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November 6, 2005 - November 12, 2005

eBay Unveils Service With New and Historical Info About Popular Search Terms

Search engine marketers might be interested to learn about a new service from eBay that launched yesterday. It allows subscribers (three different payment plans are available) to access a ton of business intelligence from the eBay database including top keyword searches by category or related keywords.

The most costly plan ($24.99/month) offers some additional features including the ability to see searches by site or country and includes 90 days of historical data. More about what search metrics are available in this FAQ. Additional info about the service in general is available from Beta News and the IDG News Service.

Posted by Gary Price on November 12, 2005, 11:06 PM | Permalink

Your Life, Your Database: MyLifeBits Developer Gordon Bell Profiled in New Article

Total Recall, an article in the November issue of IEEE's Spectrum magazine offers a five page profile of Gordon Bell and his MyLifeBits project at Microsoft Research.

His project, MyLifeBits, is the digital distillation of, almost literally, his every waking minute. It started out as an offhand experiment, but today its goal is nothing short of changing the way we use computers, and by extension, the way we live. At its heart, MyLifeBits is a big database on a personal computer, into which go the correspondence, keyboard-based chores, and even the sights and sounds of everyday life. It automatically swallows up and indexes e-mails, keystrokes, recorded phone calls, images, video, and every Web page that graces its user's computer's screen.

Like many articles about MyLifeBits, this one includes a mention of the 1945 Vannevar Bush article, "As We May Think." In fact, the project's page on the MS Research site calls MyLifeBits, the fulfillment of Vannevar Bush's 1945 Memex vision including full-text search, text & audio annotations, and hyperlinks." If you've never read Bush's paper, by all means, do so.

Posted by Gary Price on November 12, 2005, 10:33 PM | Permalink

Bloglines Expands "Universal Inbox" Initiative with Job Listings

Two job search aggregators, Indeed.com and SimplyHired have always offered keyword-based RSS and e-mail alerts to notify users of new job postings. However, users first have to know about both of these excellent services. Today, I noticed that Bloglines is allowing their users to create new job alerts from both databases as part of their growing "universal inbox" intiative.

Posted by Gary Price on November 12, 2005, 11:28 AM | Permalink

Learning About and Understanding Web Spam

Here's some great reading, viewing and material for your reference shelf. With web spam continuing to be a very hot topic, I wanted to point out two papers and the slide presentations that accompany each of them. Both do a great job of describing web spam issues and making them understandable. Both papers were given during the 14th International World Wide Web Conference and AIRWeb05 that took place in May.

Title: Web Spam Taxonomy (9 pages; PDF)
Authors: Zoltán Gyöngyi, Hector Garcia-Molina.

Abstract: Web spamming refers to actions intended to mislead search engines into ranking some pages higher than
they deserve. Recently, the amount of web spam has increased dramatically, leading to a degradation of search results. This paper presents a comprehensive taxonomy of current spamming techniques, which we believe can help in developing appropriate countermeasures.

Slide Presentation Here
23 slides; PDF.

Title: Web Spam, Propaganda and Trust (9 pages; PDF)
Authors: Panagiotis Takis Metaxas, Joe DeStefano

Abstract: Web spamming, the practice of introducing artificial text and links into web pages to affect the results of searches, has been recognized as a major problem for search engines. It is also a serious problem for users because they are not aware of it and they tend to confuse trusting the search engine with trusting the results of a search.

Slide Presentation Here
27 slides; PDF.

Posted by Gary Price on November 11, 2005, 11:06 PM | Permalink

MSN Begins Beta Testing New Homepage

MSN officials have posted that they're now testing a beta version(s) (IE only for now, Firefox support "coming soon") of the MSN homepage. Of course, the MSN Homepage team is chronicling their activities on a blog.

According to "the MSN homepage team's Blog," random visitors to http://www.msn.com will also be selected to check out various beta versions.

Neal Freeland, Group Planning Manager, at MSN writes:

One of these versions looks pretty similar to Yahoo! Last year they tested a page that looked a lot like MSN. I guess we're both just curious about how our audience reacts to a competitor's page. Remember, this is just a test. Thanks for the help :)

Btw, I've posted about MSN testing some a new look to their home page first in August that soon disappeared. This official launch, in the past week or so, includes a number of features (several similar to Live.com and Start.com) sites. Kerry Woolsey, from MSN lists several of the beta's features and also touts the reduction of ads on the page.

Posted by Gary Price on November 11, 2005, 9:27 PM | Permalink

Daily SearchCast, Nov. 11, 2005: Good Reciprocal Linking, Trusted Links, Hats Of SEO Going Gray?, Canonical Funness, ExpertRank Inside At Ask Jeeves, Love & Murder Spill Into Search & More!

Today's search podcast covers reciprocal linking and not getting into trouble, ways search engines might seek trusted links, whether white and black hats in SEO are going gray, Google and canonical/domain name issue problems, Ask Jeeves perhaps branding as ExpertRank being their technology, more about Google placing print ads for their own advertisers, cool industry stats for advertisers via Google, . and much 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) or though our Yahoo Podcasts channel. Below are links with more information about the stories that were discussed.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 11, 2005, 2:22 PM | Permalink

MSN's AdCenter: More than Just Keyword Advertising

Ina Fried's News.com excellent overview article: Microsoft's ad pitch underpins Net moves, offers a look at Redmond's foray into selling search advertising (and beyond) with their AdCenter program.

What We Already Knew
Being beta tested in Singapore, France, and in a limited "invite only" pilot in the U.S. with a long line of people wanting in.

On Future Plans

"I will admit we were late," Microsoft's [Joanne] Bradford said. "If we are going to catch up in any meaningful way, differentiating and adding value was critical."

Earlier this week posted about MSN's new CTO, Ray Ozzie, telling "Microsofties" that "we knew search would be important."

Later, Bradford tells News.com that MS hopes to serve display ads on Windows Live and Office Live and then is considering sending ads (they better be careful here) to mobile devices and Xboxes.

"Today, it's keyword," said Joanne Bradford, Microsoft's chief media revenue officer. "We believe in the future it will be about display (ads), video and all that is advertising."

"There is a significant growth opportunity for us, as we tap into the growing market for online advertising," CEO Steve Ballmer said at this week's shareholder meeting at Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., headquarters. "There will really only be a few big players in the online advertising market, and our company aims to be, and will be, one of them."

How Will adCenter do it?

Microsoft's effort to outflank its main rivals is centered on giving advertisers more targeted information about the people it is serving up advertising to--things like age, gender and ZIP code, as well as the time an ad will be delivered, and other data.

Of course, this doesn't mean that Google, YSM, and the new Ask Jeeves/IAC program will sit still (ha!) and also not expand to offer this type of info.

Differentiations: On Targeting
In a pitch to a consumer goods company this week, Bradford pointed out the difference between what Microsoft is offering and today's keyword search. Buying the keyword "bleach," she said, would seem to be a targeted purchase for someone that makes the household product. But, Bradford said, two-thirds of the people who query on that term are men aged 18 to 34. It turns out that many of the searchers are looking for a popular form of Japanese animation that also goes by the term "bleach."

More from MS's Bradford

Today's search ads make no distinction of who is doing the searching. "Right now, we're just firehosing everybody," Bradford said.

Giving and Getting More Demographic Info

Chris Winfield from 10e20 says, "I'm willing to pay more if I know that I am getting a demographic," Winfield said. "This is where paid search is going--it's getting more personalized and more localized. With that will come higher prices."

Winfield goes on to say said that Microsoft's demographic abilities are far from perfect, but says even information that is 25 percent accurate is useful. "I'd still rather that, than the zero percent Google is giving," he said.

Fried's excellent overview article goes on to talk about what Google and Yahoo are up to.

Posted by Gary Price on November 11, 2005, 12:28 PM | Permalink

Google Looking for Spanish Language Quality Raters

Do you speak and read Spanish have "experience" in Spain and other Spanish speaking countries? If so, than Google has just published a position opening (it's a temp job) to evaluate "search quality."

In particular, applicants will be asked to draw on experience living, studying, and keeping in touch with a Spanish-speaking country's (web) culture and language.

You can work anywhere in the U.S. or Canada. More here. We've posted about Google's quality rater program several times including here and here.

Posted by Gary Price on November 11, 2005, 11:36 AM | Permalink

Google Personalized Search Now Includes News Results

Yesterday, Google rolled out an improved version of personalized search results, saying that news results would be included "soon." That didn't take long—today, a message on the Google News page lets us know that news results are now included in personalized search results, joining web and image results in the mix.

Posted by Chris Sherman on November 11, 2005, 10:32 AM | Permalink

Viral on TV

Viral video is rampant on the Web, but do the short clips make good TV? This Thursday Bravo will air "Outrageous and Contagious: Viral Video." A half-hour compilation of the short clips circulating the Web.

I heard the broadcaster will call for viewers to send in their own videos, though for what purpose they haven't said. While there's enough viral contentbranded and independentfloating on the Web to supply a Bravo series, it would be more appropriate if Bravo used the clips to create its own mini-viral site.

Posted by Enid Burns on November 11, 2005, 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Moving To Trusted Links & Change The Link Election Model

Thank you, Aaron. That's for taking the research paper (PDF file) about detecting link spam that Gary wrote about earlier and breaking it down in non technical language (and Jim Boykin summarizes Aaron further here). Aaron finds things like the paper says having .edu and .gov links are a good thing, don't worry about having a few spammy links and the more trusted links you have, the better.

I was thinking last night about the way to describe some of the changes or generational evolution we've seeing with counting links, and I thought it might be helpful to break it down this way:

Counting Links / Referendum: Before Google, other search engines made use of links to determine which sites might be important. But this was mainly a counting exercise. The more links the better, regardless of the quality of those links.

In simple terms, each link counted the same.
In election terms, it was like a referendum. Every voter had an equal say.

Weighted Links / Electing A Congress: Google's PageRank system helped usher in a change to weighting links, that not all are as important as others. The system worked to figure out what were the most important links and give sites getting those links more credit -- the authority pages, to use a popular term for this.

In simple terms, not all links are credited equal. Some links are worth more than others.
In election terms, it was as if Google looked at all the links across the web, determined who seemed to get the most, then let those authorities serve in a "congress" of sort in making the big decisions about what's good on the web through the link votes they cast.

Trusted Links / Qualifying Representatives

This is what we've been moving to. When PageRank knew a link was "important," that wasn't the same as trustworthy despite the authority misnomer. It only meant knowing that some particular link should count for more because the page the link was on had a lot of people "voting" for it. You can scam that type of voting.

In simple terms, some links are worth more than others after using some checks-and-balances to eliminate the scamming.
In election terms, it's as if after a congress is elected, you go back and check the campaign contributions. If you find something iffy, then some particular congressperson's vote might not count for as much as others. Or perhaps you watch their voting record, to see if they know what they're talking about. Being popular as everyone knows doesn't necessarily mean you're an authority!

That's a rough idea, and I'm playing at refining it more, but I thought I'd share it now. Remember, it's also not just about how much a link counts for but the text that's in and surrounding the link, along with a lot of other factors. Also see Yahoo My Web: An eBay For Knowledge on how search engines hope to tap into trust in ways beyond link analysis to improve results.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 11, 2005, 10:25 AM | Permalink

Google Cache Problems

Cache not working? at our Search Engine Watch Forums and Missing: Google Cache at Threadwatch cover some people having trouble getting access to cached copies of pages via Google. I'm seeing that myself.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 11, 2005, 9:50 AM | Permalink

Murder, Love Gone Awry, Google Searches & Bogus Clicks

Google Blogoscoped and Andy Beal both point to a story about an accused murderer searching for "neck," "snap," "break" and "hold" on Google, evidence prosecutors say that the man murdered his wife. Meanwhile, Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable points to a WebmasterWorld thread where someone reports a jaded girlfriend clicking on his AdSense links and getting his account suspended.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 11, 2005, 9:44 AM | Permalink

Google Provides Search Stats By Industry Sector

Nice spot by that man Peter Da Vanzo of (The Original) Search Engine Blog, a page over at Google full of metrics about how people in different industries search. Pitching that travel client on search? Help yourself to some stats from Google to help close the sale, for example.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 11, 2005, 9:36 AM | Permalink

Google Publication Ads Site & More On Print Ads

I wrote earlier about Vinny Lingham reporting that Google was going to test putting print ads in Chicago newspapers. In case you missed it, I postscripted that with an official confirmation of the test from Google. Meanwhile, Steve Rubel spotted AdJab finding a link for people to sign up for Google Publication Ads.

I hadn't seen that page before, so it does seem new. The program isn't -- Google's been buying pages in magazines and putting advertisers in them for a couple of months now. But now things are looking more formalized.

The name "Google Publication Ads" also helps. Otherwise, people will be thinking Google print ads means putting ads in the Google Print book search service. That's not what this is about. Nor is it about Google advertising itself in print publications. It's about Google putting advertisers that come to it into print publications, serving as a broker or placement agency for these companies.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 11, 2005, 9:31 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Recruiting Google's Matt Cutts

You've seen this type of thing before, but time for another chuckle -- Google's Matt Cutts gets a mistaken recruitment email from Yahoo.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 11, 2005, 9:05 AM | Permalink

Black Hats Going White?

A reporter asked me recently if the black hat and white hat branches of SEO are getting further apart these days. I replied I thought things were coming more together.

More white hats seem to feel things they might have deemed wrong in the past to be more acceptable, while some black hats are deciding some aggressive tactics might not be worth continuing with. Meanwhile, "bad" techniques like cloaking suddenly don't seem so black hat when Google itself fully cooperates with some sites to allow it. The world of SEO just getting more gray, to me.

A Whiter Shade of Black from Gord Hotchkiss over at MediaPost is a good piece on this, looking both at how white hats can enjoy the "guilty pleasure" to talking with "these dark magicians" but how his dark hat dinner companion conversely found things getting harder and wanting to go "legit."

One point of dispute. While Gord feels the Nov. 2003 Google Florida Update was the biggest blow to spam and dark hats, I have the exact opposite view. In the wake of Florida, many, many people I talked with and read commenting on forums felt like they had been trying to go the good content route.

When Florida hit and Google stayed quiet about the mystery "signals" in place, I felt like that made it an open season for some people to feel like "anything goes" with Google, not less. Just my take.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our forum thread, Is SEO Getting More Gray?

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 11, 2005, 8:57 AM | Permalink

Search Forums Roundup: Nov. 11, 2005

Today's SearchDay,

Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Realistic SEO Expectations - Yahoo Maps Beta, Ties In With Search More - Dashes In URLs - Soon To be Spam? - How To Cross Link Without Getting Penalized? - Gates Dismissive Of Google, and more.

Posted by Chris Sherman on November 11, 2005, 8:52 AM | Permalink

Ask Jeeves To Rebrand Tech As ExpertRank Inside?

Gary Price -- awesome sleuth that is he -- was doing some searching of the US Patent Office & Trademark Office database yesterday and noticed that Ask Jeeves filed for a trademark, a service mark to be accurate, for the term "ExpertRank" about a week ago. Perhaps the sign of a new branding campaign to come?

Ask Jeeves won't comment on what this means, but Gary reminded me that Teoma means "expert" in Gaelic. Teoma is the company Ask Jeeves bought in 2001 and the name of the search technology Ask Jeeves uses for its search results. I even joked earlier about how in the UK, Ask Jeeves has been branding its service as having "new Teoma technology."

So how about some speculation? Many are familiar with the "Intel Inside" branding campaign that Intel has run for years. You never see an Intel chip when you're using a computer, but the company wants you to have the notion that it's a good thing so you'll seek out Intel machines.

The search wars have their own sort of Intel Inside branding that's heating up. Google's long trotted out PageRank as its form of under-the-hood tech that should wow consumers. A few months ago, MSN rolled out its Neural Net technology as both a way to improve its results and to help counter the notion of Google having all the secret search sauce.

Teoma's long been the secret sauce for Ask, and ExpertRank sounds like a rebranding of that (rather than some new tech) to help Ask Jeeves compete with PageRank Inside and Neural Net Inside.

Where's Yahoo in all of this? It did roll out a Web Rank idea almost two years ago, but that never caught on or was seriously promoted by the company. But if Yahoo's going to face PageRank Inside, Neural Net Inside and ExpertRank Inside, it's almost a foregone conclusion it will look for something with a little more oomph than just saying it's Yahoo Search Technology Inside, as they did launching when launching Yahoo's own technology in early 2004.

Hmm -- maybe My Rank? Since's Yahoo's big on the entire My Web concept, I can see it now: "New Yahoo Search with My Web And My Rank Technology."

Postscript from Gary: Let's not forget that Google trademarked/service marked the term "TrustRank" earlier this year. Also, keeping with the "rank" theme, Topix.net registered the service mark "NewsRank" last year. They also have the service mark "National Network for Local News" registered with the USPTO.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 11, 2005, 8:34 AM | Permalink

Amazon Touts Offline Local Films

Just got an e-mail from Amazon.com promoting the feature film "Bee Season's" opening tomorrow. It's also promoting a new opt-in service: local movie and showtime listings, e-mailed weekly.

They're certainly hitting a broad, broad customer base. I didn't buy that title on Amazon, but I've certainly bought books by women.

As someone who has purchased books by Myla Goldberg and novels by other women authors, we thought you might like to know that "Bee Season," the new film based on Goldberg's acclaimed first novel, is coming to theaters. Starring Richard Gere and Juliette Binoche, the movie is opening in selected cities on Friday, November 11, and will playing nationwide soon--and Amazon.com Movie Showtimes will have showtimes and locations in your area.

Interesting, and very logical, way for the company to exapnd customer touchpoints, hook up with studios, and promote book and DVD titles at www.amazon.com/movies.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb on November 10, 2005, 7:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Imagery Comes to LookSmart's FindArticles

RLG, a highly respected organization in the library world with more than 150 research libraries as members, has announced a partnership with LookSmart.

Today's announcement brings access to RLG's Trove.net database of "209,000 rare and unusual images" to searchers via LookSmart's FindArticles, a LookSmart site.

Trove.net contains works from 300 BCE to the present and includes a variety of images from leading cultural heritage collections. The works represented range from papyrus fragments from ancient Greece, to Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales," to vintage advertising labels, to 20th-century architectural photos. These images can be licensed for use by individuals and businesses. RLG's Trove.net contains works from major international collections?national libraries and renowned universities?as well as images from many other museums, libraries, and archives.

Here's an example search for the term "baseball." At the bottom of the results page you should spot an image result. Click, and you'll see a larger thumbnail with the chance to click again and see the full image. Those with institutional memberships to RLG Cultural Materials can click through to the image while those who don't can license the image for various types of use.

Btw, if the initials RLG sound somewhat familiar, they should. SearchDay published an article I wrote last week about RLG's wonderful and free bibliographic database named RedLightGreen.

Posted by Gary Price on November 10, 2005, 6:10 PM | Permalink

A Bad Reciprocal Link -- And Reciprocal Link Request

We've been having quite a discussion about reciprocal links over at the Search Engine Watch Forums in our Reciprocal Linking Dead or Alive? thread. I chimed in to stress that whether a reciprocal link is bad or good can also depend on what exactly you mean by "reciprocal link." From one page to another and back? From one site to another but between different pages? And what about the underlying reason for the link? For search ranking purposes or for your visitors? Today, a gift (ahem) from the email deity arrived in my inbox. An example of a bad reciprocal link plus a bad link request. Yum, double badness to blog. Let's look.

Here's the email. URLs have been broken so as not to benefit the guilty, but you can always cut-and-paste and piece together, if you're really curious.

Dear Webmaster,

We would like to add http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/ to our online directory, by placing a link to it in our site http:// www. bradandjennifer. com/ In return; we would like you to link back to http:// www. myweddingfavors. com our site.

This exchange will create one way links to both our sites, which is beneficial from SEO point of view. This link will remain active as long as the requested link back is active on your site.

Please mail us your link Title, URL & Description & we will immediately place a link to http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/ on http:// www. bradandjennifer. com/ your link shall appear at: http:// www. bradandjennifer.com/ links.htm

Please place a link back to http:// www. myweddingfavors. com using the information below:

--------------------------------------------
Link Text: Wedding Favors Description: Elegant
wedding favors and unique wedding favor ideas
from My Wedding Favors.
URL: http:// www. myweddingfavors. com
---------------------------------------------

Thank you for helping both our sites achieve higher rankings, and for becoming part of the http://www. bradandjennifer. com/ family!

Regards,
Satyajit

Want to get 10,000 unique visitors per day from organic search engine traffic, like our Yahoo Store?

"DISCLAIMER: If you prefer I not send you future emails, please reply with the word 'REMOVE' in the subject line."

Oh, where to begin? Let's go with the biggest reason why I think this is a bad reciprocal link. That's because there's no benefit to my visitors in adding it. Do they care about this Brad & Jennifer site (and no, it's not that Brad & Jennifer). They do not! They care about search stuff. If I link to this site and they link to me, sure, we've scratched each others' backs. But that's to benefit each other, to reciprocate, not to help our visitors.

Hey -- what's the deal with those blogrolls you see in a lot of places, even on our blog. Isn't that reciprocation? Sure is! Move along, you joker. You're messing up my presentation.

Seriously -- yes, it's reciprocation, but reciprocation that also helps your visitors. There's some good reason beyond "I wanna top search ranking" for doing those links.

Now what if we go with this old school reciprocal link request, defying all better judgment. Is that enough to get us banned? Yes. Yes, you will be banned for life. Using mental telepathy, I just beamed that question to all my search engine contacts and received back that unified answer, despite the tinfoil on my head.

Nah. What's one link among many? Honestly, even if I end up doing a fair number of these, I'm still not likely to get banned. But neither are they likely to be doing much good for me.

This is because the links coming at me are likely on pages with a lot of other links -- and links that clearly aren't related to each other -- and thus making it easier to identify that page as one that perhaps shouldn't be able to transmit much importance to other sites. (Want the science bit? Go read the paper about detecting link spam that Gary posted about yesterday. That's full of just one method of knowing good links from bad. Jim summarizes it here, from Aaron's longer summary. Both are better reads for most people).

Specifically to this example, while they want me to link to their home page, they're going to place my link on their links page, not their home page. If you look at that links page, you'll see it's just a jumble of links. A link to a Bahama vacations site next to one for a satellite TV site which is near a Utah homes for sale site.

The Google Toolbar PageRank meter gives the page a big ole whopping 0. That's zero, with a capital Zed. (That's Zed, in what my kids think Z is called. It's because of their mom/mum, who's British. And I ask you, if Z is Zed, then why don't Brits call a zebra a zedbra? But I digress badly, madly). Think you're going to benefit much being linked from that page? Then you'd better go claim that $400 Google's giving away (They're not! It's a scam!).

By the way, notice how the email is a bit confused, even more confused than my critique of it. It starts out about the Brad & Jen site (remember, not THAT Brad & Jen and not even an incredible simulation), but then it starts talking about a wedding favors site. Just a guess, but me thinks someone didn't do the cut and paste right before sending out this bulk email. Another sign of a quality request.

What have we learned from all this?

Exchange links your visitors care about, and you'll probably be doing the "good" reciprocal linking and needn't fear people like Google's Matt Cutts, who can fell your site with one swoop of his mighty sword:

Matt Cutts (right) with mighty sword (left).
Photo Copyright 2005 Matt Cutts, all rights reserved.
No swords were harmed in the taking of this photo.
Avoid links request that bury you in Siberia in exchange for some nice beachfront real estate on your home page.
Brad & Jen look better than that, in their better days when they were still a couple.
Send me bad link requests at your peril.

You might also take a look at my post from last year, Thanks For Your Horrible Link Request. In that, I examine not the technical quality of the link request but the style and substance of the request itself -- or lack thereof.

Want to commiserate? Visit our forum thread, Reciprocal Linking ? Dead or Alive?

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 10, 2005, 5:26 PM | Permalink

Daily SearchCast, Nov. 10, 2005: Yahoo China Relaunch; Yahoo Kicks AOL's Tires, Says Nope; Google Wants Free WiFi For Hometown; Endless Google Jagger Update Ending; Microsoft Memos On Google As Competitor; Google Automat For Automatic Classifieds & More!

Today's search podcast covers Yahoo China being relaunched, but with Yahoo itself not in the driver's seat, Yahoo deciding it doesn't need to partner with or buy AOL, Google wanting to give its Mountain View hometown free wifi, Google personalized search hits prime time, the Google "Jagger" update coming to an end, Google Automat not a place for food but perhaps to make and place classifieds and much more!

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 10, 2005, 4:08 PM | Permalink

Who's A GAP? WhoisaGAP Helps You Find Google Advertising Professionals

Are you a Google Advertising Professional? Want to find one? While Google certifies them, it doesn't give you a list of them. No matter. Teddie Cowell over at Neutralize tells me they've knocked together a directory containing over 200 Google GAPs. Wait, that would be Google Google Advertising Professionals. I guess it's over 200 Google APs. Nah, that sounds silly. Anyway, check it out at whoisaGAP. How they get the list? Searching the web, baby, searching the web and seeing who says they're a GAP. If you got left out, you can email them for inclusion.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 10, 2005, 4:01 PM | Permalink

PC Magazine Reviews Six Comparison Shopping Sites, PriceGrabber Gets Top Honors

In a PC Magazine review of six comparison shopping sites titled: Price-Comparison Sites Strive to Save You Time and Money, Rick Broida takes a look at:

+ Become.com
+ mySimon
+ PriceGrabber.com
+ Shopping.com
+ Smarter.com
+ Shopzilla
Broida's article also includes a look at Buy.com, Amazon.com, and eBay. Interestingly (maybe another article?) no mentions of Froogle, Yahoo Shopping, and/or MSN Shopping. Bottom Line? PriceGrabber grabs the editors' pick. Btw, PriceGrabber also powers "product" search on Ask Jeeves. Finally, if you follow the shopping search engine scene, make sure to visit Brian Smith's, ComparisonEngines.com blog.

Posted by Gary Price on November 10, 2005, 2:49 PM | Permalink

Mashups a Go-Go! New Mashups from MSN Virtual Earth and Yahoo Maps

It's good to see more map mashups coming from developers working with both MSN Virtual Earth and Yahoo Maps. Here's a look at just a couple of them. Remember, these are just released apps and bugs are bound to exist.

MSN Virtual Earth

Virtual Places
Nice! All sorts of "overlays." Add in images Flickr, travel books about a specific location, weather, local blogs, and more. Coming soon will be a tagging, sharing, and publishing. Btw, Virtual Places says it works with Firefox. However, I had problems when using my Firefox browser. Might be my problem.

OSX Dashboard Widget for MSN Virtual Earth
For the Mac folks out there.

Read All About It
Combine MSN Virtual Earth with the Amazon.com book database. Enter a location and find books about the location or events that took place there.

Yahoo Maps

Local Events Browser
This Ajax-based demo allows you to find events in and around San Francisco. Find events by date and tags. Add events directly to your Yahoo Calendar.

MashupUpcoming.org
Impressive! Take Yahoo Maps and then add events from Upcoming.org's (a new Yahoo property) database. You can even add in local traffic, wi-fi hotspots, and ATM's.

Geocoding, Local Seach, Traffic API Mash-up with Yahoo Maps!
Useful and easy to use. Enter an address, a local data (like a store name), and then decide to overlay traffic info. Select each button one at a time. Btw, you can use Zip Codes instead of city/town name.

Posted by Gary Price on November 10, 2005, 1:25 PM | Permalink

Yahoo China Relaunched With Pure Search Focus & New Majority Owner

Yahoo China has been acquired by Alibaba.com and relaunched as a pure search service. Here's the rundown on the changes and some reasons behind the handout, which still leaves Yahoo itself earning off the site.

Back in August, Yahoo invested $1 billion in Alibaba. That gave Yahoo a 40 percent stake in the company.

At the end of October, there was a UPI report that Alibaba bought up all the assets of Yahoo China for $1 billion. But I think that was reported backwards and working off the August announcement.

If you look at the release of the August deal, it talks of Yahoo "contributing" Yahoo China to Alibaba. So I think UPI had it wrong. This other report covers how the deal was concluded at the end of October.

Skipping ahead, via Shak's China White blog, Yahoo! China has 8 months to better Baidu or it's 'game over,' says Alibaba CEO covers the relaunch, as does Yahoo China back to search engine market found via Threadwatch.

The first article covers Alibaba feeling they've got about a year to have a chance in search in China and how the more pure search site will also focus on financial news, entertainment and sports. And political news?

I don't want to get into trouble with the government, so I don't do any political news," said Ma. China requires special certification to publish political news.

It's not all abandoning portal features, however. Email is also being kept, as that's seen as a key portal feature that can't go away.

Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny who is in Taiwan, heard about the move from his cab driver and was surprised to see that Yahoo China has gained an MP3 search tab.

No surprise, really. China's most popular search engine, Baidu, has built its popularity on music search -- or some would say illegal downloads -- as I covered in my Google's China Situation Better Than You Might Think -- And Other China Search News post. The question really is, will the new Yahoo China feature music content but not get into the same trouble Baidu's had with music companies.

I took a fast look to see if I could find any pirated songs, but needing to log into a Yahoo China account lost me, I'm afraid. If you have to log in, I'm guessing pirated music is less likely.

Finally, doesn't it seem odd for Yahoo to be handing over Yahoo China to another company when just this week, it bought out control of Yahoo UK, Germany, France and Korea from Softbank?

Nah. I'm guessing it's a handy way for Yahoo to profit off of China but get free of all those pesky complaints that Yahoo bends to China's will on political issues. Hey, we didn't hand that email over to the Chinese government. We didn't censor those news results. We didn't filter those search results. Alibaba did -- take it up with them! Yet by owning a stake in Alibaba, Yahoo can earn money of the search business.

As a reminder, Google owns a stake in four percent stake of Baidu. That gives it a bit of a hedge in case Google China doesn't work or the entire Yahoo keeping your distance situation -- if I'm reading that situation right -- looks worthwhile to follow.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 10, 2005, 11:17 AM | Permalink

Travel Search Player SideStep and Amazon.com Announce Partnership

Over at Clickz, Pam Parker reports on a new partnership between Amazon.com and travel search aggregator, SideStep in the article: Amazon, SideStep Partner for Travel Search.

Parker reports that Sidestep will be a co-branded section of the Amazon Travel Store. The co-branded site will go live "early next year." At the moment, Amazon's Travel Store uses results from Hotwire.

It's not clear whether SideStep is paying Amazon for the exposure or whether the two have a revenue-sharing arrangement. Neither company would disclose financial details or the duration of the agreement.

Posted by Gary Price on November 10, 2005, 11:13 AM | Permalink

Yahoo No Longer Bidding for Piece of AOL

Reuters and the Wall Street Journal report that Yahoo is no longer interested in getting a piece of the AOL pie.

After we learned what their proposed deal terms were, we passed and we've never looked back," a Yahoo spokeswoman said on Thursday, confirming a report in the Wall Street Journal.
She denied that the company had made an offer for AOL but confirmed that Yahoo Chief Executive Terry Semel met with Time Warner chairman Richard Parsons in October.

The full text of that Wall Street Journal article is here. This week acccess is free to non-subscribers.

The article reports that AOL is still in talks with Microsoft and Google/Comcast.

Posted by Gary Price on November 10, 2005, 10:55 AM | Permalink

Google Wants Free WiFi For Mountain View

Like others, we were dubious when Google said it didn't have plans to expand free wifi outside of San Francisco, where it has pitched a plan to that city. Google expands coverage offer to Mountain View from the San Jose Mercury News (spotted via SiliconBeat) covers how Google has now approached the city of Mountain View, where it's based, with a similar idea.

What better place asks Mountain View's mayor. Hmm. As someone who was stuck without ANY broadband option for years, how about some places that could really use it? Ah, heck -- gotta start somewhere.

Google wants to put 300 transmitters onto telephone poles and lights. Those are also receivers, as well -- nice way to help know exactly where the wifi users are and show them some targeted ads, as has been discussed before.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 10, 2005, 10:33 AM | Permalink

Google Personalized Search Grows Up

Google seems to be amping up the pace of pushing products out of the nest. This morning, the company moved Personalized search out of Google Labs and made it available as an option for anyone signing up for a Google account. The service is now also available to users around the world, rather than being limited to just Google.com, and is launching with a number of feature enhancements. More info in today's SearchDay article, Google Personalized Search Leaves Google Labs.

Posted by Chris Sherman on November 10, 2005, 10:31 AM | Permalink

Mike Grehan's Son Attacked, Recovering

Mike Grehan's a popular search writer that many know. Sadly, his son was recently attacked by someone with his knife and seriously injured. He's slowly recovering, and Mike gives an update to those who may have heard in a thread over at our SEW Forums that Barry pointed out on his SE Roundtable blog.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 10, 2005, 10:14 AM | Permalink

Matt Cutts Banned On Google? And Oct. 2005 Jagger Update Winds Down

The Oct. 2005 Google Jagger update saga that has sucked the life out of so many (but not all; some are blissfully unimpacted by it) seems to be ending. Indeed, so says Google's Matt Cutts in his Jagger winding down post. But Matt, if the update is over and bugs worked out, why's your blog banned on Google?

The article I just posted for Search Engine Watch members (go on, support the site - become a member and get to read the full story) goes into detail about the situation, but here are the highlights for everyone.

He's not really banned, but less savvy site owners could easily get that impression.
Dave Naylor presents the evidence in Jagger3 hahahaha, where he shows how a search for mattcutts.com brings up no matches. That's often a sign that a site has been banned.
He's not banned, however, as a search for matt cutts shows. You'll see how he's ranking in the top results for that, which wouldn't happen if he was banned.
But wait! Notice how he ranks twice, with listings for both www.mattcutts.com and mattcutts.com! That's a canonical error -- my favorite hated word and problem that I wrote about earlier. It's Google getting confused about which domain name to use for Matt's site (and other sites as well).
Overall, another reason for what I said earlier -- it's overdue for search engines to let us register all our domain names directly with them and indicate the ones they should be using.

Also, by winding down, that doesn't mean winding down on Google itself. Matt's post wrote that you'd find it in action if you went to the http://66.102.9.104/ data center. Over time -- the coming days -- changes will migrate to all the Google data centers.

In some related notes, Barry at Search Engine Roundtable points to Update Saga. Part zillion over at WebmasterWorld, where people are wondering if the update has come to an end. It also notes that GoogleGuy has warned of a PageRank/backlink update to happen between now and the end of the year.

Thoughts on Jagger: Recips Got Hammered, Trust Trumps All from Andy Hagans at the Link Building Blog is a nice, short piece summing up what he things were the two major changes in the update.

First, reciprocal links don't see to work as well (What are they? Want to discuss? check out this SEW Forum thread: Reciprocal Linking ? Dead or Alive?). Second, sites with authority/TrustRank seem to do better (What's that? Check out Yahoo My Web: An eBay For Knowledge).

Want to discuss or comment? Visit our SEW Forum thread, Oct. 2005 Google Update "Jagger". C'mon by Matt -- tell us what's going on :)

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 10, 2005, 10:04 AM | Permalink

A Look at Some Patent Applications from Yahoo, Microsoft and Others

With so much attention being placed on each and every U.S. patent application that Google has published, I thought it would be interesting to take a quick look and see what others are doing in the way of search-related IP. By NO means should this be considered a complete list. It's far from it. I just did some quick research and came up with the following list of patent applications (most published within the few weeks) from a few of the major search players and a couple of other companies. Each patent is linked to the full text where you can learn more. Lots of interesting stuff going on.

Title: Moveable interface to a search engine that remains visible on the desktop
Assignee: HP

Title: Method and system for identifying image relatedness using link and page layout analysis
Assignee: Microsoft

Title: Method and system for classifying display pages using summaries
Assignee: Microsoft

Title: Method and apparatus for performing a search
Assignee: Yahoo

Title: Method and system for ranking documents of a search result to improve diversity and information richness
Assignee: Microsoft

Title: Contextual flyout for search results
Assignee: IBM

Title: Method and apparatus for providing information
Assignee: Fujitsu

Title: Method and apparatus for identifying related searches in a database search system
Assignee: Overture/Yahoo

Title: Verifying relevance between keywords and Web site contents
Assignee: Microsoft

Title: Systems and methods that rank search results
Assignee: Microsoft

Title: Search systems and methods with integration of user annotations
Assignee: Yahoo

Title: Integration of instant messenging with Internet searching
Assignee: Yahoo

Title: Search system using user behavior data
Assignee: Microsoft

Want to discuss some of these non-Google patents? Check out this thread in the SEW Forums.

Posted by Gary Price on November 9, 2005, 9:23 PM | Permalink

IBM Joins Corporate Monitoring Space with Release of Public Image Monitoring Solution

According to this article from News.com, IBM is joining other players in offering services that monitor a company's "image" using the web mentions, blog postings, etc., via a new service named Public Image Monitoring Solution.

The story notes that IBM is currently testing the service with it's corporate partners (including Factiva and NStein) and Morgan Stanley.

IBM originally developed OmniFind to index and search information that resides within corporate networks. But it found that some customers were keen on learning what outsiders were saying on the Web about a given corporation, said Marc Andrews, IBM's director of strategy and business development for unstructured information.
"Organizations are struggling to understand what people are saying about them in public," said Andrews. "That ends up having an impact on opinion and buying decisions."

Andrews on Monday demonstrated a prototype where a marketing department of an automotive firm could search through blogs, news stories and newsgroups to gauge consumer feelings.

The article doesn't mention if any of IBM's WebFountain technology has been incorporated into the product but my hunch (which can be wrong) is that it has.

For more, see these news releases from IBM, Factiva and NStein.

Other SEW Blog posts of interest:
+ Factiva Launches New Service to Help Execs Measure Company Reputation
Note: Intelliseek also helps power this service.
+ A Blogosphere Buzz/ Web Trends Tool From Accenture

Posted by Gary Price on November 9, 2005, 7:29 PM | Permalink

Learn About Open Content Alliance Book Scanning at the University of Toronto

Book digitization has been going on at the University of Toronto Libraries for some time. In fact, I wrote about scanning at UT and included a link to a video of the scanning robot almost a year ago.

In a Wall Street Journal article published today titled: Building an Online Library, One Volume at a Time, you'll meet Liz Ridolfo, a scanner at UT who is digitizing books. You'll learn about her daily work and get a quick look at exactly how it works.

Ms. Ridolfo is part of a massive undertaking to digitize the world's books. She is one of about a dozen scanners employed by the Internet Archive, a San Francisco nonprofit group that is spearheading the Open Content Alliance, a consortium of business and educational groups that includes Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Adobe Systems Inc. and several university libraries. The group wants to build an online library of millions of old books and hopes to make a big batch accessible through Web searches as early as next year. For all its technical sophistication, the group needs the manual work of people like Ms. Ridolfo to make digitization a reality.

NOTE: Access to the full text of the WSJ is free this week to non-subscribers.

Posted by Gary Price on November 9, 2005, 6:59 PM | Permalink

Answers.com Adds New Content to Database

Word from Answers.com that they've added several new reference selections to their already impressive collectin of free tools. New this month:
+ Devil's Dictionary - quaint dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
+ Jargon - computer related terms
+ AnswerNotes - miscellaneous terms and names

Posted by Gary Price on November 9, 2005, 6:28 PM | Permalink

October 2005 Search News Recap Posted

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

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

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 9, 2005, 4:42 PM | Permalink

Daily SearchCast, Nov. 9, 2005: Google Ads To Be Test Distributed In Newspapers, Search Personalization Freak Out For Marketers, Google Print Debates On Tap, Survey Of Search Marketers, Avoid A Google Phishing Scam, Google Maps Makes World Too Big & More!

Today's search podcast covers Google putting its own advertisers in newspapers, search marketer freak out over search personalization, getting Google patents on CD, using Google patents to push domain names, upcoming debates over Google Print's library scanning program, a flap about Yahoo rewarding employees for kicking some Google tush, cool comparison charts of search and portal features at the major players, real time flight checking, a call for search marketers to be counted in a new survey, avoiding the $400 Google phishing scam, how Google Maps makes the world too big and much more!

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 9, 2005, 3:47 PM | Permalink

Macmillan's Book Digitisation Program: BookStore

Trying to keep all of the book digitization projects out there in some order is becoming a full time job. The Information World Review article: Macmillan takes on Google Print, features comments from Macmillan Chief Executive, Richard Charkin, about the his company's content digitisation plans called BookStore.

From the article:

Like Google Print, BookStore will be a searchable repository of digital book content, with e-commerce technology for purchasing titles.
Charkin said BookStore will appeal to publishers that want to take advantage of releasing their content online, but don?t want to surrender control of their copyright or invest in the technology required. ?We need to be able to do deals with people that we can measure, not to hold onto material, but to know who is using it and how,? Charkin said. ?Publishers have to get their act together with the entry of Yahoo and Microsoft into the arena alongside Amazon and Google.?
With three major parties digitising books for the web ? Google, Macmillan and the Yahoo/Microsoft-led Open Content Alliance ? Charkin, who is also president of the Publishers Association, has called for all sides of the industry to collaborate.

Posted by Gary Price on November 9, 2005, 2:49 PM | Permalink

Google Adds Option to Limit to Creative Commons Licensed Material

Many sources including Philipp, Nathan, and Tara, have reported that Google has made an addition to their advanced search interface and now allow users to limit their search to content that carries a Creative Commons license.

Is this new limit something we haven't seen before. Nope. Yahoo addded a Creative Commons search limit to their advanced interface (or this standalone site) on March 24th of this year.

Both Tara and Philipp do a great job of breaking down the new Google feature and report on a few problems that include:

+ Wording on results pages (Tara)
+ Lack of Wikipedia data (Philipp)

Btw, the Creative Commons site search interface allows you to search for content either using the Google or Yahoo database.

For more on finding Creative Commons material, see the SearchDay article: Finding Free Content in the Creative Commons.

Posted by Gary Price on November 9, 2005, 2:15 PM | Permalink

WebmasterWorld Network Troubles

WebmasterWorld, which had network problems last month, seems to be having them again. Barry's at SE Roundtable is reporting problems getting there from New York, and I can't reach it as well from the UK nor can Gary from Virginia. The Search Engine World site that WebmasterWorld fell back on last time is working, so watch that if the problem isn't solved quickly.

Postscript: Barry has a note from Brett, WebmasterWorld's owner, that all's fine. Still not for me. Over at the alternative site, this thread is where members are asking and being updated.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 9, 2005, 1:35 PM | Permalink

Google Print--Is it Time to Change Copyright Laws?

The Salon.com article: Throwing Google at the book, takes another look at the Google Print program and asks if it's time to change copyright laws.

Posted by Gary Price on November 9, 2005, 12:42 PM | Permalink

Google Automat: Web-Based User-Assisted Classified Advertising

Many sources including Battelle, Jarvis, Ali, and nicely summarized by Susan Kuchinskas at InternetNews.com report on a new Google (new and Google--aren't those words mutually inclusive?) code named "Google Automat" that was discovered in a patent application by John Zappe at Classified Intelligence.

From InternetNews.com:

A key component would be Google's ability to upsell classified ads, according to Peter Zollman, executive editor of the Classified Intelligence Report. "The way you make money with free classifieds is through add-on services," he told internetnews.com. "Google will be able to offer contextual advertising next to the classifieds but also, they could give you the option of paying more to have it displayed at the top of the list or with pictures or something like that."

The service would likely make use of Google Base, the online database that briefly went live on October 26. After a user entered information about the product or service, Automat could generate either a standalone Web page with the merchandise information or a text ad.

Zollman adds:

"They're certainly planning for an all-out assault on classified advertising. They have made that clear with the URL, among other things."

The Patent Application
OK, now to the patent application itselfhere it is:
Title: System and method for providing on-line user-assisted Web-based advertising OR as a PDF file (with images).
Patent No.: 20050216335
First Published: September 29, 2005; First Filed: March 24, 2004

Abstract: A system and method for providing on-line advertising is presented. An interface guiding on-line advertising creation is presented. An advertisement is created from at least one of user inputs and stored data and includes information describing at least one item. An advertising creative is generated in association with the advertisement and includes a hyperlink reference to the advertisement. The advertisement is hosted on-line as a Web page and the advertising creative is placed on one or more targeted Web pages.

From the Background of invention:

Placing creatives and advertisements on-line for access by the general Web community can be especially problematic for individual or small advertisers. Advertising creatives must be integrated into other Web content to effectively drive Web traffic, but advertisers are generally not able to unilaterally add creatives to other Web pages. A third party Web content provider, such as a search or advertising engine, is needed. Small advertisers may not have an online Web presence, and, therefore, traditional Web advertising that drives Web traffic to the Web site of the advertiser is not possible.

Therefore, there is a need for an approach to providing Web-based user-assisted advertising. Preferably, such an approach would guide a user in the creation of advertisements describing offerings of goods or services, creatives associated with the advertisements, and advertising budgets. Such an approach would also help create and host a Web presence for individual and other advertisers. Such an approach would also facilitate driving Web traffic to hyperlinked advertisements through targeting.

Again, you can read the text here or view the 22 page application with images (cool!) here.

Posted by Gary Price on November 9, 2005, 12:20 PM | Permalink

Microsoft's Ray Ozzie: "We Knew Search Would Be Important"

We've read numerous comments from Microsoft's Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in the recent past about web search and Google in particular. This time it's Microsoft's CTO, Ray Ozzie, with a few thoughts that were published internally and seen by News.com.

Key Quotes:

"We should've been leaders with all our web properties in harnessing the potential of Ajax, following our pioneering work in OWA (Outlook Web Access)," Ozzie wrote. "We knew search would be important, but through Google's focus they've gained a tremendously strong position."

"Google is obviously the most visible here, although given the hype level it is difficult to ascertain which of their myriad initiatives are simply adjuncts intended to drive scale for their advertising business, or which might ultimately grow to substantively challenge our offerings," Ozzie wrote. "Although Yahoo also has significant communications assets that combine software and services, they are more of a media company and--with the notable exception of their advertising platform--they seem to be utilizing their platform capabilities largely as an internal asset.

Postscript: You can read the memos yourself directly through Dave Winer's Hypercamp, where he's gotten copies of them.

Posted by Gary Price on November 9, 2005, 11:44 AM | Permalink

Denton's cynicism

Like his bloggers, Nick Denton is popular for his cynicism. Before his ad:tech panel yesterday, he told me there's nothing he's very excited about in online advertising. And during the session, he said blog advertising shouldn't be undertaken for purposes of community buzz, but for simple demographics. He said one-off deals like Nike's "Art of Speed," which Gawker did two years ago, aren't really worth the effort. And he said his approach to selling ads is more conservative than ever.

"I'm skeptical about the ability of advertising to influence word of mouth," he said. "The real reason for advertising on weblogs is to reach an audience that's younger, richer, more influential. They should be bought for the demographics rather than the word of mouth. If the marketer wants to influence word of mouth through weblogs, it's better for them to use PR."

Posted by Zachary Rodgers on November 9, 2005, 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Recap Of SEW Forums Live Event At Disneyland

I was on vacation over the past two weeks in Southern California, but I took a few hours off to leave my family at Disneyland and walk over to the nearby Disneyland Hotel, where we held our second SEW Forums Live event. We had about 130 people come to the low-cost, low-key session on search. I joined a panel with a number of our SEW Forums moderators, with the entire event put together by SEW Forums editor Elisabeth Osmeloski. Below, coverage of the presentations and questions that you may find interesting:

Search Engine Watch Forums LIVE Anaheim, CA from SEW Forums moderator Joe Morin recaps everyone who took part, including Joe who did a great job with his presentation. Joe highlights the heavy in-house SEM attendees that turned out and some of the presentations and questions we all took.
Search Engine Watch Forums Live from Michael Nguyen gives you more depth on two of the presentations (Nacho on multilingual and local search, Joe on measuring your site's health).
Search Engine Watch Forums Live - Disneyland from Mike Valentine also covers the presentations, including Alex's "Getting The Second Click" one and Jen on contextual ad news and tips, plus covers the questions that came up.
Search Engine Watch Forums LIVE! Anaheim, California - October 27th! is a discussion thread on the event at the SEW Forums. Most is pre-event organization, but there are some post comments at the end -- and those who attended are welcomed to add more.

Thanks to everyone who took part on the panel, those who turned out and Yahoo for buying the drinks afterward!

Yep, there will be another event like this in the future, very likely to hit Seattle next. We'll let you know via the blog and the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 9, 2005, 10:10 AM | Permalink

Warning! The World In Google Maps May Be Bigger Than You Think

Just because I'm feeling kind of punchy, does anyone else think it's odd that you can convince Google Maps that the world is three times larger than reality? I mean, look at this. I've zoomed out as far as you can go, treating me to a world where the continents are repeated three times. MSN Virtual Earth is smart enough not to do that. Shouldn't Google be able to do the same? I dunno, it just irks me for some reason. FYI, from what I can see, Yahoo Maps (at least in the US) only lets you zoom out to see all the continental US.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 9, 2005, 9:52 AM | Permalink

SEMPO Survey Of Search Marketing Industry Seeks Participants

It's SEMPO survey time again! SEMPO Survey Probes SEM/SEO Issues from Kevin Lee at ClickZ gives you a rundown on how the survey aims to measure the state of the search marketing industry. I'd encourage everyone to participate, because it's one of the few surveys out there driven out of the search marketing community. You can take it from here. State of the Search Marketing Industry 2004 from SearchDay covers results from last year's survey. Want to comment or discuss? Visit our forum thread, SEMPO SURVEY: Search Engine Marketing -- Trends and Metrics.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 9, 2005, 9:39 AM | Permalink

Google's Personalized Results Patent

Patents, patents. Yes, another Google patent to talk about, this one related to personalization of search results and which is getting the attention of many search marketers. Let's dive in!

Personalization of placed content ordering in search results (PDF file) is the actual patent, for your reading pleasure.

Patent reading is never a pleasure for most, of course. That's why it's nice to have someone break it down for you. Who've we got? C'mon over Loren Baker! He takes you through a summary over at Search Engine Journal in his Google Patent : Organic Results Ranked by User Profiling post.

Not enough? Rand Fishkin over at SEOmoz is usually all over doing a patent breakdown but hit with time issues, he summarizes Michael Nguyen's in depth rundown, which you'll find here.

Is Google Messing With Organic Algos? from Paul Bruemmer steps beyond the patent to ask what's going on with personalization more generally.

Finally, there's our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Google to Manipulate Organic Rankings with User Profile, where there's lots and lots of discussion.

In particular, I want to highlight my comment in the thread. Like Paul, I'm stressing not what's in the patent (which may or may not be in use) but rather what's actually happening in terms of personalization at Google, Yahoo and elsewhere.

If you're worried about personalization, it's especially a look at what's actually happening now that I'd encourage you to read up on -- and I provide lots of links in that post.

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

Google Text Search Ads Going To Newspapers

Remember those display-style ads Google's placing in print magazines? Vinny Lingham reports a new twist. This time, Google is apparently to put its text ads (just like you see in search results) into a Chicago newspaper. Hmm, where? The classifieds section, maybe? If so, perhaps there's hope for newspaper classifieds yet.

Postscript: I followed-up with Google on this, and they've officially confirmed with me that they are evaluating a potential print ads test in Chicago newspapers. That's all they'll say, at the moment. They added that the existing print ad program they've been testing in magazines has had favorable reaction from advertisers and publishers.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 9, 2005, 8:52 AM | Permalink

Get Your Google Patents On CD

News.com has a nice mention of long-time search watcher Stephen Arnold having compiled more than 120 patents he believes belong to Google on a CD. Want to get them in one go? Visit his site, pay your $50, and there you go. Gary, of course, regularly posts here about patents and links to where you can download them for free (use that Legal: Patents link below this post if you are an SEW member for a fast way to see his past posts). But if you want to save yourself some time and love reading patents, this looks like an easy way to go.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 9, 2005, 8:26 AM | Permalink

Tapping Google's Patent To Push Domain Registrations

GoDaddy References Google's Patent is a nice one from Aaron at SEO Book looking at how one domain registrar is making use of a Google patent to help promote the idea you should buy domain names for a longer period of time. Ah, finally a new twist for domain registrars. The last search engine oomph push they had was really when longer domain names came out in 1999. That gave us a mad rush for hyphenated domain names that to me never really paid off for people. But a lot of domain names were sold.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 9, 2005, 8:06 AM | Permalink

Yahoo's Ass Kicking Statue Controversy

This was one of those, "should I skip it" decisions, but I did find it interesting. Phillip at Google Blogoscoped in Yahoo in Battle Mode summarizes how Yahoo's mail team was given a statue (yep, there's even a picture) for "kicking an enemy's ass." That would be Google's bottom being whacked, specifically.

Phillip then points to Google's Kevin Fox having long commentary on the statue. Kevin used to be at Yahoo, and he does a compare and contrast feeling that Google's about making better products while Yahoo's focused on "how to beat Google" and finds the competition goes too far with the statue's comparison to Britain fighting Nazi Germany.

The comments after Kevin's post go all over the place and are fun to read -- pro-Yahoo, anti-Yahoo, pro-Google, anti-Google. Phillip also points to two Yahoo employees who comment on the statue as well (Ryan Kennedy suggests a toned-down description for the statue; this employee prefers the "be humble" approach).

Yahoo's new email interface is way, way cool (double verified by checking with my wife, who is a regular user) -- but honestly, the old system was already kicking Google's butt for the simple fact that anyone could sign-up for it without getting someone to send you an invite or having to get text messaged a secret code. When Gmail's freely open to anyone, then let the weigh-up really take place.

Speaking of statues, how about Yahoo putting a little message on the Bob's Big Boy statue that Chris and I came across in one of the Yahoo buildings when visiting this summer. I'll see about getting the photo off Chris's phone -- I made him stand there and take it. But it looks just like this, except the hamburger was replaced with the Inktomi logo.

Bob's an old friend I remember well, from my days of visiting Inktomi. He was in the lobby, and I'd sit next to him waiting for someone to come meet me.

If memory serves, Inktomi founder Eric Brewer bought him to represent the serving/caching service that Inktomi used to provide. When Yahoo bought Inktomi, Bob came over -- and apparently was nearly tossed out until someone gave him a home.

He deserves a better home and maybe his own message devoted to the Yahoo web search team -- those from Inktomi, plus the AltaVista and FAST/AllTheWeb vets. They assembled a great product that directly rivals Google's core search results. Heck, put Bob out in the main entrance of Yahoo! Just make the message praising the efforts without dissing the competition, and I suppose everyone will be happy.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 9, 2005, 7:58 AM | Permalink

Search Marketer Lucas Morea Makes BusinessWeek Young Entrepreneur Finals

Lucas Morea is one of our regular SES speakers, and Nacho Hernandez tells you more about him in this post at Search Engine Roundtable, sparked by Lucas making the BusinessWeek Top 20 Young Entrepreneurs List. You'll find his profile page here, though I was having trouble getting it to load. Think he should be the winner? Well, cast your vote here.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 9, 2005, 7:14 AM | Permalink

Upcoming Google Print Debates

Can't wait for the court fights over Google Print's library scanning program? Relax, because debates are underway to tide you over!

John Battelle points to a Wired/New York Public Library debate happening next week in New York City, involving Google, the Association of American Publishers that's suing Google, the Authors Guild, the New York Public Library and Lawrence Lessig. Only $15 and tickets are on sale now!

Not in New York? Then come on out to Chicago for SES Chicago 2005, where we have our own Google Print debate happening.

It's on Dec. 6 from 4:30pm - 6:00pm. Google's confirmed, and our diligent legal moderator Jeffrey Rohrs is lining up an anti-Google publishing group (the AAP can't make it due to a scheduling conflict, but they gave us plenty of other recommendations), plus a publisher that is pro and another that is con the scanning project.

OK, SES Chicago costs much more than the NY debate. But you get a lot of other sessions in addition to the debate, plus an absolutely fabulous box lunch and even free donuts if you catch me in the hotel lobby around 1am. Mmm, donuts -- it's a jelly. More about SES Chicago can be found here.

Just don't like to get out? OK, I wrote earlier about an online debate that was going on. Go check out the contributions, all for free.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 9, 2005, 7:01 AM | Permalink

Flight 949, Where Are You?

It's easy to check on the status of major airline flights in the U.S. and Canada, either through Ask Jeeves, Google or Yahoo, or through more elaborate services that offer lots of additional information. Gary offers the 30,000 foot view of the best of these services in today's SearchDay article, Real-Time Flight Tracking.

Posted by Chris Sherman on November 9, 2005, 6:51 AM | Permalink

Search & Portal Features Charted

Reading the Google Tea Leaves has Tristan Louis doing a nice job charting various search and portal features that the major services offer, reminding me exactly what I used to do back in the late 90s. But maintaining those charts is a nightmare! If you need a quick rundown, definitely check it out. Tristan also uses the charts to speculate on what products Google might offer. No real revelations there, however.

Audio search? Sure, that's kind of obvious without the charts and overdue, especially with Yahoo's continued expansion.

An encyclopedia partnership? Google kind of has that already with the existing Answers.com deal, which sometimes brings up encyclopedia info along with dictionary definitions, including that from Wikipedia. Plus, it's hard to do a search these days it seems and not run into Wikipedia on the first page of Google results.

Google also talked with Wikipedia about a hosting deal, though I don't recall seeing anything further on that. FYI, Yahoo did do a partnership with Wikipedia, but looking today, that seems to have ended, with the Columbia Encyclopedia being used instead.

Clustered results? Google's got the technology already, just not the desire to use it nor really a pressing need since clustering's hardly been a category killer (Ask Jeeves used to offer it. So did FAST. Clusty still does. None of them have seriously rivaled Google for traffic).

Calendar? Again, obvious portal feature, especially for a company with a mission of helping people organize information. So much info is calendar driven that this is a necessity. Jeremy Zawodny asked for one earlier this year, and we've had recent signs one may be coming.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 9, 2005, 6:34 AM | Permalink

More On Office Depot Versus Staples Over Google Ads

We mentioned the case of Office Depot suing Staples over ads on Google last month. Now Eric Goldman takes a look at the case in more depth in Keyword Lawsuit Between Office Depot and Staples on his Technology & Marketing Law Blog. He also posts one of the court documents.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 9, 2005, 5:55 AM | Permalink

WebmasterWorld's Brett Tabke Interviewed On PubCon Growth

Via Search Engine Roundtable, Brett Tabke Interview on Pubcon & WebmasterWorld at the Online Marketing Blog has Lee Odden talking with WebmasterWorld founder Brett Tabke in advance of next week's PubCon 10. Brett covers how PubCon got going initially and how it is growing.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 9, 2005, 5:50 AM | Permalink

Phishing Scam Purports Google To Be Giving Away $400

They might give you $1 to download Firefox, Picasa for free and all the web searches you can eat, but Google is not giving away $400, as an apparent phishing scam is saying. Google phishing scam promises a $400 windfall from News.com has some additional details, and Websense gives even more in this alert, complete screenshots of the very believable site.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 9, 2005, 5:42 AM | Permalink

The Library Card Catalog 2005: More than Just Basic Book Info

As the resident librarian around here I wanted to toss out a bit about the electronic library catalogs (aka card catalogs) of 2005. While it's true that many people think of paper card catalogs, I think it's worth pointing out that while many people still think of them as tools to simply find books, videos, etc, and then go to the library and checkout the book (DVD, CD, or lead them to the right magazine or quality web site), that library catalogs of 2005 are offering MANY more services than what many people expect to find. What follows is a brief, and I do mean brief, overview. Btw, these days card catalogs re referred to as OPACS (Online Public Access Catalogs).

The challenge in describing and demonstrating all of this is that every library offers different services and technology. However, here's a taste of what I'm talking about. Remember, all libraries offer different services.

+ Book Reviews, Cover Images, Etc.
Here's a search for a from the online catalog at the San Francisco Public Library. The basic page contains what you've come to expect from a card catalog. However, you'll also notice a thumbnail image of the cover. You'll also find a brief summary of the book. Neat! Now, click the "I" icon (right side of page) and you'll find links to reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Library Journal. Naturally, reviews and what "value added" info is available depends on the individual entry.

Here's another example. In this case you get reviews plus a portion of the opening chapter of the book.

+ Buzz
The Henderson County Public Library in Kentucky mines their catalog and produces all sorts of lists. For example, a list of the most requested items, most popular movies, and a list of new materials.

+ RSS
Of course, library catalogs are also utilizing RSS to inform patrons about new book and useful materials. The University
of Alberta offers a long list of feeds by subject area and library.

+ Hyperlinked Subject Headings
Here's a search for "search engines" from the Enoch Pratt Public Library in Baltimore. You'll see a list of titles and images of book covers. The first book listed is JB's, "The Search." Now, click the "Details" button. You'll find a summary and the table of contents. Finally, click the "catalog record" tab and look for subject term links that are all hyperlinked. Simply click one or more of them to find other books that have been assigned these subject terms by a human indexer. Click on "Internet Searching" and you'll see what I mean.

+ Interfaces
I think you'll see that a variety of interfaces are available depending on the searcher's skills and needs. A library system in Illinois makes their catalog available in a traditional method or by using a series of images.

+ Online renewal and Reserving Materials
Pretty straightforward. Enter the bar code or title and you're done

As I've hope you've now seen, today's library catalog might not be what you've come to expect. Of course, I'm only showing a few examples from a few libraries. It's not to difficult to imagine full text and public domain material being added to each record in the future.

Finally, don't confuse a library catalog with the many full text (newspapers, magazines, reference books) and FREE databases that libraries (of all types) make available from home or office. All you need is a library card. Each library offers different tools. More on that here. In fact, one database many libraries offer is called NetLibrary which allows the user to "virtually" check out the full text of thousands of new and old books that you can annotate, print (in some cases), and share.

Postscript: Last week, Chris published an article I wrote for SearchDay about a library catalog that contains more than 120 million items and then allows you to link to local libraries to see if the material is available. Heck, it will even format the entry into one of several bibliographic formats.

Posted by Gary Price on November 8, 2005, 8:26 PM | Permalink

Google Plans to Open Office in Manchester, UK

Another day and another Google office story to post. A story from Cambridge Reports alerts us to the fact that Manchester will serve as Google's main "base" (no pun intended) "outside of London" for the English Midlands, northern England, Wales and Scotland.

The company, which employs nearly 5,000 people worldwide, will open its Manchester office with a small number of specialist staff, but plans to recruit a larger team as demand for its services grows.

Posted by Gary Price on November 8, 2005, 6:28 PM | Permalink

Holiday Shopping in Full Swing, According to Search Data

Hitwise has been tracking a rise in holiday-related search queries in the U.S. since September, and saw significant jumps last week over the prior week for "christmas" (up 41 percent), "christmas gift ideas" (up 185 percent), "christmas gifts" (up 92 percent) and "christmas decorations" (up 75 percent).

No surprise here: "ipod" is the most popular product search term. Variations such as "ipod mini," "ipod nano" and "ipods," take three additional slots in the top ten product searches. Other popular product searches include "dell computers," "barbie," "xbox 360" and "build a bear."

Want more data from Hitwise? Bill Tancer, general manager of research at the company, is posting regularly to his new blog, and plans to serve up more data about holiday shopping and search as the season advances.

Posted by Chris Sherman on November 8, 2005, 4:50 PM | Permalink

Daily SearchCast, Nov. 8, 2005: Google's Jagger Update, Book Search Developments, Google Base As Database For Everyone, Programming TiVo Via Yahoo, The Google Guys' 767 & More!

Today's search podcast covers updates at Google and Yahoo, developments in book search at Google, Amazon and MSN, Google growth into new businesses, Google Base as a future database for anyone and anything, programming your TiVo via Yahoo, a new Google mobile search tool, new details about the personal 767 for Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and more!

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 8, 2005, 4:27 PM | Permalink

MyCroft Plugin Available for Clusty Blog Search

A very brief note to point out that Clusty's blog search option that I wrote about a few months ago now has a MyCroft plugin for your Firefox browser toolbar.

Posted by Gary Price on November 8, 2005, 3:51 PM | Permalink

Amazon's Jeff Bezos on Book Scanning and Amazon's New Digital Book Programs

In a new interview Amazon.com CEO, Jeff Bezos, talks about Search Inside the Book and their new Amazon Pages and Amazon Upgrade programs.

Last week, we posted details about these programs (Amazon Pages and Amazon Upgrade) which are based on their impressive "Search Inside the Book" program that I am, well, just about obsessed over. It many cases it offers info about titles that's unavailable elsewhere. Btw, you can keyword some Search Inside the Book Material using the book search option via A9.

Search Inside the Book (online before Google Print) equates most closely with the Google Print for Publishers program where publishers send in-copyright material to Amazon.com for inclusion, searching, and in many cases analysis. The full text is searchable but the searcher can only view a limited portion online. This is not the same thing as the Google Library scanning program that has caused lots of attention and that will only show "snippets" of scanned in-copyright library materials. Public domain materials are a completely different matter. We've been attempting to explain all of this since day one and Danny takes another stab at it today.

Here are a couple of quotes from the article:
Bezos on Search Inside the Book:

One of every two books we sold in the United States is now in the Search Inside the Book program. That has been done the whole time from the beginning until now--and it will continue to be done with the permission and cooperation of the publishers.

On Amazon.com Adding Open Content Alliance Material to Their Database?

I think we'll have to wait and see on that, but you know, in the public domain, I don't see why not.

Posted by Gary Price on November 8, 2005, 3:37 PM | Permalink

A New Report on Estimating Link Spam

Here's a new 21 page (pdf) technical research paper from the Stanford InfoLab that takes a look at link spam. It might be of interest to some of you.

Title: Link Spam Detection Based on Mass Estimation
Authors: Zoltan Gyongyi (Stanford), Pavel Berkhin (Yahoo), Hector Garcia-Molina (Stanford), Jan Pedersen (Yahoo)

Abstract: Link spamming intends to mislead search engines and trigger an artificially high link-based ranking of specific target web pages. This paper introduces the concept of spam mass, a measure of the impact of link spamming on a page's ranking. We discuss how to estimate spam mass and how the estimates can help identifying pages that benefit significantly from link spamming. In our experiments on the host-level Yahoo! web graph we use spam mass estimates to successfully identify tens of thousands of instances of heavy-weight link spamming.

Want to discuss? Check out this thread in the SEW Forums.

Posted by Gary Price on November 8, 2005, 2:48 PM | Permalink

Silicon Valley Search SIG Meets This Week; John Battelle Talks 10 Years Of Search

The Silicon Valley Search SIG is having a retrospective on the last ten years of search, featuring John Battelle as a speaker. More details on the group's blog here, and preregister, as seating is limited. Event happens on Nov. 10.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 8, 2005, 1:55 PM | Permalink

Google Print Is Google's Ninth Most Popular Service

With all the debate over what Google Print might do to publishers, I was wondering if anyone was even using the service? Surely it wouldn't even crack the top ten of the most used Google services. As it turns out, indeed it does.

I turned to Bill Tancer of competitive intelligence service Hitwise, who showed on his great blog recently how most traffic from Google Print flows "downstream" to online book sellers.

That's not surprising, given that Google provides links to booksellers as part of the pages it displays in Google Print. FYI, last time we checked, Google said it does not earn of off any book sales generated from visits that Google Print generates.

But how many people actually use Google Print at all? Bill said Hitwise couldn't generate audience estimates, but he did give me a percentage breakdown of traffic to all Google sites for a one week period ending Nov. 5. The summary is below (rounded to the nearest tenth of a percent for all visits, except those below a tenth of a percent):

Google Web Search: 79.9 percent
Google Image Search: 9.2 percent
Google Mail/Gmail: 5.6 percent
Google News: 1.6 percent
Google Maps: 0.8 percent
Froogle: 0.7 percent
Google Scholar: 0.6 percent
Google Groups/Groups 2 Beta: 0.5 percent
Google Print: 0.4 percent
Google Earth: 0.3 percent
Google Directory: 0.2 percent
Google Local: 0.1 percent
Google Answers: 0.1 percent
Google AdWords: 0.06 percent
Google Desktop Search: 0.04 percent
Google Talk: 0.02 percent

As you can see, Google Print doesn't have a ton of use compared to other Google services -- but it was still impressive to see it cracked the top ten.

Also notice how Google Local is below Google Maps. Google recently turned Google Maps into Google Local, and it's not hard to see why. If Google Maps was getting more traffic, the merging the two was an easy way to get more usage of local.

However, earlier this year Google said that Google Local was more popular than Froogle. It could be that Hitwise might not be counting the Google Maps/Google Local visits correctly due to the change. I'm checking with Bill on this and will postscript a follow up.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 8, 2005, 1:37 PM | Permalink

Why We Use Various Search Engines

InternetRetailer has done some nice charts off of a Majestic Research/comScore report looking at why we use particular search engines (for Google, it's the results; for others, it's because you're doing other things). The stats also look at awareness of paid links and tolerance of demographic and behavior targeting. Here's a summary:

For the question of why people use particular search engines, top reasons for each major service were:

Google: 68 percent say it's because it has the best results.
AOL: 65 percent say it's because they are doing other things at AOL, like checking mail and other non-search activities.
MSN: 63 percent say it's just like AOL, because they are doing other things there.
Yahoo: 52 percent say it's just like AOL, because they are doing other things there. Yahoo got the second highest marks for having the best results after Google, with 33 percent choosing that reason.

The report found that AOL and Google users were the most likely to notice sponsored links (82 and 81 percent, respectively) while MSN users were the least likely to notice them (69 percent).

As for privacy, 58 percent said they weren't worried about being demographically or behaviorally targeted as long as it was disclosed and they could opt out. And 27 percent said they'd keep using a search engine even if they couldn't opt out.

Haven't tracked down the actual report yet; will postscript, if I can find it.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 8, 2005, 1:11 PM | Permalink

Google Giving Away Google Mini With Google Search Enterprise Purchase

So a correction to my earlier post in this spot (the original still below for those who care). Google's got a new deal going on now where those who purchase a Google Search Appliance to replace an existing solution are also given a Google Mini for free. That's basically a smaller scale version of the GSA (more on the difference is here). So not quite the potential sweetener to get people to dump their existing enterprise search solution that I thought before.

Original Post: Google gives so many other products away for free that I guess it shouldn't be a surprise it has decided to do the same with its enterprise search product, the Google Search Appliance. The company has just announced that anyone that wants to give up their existing enterprise search tool can get the basic version of the search appliance, the Google Mini. You've got to the end of the year to do so via this page. The real question will be, will they give anyone any version of the appliance for free next year, hoping somehow to make money off of ads shown on enterprise search. Wouldn't surprise me in the least.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 8, 2005, 12:53 PM | Permalink

MSN & British Library Partner On Book Search Project

We wrote earlier that MSN was getting into the book search game. Last Friday, another piece of the puzzle came out. MSN announced that it would digitize about 100,000 books through a partnership with the British Library.

Hmm. Isn't that what got Google into trouble? Yes, because Google is scanning both in and out of copyright works. So MSN will stick with only out-of-copyright public domain works, correct? Not necessarily from reading the MSN announcement:

We will predominantly focus on digitizing out of copyright material in this partnership.

Predominantly isn't the same as exclusively -- sounds like some copyright material might be getting included. But the AP reports:

Microsoft and the British Library stressed that they will be choosing books only from the older end of the library's vast collection of 13 million titles, as these have long fallen out of copyright.

The press release over that the British Library web site also says that only out-of-copyright books will be included.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 8, 2005, 11:14 AM | Permalink

PubSub Gains Community Lists To Rank Top Blogs By Topic

Tara at ResearchBuzz talks about PubSub's new Community Lists, human compiled lists in various topics. There are four so far, for Law, PR, Fashion and Librarians. Great idea, but we'll see how well it scales. What would be really cool would be focused searches you could do of posts within one or more of these communities. Want to be an editor and create a list, hmm, say one for search? PubSub's looking for people and more details are on the Community Lists home page. Don't forget to include us! PubSub Community Lists gives you more details of those behind the existing lists from Steven Cohen, who runs the librarian list.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 8, 2005, 11:03 AM | Permalink

NYT On Google As Threat To Other Businesses

Threadwatch points to Just Googling It Is Striking Fear Into Companies from the New York Times, yet another piece that will fuel the view as Google conquering the world.

Wal-mart is quoted as watching Google closely and described as seeing them as the seed of a threat, since it might be able to tell shoppers if better bargains are nearby. Nope, we can't have that!

We get more irrational exuberance of the type I haven't seen since 2003, when New York Times quoted someone comparing Google to God. This time, Google slips in the view of one to:

Google is the realization of everything that we thought the Internet was going to be about but really wasn't until Google.

Oh, come on! Get a grip. Google offers search results, wasn't the first to do that, did raise the bar and stayed ahead for about two years, but Yahoo and Ask Jeeves in particular deliver a great experience as well. This makes Google the realization of everything the internet was supposed to be?

Yep, Google does cool things. Gmail is cool and an advancement, but again, one that others have caught up with (and don't make you use a flippin' SMS messaging system to sign-up for it). Google Maps is way cool and another advancement, but it's hardly the realization of everything the internet was to be about.

Heck, I don't even know that anyone can agree on what the internet was supposed to be about, but I darn well know that if I grab 10 people off the street, they won't all agree that Google is the sum total of everything. In the end, Google and any search engines aren't everything. They are only pointers to everything, to the actual content that people want.

Rant aside, the story's funny from citing Bill Gates as saying that in a year or so, they'll demonstrate that MSN Search is better than Google. Yep, we'll see. They've still got tons of catching up to do, plus we've yet to see any movement on how the industry will agree on testing that would let us know whether to believe the "proof" that's put out.

The article touches on Google apparently still debating a real estate service, plus revisiting the entire giving internet access away for free idea. Newspapers, telecoms are other industries looking at the Google thread.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 8, 2005, 10:54 AM | Permalink

French Party Turns To Google Ads On Riot Issue

Via InsideGoogle, Paris Riots. Political Party turns to Google Ads to win support for policies of Interior Minister at Morrison covers how the UMP, the political party of French interior minister Nicholas Sarkozy, has turned to Google ads to drum up support for their policy to reestablish order in the country. More coverage from Reuters here.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 8, 2005, 10:21 AM | Permalink

New Ad Targeting Options May Fuel Privacy Worries

Both MediaPost and AdAge have stories on a session at Ad:Tech yesterday on a panel about how search engines are starting to target ads more on personal behavior and touching a bit on the privacy backlash that might bring.

John Battelle was on the panel and talked about how privacy policies on how data is used seem unclear. Gary Stein who heard the panel thought John's idea that people for a transparent system where people can view information stored on them and edit it might be too complex.

Then again, maybe not. If you could view the profile used to target you at Yahoo, Google, etc and delete or expunge it, that might be reassuring. However, that might not wipe out the underlying data (IP address, search queries and other material from logs) and not be reassuring enough to privacy advocates.

I've touched on in various places that I'd like to see some type of "Search Privacy Bill Of Rights," a topic I hope to get back to in the near future. At the very least, I'd like to see common concerns spelled out very clearly along with a common language that all search engines would use to explain where you stand on them.

How Should Search Engines Protect Privacy? in our Search Engine Watch Forums covers this more, and I'd love to hear your comments there, as well.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 8, 2005, 10:16 AM | Permalink

Search Engines and Reputation Management

Many companies cry foul when competitors or activists manage to get top search rankings with negative or false information about the company. Whining to the search engines usually isn't an effective way to cope with this type of situation. Instead, try getting proactive by using alternative search marketing strategies, including blogs, press releases and other tools to counter the negative messages. A panel of experts at a recent Search Engine Strategies conference offered specific advice on how to do this, and guest writer Cat Seda covered the panel for today's SearchDay article, Using Search for Public Relations & Reputation Management.

Posted by Chris Sherman on November 8, 2005, 5:37 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Testing Pay Per Call In US

Yahoo Testing Pay Per Call has member Webvisitor reporting that Ingenio is telling him that Yahoo is testing the company's pay-per-call solution. Ingenio already provides AOL pay-per-call listings, as covered more in A Closer Look at Pay-per-Call Search Marketing from SearchDay earlier this year. Yahoo launched pay-per-call in the UK in August.

Postscript: Greg Sterling, Johnathan Thaw over at Bloomberg tell me (no story I can link to, sorry) and this news item all have Yahoo confirming the test on its side of things.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 7, 2005, 11:33 PM | Permalink

Once Again -- The Difference Between Google Print & Google Library

After reading What's A Week On The Web Without Controversy? over at MediaPost, I'm literally shaking my head in disbelief at the confusion in the article and what it may breed among those who read it. So once again, I'm going to dive into what Google Print is, what it does and the difference between that and what I'm going to call Google Library. Perhaps some history will be helpful given all the debate in recent weeks.

Google Print was launched in December 2003 with the full cooperation of participating publishers, as our Google Introduces Book Searches article from that time explains more. You couldn't actually search on a Google Print site at that time, however. Instead, matches from Google Print would show up in regular search results, and you could click through to very limited excerpts. Interestingly, Random House was one of the participating publishers back then, whereas today, it's critical of Google Print because of the Google Library project I'll discuss below.

In October 2004, Google greatly expanded the way for publishers to participate in Google Print, as well as making it possible to see the full-text of books in varying amounts according to what PUBLISHERS chose to display, not what Google decided would be best. Our Google Print Opens Widely To Publishers article from that time explains more about this.

The MediaPost article I mentioned above talks about Google Print having a "library project" and a "publisher project," with the latter being most controversial:

Google is said to be working in two capacities: The "library" project and the "publisher" project. The publisher project is the most controversial, as Google aims to work with publishers to make copyrighted books searchable. The Authors Guild and five major publishers are suing to prevent Google from scanning books without explicit permission.

The opposite is true. It is the Google Library project that is controversial. The Google Print Program for Publishers project isn't part of Google Library. It's the preexisting program that allows publishers who wish (and plenty do) to make their content available through Google Print and viewable to the degree they want to show. There's nothing controversial about that program in terms of copyright issues, unless you find some authors who may have concerns that their publishers might benefit more than they do. Publishers who want to participate can and do. Publishers who don't want to participate stay out of the program.

Google Library is what I'll use as a shorthand description of Google Print Library Program, Google's library digitization project. It probably would help matters greatly if Google gave that program a name that is distinct from Google Print, as I'll explain further below.

Google Library launched in December 2004, with the goal of taking books (both in and out of copyright) in public libraries and scanning them to make them searchable. Our Google Partners with Oxford, Harvard & Others to Digitize Libraries article from that time explains more about the program.

One of the chief goals of Google Library was to feed new content into Google Print. But unlike with Google Print's publisher program, Google Library gathered content up without publisher permission.

It didn't take long for publishers to object to the activity. Copyright Questions On Google Digitization Project is a post from us in March 2005 about objections. Some Publishers Not Happy With Google's Library Digitization Program followed in May. Publishers' Group Asks Google To Halt Scanning For 6 Months from June covers more pressure. Eventually, we got to a lawsuit in September (Google's Library Scanning Project Heads to Court) and a further one last month (Association of American Publishers Sues Google over Library Digitization Plan).

What's lost in all these objections is that Google Library is NOT reprinting books online. Back to that confusing MediaPost article:

Cynics speculate all books will be made available via search. The company has not said how it will address copyright laws.

--and--

So, dear readers, how do you feel about this? As a writer and a consumer, I am torn. When I've got my writing hat on, I'd say this is wrong. There must be protection in regard to copyrighted materials.

Google has said how it will protect copyright laws, that being that it will not and does not reprint books that are in copyright without explicit publisher permission via the Google Print publisher's program.

Google Library simply makes the content of a book searchable. You can go to the Google Print site, maybe find a matching book scanned through Google Library, but you won't see anything from that book unless the book publisher has given explicit permission for this. The only exception to this is if the book is out of copyright.

My recent Indexing Versus Caching & How Google Print Doesn't Reprint post explains this in more depth. Google Library is the scanning process for SOME of the content in Google Print, but that scanning is NOT the same as printing material. Google Library is effectively making a card catalog of books.

Gary hates me using the card catalog analogy as too archaic, but too bad -- I think that still resonates with many people. Card catalog, "online public access catalog," whatever you want to call them -- it's whatever you use to find a book in a library.

Now think about the last time you went into a library and sat down at a search terminal to find a book. When you got a match, did you then click and read the book on the computer screen? No, in all likelihood you did not. Instead, you were given the location of the book in the stacks, and you walked over to pull it off the shelf.

Google Library is helping Google create that type of searchable index of books, that feeds into Google Print -- but Google Print does not let you then pull the book off the virtual shelf and read it online unless a publisher has explicitly given permission.

Whether the scanning itself to build a search index is still a copyright infringement remains to be seen. If so, my Why Don't Book Publishers Object To Web Indexing?, Forget Google Print Copyright Infringement; Search Engines Already Infringe and Legal Experts Say Google Library Digitization Project Likely OK; Will It Revolve Around Snippets? posts explain why scanning of web pages has gone on for over a decade without legal repercussions, and how publisher groups involved in the Google Print lawsuit themselves sing a different tune when it comes to web indexing, though the principle at stake is the same.

Back to Google Print, the most recent news has been that it is making public domain works gained through Google Library available online via Google Print. Unlike what the MediaPost article suggests, however, these are not the only works you can get. As I've explained, works that are still in copyright works may also be read online, but this is with publisher permission.

And finally, back to that Google Print versus Google Library confusion. It is difficult for anyone to understand the differences between the publisher program, the library scanning program and what both allow and do. It would help if Google gave the library program -- which at the moment seems to be called the Google Print Library Project -- a better name.

For example, take the Why we believe in Google Print post over at Google from last month, where Google writes:

We've been asked recently why we're so determined to pursue Google Print, even though it has drawn industry opposition in the form of two lawsuits, the most recent coming today from several members of the American Association of Publishers

Google's not being sued over Google Print. It's being sued over Google Library. But the failure to distinguish the two things is making ALL of Google Print seem like it's under fire. Google Print has much content that publishers are voluntarily providing. It's the Google Library that's the problem right now for Google, so give that a name separate from Google Print and perhaps some of the confusion between the two will go away and benefit discussion about the real issues, rather than what often seem to be mistaken assumptions.

Want to know more? If you're a Search Engine Watch member, our Google: Print & Library section of Search Engine Watch has a rundown on many more past posts with history. Plus, you help support Search Engine Watch and the tired fingers of me, Gary and Chris here at the site.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Google Sued Over Google Print Library Scanning in the Search Engine Watch Forums or create a new thread over there.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 7, 2005, 11:31 PM | Permalink

Yahoo! and TiVo

An analyst in this Reuters article cracks me up. Here's what she says about the deal between TiVo and Yahoo! that has the DVR's online programming service integrated with the portal's TV section:

"I don't see how it's going to drive new incremental subscribers for TiVo. I don't see how it's going to drive incremental revenue for TiVo," said analyst April Horace of Hoefer & Arnett, who added that the deal still appeared "incrementally positive" for the company.

Hm... How could it drive incremental subscribers and revenue for TiVo? Maybe because the company's got the equivalent of a super-targeted sponsorship on one of the Web's top portals. On every single episode page on Yahoo! TV, a "Record to my TiVo box" link will appear. Indeed, even though I'm not registered for the service, when I look at the info about this Seinfeld rerun, I'm told "You can record this program to your TiVo." It involves a high-traffic portal. It offers utility and exposes the TiVo service (and its capabilities) to a TV-hungry audience. Seems like pretty smart marketing to me.

Posted by Pamela Parker on November 7, 2005, 9:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yale Law Holding Regulating Search Symposium

I got invited to take part in the Regulating Search symposium at Yale Law School next month and desperately wish I could have made it, but SES Chicago 2005 begins on Dec. 5, my flight plans were already set for that. But Gary might be taking part, and there are plenty of other good speakers and interesting panels, including:

Search Engines and Public Regulation
Search Engines and Intellectual Property
Search Engines and Individual Rights

I'm looking forward to hearing what discussion comes out of the event. Interested in attending? More info is here, and registration prices here (it's cheap, only $165 for corporate types and much less for students and academics).

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 7, 2005, 7:27 PM | Permalink

Microsoft Said Leading The Race For Part Of AOL

Many Suitors, and Pitfalls, as AOL Seeks a Partner from the New York Times says Microsoft is now the "front runner" in a potential sale of a stake in AOL.

The article highlights comments from Microsoft chair Bill Gates last week saying that interest is more about having a "greater role" in the future of advertising, suggesting as we and others have said before, that this may be more about landing increased distribution for Microsoft's new paid search program but outing AOL's current partner, Google.

The article also says the AOL-Google deal is up for renewal each year. If so, that's news to me. AOL has never said how long the last deal it signed with Google would last, but it was very, very clear when I talked to them about the deal when renewed in October 2003 that it was a multiyear agreement.

My best estimate has been that the deal would be up for renewal in October of this year, since past deals have typically lasted about two years.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 7, 2005, 7:02 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Buying Full Ownership Of Yahoo UK, Germany, France & Korea

Yahoo buy stakes in European, Korean portals from the Associated Press covers Yahoo spending about $500 million to acquire full ownership of Yahoo sites in the UK, France, Germany and Korea. In these countries, Softbank currently holds a 30 to 33 percent share of each country-specific portal. Yahoo said the move shows the confidence it has in its international business activities. The deals are set to complete by the end of the year.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 7, 2005, 6:34 PM | Permalink

Back to Basics

Everybody knows what they need to do in order to fix their Web site, they just don't do it, according to Jim Sterne, consultant, author and head of the Web Analytics Association. Sterne -- one of the most entertaining yet informative speakers I've yet seen at an event like Ad:tech, offered his top 5 ways to get "back to basics," ranging from usability issues to simple common sense:

1. Make it easy to find. Customers know they have pain, they don't know as much as you do about your industry, and they don't want to know. What they really want is to find a way to ease their pain.
2. Make navigation comprehendible. All the best advertising in the world is useless if you don't help people find what they're looking for when they get to your site.
3. Make it viewable to all. The goal should not be to have the "coolest" site in the world, but to have the site that is best designed for its purpose -- usually to help convert visitors to buyers.
4. Make data live. The power of the Internet is real-time inventory, interaction, and processes. A Web site is not a library, but a collection of verbs -- a place where people come to do things.
5. Make customers part of your site. All advertising has one objective -- to cause more interaction between a business and a consumer.

According to Sterne, all the rules for improving your online presence boil down to one simple rule -- think about what you're doing from the customers' perspective.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on November 7, 2005, 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yahoo Lowers Ad Deposit To $5

First Yahoo eliminated its $20 per month minimum spend requirement for search ads last month. Now today, the Yahoo Search Blog has announced that the minimum deposit to get started has dropped from $30 to $5 (on the US side, at least -- in the UK, it's still about $100 required). That's the same as Google has long requested, and Google has never had a minimum ad spend. So I guess Yahoo's now completed the transition of making getting started with search ads the same as Google. Of course, ads at Yahoo remain ranked by who pays the most, while Google factors clickthrough rate as a key component. But that's expected to change next year, as we've reported before. Want to discuss? Of course you want to discuss! Come by our thread at the Search Engine Watch Forums, Yahoo! Search Marketing Lowers Deposit.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 7, 2005, 4:01 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Nov. 2005 Update Weather Report Issued

Google's not the only one updating. Yahoo's Tim Mayer issued a search index weather report last week saying it would be "mild and quick." Indeed, scanning a few search blogs and forums, chatter seems light about concerns. Barry has a rundown on forum discussion areas here. Since it hasn't yet been named, I dub it "Yahoo Nov. 2005 Update." How's that for catchy? Feel the urge to discuss? Yep, we have a forum thread: Yahoo Nov. 2005 Update & Weather Report.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 7, 2005, 3:26 PM | Permalink

Miva Enhances Search Ad Offerings

MIVA announced today the launch of Ad Center 3.0, an enhanced self-service campaign management tool for advertisers. The company also debuted a new broad match tool. More information about both programs can be found at the company's press release center.

Posted by Chris Sherman on November 7, 2005, 3:17 PM | Permalink

Google Oct. 2005 Jagger Update Continues Into November & Hating The Term Canonical

So I go away for vacation for two weeks, and discussion of Google's October 2005 "Jagger" update is STILL going on when I get back. Nice (or maybe not) to know nothing changes. Here's a fast rundown on things, including a look at canonical issues, what the heck that means and why after a decade of existence, maybe it would be nice if search engines gave us a better way to indicate the domains we own and which to use when listing our pages. Seems like that would help solve canonical/domain name problems.

Google: Phone Numbers in Results and Better Precision over at Threadwatch looks at how results for things like [boeing 727] and [nokia 3650] seems cleaner. It also looks at Google showing phone number results for some queries. That's not new, but the links to maps next to listings does seem a recent change.
Reciprocal Linking After Jagger? from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable wraps-up some discussion in our own SEW Forums thread, Reciprocal Linking ? Dead or Alive?, pondering whether reciprocal linking is being hit hard in the latest update.
Jagger or Jäger? Google?s Update Unraveled at Search Engine Lowdown has Jenny Halasz taking a swing at what seems to be some of the most widely discussed changes (hidden text, paid/reciprocal linking, too much internal link optimization) but also how few of her clients are seeing changes. FYI, at our SEW Forums Live event two weeks ago, which was heavily attended by in house SEOs, the Jagger update was of relatively little concern to the audience. In other words, the update may have hit affiliates and others who are light on content harder than some others.
Why I Try to Spend Less Time Analyzing Algorithm Updates from Todd over at Stuntdubl has sage advice I've heard other vets say before. Don't try to analyze too hard now. Wait for the dust to settle.
Jagger Update at Google from Barry at SE Roundtable has him doing the hard work of slogging though the Update Jagger - Part 2 thread over at Webmaster World, which he's found to be the best forum discussion overall about various changes. He summarize two key things that seem to be involved, duplicate content issues and reciprocal linking. Then, as with virtually any other major update you care to discuss, he covers how people are also reporting exact opposite findings of each other.
Jagger 2 Update Info from Google's Matt Cutts has a rundown on changes that people should be seeing when searching Google now, along with lots and lots of comments.
Jagger3 update is the latest weather report from Matt Cutts, saying that more changes and fixes are on the way, including correcting canonical problems.

Canonical? Canonical! Oh, how I hate that term. First, I can never say it properly (I'm always saying caniconical!). Second, no one knows what it means, as you can see in comments below Matt's blog posts.

Here's a definition from Answers.com:

The actual name of a resource. For example, a canonical name of a server is its true name rather than an alias.

To put that more in SEO terms, it means knowing which domain name a search engine should use for your site. Search Engine Watch, for example, can be found at:

searchenginewatch.com
www.searchenginewatch.com
sewatch.com

Those are just some of our domains. Usually, Google gets it right and lists our pages using our preferred domain name, searchenginewatch.com, which is the only one we actively promote. But sometimes, it will list our site as if it is two different sites, searchenginewatch.com and www.searchenginewatch.com.

For example, look at this search. You'll see that the first page, How To Use HTML Meta Tags, uses the www.searchenginewatch.com domain. Then the third listing is the SEW home page, using the searchenginewatch.com domain.

That's a canonical problem. We're partially at fault. Somehow, we started doing a 302 temporary redirect rather than the 301 permanent redirect that's recommended, which I'm having fixed (we used to do a 301, and I don't know how that got messed up).

Despite our bad, it's still a search engine canonical error that it can't figure out these are the same site despite the wrong redirect being used. Or perhaps a better term is a domain name error -- it can't get the domain name right, and that's easier to understand, much less pronounce.

The entire mess also brings up the issue I've raised in the past, most recently with the MSN PageRank 2 case, about why ideally, site owners would simply be able to register the domain names they own with search engines in some trusted manner and indicate the preferred one that should be used. Then hijacking issues, canonical/domain name issues and other problems could more easily be solved.

LET'S GET ON WITH IT, SEARCH ENGINES! Who wants to continue with this type of madness?

Need to talk, discuss and commune about the update more? Part 3 of the Update Jagger over at WebmasterWorld is the latest multipart thread there. Oct. 2005 Google Update "Jagger" is the far more low-key discussion at our own Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 7, 2005, 3:16 PM | Permalink

Oct. 2005 Keyword Prices Stay Flat From Last Month, Drop From Last Year

Fathom Online has released figures from its latest Keyword Price Index showing that prices overall stayed about the same as last month, rising $1.44 to $1.45. The automotive category dropped 14 percent, however, while the finance category rose 15 percent. Compared to the same month last year, however, prices dropped about six percent. More details in this press release from Fathom and this MediaPost story.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on November 7, 2005, 11:36 AM | Permalink

ad:tech Kicks Off

It's open and it's crowded. With 8,300 registered attendees, 60 sessions and 230 speakers, Conference Chair Sue Bratton has called ad:tech New York the biggest event in the history of interactive marketing.

We'll keep you posted. Right now, we're more than a little taken aback that Sean Dee, Hard Rock's CMO, didn't so much as mention interactive anything in the morning keynote.

We did, however, learn the 57th Street restaurant moved to Times Square.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb on November 7, 2005, 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Program Your TiVo via Yahoo

You could see this coming and I'm sure it's just the beginning and not just for Yahoo.

Yahoo and TiVo (another verb for many, just like Google) have announced a partnership that will allow users of TiVo Series2 recorders to program their TiVo box via a special site on Yahoo. You'll need to have an email address and Yahoo account.

From any Yahoo TV episode page, users can click the "Record to my TiVo box" button, the companies said. The request is automatically sent to your home the next time your TiVo box connects. The companies suggest allowing for one hour of lag time if the TiVo is connected to broadband through a standard home network. Dialup users have to wait 36 hours for a request to take effect if the TiVo uses dialup.

More in the News.com article: Yahoo plans to connect services with TiVo.

Postscript: A visit to the Yahoo TV page will show to "schedule now" on TiVo. Instructions here.

Posted by Gary Price on November 7, 2005, 1:48 AM | Permalink

Getting the Airfare Buzz from Kayak.com

Kayak Buzz from travel search engine/aggregator Kayak allows the searcher to see what are the "'best fares'" to the most searched destinations from any airport in the world based on the searches other Kayak users have conducted. Your results are mapped on a Google Map. I wonder if they'll try it with MSN or Yahoo Maps?

The service combines some of the most popular ideas and topics in the
online/search world today (below in no specific order):

Using the web to spot "buzz"

Google Maps

Mashups

Communities of Users

Vertical Search and travel search aggregators

Let's run a search. We'll search for the best 25 fares from Chicago-O'Hare
Airport (ORD). You can enter a city or airport code. If you enter a city name, a
drop down appear with choices of airports.

Enter ORD

Click the "Get the Buzz Button"

A Google Map will appear with colored icons (depending on the fare) next to
the cities for the best 25 fares

In the left column, you'll see a list of fare prices and cities. You can
limit to a specific price range by moving the slider

Now, click on the city name on the list of map

I'll select Phoenix. A pop-up appears with the price someone paid, the
travel dates, the source of the fare, and how many searches the price is based
on.

Remember, if you search for the same fare you might not get it. Why? You
might be traveling on different dates and airline fares are constantly
changing.

Bottom Line: Fun and interesting technology that might even turn you on to a
great airfare.

Posted by Gary Price on November 7, 2005, 12:10 AM | Permalink

Google Local Goes Mobile

Adding to its various search services for mobile phones, Google has introduced Google Local for mobile, a stripped down version of its web-based local search, with heavy emphasis on maps and driving directions. It's a nice, but limited service, and only works on Java-enabled mobile phones at this point. More about the new service in today's SearchDay article, Google Launches Local for Mobile.

Posted by Chris Sherman on November 7, 2005, 12:00 AM | Permalink

15,000 Blogs Added to Topix.net Database

Material from 15,000 blog sources have been added to the Topix.net database. Topix.net already contains material from 12,000 mainstream media sources. Items from blogs and mainstream sources are mixed on topical "feed" pages and search results pages. Topix CEO, Rich Skrenta, has the details (including some great charts and stats) on the company blog.

If you've never visted and/or used Topix.net, it's more than worth a look. I use many times each day (it was one of my top new resources for 2004) either as a news search tool or by browsing some of the more than 300,000 topical "feeds" and 30,000 local feeds that are constantly updated. Btw, Topix also does a great job of separating press releases from other content (look for the PR Scan link in the left column of every page). Channels are available for every Zip Code in the U.S. (and most postal codes in Canada) as well as celebrities, industries, and much more. I find material via Topix I either don't see elsewhere or see it using Topix first. Every channel can be viewed on the Topix site or can be via RSS.

So, let's get to today's news from Topix.net about the addition of content from more than 15,000 blogs to their crawl of more than 12,000 news sources.

Highlights
+ Blog posts are currently highlighted in a tan/manila box to separate them from mainstream media. This is most likely a beta and will not be the final UI.

+ Topix crawls both RSS and HTML. However, Rich Skrenta tells us that it's an RSS crawl for most of the blog content.

+ "Posts should show up on our site and search index within 1-3 minutes of being crawled." Note: Our blog as well as the DocuTicker site I edit were fortunate enough to be two of about 500 blogs that have been in the Topix index prior to today. I can say that many times I was able to find something I posted in Topix within a VERY and I mean a very few minutes.

+ The Topix blog post offers a pie-chart comparing the amount of posts (by topic) from weblogs versus what Topix calls "mainstream media." Interesting. The only thing I'm unclear about what is precisely a blog and does the definition vary from blog to blog? For example, does a "blog" from the BBC, Washington Post or MSNBC count as a blog or a mainstream source? I'll admit that this is a gray area as blogs become more mainstream. Just how a blog is defined these days is very debatable.

+ The numbers. Topix.net CEO Rich Skrenta offers some insights and numbers the "real" number of blogs out there versus the amount of spam blogs that exist. Very interesting and some might say, amazing numbers that will sure have people talking. I'll leave it at that for now. Tag the following numbers: wow. (-:

While the total number of unique feeds that have ever existed, or blogging accounts that have ever been signed up can certainly be counted, what is far more relevant to us is the composition of the daily posting stream. [My emphasis] What we're seeing is that 85-90% of the daily posts hitting ping services such as weblogs.com are spam (take a look for yourself). Of well-ranked non-spam blogs that we've discovered, we've found about half haven't been updated in the past 60 days. Our filters sift through what's left, which even after discarding 95%, is still a great deal of good material.

Why 15,000 Blogs? Who Made the Selections?
So, how did Topix choose the 15,000 blogs that are now in the database? Skrenta explains that more than 1 million blogs were crawled and then ranked using their NewsRank algorithm that looked at blog posting frequency, writing style, type of reference, popularity, etc. We also learn that 15,000 blogs is an arbitrary number and Topix hopes to add more (lots more) moving forward.

Adding Your Blog
If you're blog isn't included in the Topix crawl, you can submit your blog (and give feedback on the service) here.

This is all very new and I look forward to seeing how useful the blog content is versus what I've been finding from Topix over the past year. One feature that would be good to have is an option to toggle either blog content or mainstream media content on or off both topical pages and the advanced search interface.

More later.

See Also:
An OJR interview from earlier this year with Rich Skrenta and Chris Tolles from Topix.net

Posted by Gary Price on November 6, 2005, 10:51 PM | Permalink

Google's Personalized Home Page Now Available in China

A quick note in the state-run China People's Daily that Google's personalized home page service (that requires a Google login) is now available (at least for the moment) in China.

Posted by Gary Price on November 6, 2005, 6:45 PM | Permalink

Feedster Beta Testing Podcast Search Tool, Adds "Official" News Provider Search

I just noticed on the Feedster home page that Feedster is now beta testing a "podcast" only search tool that current indexes (there numbers) 27,482 podcasts. I also noticed another new tab on the Feedster homepage that offers a "news" only search from "official news providers." Interesting. I would like to learn more on what makes an official news provider, official. No info on the official Feedster blog about the betas. However, the blog Socklabs from a person who works at Feedster, points out both of these new additions and also notes that Feedster has been growing their index of Asian blogs.

Posted by Gary Price on November 6, 2005, 12:42 PM | Permalink

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