | Permalink

Google and T-Mobile Announce Partnership

A Reuters story reports that Google and T-Mobile are announcing a partnership that will make Google the preset homepage when a T-Mobile customer opens their mobile web browser.

"With the Google homepage we want to tell our customers from the first moment that they are carrying with them the Internet they know from home," T-Mobile board member Ulli Gritzuhn said at a news conference at T-Mobile's headquarters.

The news release also mentions that Google and T-Mobile will work together to market mobile access to the Internet.

The full text of the news release is available here.

Posted by Gary Price on June 29, 2005, 10:13 AM | Permalink

Topix.net Expands to Canada

Just in time for Canada Day, Topix.net, has expanded their service to Canada. Beginning today, Topix now offers a news page for Canada as well as local "news channels" (pages continuosly updated with local news and info) for over 4,200 Canadian cities and towns.

Here's a complete list of the Canadian cities and towns that have local news channels. You can also access a local news channel by simply entering a Canadian postal code into a search box. Topix.net has also added about 700 (and growing) Canadian news sources to its crawl.

Overall, Topix.net currently crawls and aggregates content from over 10,000 sources. More than 300,000 "news channels" are available including one for every US and Canadian public company and Zip Code. Every channel also has an RSS feed. In March of 2005, three large newspaper publishers acquired 75% of Topix net. The company also has partnerships with Ask Jeeves, CitySearch, AOL, Wondir, and Findory.

Posted by Gary Price on June 29, 2005, 9:22 AM | Permalink

The 10 Google Headlines You Don't Want to Read

Google Blogoscoped has posted a spoof of Google's "Press Center" page containing the "10 Google Headlines You Don't Want to Read." My favorite, "Google Announces Motto Change; Now "Only evil when necessary."

Posted by Gary Price on June 29, 2005, 8:43 AM | Permalink

Blinkx Now Offering Podcast Search

BlinkxTV, the rapdily expanding database of multimedia content, has just added more material to their service. Beginning today, you can keyword search podcasts and video blogs and then listen or view the content online. In other words, every word spoken in a podcast or on a video blog is now searchable.

Blinkx automatically creates a searchable transcript using speech recognition technology.

According to Blinkx co-founder, Suranga Chandratillake, more than 150,000 podcasts and video blogs are now searchable. He told SEW Blog that Blinkx is currently adding more than 1,000 items a day to the podcast/video portion of the Blinkx database.

The Blinkx crawler is constanly on the prowl looking for new podcasts. However, if the crawler doesn't find your content, you can submit the url. Chandratillake told me that Blinkx supports the MediaRSS format.

Blinkx is not the first company to offer the ability to conduct a transcript search of podcast material. In April, Podscope from TVEyes began providing this service. A few weeks later, Podscope announced that they would include other audio and video material in their database.

Posted by Gary Price on June 29, 2005, 4:08 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Blends Personal & Social Search with MyWeb 2.0

Sometimes the best way to get information is to simply ask a friend or other trusted associate. Yahoo is now extending that idea to web search with MyWeb 2.0, which allows users to create their own "personal web" collections, and then allow trusted associates to search within those results. It's an intriguing idea that's moving the concept of mass media toward "my media," according to Yahoo's Eckart Walther who led development of the project. Today's SearchDay article, Yahoo Integrates Personal, Social Search with MyWeb 2.0 has an in-depth review of the new service.

Posted by Chris Sherman on June 28, 2005, 11:13 PM | Permalink

Findory and Filangy Also Offer Personalized Web Results

Since it seems to be all about personalized search today, I think it's worth mentioning that Findory has been offering personalized web search results (in addition to personalized news and blog search results) since November 2004.

Comments from Findory CEO, Greg Linden, about Google's latest offering and how Findory's personalized web search results work in this blog post. He also shared the following with me via an e-mail this afternoon:

For example, Google's personalized web search might detect that you tend to be interested in computers and library search results and bias all of your searches generally toward search results about computers and library. In contrast, Findory might notice that you just looked up a movie on IMDB.com and then did another search for a movie, so it would move relevant IMDB search results up higher. Or Findory might notice that you clicked on a research paper on a related topic in a search earlier that day and surface another, related research paper in your latest search results. Findory's
technique is more fine-grained, focusing in on your mission -- what you are doing right now -- and helping you find what you need.

Also, Filangy, the impressive web tool that I've blogged about several times (and use frequently) also provides personalized results based on recency and frequency of usage of pages. Btw, the Filangy beta is now open. You no longer need an invite to check out the service. It's more than worth a look.

Only a Thought
One question I have about personalized web results is:
Does your web search history and what you've already looked at always provide a good indication as to what you want you might want to find during a future search session? I'm not so sure.

A searcher is likely to have interests, needs, and a knowledge base that change from day to day, if not from minute to minute. A tool that would allow a searcher either build a more personalized query or quickly tweak their search results based on criteria important in a specific search situation (intent, time frame, reading level, currency, type of content, features on page, etc.) might be useful. I'm thinking of something along the lines of what Yahoo offers with SmartSort and Mindset.

Posted by Gary Price on June 28, 2005, 2:31 PM | Permalink

Gary's Wish List & More Q&A On Google Video

I spent a little time playing with the new version of Google Video that came out yesterday, then fired off some questions on how to make the video larger, whether some countries can't view video content, when SafeSearch would be coming and some other tidbits. Answers from Peter Chane, senior product manager for Google Video, are below. Also see the other Q&A that Danny did with Peter yesterday, plus there's Chris's article about the service in general. I've also listed some suggestion on how I'd like to see the service improve and other quick observations below.

There is no method to find just user contributed content. This would be useful, especially if you're after live video. Will it come?

We don't offer this feature yet. We have plans to add it soon although I don't have a timetable just yet.

Is there a way to see the content in another media player other than Google's? Or to at least make the video playback box larger? And will there be a way in the future to save files for viewing on portable devices or when offline?

Over time, we'd like to help content producers reach as many users as possible. If users use a portable video device to view content, we'll do our best to deliver content to devices like that [in the future].

If you double click on the video window it goes to full screen. Although the experience is inconsistent today, since the video quality isn't uniform, so we're not promoting the double click behavior.

NOTE: To see the video in full screen, you need to double click when the video is already playing. Double clicking on a still frame only starts the video playing in regular size.

When searching within titles on Google Web Search, the intitle: command is used. But with Google Video, it's the title: command that's promoted. Why the inconsistency?

First I've heard about this! I'll look into it.

SafeSearch doesn't yet work with Google Video. Will it be coming?

Yes, although we don't have a timeframe for this just yet.

How do I see the video at the contributing web site itself? Not all the video pages have "About this show" information that explain this, such as this example.

When a user uploads video to us, we ask them for a URL that's related to the video. We use that URL as the link in the upper left [corner, under the "About this show" heading. If they don't include a URL, it doesn't appear like in your example. We hope that more uploaders add URLs since users may want to refer to a website for more information.

Google Blogoscoped posted an item about some Google Video not being accessible from Germany. Are there locations where video cannot be viewed online?

Google Video is targeted to U.S. users for the time being, though people in most of the world can see it by visiting the website. For India, France, Germany, South Korea, and China, we are reviewing some legal issues before letting users in those countries play back videos.

Observations

In addition to the Q&A above, I also had some addition comments and suggestions for the service:

As mentioned, not all video uploaders are providing About information. I think that should be required, before Google will allow video to go live on the site. For example, we know that the International Olympics Committee keeps a very close watch on its content. But do they know that this badminton video clip is being offered? Source information would reassure me that someone perhaps had the right to post it (and if you suspect a copyright violation, you can report it, as explained more here). In addtion, better meta data from the outset will also make for a better database and better results as Google Video grows larger in size.
Right now, just finding "viewable" content is a challenge. We know that more user submitted video content is coming, but I wonder how much is in the database as of today? I ran the following searches and found no viewable video in the first 20-30 results.
- basketball
- iraq
- New York City
- horse
- iPod
- britney spears
When About/Source information is known, such as with this example, that info should also be displayed in the results snippet along with the upload date.
We always talk about using advanced search tools and syntax for more precise results when conducting many types of searches. Here's a great example. Compare a Google Video search for Eric Schmidt with one for "Eric Schmidt." The search without quotation marks (use "" to search run a phrase search) produces a results list with the first three results containing not even a mention of the the name Eric Schmidt. However, the search for "Eric Schmidt" offers a better, more precise set of results.

Posted by Gary Price on June 28, 2005, 1:17 PM | Permalink

Government Report Says MSN Search Adult Filter Most Effective

A new report from the Government Accountability Office says that the adult filter at MSN Search is more effective at blocking adult content than similar filters at Google and Yahoo.

From an Information Week article:

MSN uses a filtering system similar to the one used by the peer-to-peer file-sharing program Kazaa, which identifies titles and metadata to effectively block pornographic and erotic images. Yahoo uses a system that requires users to designate specific words to be blocked, which GAO contends still lets porn sneak by. The GAO did not provide details on Google's filtering technology but said it was not as effective as MSN's system.

"When searching Google using a known search word, we were able to download 79 images, of which 11 were adult erotica," Linda Koontz, GAO director of information management issues, wrote in a 74-page report. "Similar to [peer-to-peer site] Morpheus' filter, Yahoo's filter was largely ineffective in blocking pornographic and erotic images."

Interested in reviewing the complete 74 page (PDF) GAO report? You can find a copy here. Highlights from the report (PDF) are also available.

Posted by Gary Price on June 28, 2005, 12:44 PM | Permalink

NetRatings: Google Most Popular In May, But Trend Is No Real Trends So Far

Concluding what's turned into a series of the latest search popularity ratings today (see also WebSideStory, Hitwise), new stats now posted from Nielsen//NetRatings show that ... wait for it ... Google was the most popular search engine last month, based on the percentages of searches performed there by those within the US.

No surprise. Google was tops last month, and the month before, and the month before. What's more interesting is the chart at the bottom of the NetRatings stats page I've updated. It gives you the trend for Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL since the beginning of the year and underscores why it's a bad idea to get excited over month-to-month changes.

Google's cracked the 48 percent mark! Yes, this month. But it was as low as 46 percent of all searches in February. Overall, it's stayed relatively consistent at the 47 percent range. That's the trend -- relatively consistency.

Yahoo's had little movements, with a downswing in May. Oh no! But it's tiny, and Yahoo's had upswings as well. Overall, Yahoo's "trend" is to be solid around the 21 percent mark.

MSN had all that excitement from some when it showed a boost in February. The ads are working! Microsoft is on the path to victory! Instead, the trend is that MSN has returned to the 12 percent range it had before the campaign. Trend? The temporary boost seems just that, a temporary one so far.

Meanwhile, there's AOL. It just pushed into the 5 percent range. Question is, will the next few months see this as a new level for the service, or will it slip back into 4 percent territory.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 28, 2005, 12:14 PM | Permalink

Google Web Results, Advertising Begin Appearing on Univision Site

I posted an item yesterday that a deal between Google and Spanish language broadcaster Univision, was in the works. The article that I pointed to mentioned that the partnership would be coming next month. Well, it looks like partnership has already begun.

If you run a web search from the Univision site, you'll now find web results "optimizado por Google." Results pages also contain sponsored links from Google. It's also possible to search English language material from the interface. You'll even find lists of popular Spanish language queries.

Posted by Gary Price on June 28, 2005, 11:10 AM | Permalink

Hitwise: Google Tops In May

New stats now posted from Hitwise show Google has the highest share of visits by US web surfers of all search and directory sites that Hitwise tracked in May 2005.

It's never good to depend too much on month-to-month changes, as I've written before. Nevertheless, both Yahoo and MSN will take heart that the rankings are virtually unchanged from April 2005. Here's a comparison:

Service	4/05	5/05	Change
Google	37.8%	38.3%	0.5%
Yahoo	18.5%	18.4%	-0.1%
MSN	15.8%	15.6%	-0.3%

See the Hitwise Search Engine Ratings page within Search Engine Watch for the full top 10 list in terms of search engine popularity, including how popular image search is. Top portal front page usage is also shown.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 28, 2005, 10:34 AM | Permalink

WebSideStory: Google Continues Its Popularity Rise

New stats released today from WebSideStory show Google has continued to gain in popularity every year since 2001, while Yahoo is shown to have a continual decline. MSN has had declines for the past two years.

The data shows the percentage of traffic sent to US web sites that use the WebSideStory tracking system as of the first Monday in June, going back to 2001. Google's hit an all time high this year with 52.2 percent of referrals sent.

Figures are available in chart format via this press release, and here's a graphical look at them:

The company also released figures on how Google is doing as a referral source for selected countries, as of the first Monday in June this month, June 6.

Sites in Germany are said to receive nearly all their search referral traffic from Google, while Japan has the lowest referral percentage -- though still nearly 50 percent there:

Country	Referrals
Germany	91.1%
Australia	80.8%
UK	73.6%
US	52.2%
Japan	41.9%

For more information about WebSideStory and past data releases, see the WebSideStory's StatMarket Search Engine Ratings page within Search Engine Watch.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 28, 2005, 9:41 AM | Permalink

New Version of Yahoo Mail in Test Phase

An article from Reuters reports is beginning to test a new version of Yahoo Mail. According to the story, the new version of Yahoo will Mail will make several new features available.

According to the article, new features will include:

Drag-and-drop message organization

A preview pane to view e-mails instantly

The ability to search e-mail headers, body and attachments*

As well as viewing multiple e-mails in different windows

About a year ago, Yahoo acquired Oddpost, to help bolster Yahoo Mail services.

*Yahoo has offered an e-mail search option for quite some time and has even enhanced the service in the past few months. Yahoo mentions mail search here but doesn't include info about it in their help documentation.

Postscript: A ZDNet article has a bit more info.

Posted by Gary Price on June 28, 2005, 8:41 AM | Permalink

Google Relaunches Personal Search - This Time, It Really Is Personal

Google has released a new version of Google Personalized Search, this time in a format intended to constantly monitor what people select from search results and shape future queries based on their choices.

The new service is linked to the My Search History feature that Google unveiled last April (see our Google My Search History Personalizes the Web for more on the feature). Google Personalized Search uses My Search History data to refine your results based on your searching habits.

The service hasn't been formally rolled out via Google Labs, something that should happen later today. But it is starting to show up in search results pages for some people, as Dirson's spotted here and here, with a screenshot here.

When it does appear, you should be able to access it here: Google Personalized Search. I can reach that page myself, but it currently generates errors if I try to do a web search. Similarly, the Personalized Search help area has yet to go up.

Here's what I can tell you so far. Google hasn't explained exactly how the My Search History data is used. The service is literally brand new, and I'll be doing a follow-up to hopefully provide more details later in the day. However, it's pretty likely that a profile of what you like is created based on the pages you visit via the search results, rather than the actual searches you do.

Huh? Google gives an example (not yet posted live) that says:

For the query [bass], Google Personalized Search may show the user results about the instrument and not the fish if that person was a frequent Google searcher for music information

How would Google know you are a frequent music information searcher? It could monitor the types of queries you do and use various methods to tell if you seem to be searching for music information often. But another method -- and one using technology Google has already has demonstrated -- is to monitor what you click on in the results.

(FYI, a Google patent on personalization based on bookmarks that recently came to light is covered in this SEW Forums thread and in great depth in this Cre8asite thread. Another recently discussed patent also covers things like using clickthrough measurements to refine results. In addition, Google has personalization technologies and patents from past acquisitions, such as Outride).

Google Personalized Search 1.0 - Pages By Topic

The previous incarnation of Google Personalized Search that opened last year let you create a profile used to customize your results. By selecting categories, you could tell Google you were interested in things like movies, radio and music. Then by using a slider, you could "personalize" your results to skew them toward your particular interest areas.

More about how that service operates is covered in my past review of it, Google Gains Personalized Search Results. In it, I explained that Google was classifying pages across the web into topics. The "personal" results were simply those skewed more toward the topics areas you were interested in, a profile you had to manually create.

In the new system, a profile is created automatically. As said, exactly how isn't explained yet by Google. But almost certainly, it's measuring what you click on and then skewing your results over time to favor sites that fall in particular topics areas seems part of it.

Turning Off Personalization

What if you don't want the skew? There's a "Turn OFF Personalized Search for these results" link on the search results page you can use. If you see that link, it's a sign that the results HAVE been personalized. No link, then no personalization happened. And if you get the link, clicking on it will bring back regular results on a per result basis.

Want regular results all the time? You'll need to sign out of Google, if you've signed in. Signed in? When did I sign in! You logged into Google any time you used a service that can range from Gmail to Google Sitemaps. Anything that requires a Google Accounts sign-on is a service that logs you into Google. And if you activated My Search History, then that gets switched on along with personalized results once you've logged into ANY Google Accounts service.

Pausing Search History Recording

Understanding that signing-in automatically activates these features is important. Google's My Search History and Privacy from The Unofficial Google Weblog from a few weeks ago explains how some might not have realized that My Search History went active just because they went to check their email. So be aware. If you've enabled My Search History, it's going to switch on if you log into most anything at Google.

Dislike that? You don't have to sign-up for My Search History, of course. That will block the recording of your searches and the personalization now happening. But you can also pause the service.

When I tested today, a pause will be retained even if you sign out and then back in. It's an easy way to stop your history from being recorded unless you specifically want it to be. But remember, pausing will not stop personalization from happening. If you have any recorded search history at all, then Google will try to personalize your results, whenever you are logged in. There's no "Pause Personalization," as of yet.

Finally -- SEO Faces A Thousand Fronts

When Eurekster kicked off round two of search personalization last year (why round one died in 1999 is covered here), I explained in my review for Search Engine Watch members that personalization was appealing to search engines as a spam fighting tactic:

Link analysis itself is facing problems. Link spammers and others overtly manipulate links. Links are also created naturally in ways much different than in the past, polluting their usefulness in search. Personalization poses a potential next leap forward -- and clickthrough measurement can provide that.

In addition, past uses of clickthrough measurements never delivered personalized results by default. Anyone was allowed to influence the results that everyone else saw. In Eurekster's system, only those within your search network can directly influence you. This effectively creates hundreds, thousands and even millions of different possible results for the same search.

Click spammers suddenly face many different "fronts" in the war to be in the top ten, and they only get to fight in that war by invitation -- if someone they know asks them to be part of their network. Eurekster assumes "friends don't spam friends," and it's a pretty safe assumption.

Since then, we've seen the major search engines add search history features but not actual personalization of results, as I explained last October in my article for Search Engine Watch members, Search Personalization: A Marketer's Perspective.

That was written when Yahoo's "My Web" search personalization features came out, including the ability for searchers to block sites and the issues and workarounds this poses for site owners. Now that Yahoo's My Web is offered to anyone as part of the regular search experience, search marketers are taking more notice of the "Block" and "Save" features that appear next to every page listed.

And so they should. While these features don't rerank results yet, the Block can certainly make pages disappear. In addition, the data could be used at any time as a way for Yahoo to decide what users may like or dislike. In fact, that Search Personalization: A Marketer's Perspective article covered how this was something Yahoo said it was considering.

Since then, Yahoo's dropped heavy hints that it will create a social search service where communities may create reshape results in different ways, as Yahoo Wanted Flickr For The Tags (& Tagging Community) from last week covers briefly. Meanwhile, Google's gone and done it. Personalized results have come firmly come to the major search engines, a third generational step toward improved relevancy and the beginning of the end of everyone seeing the same results.

Will marketers find a way to spam personalized search? That remains to be seen. History so far has shown that each improvement eventually gets less effective. Heck, the Google My Search History Spam from May shows how you can spam entries easily into someone's search history at Google. It's still working. But while you can leave entries, you aren't generating clicks -- and so you aren't impacting the personalized search results. I'm sure personalization will lose some spam resistance over time, but there's no doubt it will make spamming results much harder.

Postscript: If you log out of your Google Account, then you'll see the Personalized Search home page with this text:

Personalized Search is an improvement to Google search that orders your search results based on what you've searched for before. Learning from your history of searches and search results you've clicked on, Personalized Search brings certain results closer to the top when it's clear they're most relevant to you.

Part of Personalized Search is the Search History feature, which lets you view and manage your history of past searches and the search results you've clicked on. As you build up your search history, your personalized search results will continue to improve over time.

Want to discuss? Visit our forum thread, Google Getting New Personalized Search

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 28, 2005, 7:35 AM | Permalink

Reinclusion Tips If Banned From Google Or Yahoo

Yahoo ban info at our Search Engine Watch Forums covers some tips on getting back into Yahoo if you've been removed for some reason, while Why is this site banned from google? touches on getting back in Google's good graces -- or at least how to ask. In summary:

Yahoo: Send to ystfeedback @ yahoo.com (remove those spaces, obviously). Alternatively, you can try the online support form.
Google: The old email request system no longer works -- I just double-checked that. Instead, use the Google online support form specifically for webmasters.

Before requesting any reinclusion, it's always best to ensure that you've sorted out any problems you already know that your site has. What types of problems might those be? Read the manuals.

Google Information for Webmasters is your guide from Google while Yahoo Search Help leads to plenty of similar information for webmasters.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 28, 2005, 6:37 AM | Permalink

Google Earth Launches, Goes Free

Google has taken the wraps off of Google Earth, a standalone application that combines its Keyhole 3D satellite imagery with the best features of Google Local and Maps. Chris Sherman finds it an awesome application that not only provides accurate search results but provides compelling, birds-eye views of virtually the entire planet. He provides more details about the product, now free to anyone in today's SearchDay article, Google Earth Flies Free. Also see Google Earth Launching For Free? Launches For Free from InsideGoogle for another review with screenshots, as well as First Impressions: Google's Amazing Earth from PC World for an even longer review stuffed with screenshots.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 28, 2005, 4:16 AM | Permalink

Google and Spanish Language Broadcaster Univision Plan Partnership

Nacho over at Search Engine Rountable points to a story from Crain's New York Business that includes a small mention about Google and Spanish language broadcasting powerhouse Univision, forming a partnership to "do page searches" in Spanish.

Expected to start in the next month, the partnership has the potential to develop Spanish-language listings and key words, and could encourage more advertisers to translate their Web sites into Spanish.

Posted by Gary Price on June 27, 2005, 7:16 PM | Permalink

Ask Jeeves Names Online Compliance Officer

Today, Ask Jeeves appointed Steven Pickering to the newly created position of Online Compliance Officer.

[Pickering] will focus primarily on overseeing the Company's Fun Web Products and family of My Search toolbars on a variety of online consumer issues including online privacy, disclosure, and downloadable software practices.

More about today's announcement in this news release.

About two months ago, accusations about software distributed by Ask Jeeves also installing adware, made headlines. The company denied these charges in a letter to Danny.

Posted by Gary Price on June 27, 2005, 5:45 PM | Permalink

Ballmer: We'll Catch Google In Relevancy In 6 Months

We've had Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer make jabs at Google before. However, ZDNet Australia article Google in sight as Ballmer vows .NET push reports a new spin, that "in the next six months, we'll catch Google in terms of relevancy," Ballmer said.

It will be interesting to see how this will be proved in six month's time. As Danny points out here, trying to determine search relevancy is a difficult thing to do.

That said, if you look at the results from Barry's unscientific but very interesting survey, the difference in relevancy between Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and MSN Search is already very small.

Of course, relevancy is very important but to "catch" Google, MSN needs to build mindshare. This might be their biggest challenge. No matter what Google does, it seems to get press attention and buzz everywhere (not only in the tech press). Plus, I have the gut feeling that many users have the belief that no matter what MS does, it could never be as good, cool or useful at compared to what Google provides.

As I've said many times before, it's not only about building a quality product but it's also now about changing user behavior (come see what we're doing) and beliefs (only Google is and will ever be cool).

Other comments Ballmer made while visiting Australia relating to Google:

"Innovation in search is not done."
"We'll use search to peer into a range of business applications which would allow multiple applications to be searched simultaneously."

Ah, metasearch. One interface to use and to learn. This is something I've been talking about for a long time!

Posted by Gary Price on June 27, 2005, 4:14 PM | Permalink

Google Insiders Sell and Make Huge Profit

The Mercury News article: Bonanza from Google stock's rise, reports on the more than $2.1 billion Google "insiders" have realized since the company went public last August.

In May, Googlers sold just shy of $400 million of stock, second nationwide only to the $515 million in sales by Microsoft insiders, according to Bloomberg News data.Since the Mountain View company's IPO, Page and Brin have sold stock worth $619 million and $589 million, respectively, while Schmidt's sales have totaled about $191 million. In May, Page and Brin sold 400,000 shares each, fetching $93 million and $90 million, respectively. Schmidt sold $29 million. Page and Brin have sold similar numbers of shares in June, too. Thanks to the stock's steady rise, the sales totaled nearly $116 million for Brin and $111 million for Page.

Posted by Gary Price on June 27, 2005, 3:53 PM | Permalink

Speaking At SES San Jose & SES Blog Coming

I know a lot of you want to speak at our next SES San Jose show. I know, because I'm getting a zillion messages. So here's the deal:

Did Ya Pick Me To Speak? is my current rundown at the new SES Blog on where I am with the speaker selection process and what to do if you've asked to speak but haven't heard back.

Session Openings

I am still taking pitches for the sessions below through July 27. The are all on the first day of the show. THESE ARE THE ONLY SESSIONS WITH OPENINGS. Yes, you can still pitch FOR THESE SESSION even though the How To Speak page says the deadline has passed. However PLEASE READ the How To Speak for further details on how to properly send a pitch. If selected, you'll hear by July 30. If you don't hear, you weren't picked. Please don't pitch unless you are appropriate for the panel and can fill the specific need I have. Otherwise, you're just wasting my time and yours.

Mobile Search
I'm looking for one or two marketers to be on a panel about how they've dealt with making content accessible through mobile search. I don't need someone to do an overview of mobile search players. I need people who have real experience with getting their content out via mobile. You'd likely have a 10 minute slot to do a case study presentation.

Earning From Search & Contextual Ads
I'm looking for a marketer, particularly from a fairly large site, wanting to share experiences on getting going with adding search to the site and making revenues off of that. Expect a 10 minute talking spot. I already have one person experienced with contextual placement to take part. I might have space for another to participate in Q&A. If you're a vendor of a contextual product, tell me briefly -- briefly -- how long you've been around and the type of distribution you have, as well as why you'd be a good choice for publishers to consider above other choices.

Partnering With Search Engines
Done a big business deal with a major search engine and want to share lessons with other marketers, such as on cobranding or something other than carrying search results and contextual ads? I've got an opening for a 10-15 minute slot to share and then take part in Q&A.

For more news and advice on speaking at SES San Jose and SES in general, see the Speaking category at the SES Blog.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 27, 2005, 3:10 PM | Permalink

More Q&A With Google Video Manager

As posted earlier, the new Google Video service offers live display of user contributed clips has gone live. Chris Sherman's story today Google Adds Playback to Video Search in SearchDay covers much on how the service operates. Below, some additional Q&A information from Peter Chane, senior product manager for Google Video, from when I talked with him about the service earlier this month, ranging from copyright issues to supporting Yahoo's Media RSS standard.

Why is Google hosting the embedded video thumbnails on their own site?

"When we looked at video on the web, there are multiple players and users are frequently presented with a dialog box asking them to make a choice. They don't know what to pick or don't have it [the right player]. The [video experience] service is just inconsistent, and some sites can't really handle video [they lack bandwidth or server capacity]."

Why isn't Google crawling for content like everyone else?

"We think most of the world's video content is not online, and we want to help bring it online, and that's where we decided to focus first," Chane said. "Some people, such as professional videographers....they can't put up a web site for video or they sell content on DVD. They see us as a way to get promotion for free." Chane did say crawling for content wasn't completely off the table.

Will there be ads?

"We're still figuring out what we're going to do on the ad side."

How are you checking for porn or copyright infringement?

"We do a very superficial review of the video," Chane said. "We thumbnail things and very quickly scan to see if it's porn or not and look for blatant copyright."

NOTE: To do this, scroll to the bottom of the page about the video you are watching. You'll see a "Report a problem with this video" link that takes you to a page like this, except it will have the video's URL filled in

What if someone finds copyright infringement or someone objects to being in a video?

"We'll have a feedback link and DMCA takedown form," Chane said. He also said there will be ways for people who may be unknowingly featured in video content without permission to ask that the video be withdrawn from listings.

What about support of Yahoo's Media RSS standard?

"We will support the RSS feed, and we'll crawl [what's listed in a feed]. We'll ask publishers to do one thing. We won't have custom thing that's just for Google."

NOTE: I haven't yet seen anything for this support posted.

Why not do audio conversion into transcripts?

"I haven't seen great success with it on a large scale yet. For the people who have transcripts, they've uploaded to us, and the quality is great. Once people see that if you have a transcript, you'll do better, more people will go back and get their stuff transcribed."

When will pay per video come?

"There's no set timing for that."

FYI, Chane also said that all video is being stored at Google in MP4 format, regardless of the original format, with audio in MP3 format. The formats were selected as being common standards that are easy to work with.

Want to discuss? Join our forum thread, Google Video To Gain Live Playback.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 27, 2005, 12:53 PM | Permalink

Google Video With Video Viewer Now Live

Google Adds Playback to Video Search from SearchDay covers the new Google Video service upgrade that offers live display of user contributed clips, for those who have downloaded the new Google Viewer.

Postscript:

sergey brin

Google Recruiting Video

Want to discuss? Join our forum thread, Google Video To Gain Live Playback.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 27, 2005, 12:42 PM | Permalink

Google Video To Launch Actual Video Today

NOTE: The new features are now live. More details here, Google Video With Video Viewer Now Live and More Q&A With Google Video Manager.

John Battelle reports that Google Video today will begin offering user contributed videos that have been uploaded since April (see Google Wants Your Video). In addition, users will be able to view the actual video within search results. At the moment, the service only displays content gathered mostly from television resources and only still clips are displayed, not video.

John doesn't specifically say whether it was Google itself that confirmed the news to him or rather a third party contact. Google is neither directly quoted or cited in his report.

Dirson left a comment on John's blog pointing at a Dutch blog that appears to have spotted an accidental post from the official Google Blog about the new features (and here, with Dirson comment and reprint here).

Since Google itself has leaked some of the news, we can also confirm we've been briefed about the new features that are planned to be formally announced today.

Chris Sherman will be bringing further details in SearchDay when Google lifts the embargo for those who have been prebriefed or gives us the go ahead directly to publish more.

Google isn't the only service to show user contributed video, of course. Our past article, Yahoo Launches Video Search Prototype, New Media RSS Format, covers Yahoo Video. It gathers content from crawling the web (unlike Google Video) and has an RSS feeding mechanism.

SingingFish from AOL has long accepted contributions and feed content, as well. Blinkx is another service that gathers by crawling and contributions. See Gary's past post, A Look At Other Video Search Tools, for more about these.

The key difference in what Google Video will offer compared to other services is inline playback. Rather than having to depend on having a particular plug-in for a particular video format -- which your browser will often annoyingly opens in a separate window -- Google Video will provide its own lightweight plug-in to display video right within the results.

Want to discuss? Join our forum thread, Google Video To Gain Live Playback.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 27, 2005, 4:54 AM | Permalink

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