October 31, 2005
Looking at the Upcoming Holiday Shopping Season at Yahoo Shopping
In his non-stop series of interviews with influential people in the shopping search biz, Brian Smith from ComparisonEngines.com has posted a recent chat with Rob Solomon & Chris Saito from Yahoo Shopping that looks at Y's plans for the holiday shopping season including talk of Yahoo's new mobile shopping tool (launched in September) and their Shopping Gift Finder that became available in the Spring.
From the interview:
Q. How do you expect most people to shop ? browse or search?Rob: ?People are still doing both, but search is a much bigger driver; people end up on the site through search queries, search engine optimization (SEO), and search engine marketing (SEM). More people start in a search destination and then get into search and browse. Probably 65-70% of people are searching,?
Chris: ?Certain categories lend themselves to browsing ? like apparel. Browse is driven by category.?
Rob: ?We view vertical search as one of the most important things that we?re doing. Browsing is a big
Btw, on an somewhat unrelated note, I taught a class today and Yahoo Shopping SmartSort (now two years old) continues to "wow" them when demonstrated. It's also great to see that Yahoo continues to update the reviews that the service uses. Yahoo Mindset from Yahoo Research, released in May, uses the same type of interface and intent-driven technology.
Posted by Gary Price on October 31, 2005, 11:14 PM | Permalink
AllRecipes.com Cooks Up Smart Searches for Ask.com
I recently blogged that Ask Jeeves was offering a new Smart Search with direct links to recipes from the AllRecipes.com database. Today, the Dayton Business Journal offers a profile of this recipe/cooking vertical.
Posted by Gary Price on October 31, 2005, 10:46 PM | Permalink
The Yahoo Media Content Beat: Harry Potter Exclusive Video Clip and New Content from "The Week"
A couple of quick items from the Yahoo media content beat.
First, Yahoo is the exclusive home of a new video clip from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire film.
Second, The Week will produce, "a daily roundup of print and online business news" for Yahoo Finance, according to Crain's NY Business.
Posted by Gary Price on October 31, 2005, 10:20 PM | Permalink
Special Logos From Engines For a "Scary" Halloween
Spooky and scary logos from Ask Jeeves, Google, and Yahoo today for Halloween.
Posted by Gary Price on October 31, 2005, 8:43 PM | Permalink
Review: Google and Yahoo Hiring Booms
Those of you who look at our blog regularly know that we try to post interesting and "telling" job openings at Google, Yahoo, and elsewhere. Chris has already blogged about Google WILL hire programs to support Open Office despite reports to the contrary. That's part of the story. This afternoon, Elinor Mills at News.com talks about the hiring rampages at both Google and Yahoo in the article: Google hiring like it's 1999.
In its most recent quarter, which ended Sept. 30, Google added 800 employees, bringing its global work force to 4,989. That's more than triple the total from just two years ago.
Btw, Google employed 2668 as of Sept 30, 2004.
According to Hoover's, Yahoo had more than 7600 employees in 2004, growing about 38%.
Here's a quick review of a few (and I mean just a few) recent Google and Yahoo job related stories and employment postings from various sources:
+ Via News.com: Google Hires New Public-Affairs Chief
+ Via News.com: Google hires another China exec
+ Via SEW Blog: Google Hiring Mac Developers
+ Via SEW Blog: Google Begins Hiring for Some Sort of Facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan
+ Via SEW Blog: Google Seeks Sales Team For Payment Solution
+ Via SEW Blog: Google TV Job Posting: Gone After a Day Online
And some very recent postings:
+ Google: Creative Maximizer Coordinator
Now, that's a job title! Work in Chicago!
+ Google: Gmail Coordinator and Froogle Coordinators (Temp Jobs)
+ Google: Inside Sales Representative, Google Payment Solutions - New York
+ Google: Google Earth Inside Sales Representative
+ Yahoo: AJAX Web Developer - My Yahoo
+ Yahoo: Senior Editor, Yahoo! Tech: Yahoo! Inc
+ Yahoo: Yahoo! Research Scientist, Search Content Analysis Team
+ Yahoo: Product Manager, Yahoo! Search Submit
+ Yahoo: Product Manager, Yahoo! Global Search Syndication
+ Yahoo: Principal Software Engineer - Chinese Search Technology
+ Yahoo: Director, UED for PC Client -- Yahoo!
Posted by Gary Price on October 31, 2005, 7:59 PM | Permalink
Is Google Ad-Server Shopping?
The New York Times gave Google about a million miles of ink this weekend with Google Wants to Dominate Madison Avenue, Too [subscription required].
Does the search (and everything else) giant have designs to dominate online ad serving, too? We've heard tell that (in alphabetical order) Bachelor #1 is Accipter; Bachelor #2 is Doubleclick's DART; and Bachelor #3 is Falk.
None of the parties involved are commenting, of course. Yet the potential of that sort of acquisition is anything but far-fetched. Sure, Google has stated interest in making deeper inroads into print advertising, and is dropping tantalizing hints about television -- not to mention Google Base.
All this without yet having the ability to serve a wide variety of display advertising online? It can't be long now before they buy -- or make -- some sort of solution.
Pamela Parker reminded me of the cross-platform possibilities such an acquisition would afford. All these companies can serve ads to wireless or iTV platforms (or have at least said they can).
Posted by Rebecca Lieb on October 31, 2005, 3:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Looksmart Goes Vertical
Looksmart is turning itself into an About.com style portal, launching 161 vertical search sites in 12 categories including automotive, cities, food, health, home, sports and travel. Unlike About, Lookmart's vertical sites are not put together by human editors, but are assembled using technology.
"We decided if we could do this on a highly automated basis, we thought it would be a very good business," Looksmart CEO Dave Hills (also former COO and president of sales at About) told ClickZ's Pamela Parker.
The company continues to run its paid search and contextual advertising network.
Posted by Chris Sherman on October 31, 2005, 2:57 PM | Permalink
IBM, Google Partner on Enterprise Search
IBM plans to integrate its OmniFind corporate search system with Google's free desktop search and make the package available to enterprise search customers. Infoworld reports:
By linking the IBM enterprise search system with Google's PC search tool, users will be able to search for information not only on corporate repositories, such as databases, content management systems, applications and the open Web, but also on their desktops.
Posted by Chris Sherman on October 31, 2005, 2:47 PM | Permalink
Google Working on Open Office, After All
Despite recent articles claiming that a Sun-Google hosted desktop productivity suite and common operating system, "is way off base," word comes today that Google plans to hire programmers to improve OpenOffice.org, the Sun developed Microsoft Office counterpart.
It sounds like a typical tentative first-step for Google. From the News.com article:
"We want to hire a couple of folks to help make OpenOffice better," DiBona said.Google has shown an affinity for open-source software, which are programs developed in the open and available for free. Many of the company's programmers came of age in the open-source era, so advancing the open-source agenda comes naturally, DiBona said. But the company also has business reasons to justify its open-source embrace.
"We use a fair amount of open-source software at Google. We want to make sure that's a healthy community. And we want to make sure open source preserves competitiveness within the industry," he said.
Posted by Chris Sherman on October 31, 2005, 2:35 PM | Permalink
Checking Out Books in Libraries
Many libraries throughout the world offer online access to their catalogs. The oddly-named RedLightGreen taps into thousands of these catalogs, allowing you to find books on any imaginable subject, and then do very interesting things with your search results. Gary Price offers a rundown of this alternative to Google Scholar in today's SearchDay article, Searching for Library Books with RedLightGreen.
Posted by Chris Sherman on October 31, 2005, 10:12 AM | Permalink
