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September 25, 2005 - October 1, 2005

Ask Jeeves Smart Search Makes Basic TV Program Reference Info a Click Away

When Ask Jeeves (aka Ask.com) launched a slew of new Smart Search options in August I briefly mentioned that info about tv programs was now part of the Smart Search service. However, it was just in the last day or two that I realized the number of tv programs AJ offers Smart Answer boxes for.

Smart Search boxes for television programs often contain a plot overview, link to the official site, episode guides, images, and links to purchase DVD's (if available). I've found Smart Answers for shows currently airing like The OC, 24, Law and Order and The Simpsons. A search for "The Office" shows Smart Answers for both the NBC and BBC versions. Nice. Classics programs including The Andy Griffith Show, Saturday Night Live, The Twilight Zone are Smart Search ready. Even cartoons like Speed Racer and The Flintstones are included.

Ask provides some of the show reference info from Zap2it.com and TV.com.

Let's hope Ask continues to develop this and other Smart Search research tools with more related links and in the case of tv, video clips.

Postscript: I even noticed Smart Answer boxes (on Ask.com) for UK tv classics like Fawlty Towers and Eastenders.

Postscript 2: I also spotted some tv-related Smart Answers on Ask Jeeves UK.

Posted by Gary Price on October 1, 2005, 11:52 PM | Permalink

How About Custom Search Tabs From Google & Yahoo

When running a Google web search from the Google home page or the Google Personalized home page, you can quickly rerun your search (no need to reenter your query terms) in another Google database by simply clicking one or more of the tabs labeled (Images, Groups, News, Froogle, Local, and Desktop (if available and installed). Easy to use, a possible time saver, and easy to explain to novice searchers. Nice!

However, as you know, Google offers many other databases that can be discovered by clicking another link that's visible on the Google home page labeled "more." Here you'll find access to Google Blog Search, Google Directory, Google Scholar, Google Print, and more. The problem, albeit a minor one, is that when you click "more" and then want to run your current query in one of these databases, you need to reenter the entire search string. Believe me, this is not a major issue. However, for allowing a user the chance to carry-over their query (let's say from a web search) to one or more of these databases would be useful.

Perhaps Google should consider providing what Yahoo currently offers on their clutter-free search.yahoo.com page. Here, the user (you don't need to login with a Yahoo ID) can customize which database tabs are visible on their home page. The other useful part (in addition to the customization) is that your search queries will carry over from one database to the next. Let's hope that if/when Yahoo releases their RSS/blog search tool, a tab will become available on the clutter-free page. Bow, note to Yahoo, how about adding Yahoo Audio Search tab option to the clutter-free interface?

I realize that many tools exist like FaganFinder and MrSapo, and Soople (to name only three) that allow you to move from one database to the next with great ease. However, I wanted this post to focus on what Google and Yahoo offer on their native interfaces.

Posted by Gary Price on October 1, 2005, 11:09 PM | Permalink

Add an A9 Customizable Search Box to Any Web Site

The A9 team has posted a new page with info and code to add customizable A9 search boxes to any web site. Currently available are boxes for A9.com Search and A9.com Yellow Pages search. More about other A9 services for webmasters and developers here.

Posted by Gary Price on October 1, 2005, 1:54 PM | Permalink

Google's "Playable Video" Search Option Disappears

Do you remember a Google Blog post from mid-July where Google Video's, Matthew Vosburgh, announced that two "radio buttons" were available allowing a searcher to limit their Google Video search to only playable video or both playable video and video clips where thumbmnail images were only available? Well, it appears that this useful search option is no longer available Why? What happened? Will Google bring it back? How about letting us know with an explanation on the Google Blog? Here's a cached copy of what the Google Video interface used to look like with the search options (via Gigablast cache).

However, it is still possible to limit your search to only "playable video" using this "hacked" interface or the syntax source:upload or playable:true in your query. More about both tools in this post.

Postscript: A reader correctly points out that in many but not all cases Google Video results now show playable video before non-playable video. Still, having an option without having to limit to a certain type of material without needing to use the syntax would be useful.

Posted by Gary Price on October 1, 2005, 1:07 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Testing Mobile Search Ads In Japan & Britain

Bloomberg News reports that Yahoo is testing paid ads on search result pages delivered to mobile phones and devices in Japan while also auctioning off ads on the Yahoo Mobile travel site in the UK.

"The way that Yahoo is going to stay relevant and essential is by extending our services beyond the PC browser to all devices that consumers use," Garland, who runs Yahoo's mobile group, said Wednesday in an interview at a conference in San Francisco. "There will be a paid search market that develops."

More in the article: Yahoo! is testing cell phone search ads.

In August, AOL Mobile Search began to show paid listings at the top of some pages.

The other day I posted a few thoughts about branding specific mobile search and answer tools as another way for search providers to make money in the mobile search space.

Posted by Gary Price on October 1, 2005, 12:33 AM | Permalink

Clusty Celebrates Its First Birthday

It was a year ago today when Chris and I published our introduction to Vivisimo's new metasearch/dynamic clustering product for the consumer market named Clusty, yes, Clusty. Since then, I've posted about Clusty offering a government search, job search (with Indeed.com), and its blog search capabilities. Also since its 2004 debut, Clusty began providing access to cached copies of pages via the MSN Cache and The Wayback Machine. Finally, Clusty's clustering capabilities received an honorable mention in the Best Search Feature category during our 2005 Search Engine Watch Search Awards. This press release from Clusty looks back at some of the reactions the name, not the technology, received a year ago today. A Happy B-Day to everyone at the Clusty HQ in Pittsburgh!

Posted by Gary Price on September 30, 2005, 9:41 PM | Permalink

Google Promotes Site-Targeted Advertising With Landing Page Test

Pam Parker's: Google Tests 'Advertise' Link, Landing Page, reports on another test at Google. This time, viewers of Google advertising on "select" Google Network sites will see the text link, "Advertise on this site" next to the AdSense ads.

If a user clicks the link, they're taken to a Google hosted landing page where they can learn about purchasing site-targeted advertising on that specific site. Another link on the landing page takes the user to an AdWords sign-up page. More about the test along with the usual "we're always testing things" comment from Google in this Clickz article and this page from Google that explains the "advertise on this site" page.

Postscript: AskDaveTaylor has more including a screen cap of the landing page.

Posted by Gary Price on September 30, 2005, 6:38 PM | Permalink

Google Plans AdWords Commercial Developer Program

Google will soon be offering enhanced access to its AdWords API, along with membership in a newly formed AdWords Developer Council, to commercial developers who have pushed up against the limits of the existing program.

Google has provided free access to its AdWords API since January. It's most often used by AdWords customers who handle multiple accounts, such as agencies and search marketing firms. API access allows developers to extend AdWords functionality to do things such as automatically generating keywords, ad text or custom reports, or integrate with other databases, such as inventory control systems.

The catch has always been that Google limits the use of this API according to a quota that's assigned based on the number of clients you manage and your total account spend. Use your quota for the month and your access is shut off until the beginning of the next month.

The new Commercial Developer Program is intended to address the needs of developers who exceed their monthly quotas. For an additional fee, developers will be able to increase their monthly quotas, and will also be provided with priority level developer support. They will also become members of the AdWords Developer Council, a group created to share best practices and meet regularly with Google engineers involved in the AdWords program.

Developers will be able to sign up for the new program in December, and the program will go live in January. Google isn't publicly disclosing the pricing structure of the new developer program, a practice it says is common.

For more information on the Google AdWords API, see the AdWords API FAQ.

Posted by Chris Sherman on September 30, 2005, 6:00 PM | Permalink

Local Matters Goes After Local Search Tech Market

The eWeek article, MapQuest Founder Chases Local Search Crown, offers a look at a new local search technology player, Local Matters, and its founder Perry Evans.

Evans was also the founder of MapQuest and a co-founder of Jabber, IM technology. We first blogged about Local Matters in May. The company plans to license its local search technology platform to providers of Yellow Pages.

By returning search results for small businesses that do not have Web sites, Evans argues that his company can outperform local search services from Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp., America Online Inc. and Amazon.com's A9 engine..."Local search is a booming business, but Google and Yahoo are offering a very limited experience. The content they provide is not pervasive about local business and that gives us a big advantage. There's no better place to find local business data than the Yellow Pages," Evans said.

The article goes on to say that Local Matters will offer mobile search (via SMS) and the ability to "shuttle" results to wireless devices. This sounds similar to how you can quickly send results from Yahoo Local to a mobile phone. Perry Evans also tells eWeek that future versions of the Local Matters platform will include the use of "widget" technology like what's seen from Apple and Yahoo's Konfabulator.

We're already playing with widgets quite a bit and we think we can do something there to present personal local lists on demand. That's an exciting area for us."

Postscript: For more about Perry Evans and Local Matters check out this interview he did with Adena Schutzberg and Joe Francica in Directions Magazine. We've also learned that Evans will be the keynote speaker at the Location Intelligence Conference in April.

Posted by Gary Price on September 30, 2005, 3:01 PM | Permalink

Listen Online: Search Execs and Others Speak During Advertising Week 2005

I'm not sure how much longer (my suggestion, head to the site soon) these presentations from Advertising Week 2005 (it ends today) will be available for listening online and/or downloading but several of the talks and panels, including one from Google, might be of interest to SEW Blog readers. Registration is free and fast at: http://www.infinityradio.com/advertisingweek/register.php. After you've registered, simply review the lists of presentations by date. Here are a few talks that might be of special interest.

Thursday, September 29th

+ 12 pm, Mike Kelly, President AOL Media Networks

Wednesday, September 28th

+ 9 am, David Verklin, CEO Carat Americas

+ 9 am, Google: Building Brands in the Consideration Economy

Tuesday, September 27th

+ 9 am, Wenda Harris Millard, Chief Sales Officer, Yahoo

+ 12 pm, Dan Rosenzweig, COO, Yahoo

Posted by Gary Price on September 30, 2005, 2:47 PM | Permalink

MTV VMA Results

Rafat over at PaidContent.org is reporting that MTV's video music awards generated 13 million unique streams since the original event. We wrote about the company's cross-platform plans for the awards last month.

Posted by Pamela Parker on September 30, 2005, 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Trying to Find the Mobile Searcher

Ben Charny's eWeek article: Mobile Search Struggles to Find an Audience, reports on why some say that mobile search is having problems finding users.

The most oft-cited reason here for search's cell phone failure is the phone itself. Typing in any information, like a Web address or a search inquiry, using a phone's cramped keypad is a chore many people aren't willing to put up with. Handset makers have tried to ease the thumb strain using any number of innovations, such as adding miniature QWERTY keyboards, or software, to complete words as they are typed. But it has obviously not been enough.

Yes, I'm a frequent mobile searcher with my Treo 650 that has a mobile browswer and a QWERETY keyboard. When I go out and do demos about mobile search in general (not just what's available on a Treo), the response I get is what I often here when it comes to other forms of web searching.

+ I had no idea that I could do "that" on my phone!

+ You mean I can get addresses, maps, weather, sports scores, and more on my mobile phone?

+ I can search for info on my regular computer and then send the info to my phone as a text message.

+ I don't have a mobile browser, I guess I'm out of luck.

How can people use a service if they don't know about it? How can they take advantage of an SMS search tool like 4info.net if they don't know it's out there and more importantly, what it can offer them?

Of course, these are the early days of mobile search (and I'm still very bullish), but it's going to take search service providers doing more to get the word out not only on paper but with live demonstrations to not only the "classic" early adopters but to other groups who might find the services useful. In other words, get to potential users by going directly to them not wait for the technology to slowly move into the mainstream. Right now, medical and legal professionals are increasingly becoming big users of mobile search. Heck, the National Library of Medicine has offered a mobile versions of their PubMed database for years.

I also think the move that we're seeing in "regular" web search from only providing lists links to answers to actually returning a specific answer to a factual query (Who won the academy award...?, What is the population of Chicago?, Where is Timbuktu located?) also lends itself perfectly to the mobile searcher.

So, where is the money in all of this? Who's going to pay for it? How can you get ads into a very small amount of space. As I said at Search Engine Strategies one model that should be looked at is branding answers and databases. For example, if you're searching for sports facts, that type of query might be branded by a certain company. Let's call it, "Nike's Mobile Sports Search." Searching for movie facts? What about the, "Netflix Mobile Movie Search?" You get the idea. A local search could be branded by a local company or merchant. You might also include a line preceding a mobile search answer like, "this info is provided by xxx company."

Have you ever heard of Guinness beer? Of course, you have. (-: Have you ever seen, searched, or read Guinness World Records. Well, this classic reference resource began as a branded tool to settle bar bets by the brewery.

Why can't companies/services do the same and brand mobile search tools?

Posted by Gary Price on September 30, 2005, 10:36 AM | Permalink

Feedster Plans Self-Serve RSS Ad Program

According to a Media Daily News article: Feedster to Release New RSS Ad Product, placing advertising in Feedster RSS feeds will become even easier in the next few weeks when the RSS search tool launches a new, "self-service" program (aka AdSense like) as compared to the RSS ad program Feedster currently provides.

The Media Daily News also reports that Feedster will release a "feed-profiling tool" later this year.

The product, Redlitz said, will profile a blogger's feeds using Feedster's index--and will deliver ads based on the overall content of the feed over time, not individual posts. For example, a blogger who writes about politics 80 percent of the time would still receive politically relevant ads the other 20 percent of the time when he blogs about, say, his cat.

Just a thought. For many RSS users the lack of advertising, to this point, is a reason I frequently hear as one of the reasons they like it so much. I wonder if increased advertising, any advertising for that matter, will stop current users from using RSS and slow its growth and acceptance with people who haven't tried it.

Posted by Gary Price on September 30, 2005, 10:23 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Site Explorer Live: New Way To See All Your Pages, Links

Promised over a month ago, Yahoo Site Explorer is now reality. Yahoo gives the heads-up to everyone here on its Yahoo Search Blog, and how it will show you all pages within a domain, within a particular directory of a domain, all inbound links to a domain and the ability to bulk submit (which was already live earlier and explained more in our earlier post). You can also access through a new Site Explorer API or export data for further analysis. More details also on the help page.

If you're a Search Engine Watch member, I do a through exploration of Site Explorer in this article in the members area. Check it out! Or hey, help support the site and the blog by becoming an SEW member! Below, a summary of my wish list items and observations from that members' article:

You can see all pages from all domains, one domain, or a directory/section within a domain
You can NOT pattern match to find all URLs from a domain, unfortunately
You can see all links to a specific page or a domain
You can NOT exclude your own links, very unfortunately
You can export data, but only the first 50 items, unfortunately
Search commands such as link: aren't supported, and I hope that might come
You can get a feed of your top pages, but I want a feed of backlinks to inform me of new ones that are found. Site owners deserve just as much fun as blog owners in knowing about new links to them.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Yahoo Site Explorer Now Live!

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 29, 2005, 8:46 PM | Permalink

MSN Shopping Adds Search Refinements for Hundreds of Product Categories

Just up on the MSN Shopping Insider is a post about some new and useful features that have gone live at MSN Shopping. Now, it's possible to focus and refine a shopping search using attributes that are specific to the product category your searching in. This has been possible with MSN Shopping in the past with categories like televisions and computers but as of today these types of refinements are available in more than 300 categories. For example, if you're searching for flowers, you can now focus your flower search by type (roses, lillies, etc), arrangement type (bouquet, vase, planter, etc.) flower color, and seller. Of course, you can also focus by price range. If you're searching for a diamonds, you can refine by color, carat, clarity, cut and price. Little to no learning curve to use these refinements. A good example of keeping it simple.

I didn't check all 300 categories (-:, but I did look at other shopping engines to see what refinements they offer shopping for diamonds.

+ Shopzilla also allows to refine by stone shape, carat, cut, color, clarity, and price range.
+ Shopping.com allows a searcher to refine a search for diamonds by clarity, carat, and price. Very similar to MSN Shopping.
+ PriceGrabber offers a carat refinement.
+ Yahoo Shopping, refine by price.
+ Become.com, refine by price.
+ Froogle, refine by price and store

Posted by Gary Price on September 29, 2005, 8:31 PM | Permalink

Daily SearchCast, Sept. 29, 2005: Google Partners With NASA, Google Calendar Coming?, Who Pays For Google's House Ads, SEO Ranking Factors, Debunking Urban Myths, Roll Your Own Search Engine & More!

Today's search podcast covers more on Google's partnership with NASA for office space and data, more signs of a potential Google Calendar, whether site owners should get paid for carrying Google house ads, a list of nearly 100 factors to rank web pages, finding out the truth behind urban myths, a new way to create your own search engine and more!

Tune-in by listening to this MP3 file, listening via WebmasterRadio at 11:30am Eastern and repeated at 2pm Eastern Tuesday through Friday, via our Odeo channel or through iTunes via this link (or use alternative iTunes instructions explained here). Below are links with more information about the stories that were discussed.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 29, 2005, 3:38 PM | Permalink

Search Pulling From Banner Ad Spend

An article in New Media Age UK titled: Long-time advertisers are abandoning banner ads in favour of search, includes comments about how firms that have been the "backbone" of Net advertising for years are moving into search marketing.

Eric Abensur from Wanadoo UK and Giles Ivey from AOL both say that big-volume advertisers are switching their spending from display ads and banners into search.

Media agency Unique Digital says it has been seeing this from finance, retail and travel brands, with some putting up to 20% of their budgets into search. "It's primarily advertisers that are looking for a direct response," said the agency's media director Martin Kelly. "Search is an easy win, but it's not a long-term solution."

While Abensur and Ivey are postive about large companies moving from banners to search spending, Phil Macauley, head of planning and strategy at Yahoo Europe, says:

Direct response advertisers are increasing their media spend online as a whole, both in branded advertising and sponsored search. But they're moving it away from other media, rather than moving budgets around within online."

Posted by Gary Price on September 29, 2005, 2:49 PM | Permalink

Infospace & Seekport Announce Partnership as InfoSpace President Leaves Company

Netimperative reports that European engine Seekport and Infospace will partner. The partnership will have Infospace providing paid listings on Seekport results pages.

This has been a busy week for InfoSpace news. On Monday, we blogged about a new mobile search tool that InfoSpace plans to launch in October. Then, on Tuesday, we learned that Kathleen Rae, president and chief operating officer of InfoSpace, will be retiring from the company.

Posted by Gary Price on September 29, 2005, 2:24 PM | Permalink

Preview New Saved Searches & Clip Feature At AOL Search

While I was looking at the AOL Search home page this afternoon, I noticed some text (near the bottom the page) that invited me "preview new features" as AOL continues to enhance its search site. So, what did I find?

After clicking the preview url (http://aolsearcht.aol.com/aolcom/webhome) I arrived at a page that allowed me to save my searches. Look for the green box and scissors icon on the right side of the page. Clicking this green box took me to another page where I could turn off the feature and erase everything (searches are saved for 30 days) or sort my past clips and searches by when it was saved or what I searched for.

Web search results page also allow you to easily clip and save results. For example, I searched for "Search Engine Watch" and was allowed to clip results (note how the scissors icon moves from result to result). Clicking the icon saves a copy of the result link and snippet. It does not save the full text of the underlying page. It's also possible to clip and save sponsored links. You you can "clip" up to 25 results per search.

I was not asked to sign-in with my AOL ID to preview. However, I would imagine that in the future, signing-in will allow me to view my saved results and searches on any computer. Make sure to take the proper safety precautions if you share your computer with others.

A final note, this time on image searching.

When you run an image search, here's a set of thumbnail results for "Golden Gate Bridge" the image(s) you clicks appears along with the full page of where the image appears embedded on the page directly below the selected image.

Remember, this is a preview and not all features work with all search types. Still, it's good to see AOL continuing to improve their web search offerings. Kudos. Given the ephemeral nature of the web, I would love to see AOL begin offering what others (Filangy, Yahoo, etc) offer and begin locally caching copies of pages viewed by the searcher for future reference and use.

Posted by Gary Price on September 29, 2005, 1:47 PM | Permalink

Listings Hijacked At MSN, With A Little Help From Google

Google 302 and MSN from Dave Naylor is chock full of badness on the parts of both Google and MSN, showing how Google redirections are causing it to hijack listings in MSN's search results. Dave gives you the short rundown. Here's the spelled out version, and thanks for his help in assembling it.

Look at this search result at MSN UK for batman animated bean bag.
See how the first result is for this page at Kids UK?
Now look at the URL MSN UK lists for that page:

http://groups.google.co.uk/froogle_url?q=
http://www.kidsuk.co.uk/shop/catalog/
Batman-Bedding-p-1-c-1288.html
%3Fsource%3Dfroogle&fr=AJrr2tQq23-_SJjef
Mma5wwNUyhA6FBUGEdlEBymj9jJAAAAAAAAAAA
See the bold part? That shows that MSN believes this page is hosted at groups.google.co.uk.
What's happening is over at Froogle UK, all links you click on there are redirected out of Google and to the destination sites, but...
Google is using 302 temporary redirection, which is causing MSN to let it "hijack" these listings.
To be clear, MSN is NOT listing a Google page, even though the page has a Google URL. Look at the cached copy of that page, and you can see that it is the same page as at Kids UK. But Google has control over the URL in MSN's results.
In other words, should Google lose its mind, it could at any point send MSN a cloaked version of the Kids UK page and likely maintain the ranking while showing human visitors something else entirely. Kids UK is not in control of that listing on MSN, even though it currently leads to the Kids UK site. It's been hijacked by Google! If Google were using a 301 redirection, however, this shouldn't be happening.
Side point. If this is a Froogle UK thing, why does that URL say GROUPS.google.co.uk? Google UK has some domain madness going on. Visit the home page. Click the Froogle link to get this page. Now click the Groups link to reach this page. Notice now how even though you are in Google Groups, the the froogle.co.uk domain is what shows in your address bar. That shouldn't be happening. Other mix-ups like this are leading to the confusion.
Hey! What's MSN doing crawling Froogle anyway? The robots.txt file there should be keeping it out, right? Sure. But if some site has made copies of Froogle results, scraped the content as fodder for a fake blog or something else to attract traffic, MSN might crawl that and thus see the Froogle redirections.

Overall, a nice demonstration of why MSN needs to consider how it handles redirection. My Revisiting Hijacking & Redirects: Moving To A Solution story gives you more background on the hijacking situation as it especially has impacted Google.

I also wrote that story as a lead in for our Indexing Summit 2 session as SES San Jose that was held last month, to see if we could get a standard solution to handing redirection and eliminate these type of problems. I was planning to finally write up what happened at that session next week, and I still will, promise. But here's the summary:

Yahoo: We have a solution (as described in my article) that seems to work.
Google: Matt Cutts wants to use the Yahoo solution but the engineer overseeing how redirections are handled says they've solved it another way. Matt said if you still see it happening, report it to Google, and then he's got some ammunition to say "I told you so" and get the Yahoo solution going. It's been reported at least once already. Bacon polenta on Matt's blog explains that and more important, gives updated instructions on how to report a hijacking in Google's listings.
Ask Jeeves: Thinks it has a handle on the situation and doesn't need to follow the Yahoo solution.
MSN: Didn't take part in the summit.

Want to discuss or comment? Visit our forum thread, Google Hijacks Batman Room Decor Listing At MSN!

Postscript: I was incorrect on the robots.txt banning. The robots.txt file for Google Groups wouldn't have prevented MSN from crawling Froogle results that can be accessed under that domain. More in the forum thread above.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 29, 2005, 1:42 PM | Permalink

MSN Search MyCroft Plugin Now Available for Firefox

If you're a Firefox user who wants to have easier access to the MSN Search database, a post on MSN Search's WebLog points out that a new MSN Search "Mycroft" search plugin for Firefox is now available. Actually, a number of MSN Search plugins are available for various versions of the MSN database.

Posted by Gary Price on September 29, 2005, 1:11 PM | Permalink

Tax Assessor Wants Google To Pay Property Taxes Even Though New Facility Will Be on Federal Land

We've blogged several items about the new Googleplex and Google/NASA relationship that's we be built on NASA Ames property in Mountain View. One story even has Google's Peter Norvig saying that he woild love to see Google Mars and Google Moon. Note to Peter: Google already has these "space" domains already registered.

So, why am I mentioning the Google/NASA story again? Property taxes, that's why?

According to a San Jose Mercury News article: Assessor will try to make Google pay property taxes, the Santa Clara County Assessor wants Google to still pay property taxes even though NASA Ames is located on federal propery.

As part of the deal, Google plans to build hundreds of new homes and carve out roads on a stretch of the 213-acre research campus. In 2002, Mountain View cleared the research park's bid for 4.2 million square feet of new construction, including up to 2,000 homes for any new tenant. "Obviously if they are building enough housing for workers, that's wonderful," said Mountain View City Councilman Greg Perry. But Perry was wistful that the company decided to duck inside the federal borders and deny the city property tax revenue. By building on federal land, Google would avoid potentially millions of dollars in annual property taxes.

Of course, many are thrilled by Google's recent announcement. However, Lee Stone, a negotiator for Ames Federal Employees Union, is not so sure about the deal to bring Google to Ames.

``I fear this could be just about a real estate deal and avoiding the regulatory problems of building in the Bay Area and a moneymaking deal for Ames,'' Stone said. ``Unless there's a bona fide intellectual interaction between the government and Google, then I would be disappointed.''

Posted by Gary Price on September 29, 2005, 12:24 PM | Permalink

Broadband Adoption in U.S. Homes Continues to Increase

Some new numbers just released from Nielsen//NetRatings report that the adoption of broadband in U.S. homes continues to increase.

According to Nielsen//NetRatings the number of Americans with broadband access at home reached 42 percent of the U.S. population in August, increasing 16 percent since the beginning of this year.

In January 2005, 103.8 million Americans had broadband access; by August, that figure had grown to 120.8 million. These figures were compiled from the Nielsen//NetRatings panel and report the connection speeds of those with Internet access at home.

The news brief goes on to say:

in August 2005, the percent of active U.S. Internet users connecting online via broadband from home reached an all-time high, at 61.3 percent, compared with 51.4 percent of active Internet users in August last year...In contrast, fewer Internet surfers are using a narrowband connection to go online. Among at-home Internet users, those using a narrowband connection have decreased by 10 percent since August last year, from 60.6 million to 54.3 million in August 2005. Currently, 38.7 percent of active Internet users continue to rely on a narrowband connection, compared with 48.6 percent in August 2004.

Posted by Gary Price on September 29, 2005, 11:35 AM | Permalink

SEO Still A Low Priority for Many Marketers When Compared with Paid Search

A brief Media Daily article titled: Marketers Slow To Embrace Optimization, Say Search Experts, reports on a panel of heavy hitters that took place at the OMMA East conference yesterday in New York. The audience was told that they need to both opitimize their web sites for web crawlers and also run cost-per-click campaigns.

Gord Hotchkiss from Enquiro told the audience that still SEO remains a low priority as compared to paid search for many marketers.

Quotes

"Search marketing can be done as a stand-alone strategy," said Hotchkiss, referring to paid campaigns. "But we don't recommend that." - Gord Hotchkiss

"A lot of people still see SEO as sort of 'black magic." - Alan Boughen, mOne

Often marketing departments and the IT departments are not coordinating to get the job done. "Sometimes you'll get brought in by the marketing folks and they won't even consult the IT department," he said. "It comes down to organizational commitment." - Rob Murray, iProspect

Also on the panel were Chris Copeland, Outrider and Jeremy Cornfeldt, Carat Fusion.

Posted by Gary Price on September 29, 2005, 11:00 AM | Permalink

New Patent Apps from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft

If your the type who enjoys reviewing newly published patent applications, Barry over at Search Engine Roundtable lists a bunch of newly published apps that were posted on Cre8asite earlier today. The list includes applications from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Remember, a patent app is NOT the same thing as an awarded patent. I do my best to explain the differences in this post that also includes more Yahoo patent apps and applications. Although I haven't updated the list in a while, it includes a lengthy list of search-related patents and patent applications from Microsoft. Want more? Browse my ResourcShelfPLUS site where I posted patent and patent apps (from many companies) before coming to work here at SEW.

Posted by Gary Price on September 29, 2005, 10:40 AM | Permalink

Don't Overlook B2B Search Engines for Search Marketing Opportunities

Sites specializing in business-to-business search may seem like fallow fields for search marketing efforts, but in fact the opposite is true. Business verticals can offer tightly targeted traffic, high click-through rates leading to high conversion rates for those search marketers savvy enough to take advantage of what they offer. Guest writer Greg Jarboe reports on a recent Search Engine Strategies panel featuring reps from some of the more prominent B2B engines in today's SearchDay article, Meet The B2B Search Engines.

Posted by Chris Sherman on September 29, 2005, 10:10 AM | Permalink

AltaVista's Former Engineering Director At Microsoft

AltaVista's former director of engineering Don Dodge turns up now working at Microsoft. Robert Scoble talks with him a bit about the old days here. Don's got a blog you can tune into over here.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 29, 2005, 7:49 AM | Permalink

And Debunking Urban SEO Myths!

Speaking of debunking urban myths, how about those of the SEO world? I just posted about a list of things that may (or may not) influence how a page will rank in search engines. But what convinces people of the truth behind a particular factor? Cause and Effect - Not Always Easy to Determine from Scottie Claiborne over at Search Engine Guide looks at how you can end up assuming something is working a certain way for all the wrong reasons, plus gives some basic tips on how to test correctly.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 29, 2005, 7:46 AM | Permalink

Debunking Urban Myths

Did you hear about the killer dolphins that got loose from a naval facility in the wake of Hurricane Katrina? Apparently, an urban myth. How do you track down if something's a myth or not? Shirl Kennedy over at Gary's other site, ResourceShelf, give you a fresh rundown on urban myth debunking tools here.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 29, 2005, 7:41 AM | Permalink

Google WiFi In New York's Bryant Park

Google Wi-Fi in NYC, spotted via Russell Shaw, shows Google backing wifi in New York's Bryant Park. Another stepping stone down the GoogleNet path? It looks more like Google's putting up the money to make it "Provided by Google," as it says on the sign, rather than "Powered By Google."

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 29, 2005, 7:38 AM | Permalink

Google House Ads In AdSense On Non-Google Sites

I wrote earlier of issues some have with Google running house ads for its own products in Google search results. Selling Their Own Dog Food from Andrew Goodman looks at the flipside, Google house ads running in AdSense ads on sites outside of Google. "I wonder if publishers get paid for these clicks?," he asks. Good question -- I'll see if I can find out. It seems like they should.

Postscript: Chris Ridings writes to say, nope, Google doesn't pay for those ads. See section 11 of the AdSense terms:

Google shall not be liable for any payment based on....(d) Google advertisements for its own products and/or services;

Postscript 2: Jen Slegg emailed me and also posts on her blog that publishers ARE PAID for these ads, according to what Google tells her. Andrew's also posted a follow-up saying he's been told the same.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 29, 2005, 7:33 AM | Permalink

Rundown On Search Ranking Factors

Search rankings aren't all about PageRank. Even Google will tell you they have many, many "signals" that are measured to rank a page. The same is true for other search engines -- and has been a fact of SEO life for years and years. But what are all these signals and factors? Some are known, some are speculated on, and some change all the time. Search Engine Ranking Factors now up from Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz is a diligent rundown on factors that could influence how well a page does.

Rand stresses that exactly what is used and how important is impossible to know. That's crucial to remember. I skimmed his list, and some of the stuff makes a lot of sense that I'd agree with. Have good title tags, absolutely. Have good use of the terms you want to be found for in the body copy.

Other things, I'm not so much in agreement with. I don't think external links are crucial for a page to do well, but that's my view and experience. Keyword use in the URL is a extremely minor factor to me -- I'd give it half a box or even less, if that was an option. He also stresses too much to me the idea about links coming in to your TLD or your root domain.

Search engines by and large still say they are (and seem to be) operating under the notion of looking at pages individually. They don't really seem to try and understand what your entire site is "about," though Yahoo did say about a year ago that having many links at your root domain could help boost your internal pages.

It would be fun to see all the factors listed so that a community of SEOs could rate how important they are deemed to be. Overall, it's fun to look down and certainly will give you plenty to think about. But you'll also realize how difficult it will be to get exactly every piece "right."

In fact, you won't. You'll get many things wrong. So how do you win? I still fall back on making sure you have some of the best content you can offer, built in search engine friendly manner. Build it -- and don't put up search engine barriers -- and for many people the traffic will indeed flow.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 29, 2005, 7:27 AM | Permalink

Google Partners With NASA For Expansion Space, Space Data & Supercomputing Talent

Google, NASA sign `a very big deal' from the San Jose Mercury News gives the rundown on the aforementioned plans by Google to expand onto NASA's Ames facility in Mountain View. It's not just getting more space. It's also about collaborating with NASA scientists and getting NASA data, as well. So literally, the sky's not the limit, for Google.

In particular, Google will get access to scientists behind to supercomputing technology that NASA has developed, the article says. Google also gets more access to NASA space data and images, additional fodder for Google Maps and Google Earth, no doubt.

"We already have Google Earth....We'd like to have Google Mars and Google Moon," Google's Peter Norvig is quoted as saying.

NASA Takes Google on Journey Into Space is the official press release from Google with more details, and the NASA version is here.

Postscript from Gary: Google already owns many of the domains that they might need for outer space exploration. See this collection of domains that Google registered a few months ago including GoogleMoon, GoogleMars, and GoogleNeptune.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 29, 2005, 7:14 AM | Permalink

A List of Domain Names Registered by Google

I'm a list fanatic. Many years ago, I started compiling a web-based lists of lists while I worked as a librarian at George Washington University. That compilation remains online and under the management of my friend, Trip Wyckoff. A new list that I've been compiling over the past few weeks offers a look at many of the domain names that are registered to Google Inc. I used various sources to compile the list.

This is not a 100% comprehensive list. Repeating, this is not a 100% comprehensive list. The primary focus of the list is on the .com, .org, .net, .biz and .info domains but it's very likely that some of the domains that Google has registered are not included. In fact, it's also a strong possibility that some domains are registered to domain "holding" companies that we just don't know about and/or haven't discovered yet.

Nevertheless, I think what follows is an interesting list and one I hope to update in the future. You'll also notice that many of these names come from acquisitions that Google has made over the years. I hope this list is not only useful but also fun for all of the Google geeks out there.

Now, click here to access a list of domains registered (with a few exceptions) to Google Inc.

Posted by Gary Price on September 28, 2005, 10:09 PM | Permalink

A Google Calendar and Some Domain Name Research

As someone who watches Google domain names closely, I learned about this post on the Google Addiction Blog that points out that GCalendar.com (an online Google calendar?) is a domain name that's currently registered to Data Docket, an Idaho company that often "holds" domains in their name (so nosy researcher types (-: don't get clued in) to new Google services until the service or search tool is just about ready for launch. I've seen the Data Docket many times in the past.

Here's a recent example of Data Docket's involvement with Google, specifically, Google Earth. Before Google Earth was officially released, the domain name was registered to Data Docket. On May 31st, the domain was transferred to Google Inc. (and Google domain servers) just a few weeks before Google Earth launched.

So, does this mean that a Google has plans to release an online calendar program very soon? Who knows? Let's watch and see if GCalendar's registration moves to Google sometime soon. That said, I don't think many would be surprised if/when they do offer some form of online calendar.

A few more facts. The GCalendar.com domain has been registered since 2004. However, it hasn't always been registered to Data Docket. Using a WHOIS History database I was able to track down the following:

GCalendar was first registered in April, 2004

In September, 2004, the WHOIS History database shows GCalendar was registred to Guido Pantnella in Walnut Creek, CA.

On October 6, 2004, the domain was transferred to Trout & Zimmer, a Burbank, CA firm that helps companies register/acquire domains.

On July 7, 2005, the domain was transferred to Data Docket.

Finally, what do we know, at least for now, about Data Docket? Not much. We do know that is is a registered corporation in Utah. You can see for yourself here by entering Data Docket into the "Business Entity" field in in this Idaho public records database.

Caveat:
I'm sure as more and more people become aware of a Data Docket/Google relationship, I would expect see Google having another company "hold" domain names until they're ready for launch. Oh well!

Postscript: In case you're wondering, GCalendar.net is also registered to Data Docket. GCalendar.org is registered to Trout & Zimmer, another organization mentioned in this report.

Postscript: Google Addiction is now reporting that calendar.google.com now points to Google.

Posted by Gary Price on September 28, 2005, 5:35 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Maps Japan Begins Adding User Info

Yahoo begins updating online map based on user tips, from Japan Today, reports that Yahoo Maps Japan has begun allowing users to submit local information for inclusion on maps. Worth noting is that user submitted info will be verified before it's added to the service. service.

"To submit local information, users first have to access the website and select a particular area, and then send in-depth information only locals would know, such as "a convenience store has opened" or "the name of the building has changed." Based on those submissions, Alps employees will visit the area to verify information before they update the map, which will be done once a month.

Posted by Gary Price on September 28, 2005, 4:09 PM | Permalink

Winners of Yahoo Video Search Yammys Revealed

May we have the envelope please!

About a month ago Danny blogged about the The Yammy Video Search Awards from Yahoo that would honor the best in original online video. Yammy winners would receive a number of prizes (including a plasma TV for the grand prize winner).

This afternoon winners of the Yahoo Yammys were announced.

The winning video is titled "Twinkle Toes" and was directed by Marty Putz. It can be viewed online along with other audience favorities.

Posted by Gary Price on September 28, 2005, 3:49 PM | Permalink

Lots of Job Resumes Appear at Google China; Chef Position is Still Open

After Dr. Kai-Fu Lee officially began his job (at least for the time being) last week at the head of Google efforts in China, Google received more than 1000 resumes for 50 positions at their soon to be built research facility in .CN. In fact, all of the resumes were received in a five hour period. The InfoWorld article: Google gets 1,000 resumes for 50 jobs in China, has more including word that Lee is looking to hire employees for a variety of positions including product managers, software developers, wireless developers, and of course, a chef.

Posted by Gary Price on September 28, 2005, 3:09 PM | Permalink

Daily SearchCast, Sept. 28, 2005: Google Moving To NASA (Offices), Dropping Euro Commissions, Yahoo Preps Tools On Search Buzz, Releases Desktop Search From Beta, A Search Marketer On The Apprentice & More!

Today's search podcast covers Google expected to expand offices to the NASA Ames site, removing commissions for European advertisers and unifying logons, while Yahoo is prepping new tools to measure search buzz and releasing its desktop search tool. Plus, a search marketer on The Apprentice and more!

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 28, 2005, 2:24 PM | Permalink

Roll Your Own Search Engine With Rollyo (Beta)

For the past few weeks I've had the chance to test out and create several focused and targeted search engines (based URLS I specified) with Rollyo, a new search tool released to the public today in an early beta by Dave Pell of Davenetics fame. As John notes, the public beta just went up, so fair game to talk about it! I think it's an exciting idea and one that you'll want to check out for yourself.

What is Rollyo?
In a nutshell, Rollyo allows the user to take up to 25 urls and create a search tool (what Rollyo calls a Searchroll), that search ONLY these domains. The database your pulling sites and content from is powered by Yahoo. Of course, you can edit and modify your Searchroll at any time.

Sure, you could head to Yahoo, Google, Gigablast, Ask, MSN and others and as an advanced searcher string together long query strings limiting your search with the site: command. However, most people AREN'T advanced searchers and even those who are might not have the time to create such a query.

What Rollyo does is make all of this MUCH easier. All the user has to do is enter up to 25 urls that contain material(s) of interest and click. It's that simple. There are no limitations about what you can create a specialized/target search tool about.

Here's a simple example. A user might want to create a focused search (aka Searchroll) about meteorology/weather.
With Rollyo, all they have to do is find* and enter the urls of a site or sites of that focus on the topic.
+ www.noaa.gov
+ www.wildwildweather.com
+ ggweather.com/
+ www.worldweather.org
+ www.weatheronline.co.uk/

* Non-commercial web directories like the Librarians' Index to the Internet (http://www.lii.org) , RDN (http://rdn.ac.uk) , and Infomine (http://infomine.ucr.edu) are great places to begin.

Then, the Rollyo allows you to name your focused search database (Searchroll), let's call ours Weather Search' and now, when the click search, they're only searching the content in domains they listed.

Very cool and very easy!

Even better, it's possible to share your Rollyo "Searchrolls" with friends and colleagues. I think that a tool like this, because of its easy of use, has a strong future in both the workplace and in schools.

Strengths
Even folksonomy enthusiasts will be happy since it's possible to "tag" your Searchrolls for better retrieval. All rolls can be marked public so they can be seen by all Rollyo users.

Weaknesses
Remember, today is just the first day of the Rollyo public beta and it still needs work to make it an even more useful service. Here are a few things I would love to see in future releases.

The ability to be able to limit your search to a specific part of a web domain. For example, Rollyo searches entire sites such as www.cnn.com or support.apple.com, but not parts of sites, such as www.cnn.com/politics/. The ability to limit to parts of sites would make Rollyo MUCH more powerful. In some cases, it would also be useful to be able to enter only a specific page into a SearchRoll.

The chance to use other databases (verticals) alongh with the Yahoo web database. Remember, if the page hasn't been crawled by Yahoo, Rollyo will not find it.

A date next to each Rollyo/Yahoo results listing the last time the page was crawled. Also, a direct link to the Yahoo cached version of each page on Rollyo results page. Links to The Wayback Machine would also be useful (Yahoo now provides these).

Documentation about how to use of some Yahoo's advanced search features with Rollyo like limiting your search to words in the title of a document.

Bottom Line
I've very bullish on Rollyo and will be monitoring the site for changes and enhancements. I've been wanting something like this for a long time. Kudos to Dave Pell and his team.

Postscript:
Hey, that's cool. I just noticed a demo Searchroll I created is listed on the Rollyo home page.

Posted by Gary Price on September 28, 2005, 1:10 PM | Permalink

Interactive best practices, Yahoo!-style

You would expect a company like Yahoo! to know a thing or two about online advertising. Marketers in attendance at today's OMMA East conference were given a glimpse inside Yahoo!'s marketing machine with a keynote address from CMO Cammie Dunaway.

Dunaway shared her "Interactive Marketing 101"-style best practices:
* Match the creative to your target
* Connect emotionally
* Communicate a clear benefit
* Support your brand's personality
* Use meaningful interactivity
* Use rich media
* Integrate the customer experience
* Utilize promotional capabilities

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on September 28, 2005, 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Export or Backup Your Gmail Contacts List with Just a Few Clicks

I noticed a small addition to the Gmail Whats New page in the past day or so that points out that its now VERY easy to export your Gmail contacts list offline (its always good to have a backup) or to use with another email reader. Simply login to your Gmail account, click your Contacts list (left column) and then look for the Export link located on the right side of the page. Your contact list is made available as a .CSV file. Additional instructions and info can be found here.

Posted by Gary Price on September 28, 2005, 12:01 PM | Permalink

Google Changing Agency Commission Payments In Europe

Many search marketers in the US are unaware that in Europe, both Google and Yahoo offer agency commissions. Today, Google has announced plans to restructure that practice. The Google press release on the move hasn't yet been posted in the Google press release area, so I've reprinted what I was sent below. The longer edition of this post for Search Engine Watch members has more information on the move, including:

The new program opens across Europe from January 2006 to any qualified third party agency (at least five clients, two Google certified professionals on staff).
Google does NOT consider the new program to be paying commission but rather having a "best practice funding element."
Payments will be tied to business brought in or grown and tiered to a maximum of 12 percent
Yes, search marketing firms are eligible.

For more, see the members' version of this post (or become a member and help support the site and this blog!).

See also the Agency Commission Or Discount Offered On Search Ads? thread in our Search Engine Watch Forums for discussions of payments in Europe and how they don't happen in the US.

Postscript: Here's additional info Google has sent (press release comes after that):

From 1st January 2006 there will be no agency commission i.e. All advertisers will be on a level playing field.
The Google European third party programme is a drive to empower 3rd parties in the delivery of best practice within the field of search marketing.
The best practice funding element is a criteria-based scheme which aims to provide investment for third parties from Google in order to drive their search marketing capabilities forward and grow the industry.
The scheme is optional and does not involve any discounting of the Google advertising model - a deliberate move aimed at achieving transparency and integrity for the adwords auction model.
The criteria for qualification are not solely financially based and include mandatory adoption of our My Client Centre. Third parties must also meet Google Advertising Professional quota requirements in order to qualify.

Here's the Google press release:

London - September 28, 2005 - Google Inc. today announced that it has introduced a new program aimed at empowering third parties and delivering continued value to advertisers of all sizes. This new industry program will be available to all qualifying third parties across Europe from January 2006.

Under the new Google European Third Party program, Google will deliver training, tools and support to third parties, enabling them to deliver more value to their clients. By reconfiguring the previous practice of giving agency discounts and introducing best practice funding, this new program will level the playing field, allowing advertisers of all sizes to fairly compete in Google's auctions based advertising platform.

"Google's new program empowers third parties to more efficiently and effectively serve their clients. Third parties are critical to the success of advertisers and to Google and we have designed an approach that favours both," says Nikesh Arora, Vice President of European Operations at Google. "We firmly believe that it is important to preserve the integrity of the channel in terms of marketing effectiveness and advertiser perception. By fostering greater equality across Google's auction model, advertisers of all sizes can more effectively compete against each other," he concludes.

The core elements that Google will now provide its third parties are:

Tools to increase third party efficiency and effectiveness

Training and market research

Process enhancements such as wholesale upgrades to our commercial processes to ensure that our processes are aligned to our third party business models

Extended service and technical support

A quarterly best practice funding program for investment in training and platforms which aims to provide financial support for those third parties who fulfill our quality and investment scale criteria

Designed to boost the quality of search marketing operations, and safeguard the integrity of the channel, this program encourages third parties to deliver quality advertising results for users thereby improving marketing effectiveness, clients ROI and advertiser perception.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 28, 2005, 9:38 AM | Permalink

BitTorrent Looking To Work With Publishers

Looking for video content? I mean, not just looking but also wanting to download it? BitTorrent is a popular way for many seeking to get the latest television program or film. BitTorrent's Grab at Respectability from BusinessWeek looks at how the service wants to move on by raising capital and turning into a distribution network for publishers, rather than for those sharing published works.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 28, 2005, 9:04 AM | Permalink

Search Marketer A Candidate On The Apprentice

Member Promediacorp (Avi Wilensky) at our SEW Forums dropped me a note to say one of the contestants on the current series of The Apprentice: Martha Stewart hails from the world of SEO. The contestant is David Karandish, who is described on The Apprentice site as "owner and creator of an internet advertising company." His company is over here, where SEO is the first solution listed. Aaron at SEO Book jokes "please take note to how & when he spams the show with product placement, keyword density, and the like." But seriously, it will be interesting to see if SEO and search marketing gets a nod as the show progresses.

Postscript: David writes with word of his blog, which you'll find here. So far, only one brief entry about the show, but keep an eye on it.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 28, 2005, 8:48 AM | Permalink

Google AdWords Logins Shifting To Google Accounts

Google's been doing some consolidation of having people sign-in for various services through a common Google Accounts login. Dave Naylor noted this happening for Orkut users last week, and now Andrew Goodman finds it happening to Google AdWords advertisers.

Andrew doesn't like it, as he discusses in our forum thread, Google AdWords Advertisers must have Google Accounts to log in? Neither does Nick and gang over at Threadwatch. Nathan at InsideGoogle feels its a good thing.

As for me, I said in our forum thread I find it mostly positive. I don't want to have to remember a billion different passwords at Google. But to Andrew's main complaint, that he doesn't want his business activities (AdWords, AdSense) also mixed with an account of personal stuff (Web Search, Personalized Home Page), that I agree.

I suspect you might be able to have two different accounts, as long has you have two different email addresses. Overall, I like options. I like the option to have a combined account or the option to have two separate accounts, personal and work.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 28, 2005, 8:38 AM | Permalink

Branding & Search Panel Highlights

OMMA Conference Track: Maximizing Brand Advertising Via Search from SearchViews gives you a few highlights from a panel at OMMA this week about branding and search

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 28, 2005, 8:31 AM | Permalink

Better Yahoo Tools Coming To Measure Search Buzz - And Watch Google, Too!

Yahoo! Testing New Branding Metrics for Search at ClickZ covers how Yahoo is helping more advertisers tap into tools to measure brand reach and buzz through search, a sign that tracking search buzz is finally getting some needed, renewed attention.

Many are familiar with Yahoo Buzz, the consumer-facing service that shows what's hot in search. Not so well known is another version that advertisers and others can tap into. Yahoo has had that product for years. It's not new, as the story suggests. Instead, it sounds like it's being given a revamp in preparation for wider positioning. A new "Search Share Of Voice" tool is also planned.

It's long overdue for greater outreach like this. As we've had more and more "word-of-mouth" tools designed to measure blog buzz, it's seemed forgotten that search engines have access to much more broad web buzz based on what wide, everyday audiences are looking for and writing about.

FYI, Google's got a similar tools it developed to help CurrentTV do Google Zeitgeist segments. I asked Google a couple of weeks ago whether these tools might be rolled out for others to use, when talking about them. It's something Google has in mind, but there were no immediate plans to do so. So we watch and see!

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 28, 2005, 8:25 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Desktop Search Out Of Beta, Gets LiveWords Contextual Search

Desktop Search Goes Live! at the Yahoo Search Blog covers how a new LiveWords button has been added to Yahoo Desktop Search as part of that product coming out of beta. Select a chunk of text, and then LiveWords automatically tries to find matches related to the context of that search.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 28, 2005, 8:14 AM | Permalink

Google Going To NASA -- NASA Ames, That Is

Silicon Beat said earlier this week (and Gary last month) that Google was to open a research center at NASA Ames in Mountain View, California. Now it's more official. Google expected to build campus at NASA Ames 1 million-square-foot complex envisioned as heart of Valley from the San Francisco Chronicle has more details now, with a news conference scheduled for 4:30pm Pacific Time today about the move. It's not clear whether the location is designed to help tie into the space interests of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin or simply that NASA has a lot of land, and Google needs space to expand. I'll I know is that I love the big WWII blimp hangars near by at Moffett Field, reminding me of the ones in Tustin at home in Orange County! I've got a print of them hanging on my wall right now :)

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 28, 2005, 8:09 AM | Permalink

Google Seeking Classified Ad Feeds

Classified Intelligence reports briefly in a press release that Google is looking to include listings from classified advertising web sites in its search results. Via Threadwatch, Paid Content gives a little more detail on the Classified Intelligence news, that Google is looking to take in direct feeds of classified content. For some perspective, many of these listings will already be within Google's regular web search results (and Yahoo's, and MSN's, and Ask's).

However, taking in feeds would allow Google to do make it easier for searchers to sort and filter in various ways, just as feeds have helped with that on Froogle. Even with without direct feeds, you can still do a lot of mining of the web to build classified listings through crawling. Oodle is just one example of that.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 28, 2005, 8:01 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Paid Inclusion Redirection & Hijacking Confusion

Paid Inclusion Making Yahoo Results Seem Hijacked? looks at the confusing situation one of our forum moderators Jeff Martin found when looking at some listings in Yahoo. They redirected through Business.com until winding up at sites that had nothing to do with that B2B search engine. Jeff also describes more here. What's up? I posted my thoughts in the forum thread. To me, it looks like Yahoo is taking a paid inclusion feed from Business.com -- hence why the click redirects through Business.com before hitting the destination sites. In other words, buy some listings in Business.com, and those are distributed also through Yahoo. That's a long-time tactic. LookSmart long did the same.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 28, 2005, 7:33 AM | Permalink

A Snapshot of the Search Marketing Industry

A new study by Jupiter Research and iProspect looks at several aspects of the search marketing industry, and draws some interesting conclusions about how well search marketers are performing, the effectiveness of organic vs. paid search marketing campaigns, and obstacles encountered in implementing search engine optimization techniques on client web sites, among other findings. See today's SearchDay article, How are Search Marketers Performing?, for more on the new research.

Posted by Chris Sherman on September 28, 2005, 12:28 AM | Permalink

Dynamically Search and Browse RSS News Headlines

Last week I authored a SearchDay article about Surfwax making their dynamic search navigation technology, LookAhead, available to any webmaster to license and use on their site(s). LookAhead can potentially help the searcher focus a news or RSS search with very little effort before clicking the search button. In other words, dynamic search navigation can save search time and provide them with better results with very little effort.

Now, Surfwax, the providers of LookAhead are offering a free RSS search tool that demonstrates the technology. Heres how it works.

+ Go to http://lookahead.surfwax.com/rss-index.html and begin entering terms hat might be of interest to you.
+ As you enter terms, the TITLES of potentially useful posts will begin appearing in a box directly below the search box. The list also contains the source of the post and the time it was posted.
+ Now, click the title/headline and you?ll be taken DIRECTLY to the article or blog post. That's right, now search results page to review.
+ Remember, your search terms are ?rotated,? so you?ll see useful headlines regardless of what order you enter your search terms.

Users are encouraged to suggest feeds for the service to crawl. We?ve also learned that a larger index will be released very soon.

Here?s a list of just a few other services that provide similar types of services:

+ WikiWax from Surfwax
+ News Accumulator from Surfwax
+ Snap Suggest from Snap.com
+ Pinpoint Shopping from AOL
+ Google Suggest

Posted by Gary Price on September 27, 2005, 4:51 PM | Permalink

Daily SearchCast, Sept. 27, 2005: Google Claim To Be Most Comprehensive But Backing Away From Counts, Searchers Loving The First Result, Detecting Phishing Sites, Search Spending On The Rise, Google's New Remove Feature & More!

Today's search podcast covers Google's claim to be most comprehensive but dropping index size as proof of that, plus Google's second birthday this month, Google talking to CNET again, searchers loving to click on the first result, ways to detect phishing sites, search spending continuing to rise, Google and Yahoo making programming moves, how to remove results you don't like from Google and Yahoo and more!

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 27, 2005, 2:52 PM | Permalink

One Strong Cuppa Joe

Consummate campaigner Juan Valdez, along with the GEICO Gecko, took home the "top icon" title, winning the surely very scientific popularity poll conducted in conjunction with Advertising Week. Top slogans were GE's "Imagination at work" and Hallmark's "When you care enough to send the very best."

Posted by Pamela Parker on September 27, 2005, 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Down the Rabbit Hole with Microsoft

Bloggers (and presumably gamers) are abuzz over a European-targeted Web site to promote Microsoft's Xbox 360. Site visitors follow a pair of white rabbits through a series of surreal Flash adventures. One lets users take a quiz to win a trip to "Origen," described as "a wonderful magical place where all of your gaming fantasies come true."

[via Threadwatch]

Posted by Pamela Parker on September 27, 2005, 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What's An Ad Agency? What's A Search Agency?

Ad/Search Agency Convergence from Hollis Thomases at ClickZ looks at when an ad agency is NOT also and SEM firm or more to the point, how they can't be when paid search is making up so much of online ad spend.

The slant seems more on the pure-play SEM firms suggesting that ad agencies can't do well in the search world. From my experience, that's not just a marketing pitch by the firms. It's often the reality. But it depends on the ad firm you're talking about.

A pure play creative ad shop? Search is going to be weird, strange and not really what they do. If they need it, they're far more likely to outsource to someone else to do it.

In the end, you're going to continue to have a spectrum of agencies -- SEMs that focus just on search and everything to do with search (feeds, local, shopping, web, and free and organic listings in all of those), interactive agencies that do search along with other buys, traditional agencies that may or may not take on some interactive roles.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 27, 2005, 11:23 AM | Permalink

Google After Madison Avenue

Search 'N' Sell from the New York Post is a relatively short look at how Google is cozying up to major ad agencies, holding more than 100 training sessions to help them understand search marketing better. Agencies are also given support teams so they can call around the clock with questions. Google's also taking part in this week's Advertising Week in New York apparently doing little last year.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 27, 2005, 11:09 AM | Permalink

Linking Neighborhoods, Illustrated

Threadwatch points over to the Picture of Link Neighborhoods post at Jim Boykin's new SEO blog, where he posts a nice illustration (PDF) of how search engines use links to determine what sites are important -- and not.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 27, 2005, 10:50 AM | Permalink

Delete Those Emails With SEO Pitches!

Ineffective SEO E-Mail Campaigns at ClickZ from Shari Thurow is a nice, fresh reminder of all those pitches you get for SEO services via email that you can safely delete. No, you almost certainly don't need to worry that they are kindly informing you that you aren't ranking for a particular term!

Shari doesn't get into it, but warnings that you aren't "found" on a search engine our that your listing may be in "trouble" or "vulnerable" can almost certainly be ignored, as well. In fact, rather than list and dissect everything, just remember this. I'd say 99.9 percent of the unsolicited email you get pitching you on search marketing services or alerting you to some type of SEO problem can get deleted.

Good SEM firms are in high demand and aren't going to be cold-calling you by phone or via email. The ones that do, I'd be wary of them and certainly wouldn't lose sleep worrying if something they claim is a problem with your site really is.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 27, 2005, 10:39 AM | Permalink

TrustWatch & MSN Offer Anti-Phishing Tools To Searchers & Surfers

TrustWatch is a new Ask Jeeves-powered search engine designed to give you a green, yellow or red light warning on whether to trust pages listed in its results. It follows on the release of an anti-phishing add-on for users of the MSN Search toolbar.

At TrustWatch, the warnings are to help you know if you are reaching a fake site or one that's "phishing" for you to reveal personal information.

For example, imagine you were trying to reach the Bank Of America site. It's possible that someone might create a site that looks like the real BofA site and ranks well for a search on the company's name. A good search engine shouldn't let this happen, but it still can occur. Even more likely, it can happen if you search using a slight misspelling.

TrustWatch places colored rating icons next to each listing. Green means the listing has been verified as real and trustworthy by a third party. Yellow means there's been no verification, but neither has the site been reported on a blacklist. Red means someone has reported a site as disreputable and that you shouldn't trust it.

Run a web site and want to be trusted? GeoTrust, the company behind TrustWatch, will conveniently sell you a site identity seal for $49 per year. You can also get a trust rating from one of the other companies that it lists, including TRUSTe. I wish the page TrustWatch lists with these organizations made it exceptionally clear exactly which products each of these companies are selling are acceptable, especially what the lowest cost options are.

I can understand that site owners probably should pay to be rated. Someone's got to do the reviewing. But it shouldn't be super expensive. Plus, non-profits and governmental groups should get a break. Of course, I see the US White House site is considered trusted, and I'm betting they didn't pay for a review.

Want to know if something is trustworthy as you surf the web? There's a TrustWatch toolbar you can install that lights up to let you know if a site is trusted when you visit it.

That brings me over to news from earlier this month. Microsoft has a Phishing Filter Add-In for its MSN Search Toolbar. Like TrustWatch's, it's only for Internet Explorer, unfortunately. It will block sites that are on known phishing lists and warn you of sites that it suspect may be phishing based on scanning for common characteristics.

Having these features in toolbars is great, of course. In fact, I'm guessing we'll see Ask Jeeves down the line add TrustWatch-powered warnings to its toolbar since it's partnering to provide TrustWatch with search results. But it would be nice to see anti-phishing warnings in the results of the major search engines, as well.

I mean, the Ask Jeeves blog today is what alerted me and others to the new TrustWatch service. Rather than have Ask Jeeves point me elsewhere, I obviously want them to put these features into their own search results. Same, too, with MSN. Give phishing warnings in the search results, as well as in the toolbar. And let's see Google and Yahoo do the same.

Want to discuss? Visit our forum thread, Ask.com Powers TrustWatch - GeoTrust's Secure Engine.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 27, 2005, 10:26 AM | Permalink

Time For Results Counts / Number Of Matches To Go?

As Danny mentions, it's good to see the total size war go away for at least the time being. Danny also points out this page from Google that lays out there thoughts on comprehensiveness. A couple of quick comments, including wondering if the results counts that every search engine shows should now go away.

From the page:

The basic test for search engine comprehensiveness is whether you can find uncommon information. Popular queries return millions of results, but even the most obsessive searcher isn't about to surf a few million pages, or even a tiny fraction of them; in most of these cases, you'll either quickly find what you're looking for or refine your search to be more focused.

Perhaps it's time to take a look at the usefulness (asides from their marketing value and likely the reason they don't point out this fact) of the page estimates that Google and others provide at the top of results pages.

Just how accurate are they? What are they telling the typical searcher? It would be useful if all search companies (not only Google) would let the public (including many journalists) know that they're just estimates and often far from accurate.

Yes, some people will refine (if they know how, do they?) their searches. However, don't forget that even if you wanted to view all of the results, you couldn't. Most web engines will only show the first 1000 results.

Are the estimates on web results pages going to be the next battleground? I wonder how many people even noticed the total that Google used to list on their home page vs. the estimates they see each and every time they run a search?

Didn't Google Just Have A Birthday?

No, you aren't losing your minds. Just earlier this month, Search Engine Watch and a wave of other sites wished Google a happy 7th birthday on September 7. What's going on with Google having another 7th birthday today?

The wishes earlier this month were sparked by this page from Google's Help Center. It's now gone, but here's what it said:

Google's official birthday is September 7, 1998. If Google were a person, it would have started elementary school late last summer (around August 19), and today it would have just finished the first grade. In other words, we're just getting started. To discover more about Google's history, please visit http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/history.html. To learn about our mission, please see http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/index.html

For the time being, you can see a cached copy of the page yourself here.

So what's the deal? How does Google get to have two birthdays in the same month? Google's Marissa Mayer told me when I asked her about this earlier this week that Google internally has often celebrated the birthday on various different days in September over the years. It's now settling on Sept. 27. Google the Virgo becomes Google the Libra!

Honestly, it's hard to not have a cynical eye that settling on this date was also a convenient news peg to hang the new size announcement. But now that there's this new official date, I guess there's no going back from it.

For those unaware, Queen Elisabeth II has both her "real" birthday and an official one that the United Kingdom celebrates. The Netherlands does the same thing, as other countries no doubt do, as well. It's sort of like how Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays used to be holidays of their own in the US, until it was more convenient to have an official Presidents' Day holiday always happening right against the weekend.

So as Gray Hat News points out in is humourous The Queen of Search Engines post, whatever Google's real birthday was, we've not got a new official/observed one to follow.

Want to discuss or comment? Visit our forum thread, Happy 7th Birthday Google?

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 27, 2005, 9:46 AM | Permalink

CNET Off Double Not-So-Secret Probation With Google

I mentioned this in my earlier post, but it deserves better play. Google's talking with CNET again. Google stopped talking with the news organization in a dispute over whether CNET crossed a privacy bounds in reporting on privacy issues, when it used examples of information about Google CEO Eric Schmidt. More background on the dispute in our Google Not Happy With CNET post and our Google Blacklists News.com forum thread. Schmidt himself spoke with CNET's News.com for its article over today's size announcement. Glad to see that Google has changed its mind over what I and many others felt was a bad policy. You can see the positive reaction flowing in already elsewhere, such as from Dave Winer and Steve Gillmour.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 27, 2005, 9:04 AM | Permalink

Roundup Of Google Size Announcement Coverage

Yesterday was pretty much spent by me writing my story about Google claiming to be most comprehensive search engine but also dropping any page count from its home page. That story, if you missed it, is up here: End Of Size Wars? Google Says Most Comprehensive But Drops Home Page Count. Now that I've emerged from my writing cocoon, here's a roundup of what others are saying on the subject:

We wanted something special for our birthday is the post on Google's blog telling the world it is 1,000 times larger than when it started in September 1998, three times larger than any other search engine, but no mention of the actual count or that the count has been removed from the home page. Instead, Google asks readers to "see for yourself" how effective the new index is.

The post also points at a new Sizing Up Search Engines page where Google explains that it could prove the number of unique documents it has but doesn't. Instead, it tells readers "you can prove it yourself" and advises them to search for uncommon information as a test.
Google Announces New Index Size, Shifts Focus from Counting from John Battelle covers how he also sees the index wars as over "at least in terms of raw counting" and how it shifts the debate "back to relevance, where honestly, it really belongs." Absolutely!
The end of the index size wars (we hope) from Charlene Li is pleased like John, like me, like Phil Bradley and no doubt many, many others that we're getting away from "mine is bigger than yours" comparisons, though she sees the obvious irony of Google still saying its bigger as part of the pullback.

She also asks, "How long do you think it will be before some journalist does some math and writes that Google's index has 60 billion documents? Hopefully, never." Well, she's effectively a journalist on her blog, so never just became reality. But of course someone was to publish the simple math, if not her.

The point is, when both Google and Yahoo themselves tell you that their counts aren't comparable, then it doesn't matter what the number is that either releases. It's like Google saying it has "60 billion GoogleTons of pages" and Yahoo saying it has "20 billion YahooTons of pages." What's the conversion rate for GoogleTons into YahooTons? We don't know. And if you don't have that common metric, then you can't compare the figures.
Google: No, really ours is the biggest, you'll just have to trust us on that ok? from Nick over at Threadwatch sees Google taking a "slap" at Yahoo over the issue of duplicated entries. That's ironic, too, since if you read my story, I showed an example where Google has three duplicated entries in one example -- all of which are counted. It's another reason why I'm glad we're getting away from counts.

Nick also wonders if rather than a pullback from the index wars, we're seeing an escalation. I say a pullback, Nick. Yahoo's already making statements that it agrees users should judge for themselves. I'd expect that they'll later further say they consider themselves to be most comprehensive and take the Google line that users can verify this for themselves. As long as we don't see actual count figures come back as "proof" of comprehensiveness, we may move along for a bit.
Google: Mystery index from Jean Véronis who's done some great watching of search engine counts notes that the Google claim meshes with his estimate of where the index was going.
Google says size matters less, drops search boasts from Reuters has a basic overview of the move by Google.
Google to take down front-page boast about index size from the Associated Press provides another overview with the idea that verification is left to a user "taste test."
How Many Pages in Google? Take a Guess from the New York Times also has the "taste test" idea and gets Google CEO Eric Schmidt "not to rule out" the idea that a prize might be given for the best guess at its size.
Google touts size of its search index has Google ending the CNET news blackout, with Google CEO Eric Schmidt doing a phone interview on the announcement along with the Yahoo statement others are also being given:

"We congratulate Google on removing the index size number from its home page and for recognizing it is a meaningless number," Yahoo said in a statement. "As we've said in the past, what matters is that consumers find what they are looking for, and we invite Google users to compare their results to Yahoo search at http://search.yahoo.com."

Open Letter To Google Chief Eric Schmidt is from WebmasterWorld member reseller who has issues with Google's claims of being larger in terms of "unduplicated" pages. My story above gives examples of how some duplicate pages are already in Google. The complaint in partiular covers the fact that while duplicate pages exist, de-duplication efforts may also remove the original documents from Google, rather than mirrors.

I may add further links as I see unique stuff flow in.

Want to discuss? Visit the Google Drops The Home Page Count thread in our Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 27, 2005, 8:57 AM | Permalink

Google Claims To Be Most Comprehensive - But Helps Defuse Size Wars By Dropping Home Page Count

Today's SearchDay article Google Says Now Biggest, Most Comprehensive - But Size Wars Defused By Dropped Home Page Count covers the latest chapter in the dispute over search engine size that started with last month's claim by Yahoo to have outdistanced Google in index size.

Google now says it is three times larger than its closest competitor (ie, Yahoo) and is the most comprehensive search engine available. However, it's not offering proof of that through an actual count. Indeed, Google is dropping the famous number of web pages it is "searching" from its home page.

Why? Because comparison counts don't mean much any more, something Yahoo has said itself. In short, Google is leaving it to users to prove to themselves whether it does -- or does not -- measure up as most comprehensive.

More in my story, as well as a long look at why count figures themselves aren't the comprehensiveness metric they've sometimes been in the past.

Want to discuss? Visit the Google Drops The Home Page Count thread in our Search Engine Watch Forums

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 27, 2005, 12:01 AM | Permalink

Google Accused of Issuing Misleading Statements in Gmail Name Dispute

Do you remember a blog post from a couple of week's ago about a possible lawsuit by a UK firm against Google over the name Gmail? This Sunday Times article reports that the dispute is quickly turning into a war of words as Independent International Investment Research (IIIR), the company who has been contesting the use of the Gmail trademark, says that Google has been issuing "inaccurate and misleading statements."

From the article:

Times Online today had sight of an e-mail exchange between Google and the chief executive of Independent International Investment Research (IIIR) - which is threatening legal action over the trademark for GMail. In the e-mails, the IIR takes Google to task over official comments it made in response to his case.

Much more in the article: Google accused of misleading in Gmail row.

Posted by Gary Price on September 26, 2005, 7:00 PM | Permalink

Google Looking More Portal-Like

Google has struck its first deal to promote TV programming through video content on its site. The search company is working with UPN to make the premiere episode of Chris Rock's "Everybody Hates Chris" available on Google Video.

As Gary Price notes on the SEW blog, Yahoo! previously "aired" the Kirstie Alley Showtime program "Fat Actress" and America Online streamed the WB pilot "Jack and Bobby".

Says UPN president Dawn Ostroff, in the press release:

"UPN's young adult viewers are avid online users, and streaming the premiere episode of EVERYBODY HATES CHRIS on Google Video is the perfect opportunity to reach this audience in a new and creative way," said Ostroff. "Everyone at UPN is very excited about this innovative relationship with Google, which offers viewers who may have missed the premiere the chance to watch it and hopefully motivate them to watch the second episode on UPN."

Posted by Pamela Parker on September 26, 2005, 5:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For Many, It's All About the Very First Search Result

Jakob Nielsen's new Alertbox article: The Power of Defaults, does a great job of summarizing and commenting on new search engine research from Cornell University about why and where people click on a search results page.

From Nielsen's article:

Search engine users click the results listings' top entry much more often than can be explained by relevancy ratings. Once again, people tend to stick to the defaults. This study goes far to address why users tend to click on the top hit. There are two plausible explanations:

Search engines are so good at judging relevancy that they almost always place the best hit on top.

Users click the top hit not because it's any better, but simply because it's first. This might be due to sheer laziness (after all, you start from the top) or because users assume the search engine places the best hit on top, whether that's actually true or not. As the study shows, the answer is clearly a little of both.

As someone who does a great deal of work teaching people how to become better searchers and take advantage of the "power" that most of the large web engines and verticals offer, I'm hardly surprised by these numbers.

Sure, searching should be easy but at the same time most people don't have a clue about what a small amount of learning can do to provide them with better results in less time and aggravation.will Every good and useful result can't always be at number one.

Search education does not need to be a long, drawn out affair. A little learning goes a long way and it's been my experience that just sharing a little gets people motivated to learn more. I've said time after time here on the blog that the search engines should do more to help teach people (especially certain user groups) to be better searchers, go beyond the defaults, and formulate better queries from the outset.

Web searching is not a field of dreams. Building search tools (for example, customization features) doesn't mean people will come and use them. In fact, they don't. Some user education is not only a good public service but also good business because a typical user can't even attempt using what an engine offers if they don't what's available and why it might be useful.

Two groups that need and deserve plenty of search education are students and teachers. Let's get to new searchers at a young age. Librarians would be a great group for any engine to partner with. Good info retrieval and critcal info skills (is the info accurate? current? etc.) should be a top concern for all of us.

Posted by Gary Price on September 26, 2005, 5:21 PM | Permalink

IAB Report: Search Ads Account for 40% of Ad Sales During First Half of 2005

Via a thread in the Search Engine Watch Forums, news from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PriceWaterHouseCoopers about online ad spending in the first half of 2005.

From a ZDNet article:

As of June, advertisers had spent $5.8 billion to place ads online this year, a 26 percent increase compared with the first six months of 2004, according to a new report...Overall, search ads accounted for 40 percent of Internet ad sales, in line with last year, the group said. Banner ads and classified listings were the next-biggest ad categories, attracting 20 percent and 18 percent of the spending, respectively.

This IAB news release offers a bit more. The complete report will be available via the IAB web site next week.

Last year, Danny noted that contextual advertising, which he doesn't conisder search advertising, was included in the search ad total. I can't spot anything in today's news release that shows that this fact is any different this time around.

It's very likely that Danny will post some analysis of these numbers in a future blog entry but I thought they were worth getting out asap.

Want to discuss? Check out this thread in our Search Engine Watch forums.

Posted by Gary Price on September 26, 2005, 4:37 PM | Permalink

Infospace Gets Ready to Launch Mobile Search Client

The Seattle Times article: Cellphones emerge as local-search tool, reports on some new mobile search/local search client software that InfoSpace (there's a company we haven't blogged much about recently) and Action Engine will launch in October.

The new product require users to download client software onto their cell phones and then pay for access to the database How much InfoSpace will charge and which wireless carriers will offer access, is unknown.

InfoSpace hopes for a model in which merchants will pay when a user clicks on information about that merchant, said Joe Herzog, InfoSpace's director of emerging products.

The article goes on to say:

Herzog said that InfoSpace will not support a model in which advertisers pay to be at the top of the list ? a common practice in PC searches ? because consumers would find that irritating, especially since such listings could clutter the mobile phone's small screen.

Huh? I'm unaware of any major web engine where the advertiser can pay for placement at the top of the organic results. Perhaps the writer should have done a bit more research.

As many of you know I'm the mobile search guy around the SEW Blog and as soon as I can get my hands on the software I'll give it a test and report back. I'm not saying it can't be done but getting the typical cell phone user to first download and then pay for software to access local listings, etc. is going to be an uphill battle for InfoSpace especially when many other companies offer similar services for free via WAP and SMS. More in this news release.

Postscript: If you have a Treo SmartPhone and some models of phones from Kyocera and Samsung, I've found Rick Whitt's Directory Assistant 3.2x client worthy of attention and use. Local listings from YP.com, maps from MapQuest, and more. Directory Assistant 3.2x is donationware.

Posted by Gary Price on September 26, 2005, 3:33 PM | Permalink

A Behavioral Network for Branding Campaigns

Tacoda's CPM-based behavioral ad network, which the company talked about in April, officially launched today.

Called Audience Networks, it boasts approximately 60 million uniques on 800 or so Web sites. Early advertisers include Delta, TGIFridays, Radisson, Western Union and eBay; and two thirds of clients have renewed. A longer list of participating sites can be found in the news release.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers on September 26, 2005, 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google Video Gets Flashy

A Google spokesperson has confirmed what we first learned via a InsideGoogle post over the weekend that reports you'll no longer need to download and use the Google Video Viewer to watch streaming content from the Google Video database. During the past few days, streaming video content from Google Video began being delivered via Adobe Flash. The short lived Googe Video Viewer debuted in June. Todays news should make Mac users happy since the video viewer was only available for Windows. Look for a Google Blog post about the switch to Flash sometime today.

Since Flash in already installed on many systems, Google will increase their video user base in seconds (including Mac and Linux users) without making new users do anything. In many cases, a Google Video searcher can now be watching streaming content online in seconds. Keeping it simple for the masses, yet another smart move from Mountain View.

Here are other features that the swith to Flash will offer Google Video users (from an email note from Google):

Better Viewing: Users can now watch videos in a larger viewing window that is resizable to fit their browser.

More Control: Google Video now includes user controls for play, pause, skip back, skip forward, position timeline with slider, and volume control.

Faster Searching and Viewing: Large thumbnail video "snippets" enable users to play 10-second previews of videos that are available for playback right on their results page.

Posted by Gary Price on September 26, 2005, 11:05 AM | Permalink

Google and UPN Announce Deal to Stream Video of Recently Aired TV Premiere

Google is joining AOL and Yahoo in making new television programming available via their video search service. Today, UPN and Google have announced that Google Video now offers access (free) to the premiere episode of Everybody Hates Chris which aired last week on the network and is "inspired" by comedian Chris Rock's life as a kid. You can watch the complete program here. More in this article from Broadcasting and Cable.

Last week we blogged about Yahoo News offering web-based video news reports from Kevin Sites in Iraq. In February, Yahoo streamed the premiere episode of "Fat Actress" starring Kirstie Alley. For more about Yahoo's plans to create original video content, see this SEW Blog post from yesterday.

Last year, AOL streamed the WB tv pilot, Jack and Bobby. This past summer, AOL offered live streams of the Live8 concerts.

Postscript: The complete "Everbody Hates Chris" program is only viewable to U.S. users of Google Video for the next four days

Posted by Gary Price on September 26, 2005, 10:22 AM | Permalink

OneStat Puts Google On Top

OneStat has released its latest results of most popular search engines worldwide, putting Google first on average over the past two months. The figures:

Google 56.9%
Yahoo 21.2%
MSN Search 8.9%
AOL Search 3.2%

It said that MSN Search's share rose from 8.6 to the current 8.9 percent over the past eight months, while Yahoo stayed stable and Google dropped from 57.2 percent to the current 56.9 percent.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 26, 2005, 10:10 AM | Permalink

Blog Buzz News: PubSub Improvements Coming, BuzzMetrics Sold

PubSub to Measure Blog Influence by Category from ClickZ says that PubSub is supposed to release a new version of its LinkRanks service, to help you find key blogs in various topics. Watching to see what comes up. No news yet on the PubSub blog. Top of my list is a hope that PubSub goes back and measures links from actual blog posts rather than just feeds, because of the problems with this I covered before. Meanwhile, BuzzMetrics Bought By Israel-Based Trendum covers word-of-mouth firm BuzzMetrics being bought by Trendum.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 26, 2005, 10:00 AM | Permalink

Google's Marissa Mayer Profiled

John Battelle called Google's Marissa Mayer a "hummingbird" of a woman in his new book The Search, which is a great description for anyone who has ever met her. She's literally flying around constantly with excitement and activity about various products. Managing Google's Idea Factory is a new BusinessWeek profile on Marissa, the company's director of consumer web products, covering what her workday is like, her background and how she goes about managing so many of the things Google develops. See also Google's Mayer: Searcher Behavior & Google Factoids.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 26, 2005, 9:37 AM | Permalink

More Transparency Needed On How AdWords Are Ranked?

Google Goes Las Vegas from Robert X. Cringely at PBS looks at the anecdote of someone who was paying $0.10 per ad to promote his site and then tried to test new ideas with a different site, coming away perplexed about why paying more for the second site generated LESS traffic. Are things rigged, Cringley asks?

The person he writes about decided to try testing ideas on getting better results with an entirely new web site. When he created ads for this site -- using the same terms as the old site -- he was told he had to pay $1.00 per click.

It's not clear whether he actually had to pay that full amount or if this is what Google was recommending he pay that amount (what you pay and what Google suggests and actually bills can be different). But he did pay that amount and got more clicks than his main site.

Then he dropped to $0.40 per click, and his clickrate plunged. Why didn't the test site still do better than the main site? After all, it was paying four times more.

Cringely says he has "no idea" what this happened, leading to his main point. Since the system has a lot of things to calculate about how well an ad does, more transparency would help those who might assume it's just rigged to benefit Google.

Of course, the system's always been rigged to benefit Google. Ranking ads on the old formula of CPCxCTR did help promote relevancy, but first and foremost in my mind, it also ensured Google was giving the most play to ads that were making it money.

Recent changes -- as covered in New Google AdWords Bidding System Live For All and Goodman Revisits AdWords Changes & Importance Of Clickthrough -- introduced the quality score factor, but exactly what's in that isn't certain. That's concerned some advertisers. Certainly a clearer explanation would help. Cringely's article points this out. John Battelle calls for the same here, and Andrew Goodman, of course, has been wanting that for weeks.

For all we know, part of the quality score might be rewarding an advertiser with a longer history of performance with Google. Since this advertiser set up an entirely new account for an entirely new web site, the quality score might have counted against him in that instance, since that account had no real history.

It would also be interesting to know more about exactly what wording was used in both ads. Is the "main" site a more "trusted" URL to users? That has an impact. More transparency from Google would help, but knowing more specifics about this advertiser's situation would also be useful.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 26, 2005, 9:23 AM | Permalink

More On Yahoo & Its Own Programming

It's Not TV, It's Yahoo from the New York Times is another look at Yahoo's moves to provide its own programming. The opening anecdote is key. Yahoo media chief Lloyd Braun "fumed" that Yahoo News was only offering "a white page filled with links to other sites on the web" during the troubled Discovery space shuttle mission rather than something original of its own.

I wrote before of the challenge this type of approach poses to Yahoo. Create your own programming, and people may not trust you're going to point them elsewhere. Indeed, that type of pointing IS programming and worked to bring people to Google in droves back when search engines became portals and decided they needed to have "channels" and their own content.

I don't know which way it will pan out, of course. Soon after Braun came aboard and talked about Yahoo's vertical areas as "channels," I wasn't impressed that he didn't seem to know the past history with search of that metaphor. But the closing quote in today's New York Times article suggests he does see the difficult balancing act:

"People want the freedom to do exactly what they want to do," he said. "But they also like to be programmed to and reminded of the different things that exist. Yahoo is in a position to do both of those."

I can certainly agree with this. There are definitely times when going beyond the algorithmic organization of information, some human programming, is helpful.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 26, 2005, 8:52 AM | Permalink

Emcee James Fallows Expects Blogorrhea Leaks Of Google Zeitgeist 05

Reader P. Webster sends me word that in the current edition of transAtlantic, a rundown of happenings related to The Atlantic magazine by that publication, "Google Zeitgeist 05" emcee James Fallows is expecting news of the off-the-record event to leak out. It writes:

Fallows admits that with guests representing "a zillion blogs" and some of the biggest U.S. newspapers, it's unlikely that anything will remain a big secret. He doubts there will be articles with Mountain View datelines, but with so much attention focused on Google these days, he anticipates "a fair amount of 'blogorrhea' on this subject."

Fallows is friends with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, which lead to him participating in the event:

In fact, Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, and its founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, recently invited him to emcee their technology conference, Zeitgeist '05: The Google Partner Forum. (Fallows met Schmidt and his wife, Wendy, both avid Atlantic readers, on a book tour in the 1990s, and their families have remained friends.)

For more background on the event, see my original post, Google Zeitgeist 05: Featuring Press & Bloggers But No Blogging Or Coverage Allowed and the News.com follow-up to that, Google invites 400 to 'off the record' event.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 26, 2005, 8:28 AM | Permalink

Microsoft Opens adCenter & MSN Keywords To Singapore & France

Microsoft has officially launched its adCenter system to sell paid search in France and Singapore. More details in this company press release. More info on the program in general here.

Actually, the release notes that Singapore officially launched on August 30, so it's France that gets rolled out today. MSN lance sa plateforme de liens sponsorisés en France from Abondance has more details on that, and the new French program can be found here.

Microsoft Plans to Sell Search Ads of Its Own from the New York Times has some overview coverage of the rollout, with some reaction comments from Google and Yahoo. MSN reiterates previous timing of hoping to replace Yahoo ads on its own sites entirely by next spring.

For more, see also

Coming in October: Microsoft To Begin Testing Paid Listings Program in US: Points to Wall Street Journal article about planned rollout in the US.
More Details On New MSN Keywords Program: Covers how the system has been in a closed beta in France and Singapore and how will partially open to US advertisers in October and be rolled out overall.
Details About MSN's AdCenter Begins Emerging: Points to a review of someone who has been playing with the system.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 26, 2005, 8:17 AM | Permalink

Google Targeting College Students With Newspaper Ads

I wrote earlier of Google targeting colleges with a special "College Life" page at Google. Now the other part of that story -- how university students are finding that page. That's through print ads in college newspapers such as the one that Google Blogoscoped has posted. It pitches Gmail as a way of getting "infinite" mail storage. Try the listed URL, www.google.com/university/gmail, and you end up at the Google College Life page. See also the Google Expanding Consumer Ads With European Campaign for a rundown on some other consumer-facing ad campaigns Google has been doing.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 26, 2005, 8:00 AM | Permalink

Apology To David Berlind

I postscripted an apology to my critique of ZDNet's David Berlind's complaint in wanting Google Alerts to offer a blog-specific email alerting service. I didn't want that apology lost in the shuffle, however. Dave Winer brought me up after my post for being unnecessarily personal, and he was right. The piece could have, and should have, been written without such a negative tone. My sincere apologies for that to David, plus for any suggestion that I somehow was implying that he couldn't write a fair piece about Google because of Google's policy of not speaking to CNET publications.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 26, 2005, 7:54 AM | Permalink

FirstGov Switches to Vivisimo & MSN

FirstGov, the official U.S. government information and services portal, will soon be powered by Vivisimo and MSN Search. Since 2002, FirstGov has been powered by Norway's FAST, but the switch was apparently made not to get homegrown technology but rather because the new deal provides more services at less cost. Gary Price has more about the new arrangement in today's SearchDay article, Vivisimo and MSN to Power FirstGov.

Posted by Chris Sherman on September 25, 2005, 10:15 PM | Permalink

Avoiding Holiday SEM Blunders

The holiday season will soon be upon us, and it can be a fantastic time for search marketers, provided you make all of the right moves, says Kevin Lee.

Though many marketers are doing a lot of things right, they're also setting themselves up to make some serious blunders this holiday season. Some best practices could easily replace those blunders.

Kevin offers a checklist of these potential blunders along with "power tips" to turn each into a best practice for search marketing in his latest ClickZ column, Turn Holiday SEM Blunders Into Best Practices.

Posted by Chris Sherman on September 25, 2005, 3:35 PM | Permalink

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