May 28, 2006 - June 3, 2006
Search Headlines & Links: June 2, 2006
Below, a recap of stories posted today to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with other items we've spotted but not blogged separately:
From The SEW Blog...
- Daily SearchCast, June 2, 2006: NoFollow Changes Linking, Reputation Management, DOJ Wants Records, Microsoft's Planned Investment and much & More!
Today's search podcast covers how the "psychology of linking" has changed, handling bad behavior with reputation management and the DOJ wanting to prosecute so Internet companies need to store those records! Plus Microsoft's planned investment that totals $6.2 billion 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. Need more help tuning in live or finding the chat room? See the Daily... - 55 Ways To Have Fun With Google
Interested in playing games? Want to learn a few other trick things you can do with Google? Google Blogoscoped author Phillip Lenssen has written a book titled: 55 Ways to Have Fun With Google. Learn about playing the classic Snake game among others, and using Google calculator utilities etc. According to the description, there's no programming skills needed. I haven't read the book, but knowing Phillip's blog, it sounds like it could be very interesting reading.... - AdSense Calendar
If you're an AdSense publisher, then you have a Google Account with access to Google Calendar and other services. As announced on their blog, you can now populate your Google Calendar with events by the AdSense team. Instructions for doing so are in the blog entry. It enables you to view and keep track of system maintenance, blog entries and upcoming events.... - Microsoft's Investment In The Coming Year
The open source phenomenon presented a challenge to Microsoft some years back, and it took the company a few years to learn to deal with it. The advent of Google has presented them with a new challenge that a transformation is "not optional" according to Steve Ballmer. While Google exemplifies the type of company success that ad supported software services can yield, Microsoft's model to date has been entirely different. The investment Microsoft plans for the coming year includes $6.2 billion, $2 billion more than previously budgeted. This investment will go towards building success in ad supported software which includes... - DOJ Asks Microsoft, AOL And Google To Keep Records
Last week during meetings with executives, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales asked several Internet companies to retain records for aiding in their prosecution efforts of terrorists and child predators. They requested lists of emails sent and received and web search information be kept for a reasonable length of time. The content of emails aren't part of this request, since the proper legal channels through which such information can be sought is by subpoena only.... - NoFollow Changes Linking Behavior
Jeremy Zawodny posts his commentary on the NoFollow tag after finding an interesting blog entry on how the NoFollow attribute has changed linking behavior. NoFollow was introduced by Google over a year ago to combat prevalent comment spam as blogs became extremely popular. Ever since, NoFollow has had mixed responses from Webmasters, and Jeremy nicely puts it all in perspective. NoFollow has done very little to actually thwart comment spam, and its other effect is to dissuade some from entering legitimate comments. Without a reciprocal link, what motivates readers from commenting on someone else's website? Jeremy notes the "psychology of... - Reputation Management: How To Handle Saboteurs
The [failure] GoogleBomb had become well-known enough to have seen Marrissa Mayer post a response on the Google company blog last September. I first heard the phrase "Reputation Management" as applied to search from Heather Lloyd-Martin during a private conversation a long time before this. It was obvious Heather was on to something because we've all seen search results that produce unexpected listings. David Dalka recently posted his frustration that Googling his name could confuse searchers into thinking he is a millionaire. This may be a personal example, but what if you have a bona-fide saboteur?...
Other Things We Read, Didn't Blog But You Might Want To Read...
- Google News inventor defends aggregator site, Online Press Gazette
- Learning To Surf The Web From China, Marketwatch.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on June 2, 2006, 9:20 PM | Permalink
French Used "Email" Term All Along
Does anybody remember when the French government decided to ban use of the word "e-mail," hoping to cleanse the language of English impurities? Well, it turns out it was a French word all along (sorta).
Here's how I discovered this: There's a calendar in my kitchen featuring 19th century French ad posters. Today I flipped it to June (not bad for me -- usually I wait till mid month) and noticed the word "email" in an ad for a paint brand called L'astrolin. The full text: "L'astrolin peinture email donne brilliant parfait inalterable." I won't do a parfait translation, but it means something like L'astrolin paint gives you brilliant, perfect color that doesn't fade, or change, something along those lines.
And that pesky "email" term? I've gathered from looking at a couple translation sites that it's like a stain or the kind or thing that's applied to ceramics before they're baked. Maybe like enamel? (I'm sure I'm off on this and my above translation, so if anyone wants to clarify, please comment!)
Of course, our "e-mail" isn't derived from theirs, but I thought this was kind of an ironic tidbit anyway.
Posted by Kate Kaye on June 2, 2006, 3:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Daily SearchCast, June 2, 2006: NoFollow Changes Linking, Reputation Management, DOJ Wants Records, Microsoft's Planned Investment and much & More!
Today's search podcast covers how the "psychology of linking" has changed, handling bad behavior with reputation management and the DOJ wanting to prosecute so Internet companies need to store those records! Plus Microsoft's planned investment that totals $6.2 billion 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. Need more help tuning in live or finding the chat room? See the Daily SearchCast FAQ.
Below are links to items discussed:
- Reputation Management: How To Handle Saboteurs
The [failure] GoogleBomb had become well-known enough to have seen Marrissa Mayer post a response on the Google company blog last September. I first heard the phrase "Reputation Management" as applied to search from Heather Lloyd-Martin during a private conversation a long time before this. It was obvious Heather was on to something because we've all seen search results that produce unexpected listings. David Dalka recently posted his frustration that Googling his name could confuse searchers into thinking he is a millionaire. This may be a personal example, but what if you have a bona-fide saboteur?... - NoFollow Changes Linking Behavior
Jeremy Zawodny posts his commentary on the NoFollow tag after finding an interesting blog entry on how the NoFollow attribute has changed linking behavior. NoFollow was introduced by Google over a year ago to combat prevalent comment spam as blogs became extremely popular. Ever since, NoFollow has had mixed responses from Webmasters, and Jeremy nicely puts it all in perspective. NoFollow has done very little to actually thwart comment spam, and its other effect is to dissuade some from entering legitimate comments. Without a reciprocal link, what motivates readers from commenting on someone else's website? Jeremy notes the "psychology of... - DOJ Asks Microsoft, AOL And Google To Keep records
Last week during meetings with executives, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales asked several Internet companies to retain records for aiding in their prosecution efforts of terrorists and child predators. They requested lists of emails sent and received and web search information be kept for a reasonable length of time. The content of emails aren't part of this request, since the proper legal channels through which such information can be sought is by subpoena only.... - Microsoft's Investment In The Coming Year
The open source phenomenon presented a challenge to Microsoft some years back, and it took the company a few years to learn to deal with it. The advent of Google has presented them with a new challenge that a transformation is "not optional" according to Steve Ballmer. While Google exemplifies the type of company success that ad supported software services can yield, Microsoft's model to date has been entirely different. The investment Microsoft plans for the coming year includes $6.2 billion, $2 billion more than previously budgeted. This investment will go towards building success in ad supported software which includes... - SideStep Adds Travel Guides Beta, Names SVP of Engineering
The battle of features in travel search continues with SideStep launching Travel Guides Beta. Most of the content is licensed from Frommer's with additional information courtesy of hotel partners. This launch by SideStep comes just about a month after the company announced its activities search.... - AdSense Calendar
If you're an AdSense publisher, then you have a Google Account with access to Google Calendar and other services. As announced on their blog, you can now populate your Google Calendar with events by the AdSense team. Instructions for doing so are in the blog entry. It enables you to view and keep track of system maintenance, blog entries and upcoming events.... - 55 Ways To Have Fun With Google
Interested in playing games? Want to learn a few other trick things you can do with Google? Google Blogoscoped author Phillip Lenssen has written a book titled: 55 Ways to Have Fun With Google. Learn about playing the classic Snake game among others, and using Google calculator utilities etc. According to the description, there's no programming skills needed. I haven't read the book, but knowing Phillip's blog, it sounds like it could be very interesting reading....
Posted by Detlev Johnson on June 2, 2006, 12:48 PM | Permalink
55 Ways To Have Fun With Google
Interested in playing games? Want to learn a few other trick things you can do with Google? Google Blogoscoped author Phillip Lenssen has written a book titled: 55 Ways to Have Fun With Google. Learn about playing the classic Snake game among others, and using Google calculator utilities etc. According to the description, there's no programming skills needed. I haven't read the book, but knowing Phillip's blog, it sounds like it could be very interesting reading.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on June 2, 2006, 9:18 AM | Permalink
Add The AdSense Calendar To Your Google Calendar
If you're an AdSense publisher, then you have a Google Account with access to Google Calendar and other services. As announced on the Google AdSense blog, you can now populate your Google Calendar with events from the AdSense team. Instructions for doing so are in the blog entry. It enables you to view and keep track of system maintenance, blog entries, scheduled monthly payments, upcoming events and more
Posted by Detlev Johnson on June 2, 2006, 9:09 AM | Permalink
Microsoft Ups R&D Budget To $6.2 Billion Over The Next Year
Speaking at a business conference, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that his company would spend $6.2 billion over the next year, $2 billion more than previously budgeted. Most of this investment will go towards further developing Microsoft's online businesses.
Ballmer also spoke about how the open source phenomenon presented a challenge to Microsoft some years back, and it took the company a few years to learn to deal with it. The advent of Google has presented them with a new challenge that a transformation is "not optional." While Google exemplifies the type of company success that ad supported software services can yield, Microsoft's model to date has been entirely different.
Regarding the Google Dell distribution deal, Ballmer stated:
The cost of online customer acquisition is going up. Everybody has got to decide at what level they want to pay to play. So that was bravo. We know very well that people will change their defaults, people will change their search. They will go look, if they think something is worth looking for, and our job is to create that value. This is a case where you could say we decided that the return to our shareholders was not there in the business deal that could be done.
With Microsoft's plans for transformation, they rightly need to exercise patience and allow their company enough space time to adapt to a new model of business, and learn to compete in an area they are not currently leading.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on June 2, 2006, 8:52 AM | Permalink
DOJ Asks Microsoft, AOL And Google To Keep Records
Last week during meetings with executives, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales asked several Internet companies to retain records for aiding in their prosecution efforts of terrorists and child predators. They requested lists of emails sent and received and web search information be kept for a reasonable length of time. The content of emails aren't part of this request, since the proper legal channels through which such information can be sought is by subpoena only.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on June 2, 2006, 8:44 AM | Permalink
NoFollow Changes Linking Behavior
Jeremy Zawodny posts his commentary on the NoFollow tag after finding an interesting blog entry on how the NoFollow attribute has changed linking behavior. NoFollow was introduced by Google over a year ago to combat prevalent comment spam as blogs became extremely popular. Ever since, NoFollow has had mixed responses from Webmasters, and Jeremy nicely puts it all in perspective.
NoFollow has done very little to actually thwart comment spam, and its other effect is to dissuade some from entering legitimate comments. Without a reciprocal link, what motivates readers from commenting on someone else's website? Jeremy notes the "psychology of linking" has changed, and people now ration their linking. It should really be up to the search engines to sort out linking and its prominence in the algorithm for ranking sites.
Jeremy's advice is try not to over-think the issue; link and be linked to! Life's too short.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on June 2, 2006, 8:25 AM | Permalink
Search Forums Roundup: June 2, 2006
Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: AdWords To Begin Crawling Landing Pages - Full Coverage Recap - SEW Live! - Expired Domains With Good Links - How Do We Fight Back Against The Google Monster? - Ask Now With Blog and Feed Search, and more.
Posted by Chris Sherman on June 2, 2006, 5:56 AM | Permalink
Reputation Management: How To Handle Saboteurs
The [failure] GoogleBomb had become well-known enough to have seen Marrissa Mayer post a response on the Google company blog last September. I first heard the phrase "Reputation Management" as applied to search from Heather Lloyd-Martin during a private conversation a long time before this. It was obvious Heather was on to something because we've all seen search results that produce unexpected listings. David Dalka recently posted his frustration that Googling his name could confuse searchers into thinking he is a millionaire. This may be a personal example, but what if you have a bona-fide saboteur?
Heather recently related to me her experience with a client where a saboteur took the client company name, mixed it with adult content, and auto-generated unsavory posts published across the Web in numerous blogs and forums. Needless to say, search results for that company started looking really bad, and at times, the whole set of results was flooded with what looked like adult listings.
Heather now regularly points out examples of big brands that could use reputation management as regards their search listings. She presents screen shots at conferences showing Google queries for uhaul and victorias secret having results at number 3 and number 2 respectively that read: "UHaul made my move a miserable and stressful experience" and "Victoria's Dirty Secret."
The dirty secret site has an image with an "angel" holding a chain saw. The site makes it sound as if whole forests are regularly depleted because the cataloger lacks environmental awareness. What can you do when this happens?
You certainly have little control over the natural rankings of saboteurs unless they spam. You can easily choose to hand spammers that polute your rankings over to search engine quality assurance teams when they use tactics that would have them removed. In the case of the dirty secret site, it appears the other extreme is occurring. The campaign for environmental change at Victorias Secret may be working. Perhaps Victorias Secret will establish more earth friendly contracts with their suppliers.
Other things you can do is publish pages telling your side of the story in the hopes to get natural rankings that counteract the negative spin. You needn't wait for natural rankings to appear either, you can purchase sponsored listings to drive users to the new pages straight away. At least in the meantime your presence can be felt on those most troubling queries should they begin to affect your image in search results.
Postscript: David's personal example caused him some grief. Consider the amount of grief an "eBay Avenger" causes the young fellow who it looks like fell victim to an angry buyer that decided to make an example of him. Even if the allegations later prove to be false, and although the eBay avenger has publicly offered to take down the site, SERPs for his name will likely be damaged for a long time to come, (Google, Microsoft and Ask too).
Posted by Detlev Johnson on June 2, 2006, 4:44 AM | Permalink
Search Headlines & Links: June 1, 2006
Below, a recap of stories posted today to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with other items we've spotted but not blogged separately:
From The SEW Blog...
- Daily SearchCast, June 1, 2006: New Online Ad Spending Record, Offline Print Ads Disappoint, Ask Debuts Impressive Blog Search, Clickfraud, the Google settlement and much & More!
Today's search podcast covers record new online ad spending while offline print ads disappoint, Ask launches impressive blog search with preview feature, a new AdSense API and Google Base used to generate Froogle feeds. Listen in as we talk about clickfraud, the Google settlement 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. Need more help tuning in live or finding the... - Google Settlement: Online Merchant Opting Out
The unfolding story of Radiator.com starts as the company began spending $1,000 per month on search ads, and grew the spend up to $20,000 at which point Google wrote a case study to help promote AdWords. Since they are reportedly a mid-sized company that "lives on data," there came a time to analyze the effectiveness of the campaign. They found that between Yahoo! and Google they were not turning a profit, and much of the problem was easily discovered as buying broad terms that stood little chance of converting. But it didn't end there. Analyzing the data, an outside firm... - Google Base Absorbs Froogle Feeds; Other Submission Systems Remain Independent
When I was at Google last this month, I got an update on Google Base for a forthcoming article. One of the things I was told was that Google Base was now the preferred way for merchants to submit content to Froogle. Really? Then why was Google still telling people on the Froogle site still to submit Froogle feeds? That oversight has now been corrected. As Garett Rogers notes, the feed submission mechanism formerly in the Google Merchant Center has now been replaced with Google Base submissions. Garett also highlights specific help pages about the change here. The consolidation is... - Offline Print Ad Experiment Disappointed Google
During an investor call held yesterday, Google's Jonathan Rosenberg mentioned the experiment in print ads "probably hasn't taken off as fast as we would like." The plan for future success is to seek the right combination of ideas with producers of magazines to find the format that can work. Eric Schmidt commented that it took several years for the successful model to crystalize online, and he is not detered from further development of offline print ad experimenting.... - MSN adLab Launches With a Variety of Keyword Tools
MSN first announced adLab back in January, but it has now been made available to everyone (in beta) with a wide variety of interesting keyword tools for advertisers and marketers. They have launched with 11 demos, broken down into areas Paid Search, Contextual Advertising, Behavior Targeting and Emerging Markets.... - AdSense API Launched for Developers
Developers with 100,000+ daily page views and users contributing content will now be able to offer a "one stop shop" for their content creators to sign up for AdSense while allowing developers to integrate and optimize their AdSense ads for them. And while doing so, developers could be eligible to earn not only a $100 referral bounty, but also a 15% revenue share which would be paid directly by Google.... - Yahoo Video Allows Uploads & Sharing
Yahoo Video, previously offering content found only by crawling the web, now has changed to also allow uploads from content owners, similar to services that YouTube and Google Video offer. I'm away at our SES London show, so I can't take a longer look at the service now. Instead, TechCrunch has a short review here and the press release is below. TechCrunch is disappointed that the product isn't integrated into Flickr. Putting video into Flickr is something that Yahoo's debating, they told me when I talked with them about upcoming changes last month. However, there's a concern that it might... - Ask Launches Blog & Feed Search
Nearly a year after acquiring Bloglines, Ask has rolled out a new blog & feed search that combines the best aspects of its web search engine with the intelligence it has gained from the thousands of Bloglines users who read blogs on a daily basis. The result is a terrific new search tool for the blogosphere?one that will appeal to heavy feed readers and casual searchers alike. More on the new service in today's SearchDay article, Ask Debuts Blog & Feed Search.... - Record New Online Ad Spend
The latest figures from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the IAB shows another quarter of tremendous growth in online ad spending. By now it has reached just about double the spend during the year 2000 before the tumble. Inside the numbers, search is going to be a fraction of that total spend since media placement with banners, email and affiliate marketing also are represented in "online ad spend" figures. Online ad spending shifted since the year 2000, to a better portion of it ending up with search than ever before. Tim Beyers of The Motley Fool helps us do the numbers with respect...
Other Things We Read, Didn't Blog But You Might Want To Read...
- Chinese excuses ? Terry Semel keeps digging his hole deeper, Jeff Jarvis
- Googleheads, Valleywag (watch and be amused or perhaps fearful).
- Krugle gets funding, programming code search engine gets funding.
- Sawafi gets new partner, Arabic region expected to grow as a result, and at the same time GMail now available in Arabic and Hebrew.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on June 1, 2006, 7:13 PM | Permalink
SideStep Adds Travel Guides Beta, Names SVP of Engineering
The battle of features in travel search continues with SideStep launching Travel Guides Beta. Most of the content is licensed from Frommer's with additional information courtesy of hotel partners. This launch by SideStep comes just about a month after the company announced its activities search.
Consistent with other travel search sites, Travel Guides is a stand alone section not heavily promoted in flight or hotel search. I think it's smart that SideStep, Kayak, and Mobissimo have kept their travel search engines squeaky clean, but there are natural synergies in stronger integration. As a first step, it's good to see a big 'Find a Room' button for some hotels in the Travel Guides. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find similar booking options for any activities.
The content for Travel Guides is good...of course it is, it's Frommer's. However, there's room for improvement and SideStep definitely has to take advantage of more user friendly, Web 2.0 functionality to beef up the user experience. Here are some other quick notes:
-SideStep is a search engine, but there is no option in Travel Guides to search for Bouchon or Ghost Bar if you're headed to Vegas (for example).
-The map functionality will soon be upgraded to Mapquest's new platform (the sooner the better).
-There's no mashup between the map on a city page (here's New York City) and attractions or hotels as Farechase and Kayak provide.
-Frommer's is great, but where's the user generated content? SideStep should allow users to add their own ratings and reviews. At the very least, a partnership with TravelPost is in order.
In related news, SideStep named John Robison as SVP of Engineering. John was most recently the VP and GM of Yahoo's Premium Services Infrastructure, "playing an integral role in the development and support of Yahoo!'s technology and business infrastructure."
Posted by Brian Smith on June 1, 2006, 7:11 PM | Permalink
The Further Adventures of Pud
Philip "Pud" Kaplan, former steward of FuckedCompany.com, is stepping down as CEO of blog ad marketplace AdBrite to make room for a "hardcore business guy."
CNET had a story on it today painting Kaplan as a partying bungler sneered out of the room by the company's board. That's off-base he says, and I'd have to agree given that he remains chairman and will continue with the company in a product management role.
He told me in an email today, "Im not going anywhere. AdBrite had huge growth over the past six months and I wanted a hardcore business guy with experience & success to work here."
Taking over as CEO is Iggy Fanlo, former president of Shopping.com.
I wrote a feature last year comparing Kaplan with John Battelle, who runs a very different blog ad network. The two men have oddly parallel histories with digital media. They're like inverted reflections of one another.
Posted by Zachary Rodgers on June 1, 2006, 3:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
AOL Experiencing System-wide Outages
AOL is right now in the midst of a massive, system-wide e-mail outage, ClickZ has learned. Word of the problem, complete with tales of AOL asking ESPs to stop sending mail to its users, is flying all around the INBOX event in San Jose, where our own Pamela Parker is speaking on a panel today.
It was confirmed by AOL spokesperson Nicholas Graham:
"Late this morning, an e-mail software issue started to cause delays in the sending and receiving of AOL e-mails for our members and AOL.com users. We are in the process of implementing a resolution and investigating its cause," Graham said. "All e-mails sent by AOL members and individual Internet users during this temporary hiatus will be delivered to email inboxes. During this time, some e-mails will be able to be sent and received intermittently."
Graham was unable to say whether the outages were caused by any kind of malevolent attacks, but AOL has certainly not been making friends lately with its CertifiedEmail program.
UPDATE: According to Graham, the outage lasted from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., when millions of messages were stuck in a queue. All the affected messages were successfully delivered, and this "rare and isolated incident" will not impact users again, Graham said in a statement.
Posted by Kevin Newcomb on June 1, 2006, 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Daily SearchCast, June 1, 2006: New Online Ad Spending Record, Offline Print Ads Disappoint, Ask Debuts Impressive Blog Search, Clickfraud, The Google settlement And Much & More!
Today's search podcast covers record new online ad spending while offline print ads disappoint, Ask launches impressive blog search with preview feature, a new AdSense API and Google Base used to generate Froogle feeds. Listen in as we talk about clickfraud, the Google settlement 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. Need more help tuning in live or finding the chat room? See the Daily SearchCast FAQ.
Below are links to items discussed:
- Record New Online Ad Spend
The latest figures from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the IAB shows another quarter of tremendous growth in online ad spending. By now it has reached just about double the spend during the year 2000 before the tumble. Inside the numbers, search is going to be a fraction of that total spend since media placement with banners, email and affiliate marketing also are represented in "online ad spend" figures. Online ad spending shifted since the year 2000, to a better portion of it ending up with search than ever before. Tim Beyers of The Motley Fool helps us do the numbers with respect... - Offline Print Ad Experiment Disappointed Google
During an investor call held yesterday, Google's Jonathan Rosenberg mentioned the experiment in print ads "probably hasn't taken off as fast as we would like." The plan for future success is to seek the right combination of ideas with producers of magazines to find the format that can work. Eric Schmidt commented that it took several years for the successful model to crystalize online, and he is not detered from further development of offline print ad experimenting.... - Ask Launches Blog & Feed Search
Nearly a year after acquiring Bloglines, Ask has rolled out a new blog & feed search that combines the best aspects of its web search engine with the intelligence it has gained from the thousands of Bloglines users who read blogs on a daily basis. The result is a terrific new search tool for the blogosphere?one that will appeal to heavy feed readers and casual searchers alike. More on the new service in today's SearchDay article, Ask Debuts Blog & Feed Search.... - Yahoo Video Allows Uploads & Sharing
Yahoo Video, previously offering content found only by crawling the web, now has changed to also allow uploads from content owners, similar to services that YouTube and Google Video offer. I'm away at our SES London show, so I can't take a longer look at the service now. Instead, TechCrunch has a short review here and the press release is below. TechCrunch is disappointed that the product isn't integrated into Flickr. Putting video into Flickr is something that Yahoo's debating, they told me when I talked with them about upcoming changes last month. However, there's a concern that it might... - AdSense API Launched for Developers
Developers with 100,000+ daily page views and users contributing content will now be able to offer a "one stop shop" for their content creators to sign up for AdSense while allowing developers to integrate and optimize their AdSense ads for them. And while doing so, developers could be eligible to earn not only a $100 referral bounty, but also a 15% revenue share which would be paid directly by Google.... - MSN adLab Launches With a Variety of Keyword Tools
MSN first announced adLab back in January, but it has now been made available to everyone (in beta) with a wide variety of interesting keyword tools for advertisers and marketers. They have launched with 11 demos, broken down into areas Paid Search, Contextual Advertising, Behavior Targeting and Emerging Markets.... - Google Base Absorbs Froogle Feeds; Other Submission Systems Remain Independent
When I was at Google last this month, I got an update on Google Base for a forthcoming article. One of the things I was told was that Google Base was now the preferred way for merchants to submit content to Froogle. Really? Then why was Google still telling people on the Froogle site still to submit Froogle feeds? That oversight has now been corrected. As Garett Rogers notes, the feed submission mechanism formerly in the Google Merchant Center has now been replaced with Google Base submissions. Garett also highlights specific help pages about the change here. The consolidation is... - Google Settlement: Online Merchant Opting Out
The unfolding story of Radiator.com starts as the company began spending $1,000 per month on search ads, and grew the spend up to $20,000 at which point Google wrote a case study to help promote AdWords. Since they are reportedly a mid-sized company that "lives on data," there came a time to analyze the effectiveness of the campaign. They found that between Yahoo! and Google they were not turning a profit, and much of the problem was easily discovered as buying broad terms that stood little chance of converting. But it didn't end there. Analyzing the data, an outside firm...
Posted by Detlev Johnson on June 1, 2006, 3:05 PM | Permalink
Google Click Fraud Settlement: Why One Online Merchant Is Opting Out
Radiator.com is a company spotlighted in a recent Associated Press article about the proposed settlement of a class action suit against Google over click fraud. Radiator.com Boiling over Bum Clicks from Multichannel Merchant takes a closer look at Radiator.com's experience with alleged click fraud and why the company plans to just say no to the settlement.
The story details how Radiator.com didn't feel Google took seriously its claims, ironically despite also having used the company has a success story for AdWords. From the article:
The result, Thys says, was a boilerplate e-mail message from Google?s quality enforcement team informing him that the company had concluded, after examining his data, that it had caught those bogus clicks before he was charged for them and therefore that he had no fraud credits coming. The message contained no itemized details about the data Thys had found suspect. ?They simply said, ?Thanks for the data, and by the way, our algorithms are smarter than you, and we?ve determined these clicks were filtered out already.??
To add insult to injury, the e-mail was signed simply ?Ray?. ?No last name, no phone number, no e-mail address,? Thys says. ?To me that was insulting. We were spending upwards of $20,000 a month with Google almost since they started selling PPC ads. We followed their reporting procedure. Getting that kind of result didn?t sit too well with me.
While opting-out of the settlement, the company has no plans to join another lawsuit or start a new one. Instead, it hopes for an expanded pay-per-call system, something Google is testing:
What would make Thys feel better about running performance ads on the big search engines?
?Calls,? he says. ?I?m begging for Google to expand their distribution network with pay-per-call.? His company has run a small program on the network operated by pay-per-call provider Ingenio and seen some good results. The model makes perfect sense for radiator.com, which after all began life as 1-800-Radiator and operates its own CRM call center.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on June 1, 2006, 12:29 PM | Permalink
Google Base Absorbs Froogle Feeds; Other Submission Systems Remain Independent
When I was at Google last this month, I got an update on Google Base for a forthcoming article. One of the things I was told was that Google Base was now the preferred way for merchants to submit content to Froogle. Really? Then why was Google still telling people on the Froogle site still to submit Froogle feeds? That oversight has now been corrected. As Garett Rogers notes, the feed submission mechanism formerly in the Google Merchant Center has now been replaced with Google Base submissions. Garett also highlights specific help pages about the change here. The consolidation is good, as Google Base is meant to be a central submission point of all content for Google, as I've written before (and SEW members, see also this). However, that goal still remains far off. Google Co-op, Google Sitemaps, Google Book Search and Google Scholar all remain independent ways to submit content of various types independently of Google Base, as the links for those services explain. I'll come back to this issue in more depth, in the future.
Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 1, 2006, 10:28 AM | Permalink
Offline Print Ad Experiment Disappointed Google
Google Fumbles Offline from BusinessWeek covers how during an investor call held yesterday, Google senior vice president of product management Jonathan Rosenberg mentioned the experiment in print ads "probably hasn't taken off as fast as we would like." The plan for future success is to seek the right combination of ideas with producers of magazines to find the format that can work. Eric Schmidt commented that it took several years for the successful model to crystalize online, and he is not detered from further development of offline print ad experimenting.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on June 1, 2006, 7:27 AM | Permalink
MSN adLab Launches With a Variety of Keyword Tools
MSN first announced adLab back in January, but it has now been made available to everyone (in beta) with a wide variety of interesting keyword tools for advertisers and marketers. They have launched with 11 demos, broken down into areas Paid Search, Contextual Advertising, Behavior Targeting and Emerging Markets.
7 more demos are listed as "coming soon", providing a teaser of what is to come, although no timeline is given for when they will be available.
Some tools will definitely be useful to advertisers, such as the Search Volume Seasonality Forecast, Search Funnel and Keyword Mutation Detection. Those in Local Search will want to check out the demo on Local Ads, which ironically uses Starbucks for their opening demo (along with an outdated notation about their Christmas Blend), although you can specify your own keywords.
Some interesting tools, and I am sure those in paid search will be watching closely to see if any of these are integrated more closely into Microsoft adCenter, and how Google and Yahoo will respond.
Posted by Jennifer Slegg on June 1, 2006, 6:58 AM | Permalink
AdSense API Launched for Developers
Developers with 100,000+ daily page views and users contributing content will now be able to offer a "one stop shop" for their content creators to sign up for AdSense while allowing developers to integrate and optimize their AdSense ads for them. And while doing so, developers could be eligible to earn not only a $100 referral bounty, but also a 15% revenue share which would be paid directly by Google.
For more details, see the AdSense Blog, AdSense API home, or JenSense.
Posted by Jennifer Slegg on June 1, 2006, 6:33 AM | Permalink
Yahoo Video Allows Uploads & Sharing
Yahoo Video, previously offering content found only by crawling the web, now has changed to also allow uploads from content owners, similar to services that YouTube and Google Video offer. I'm away at our SES London show, so I can't take a longer look at the service now. Instead, TechCrunch has a short review here and the press release is below. TechCrunch is disappointed that the product isn't integrated into Flickr. Putting video into Flickr is something that Yahoo's debating, they told me when I talked with them about upcoming changes last month. However, there's a concern that it might change the style or usage of Flickr too much and remains something the company is examining and debating. So stay tuned. The press release:
Yahoo! Debuts Next Generation Video Experience
Yahoo! Video combines search, upload and community, enabling publishers to be discovered by users everywhere in the world of online video
SUNNYVALE, Calif., June 1, 2006 - Yahoo! Inc., (Nasdaq: YHOO) a leading global Internet company, today introduced Yahoo! Video (http://video.yahoo.com), an online video destination that combines the power of Yahoo! Search with new upload, browse and community features. These new services, coupled with Yahoo!?s extensive and highly engaged global audience, uniquely position Yahoo! to deliver a comprehensive, entertaining online video experience to users and an unparalleled distribution platform to video publishers.
?As the video space continues to emerge, our strengths in search, content, personalization and community make it possible for Yahoo! to offer a highly engaging video experience for both users and publishers,? said Jason Zajac, general manager of social media. ?Yahoo! Video makes it easy for users to discover high quality content, while video creators can be discovered by the Web?s largest global audience.?
Yahoo! Video allows users to access the most popular and relevant videos on the Internet including Lazy Ramadi, The Glomp, and the latest Shakira music video. It brings together content in more ways than any other video Web site by crawling the Web, accepting uploads, receiving direct feeds from partners, and leveraging the Yahoo! Media Group?s unique content and industry relationships. As a leader in online video, Yahoo! already hosts and serves hundreds of millions of music, news, sports, movies, and television videos per month. Now, Yahoo! Video combines these assets with content from across the Web and directly from publishers, enabling users to determine what videos are most important to them:
? Featured, Popular, Category and Tag sections enable users to easily browse for videos.
? Users can subscribe to and watch channels, groups of videos related by source or topic, to stay current on content from their favorite publishers.
? Users can access the largest database of videos on the Web through Yahoo! Search
Additionally, Yahoo! Video enables users and video enthusiasts to participate in an active social community by rating, reviewing and sharing videos. Users can save videos to a ?My Favorites? section and then tag them, making retrieval easier. Friends can share content via Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger. In addition, users can also share uploaded videos by embedding a version of a Yahoo! Video player with the video of their choice into their Web site or blog for the world to see.
Yahoo! offers video publishers the opportunity to be discovered by millions. Yahoo! Video empowers publishers with free tools and a platform to distribute their content and to create both individual identity and shared communities around video. Publishers can:
? Upload videos to Yahoo! Video, manage content, and track views and ratings through ?MyStudio?
? Build a publisher profile, create channels and establish an identity for the Web to discover
? Potentially have their videos featured on Yahoo! Video, within a Yahoo! property, or on the Yahoo! Homepage
About Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo! seeks to provide online products and services essential to users' lives, and offers a full range of tools and marketing solutions for businesses to connect with Internet users around the world. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.
Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 1, 2006, 2:36 AM | Permalink
Ask Launches Blog & Feed Search
Nearly a year after acquiring Bloglines, Ask has rolled out a new blog & feed search that combines the best aspects of its web search engine with the intelligence it has gained from the thousands of Bloglines users who read blogs on a daily basis. The result is a terrific new search tool for the blogosphere—one that will appeal to heavy feed readers and casual searchers alike. More on the new service in today's SearchDay article, Ask Debuts Blog & Feed Search.
Posted by Chris Sherman on June 1, 2006, 12:01 AM | Permalink
Search Headlines & Links: May 31, 2006
Below, a recap of stories posted today to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with other items we've spotted but not blogged separately:
From The SEW Blog...
- Daily SearchCast, May 31, 2006: Travelin' Green With Google, Microsoft Waiting To Advertise, Language Specific SEO, Pay-Per-Call & More!
Today's search podcast covers Travelin' green with advice from The Earthday Network and Google, Bill Gates talking about Microsoft's 5-year battle plan to get users to navigate to them for search (instead of Google) and some nice SEO tips about optimizing using languages outside English. Listen to Daron Babin and Detlev Johnson discuss Google supporting Mozilla Firefox 2.0 with Anti-Phishing technology, and with such strong ties to the Firefox browser, shouldn't Google just buy Mozilla Corporation? Hear all these stories and much more! Tune-in by listening to this MP3 file, listening via WebmasterRadio at 11:30am Eastern and repeated at 2pm... - Redfin Gets Funding and Prepares to Go National
Seattle-based Redfin.com was one of the first real estate ?mashups? to employ a map interface as a primary navigation tool for real-estate search. The site was quickly joined by other real-estate mashups, HousingMaps.com (the early poster child for mashups), HomePages.com, Trulia and, more recently, Zillow.... - Google Anti-Phishing Will Be Part Of Firefox 2.0
While Microsoft makes the dominant Internet Explorer 7 which will be bundled with Vista, Google has strong ties to the upstart Firefox browser, employing key developers and supporting Firefox with a search affiliate deal worth 10's of millions of dollars. Both browsers will have state of the art anti-phishing capability, protecting users from online scams that steal identities among other crimes. Google collects an online list of phishing sites to help alert users of the Google Toolbar, and the same technology is planned to provide Firefox 2.0's Safe Browsing features. Firefox has approximately 20% of the browser market share and... - Language Specific SEO Advice
A very well written elaborate (PDF) whitepaper by Huiping Iler explains in great detail what's involved, and most of the difficulties, with search engine rankings outside English. Consider that users are faced with filters, radio buttons and other obstacles during the search process, and you can picture what must be done to establish visibility with your target audience. Consider the facts pointed out by Iler, such as 60% of searches are performed in languages other than English, English has approximately 500,000 words, compared with French having approximately 300,000 and all forms of Chinese combined characters amount to approximately 50,000. One... - Microsoft Patiently Waiting To Advertise
Marketwatch, reporting from the D4 conference, quotes Bill Gates discussing Google as "very much the leader" contrary to Microsoft having made previous grand statements about matching Google within 6-months far longer ago. Bill Gates announced "it's a five year battle." The plan is to get users to navigate to Microsoft search rather than Google. Mocrosoft has invested heavily in search, and search (among other Web services) will see an increase of $2 billion more in investment over the next year than what was initially planned. And when it all comes together, the plan is to spend on advertising to let... - Travel Green With Tips From Google
Promoting companies that offer environmental benefits, Google has partnered with The Earth Day Network to provide Have a Green Summer tips for traveling green. Check out special "tours" using Google technologies that highlight businesses that offer a useful green alternative to the status quo, including an alternative fuel car service out of New York, (I actually used Ozo on a previous trip), and earth friendly fun activities pinpointing parks, links to hiking trails and museums. The tips Google provides are meant to guide searchers and better help those looking for environmentally responsible hotels and accommodations. The tips simply add environmental... - Pay-Per-Call Looking For Ways To Grow
The Pay-Per-Call industry has a number of folks that assumed far faster growth than what has realized to date. Looking for ways to get more advertisers participating, the companies that offer Pay-Per-Call advertising are posturing and making deals with mobile search service providers to expand inventory. Search users are also slow to adopt mobile search, although acceptance of mobile, especially with local mobile search for travelers, is probably a mere matter of time and excellent small screen device options. Pay-Per-Call advertising networks hooking up with mobile search providers makes a lot of sense, since the small screen device people will... - Record New Online Ad Spend
The latest figures from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the IAB shows another quarter of tremendous growth in online ad spending. By now it has reached just about double the spend during the year 2000 before the tumble. Inside the numbers, search is going to be a fraction of that total spend since media placement with banners, email and affiliate marketing also are represented in "online ad spend" figures. Online ad spending shifted since the year 2000, to a better portion of it ending up with search than ever before. Tim Beyers of The Motley Fool helps us do the numbers with respect...
Other Things We Read, Didn't Blog But You Might Want To Read...
- Life in Google's Copyright Cross Hairs, Publish
- US poultry experts using Google to beat bird flu, Reuters.
- Searching for the Google of cell phones, Business 2.0
- BBC chief sets sights on Google and AOL, This Is Money (what, the service they launched way back in 2002 hasn't been trying to do this already? --danny)
- Net advertising 'to overtake national newspapers', The Guardian
- Google Base for the UK and Germany, Official Google Blog
- Google's video replay, News.com
- Google Sitemaps Should Never Hurt Your Domain, Search Engine Roundtable
Posted by Detlev Johnson on May 31, 2006, 8:45 PM | Permalink
Daily SearchCast, May 31, 2006: Travelin' Green With Google, Microsoft Waiting To Advertise , Language Specific SEO, Pay-Per-Call & More!
Today's search podcast covers Travelin' green with advice from The Earthday Network and Google, Bill Gates talking about Microsoft's 5-year battle plan to get users to navigate to them for search (instead of Google) and some nice SEO tips about optimizing using languages outside English. Listen to Daron Babin and Detlev Johnson discuss Google supporting Mozilla Firefox 2.0 with Anti-Phishing technology, and with such strong ties to the Firefox browser, shouldn't Google just buy Mozilla Corporation? Hear all these stories 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. Need more help tuning in live or finding the chat room? See the Daily SearchCast FAQ.
Below are links to items discussed:
- Travel Green With Tips From Google
Promoting companies that offer environmental benefits, Google has partnered with The Earth Day Network to provide Have a Green Summer tips for traveling green. Check out special "tours" using Google technologies that highlight businesses that offer a useful green alternative to the status quo, including an alternative fuel car service out of New York, (I actually used Ozo on a previous trip), and earth friendly fun activities pinpointing parks, links to hiking trails and museums. The tips Google provides are meant to guide searchers and better help those looking for environmentally responsible hotels and accommodations. The tips simply add environmental... - Microsoft Patiently Waiting To Advertise
Marketwatch, reporting from the D4 conference, quotes Bill Gates discussing Google as "very much the leader" contrary to Microsoft having made previous grand statements about matching Google within 6-months far longer ago. Bill Gates announced "it's a five year battle." The plan is to get users to navigate to Microsoft search rather than Google. Mocrosoft has invested heavily in search, and search (among other Web services) will see an increase of $2 billion more in investment over the next year than what was initially planned. And when it all comes together, the plan is to spend on advertising to let... - Language Specific SEO Advice
A very well written elaborate (PDF) whitepaper by Huiping Iler explains in great detail what's involved, and most of the difficulties, with search engine rankings outside English. Consider that users are faced with filters, radio buttons and other obstacles during the search process, and you can picture what must be done to establish visibility with your target audience. Consider the facts pointed out by Iler, such as 60% of searches are performed in languages other than English, English has approximately 500,000 words, compared with French having approximately 300,000 and all forms of Chinese combined characters amount to approximately 50,000. One... - Google Anti-Phishing Will Be Part Of Firefox 2.0
While Microsoft makes the dominant Internet Explorer 7 which will be bundled with Vista, Google has strong ties to the upstart Firefox browser, employing key developers and supporting Firefox with a search affiliate deal worth 10's of millions of dollars. Both browsers will have state of the art anti-phishing capability, protecting users from online scams that steal identities among other crimes. Google collects an online list of phishing sites to help alert users of the Google Toolbar, and the same technology is planned to provide Firefox 2.0's Safe Browsing features. Firefox has approximately 20% of the browser market share and... - Redfin Gets Funding and Prepares to Go National
Seattle-based Redfin.com was one of the first real estate ?mashups? to employ a map interface as a primary navigation tool for real-estate search. The site was quickly joined by other real-estate mashups, HousingMaps.com (the early poster child for mashups), HomePages.com, Trulia and, more recently, Zillow.... - Pay-Per-Call Looking For Ways To Grow
The Pay-Per-Call industry has a number of folks that assumed far faster growth than what has realized to date. Looking for ways to get more advertisers participating, the companies that offer Pay-Per-Call advertising are posturing and making deals with mobile search service providers to expand inventory. Search users are also slow to adopt mobile search, although acceptance of mobile, especially with local mobile search for travelers, is probably a mere matter of time and excellent small screen device options. Pay-Per-Call advertising networks hooking up with mobile search providers makes a lot of sense, since the small screen device people will...
Posted by Detlev Johnson on May 31, 2006, 7:37 PM | Permalink
Record New Online Ad Spend
The latest figures from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the IAB shows another quarter of tremendous growth in online ad spending. By now it has reached just about double the spend during the year 2000 before the tumble. Inside the numbers, search is going to be a fraction of that total spend since media placement with banners, email and affiliate marketing also are represented in "online ad spend" figures. Online ad spending shifted since the year 2000, to a better portion of it ending up with search than ever before.
Tim Beyers of The Motley Fool helps us do the numbers with respect to Google and Yahoo!. Tim used the search engines' own revenue reporting assuming their revenue is entirely from online ad spending. He can show what fraction of the total online ad spend each engine has, finding Google captured 22% of US ad spending. He expected to calculate Google's share to be 40%.
Tim may not assume that online ad spending includes all online forms of advertising and not just search. He found Google's portion to be strikingly low. It's actually quite high considering the history of total online ad spending and search's share. What's more, he favorably compared Yahoo! with Google after calculating Yahoo! captured 16% of the spend. Yahoo!'s revenue includes earnings from other businesses, such as their Internet connectivity deal with SBC, and a myriad of other business offerings that would not be calculated into IAB's "online ad spend" figure. This makes Tim's characterization of Yahoo!'s share of the spend potentially too high against Google.
What Google has been able to do, is capture far more text-based search advertising dollars than anyone else. Google makes 99% of its revenue from text-based search ads, and most of that comes from ads served at its own properties. Google is vulnerable that way, but it is also driving search ad spending. The ratio for text-based search ads alone may be close to Google earning $4 for every $1 Yahoo! currently earns.
The final thing to point out about all this, is during the year 2000, the search ad spend was a minuscule portion of the total online ad spending at that time. If you see fantastic growth in Google's earnings, and increasing portions of the online ad spending that goes to search, it is because search growth has begun and continued to outpace media placement, email and affiliate spending. Search is the secret tactic become mainstream. Google exemplifies what is possible with search ads when advertising dollars meet the inquisitive, interested and engaged target audience and at just the right time.
Postscript: Tim wrote in to say the Yahoo! numbers he crunched came from his calculating Yahoo!'s revenue from "online advertising" after subtracting revenue from other businesses. No available further breakdown means the numbers are likely to include Yahoo! revenue from banner and other image-ad media as well as strictly search. From an investor standpoint, this makes sense (to compare apples to apples). A one-to-one revenue comparison with respect to our search industry, however, is not exactly possible here. Yahoo! appears too competitive against Google's search ad dominance.
To clarify (and reference) some other things about Google's revenue source, 99% of Google's income is "advertising related," and this means primarily text-based search ads. As much as 90% of Google's revenue is from the AdWords program because the majority of AdSense revenue is given to the publishers that host the ads. Google is experimenting with other media formats, but has encountered real trouble making anything else work. Google has not discovered the formula for making anything else work. Even though they are getting into video and radio advertising (as well as offline print), the format that is responsible for bringing in the revenue at this time is text-based search ads.
Contextual ads make up the remaining roughly 10% ad revenue after AdWords. AdSense is contextual advertising, and technically speaking, they may not be search ads per se, but the Google crawler uses its search prowess to match ads to the site nonetheless. The format that works best with contextual is also text-based, (although Google is pushing other formats on publishers and advertisers). They want to experiment, gather data and uncover another winning formula. I've heard from big brands I work with that Google is anxiously pitching them alternatives (I've heard with radio especially). I'd guess from my own anecdotal evidence that they want the recent purchase of dMarc Publishing to start paying off.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on May 31, 2006, 5:37 PM | Permalink
"Believe" Brand Suicide in Scotland?
I'm just back from Scotland on vacation and can't help but note a brand story that came up again and again during my visit. Mars' Mars Bar -- popular enough in Scotland to have spawned the renowned deep fried Mars Bar -- has rebranded as "Believe" in the UK for the 2006 World Cup season. Mostly, the change is aimed at fueling hopes for England's bid for the championship, in a year in which they're thought to have a chance. (See Web site here.) But the "Believe" bars are being marketed in Scotland, too, where the favorite pastime is rooting for England's opponent. (Scotland failed to qualify for the World Cup.) Again and again, I heard people express outrage at the slight. Most said they'd stopped buying the candy in protest. One shopkeeper said he'd been trying to stock bars without the "Believe" branding. T-shirts with a send-up of the controversy, reading "Believe? Ma Arse" are reportedly selling like crazy.
Yes, England is a much bigger market, but why rebrand in such a way as to alienate Scotland (and Wales and Northern Ireland)? And knowing the Scots, they're certain to hold a grudge well beyond when the candy changes back to its previous name.
Posted by Pamela Parker on May 31, 2006, 1:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Pay-Per-Call Looking For Ways To Grow
The pay-per-call industry has a number of folks that assumed far faster growth than what has realized to date. Pay-Per-Call Struggles to Prove Worth in Internet Ad Realm from E-Commerce Times looks at the latest in the space, how the companies that offer pay-per-call advertising are posturing and making deals with mobile search service providers to expand inventory.
Search users are also slow to adopt mobile search, although acceptance of mobile, especially with local mobile search for travelers, is probably a mere matter of time and excellent small screen device options. Pay-per-call advertising networks hooking up with mobile search providers makes a lot of sense, since the small screen device people will likely be holding will be a phone.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on May 31, 2006, 10:28 AM | Permalink
Travel Green With Tips From Google
Promoting companies that offer environmental benefits, Google has partnered with The Earth Day Network to provide Have a Green Summer tips for traveling green. Check out special "tours" using Google technologies that highlight businesses that offer a useful green alternative to the status quo, including an alternative fuel car service out of New York, (I actually used Ozo on a previous trip), and earth friendly fun activities pinpointing parks, links to hiking trails and museums.
The tips Google provides are meant to guide searchers and better help those looking for environmentally responsible hotels and accommodations. The tips simply add environmental qualifiers to terms one would normally use. The first of five total tips at this time is to try [environmentally friendly hotel] instead of simply [hotel].
Posted by Detlev Johnson on May 31, 2006, 10:08 AM | Permalink
Microsoft Patiently Waiting To Advertise
Marketwatch, reporting from the D4 conference, quotes Bill Gates discussing Google as "very much the leader" contrary to Microsoft having made previous grand statements about matching Google within 6-months far longer ago. Bill Gates announced "it's a five year battle." The plan is to get users to navigate to Microsoft search rather than Google.
Microsoft has invested heavily in search, and search (among other Web services) will see an increase of $2 billion more in investment over the next year than what was initially planned. And when it all comes together, the plan is to spend on advertising to let people know. Their investment in advertising to date hasn't led to much of a market shift yet.
Postscript From Danny: Microsoft, of course, has indeed already spent heavily to promote its search service, such after MSN Search launched with Microsoft's own technology or with a recent online game promotion. But perhaps Gates means that Windows Live Search won't get the same treatment until they feel the quality has improved.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on May 31, 2006, 9:49 AM | Permalink
Language Specific SEO Advice
A very well written elaborate (PDF) whitepaper by Huiping Iler explains in great detail what's involved, and most of the difficulties, with search engine rankings outside English. Consider that users are faced with filters, radio buttons and other obstacles during the search process, and you can picture what must be done to establish visibility with your target audience.
Consider the facts pointed out by Iler, such as 60% of searches are performed in languages other than English, English has approximately 500,000 words, compared with French having approximately 300,000 and all forms of Chinese combined characters amount to approximately 50,000. One can surmise the increasing difficulty of optimization with the decrease in available words.
Although the optimization tips are pretty straight forward, special attention is given to detail such as language specific character encoding sets, and examples of what it looks like for users when they're incorrect. Other good advice includes hosting and top-level domain issues for search engines to get your site properly categorized and served in the region of interest.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on May 31, 2006, 9:03 AM | Permalink
Google Anti-Phishing Will Be Part Of Firefox 2.0
As rumored, Google is to power the anti-phishing capabilities in Firefox 2.0. Firefox 2.0 Bakes in Anti-Phish Antidote from InternetNews.com has more details.
While Microsoft makes the dominant Internet Explorer 7 which will be bundled with Vista, Google has strong ties to the upstart Firefox browser, employing key developers and supporting Firefox with a search affiliate deal worth millions of dollars. Both browsers will have state of the art anti-phishing capability, protecting users from online scams that steal identities among other crimes.
Firefox has approximately 20% of the browser market share and appears to consistently gain ground against Internet Explorer. This may be because influential technically-minded people favor Firefox and promote its use.
By employing key developers and supplying technology support, since Mozilla Corporation is snug tight with Google, perhaps Google should simply purchase Mozilla with its war chest if and when a tipping point were to occur, and abandon any plans to ever produce their own browser client.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on May 31, 2006, 7:53 AM | Permalink
Redfin Gets Funding and Prepares to Go National
Seattle-based Redfin.com was one of the first real estate mashups to employ a map interface as a primary navigation tool for real-estate search. The site was quickly joined by other real-estate mashups, HousingMaps.com (the early poster child for mashups), HomePages.com, Trulia and, more recently, Zillow.
Today Redfin announced that it was expanding to other markets and that it had secured a round of $8 million in venture capital funding, lead by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen?s Vulcan Capital.
But perhaps the most interesting aspect of the new developments is that the business model has changed. Most real estate listings sites are ad supported, but Redfin is becoming a discount broker-agent and will actually help individuals buy and sell homes for reduced fees and commissions, even providing rebates to buyers (they say as much as $10,000 on a $500,000 sale). This is similar to ZipRealty?s discount broker model.
Redfin is apparently also opening local real estate offices, a move that IAC?s RealEstate.com also recently made.
Posted by Greg Sterling on May 31, 2006, 2:29 AM | Permalink
Search Headlines & Links: May 30, 2006
Below, a recap of stories posted today to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with other items we've spotted but not blogged separately:
From The SEW Blog...
- Daily
SearchCast, May 30, 2006: Ask's Memorial Day Link, About Links From Google, WikiMapia, Political Google, Google Powered TV Guide & More!
Today's search podcast covers Ask, the only major search engine that had a special Memorial Day homepage, a quick heads up on the new Yahoo! Weather report and a reasoned breakdown about links as confusing messages appear from Google company blogs. Meanwhile, the rumors about Google Payments start to swarm and build up to the tempest that hit the likes of CNet. So, we ride the tempest wind and rain to tell you all about what we hear might be happening. Check out the new Mashup WikiMapia!. We tell you how to find a UK PacMan crop-circle gobbling up dots and much much more! -
Mazeltov Barry & Yisha!
If all seems quiet from hard-working chief news correspondent Barry Schwartz, that's because he's off on his honeymoon. Barry married Yisha yesterday, concluding the engagement he started with a wedding proposal on Ask last year. Congrats from all of us at Search Engine Watch to the happy couple! If you'd like to send your best wishes, pop by our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Rustybrick Getting Hitched This Weekend!... - Ask Recognizing Memorial Day
The Ask homepage has recognized Memorial Day with an image and link to customized search results. While Memorial Day is specifically an American holiday, Thanksgiving is also specifically American and most search engines had fun with their logo on that day last year. Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft apparently skipped the day for custom search, while Ask has nicely provided references to the history of Memorial Day, recipes and other observance tips. Postscript: We can expect most Holidays to be highlighted on Ask in the future. Our friend Gary Price wrote in to explain the Memorial Day reference at Ask is... - Yahoo! Weather Report
Yahoo! announced late yesterday that they have begun an update to their Web Search index. You can expect some changes to your Yahoo! rankings over the next several days, and if you want to provide feedback, they supply a new form that you can use to do so. The form field is limited to 6 lines of text, so prepare only short commentary, but you can specify whether your issues are technical in nature, a suggestion or just general feedback.... - About Links From Google
The Google Sitemaps team posted to their blog in response to a question at SearchEngineWatch Seattle. Interestingly, they note that links from bad neighborhoods do not harm a site's rankings, only links to bad neighborhoods. It has long been theorized that links from bad neighborhoods do cause ranking problems and this goes against conventional thinking. Link networks often populate quality content sites with paid text links as part of their program. If at all possible, Google obviously wouldn't want to remove quality content from their search engine. One solution is to make outbound links from quality sites that sell links... - Rumor: Google Payments
Rumors have been flying since yesterday about Google's plan for a payment system and recent developments. Although unsubstantiated at this time, the talk is not new. Google itself has made some overtures about a pending payment system, and we can expect one to arrive sometime in the near future.... - WikiMapia: Google Maps and Wikipedia Mashup
# Coming on the heels of the recently launched Microsoft MapCruncher, WikiMapia uses the Google Maps API and a Wiki interface. This enables users to enter or edit information with map hotspots. They ask that you refrain from adding anything that wouldn't be useful to everyone. Currently, the entries mainly consist of empty hotspots on buildings of interest, but a UK PacMan was also spotted. The search functionality only works searching tags applied to entries. There just aren't enough entries yet. I searched [cropcircle] from the main screen, and it limited the hotspots to the single entry with that tag. If... - Political Actions By Google In Washington Seen As Naive
Threatening everything from Net Neutrality to regulating companies with operations in China, tech companies must take their cause to Washington. The Seattle Times details lessons learned by Microsoft over its antitrust woes, and characterized Google has having taken serious missteps by irritating Republicans in power with its employees modestly contributing nearly entirely to Democrats and under staffing its DC operations. Google countered that they are "not a partisan presence in Washington," and "recently announced the hiring of Bush White House aide Jamie Brown for a senior position." The general sense is that Google will take lessons learned from Microsoft and... - Google Pressures CHMoogle Into Name Change
The chemistry search engine CHMoogle encountered opposition to its Trademark filing by Google, and decided to resort to eMolecules rather than take on the search giant. Although eMolecules' attorneys could argue the different audience and content wouldn't cause consumer confusion, the complaint against them met its mark with CEO Klaus Gubernator. A legal proceeding would distract the company from its mission addressing the lack of "cheminformatics" in Web-wide search engines.... - Free New AdWords Alerts Service
A free alert service kicks off with two alerts related to Google AdWords and AdSense. You can get daily email alerts with the costs of the most expensive AdWords both by bid and by cost per day. Today is a new alert by keyword that emails you when new advertisers appear for a keyword you supply. Assuming you don't mind a flurry of email when tracking popular categories, this can be handy.... - A Google Powered TV Guide
Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, comments that their mission is to provide access to everything, including television content. Using Google search capability, coupled (for instance) with Media Center or an XBox, this vision could potentially be realized. There are questions, of course, about Internet connections fast enough to withstand the bulky data transfer that such content requires. This may ultimately get supported by a new format of advertising that Google is continually testing on a weekly basis.... - Marchex Acquires Local-Vertical Search Company Openlist
New York-based Openlist, a local, vertical search engine, was acquired by Marchex, which provides search and contextual marketing but also owns a network of thousands of "direct navigation" domains. Little-known Openlist was co-founded by former Jupiter analyst Matthew Berk as Local-i and has been around for roughly two years. The deal is worth $13 million in cash and stock and Berk, among several others, now joins Marchex. One can think of Openlist as Citysearch built by aggregation. I think that Openlist is doing some of the most interesting work in Local right now; and the acquisition makes Marchex a potentially... - Kozoru To Launch Chat-Based Search Technology, Byoms
Internet search is in many ways fairly standard now, and although existing search engines bring out new features, or new engines appear, it isn't often that you see anything that's really different. However kozoru is launching a chat based search resource called byoms or 'build your own mobile search', with a public beta going live on June 5th. This is something of a departure from traditional search, by allowing users to run their own searches using a chat client.... - Fixing AOL Search
Jason Calacanis has written a forthright piece on the importance of fixing AOL search. He's examined Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL search, and in particular looked at the position of the first organic result, down to the number of pixels from the top and the left, together with useful screen shots. Danny wrote on the same subject of the positioning of results a couple of years ago. There's absolutely no doubt that the positioning of organic results is very important, but as a searcher there are other things that I worry about rather more....
Other Things We Read, Didn't Blog But You Might Want To Read...
- MySpace: Understanding the Impact of a Search Deal
- MSN Search Now Offering "More SPAM Per Query", Threadwatch (plus WebmasterWorld) and SEW Forums): MSN apparently making some ranking changes and not everyone is thrilled.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on May 30, 2006, 8:06 PM | Permalink
Daily SearchCast, May 30, 2006: Ask's Memorial Day Link, About Links From Google, WikiMapia, Political Google, Google Powered TV Guide & More!
Today's search podcast covers Ask, the only major search engine that had a special Memorial Day homepage, a quick heads up on the new Yahoo! Weather report and a reasoned breakdown about links as confusing messages appear from Google company blogs. Meanwhile, the rumors about Google Payments start to swarm and build up to the tempest that hit the likes of CNet. So, we ride the tempest wind and rain to tell you all about what we hear might be happening. Check out the new Mashup WikiMapia!. We tell you how to find a UK PacMan crop-circle gobbling up dots and much 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. Need more help tuning in live or finding the chat room? See the Daily SearchCast FAQ.
Below are links to items discussed:
- Mazeltov Barry & Yisha!
If all seems quiet from hard-working chief news correspondent Barry Schwartz, that's because he's off on his honeymoon. Barry married Yisha yesterday, concluding the engagement he started with a wedding proposal on Ask last year. Congrats from all of us at Search Engine Watch to the happy couple! If you'd like to send your best wishes, pop by our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Rustybrick Getting Hitched This Weekend!... - Ask Recognizing Memorial Day
The Ask homepage has recognized Memorial Day with an image and link to customized search results. While Memorial Day is specifically an American holiday, Thanksgiving is also specifically American and most search engines had fun with their logo on that day last year. Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft apparently skipped the day for custom search, while Ask has nicely provided references to the history of Memorial Day, recipes and other observance tips. Postscript: We can expect most Holidays to be highlighted on Ask in the future. Our friend Gary Price wrote in to explain the Memorial Day reference at Ask is... - Yahoo! Weather Report
Yahoo! announced late yesterday that they have begun an update to their Web Search index. You can expect some changes to your Yahoo! rankings over the next several days, and if you want to provide feedback, they supply a new form that you can use to do so. The form field is limited to 6 lines of text, so prepare only short commentary, but you can specify whether your issues are technical in nature, a suggestion or just general feedback.... - About Links From Google
The Google Sitemaps team posted to their blog in response to a question at SearchEngineWatch Seattle. Interestingly, they note that links from bad neighborhoods do not harm a site's rankings, only links to bad neighborhoods. It has long been theorized that links from bad neighborhoods do cause ranking problems and this goes against conventional thinking. Link networks often populate quality content sites with paid text links as part of their program. If at all possible, Google obviously wouldn't want to remove quality content from their search engine. One solution is to make outbound links from quality sites that sell links... - Rumor: Google Payments
Rumors have been flying since yesterday about Google's plan for a payment system and recent developments. Although unsubstantiated at this time, the talk is not new. Google itself has made some overtures about a pending payment system, and we can expect one to arrive sometime in the near future.... - WikiMapia: Google Maps and Wikipedia Mashup
Coming on the heels of the recently launched Microsoft MapCruncher, WikiMapia uses the Google Maps API and a Wiki interface. This enables users to enter or edit information with map hotspots. They ask that you refrain from adding anything that wouldn't be useful to everyone. Currently, the entries mainly consist of empty hotspots on buildings of interest, but a UK PacMan was also spotted. The search functionality only works searching tags applied to entries. There just aren't enough entries yet. I searched [cropcircle] from the main screen, and it limited the hotspots to the single entry with that tag. If... - Political Actions By Google In Washington Seen As Naive
Threatening everything from Net Neutrality to regulating companies with operations in China, tech companies must take their cause to Washington. The Seattle Times details lessons learned by Microsoft over its antitrust woes, and characterized Google has having taken serious missteps by irritating Republicans in power with its employees modestly contributing nearly entirely to Democrats and under staffing its DC operations. Google countered that they are "not a partisan presence in Washington," and "recently announced the hiring of Bush White House aide Jamie Brown for a senior position." The general sense is that Google will take lessons learned from Microsoft and... - Google Pressures CHMoogle Into Name Change
The chemistry search engine CHMoogle encountered opposition to its Trademark filing by Google, and decided to resort to eMolecules rather than take on the search giant. Although eMolecules' attorneys could argue the different audience and content wouldn't cause consumer confusion, the complaint against them met its mark with CEO Klaus Gubernator. A legal proceeding would distract the company from its mission addressing the lack of "cheminformatics" in Web-wide search engines.... - Free New AdWords Alerts Service
A free alert service kicks off with two alerts related to Google AdWords and AdSense. You can get daily email alerts with the costs of the most expensive AdWords both by bid and by cost per day. Today is a new alert by keyword that emails you when new advertisers appear for a keyword you supply. Assuming you don't mind a flurry of email when tracking popular categories, this can be handy.... - A Google Powered TV Guide
Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, comments that their mission is to provide access to everything, including television content. Using Google search capability, coupled (for instance) with Media Center or an XBox, this vision could potentially be realized. There are questions, of course, about Internet connections fast enough to withstand the bulky data transfer that such content requires. This may ultimately get supported by a new format of advertising that Google is continually testing on a weekly basis.... - Marchex Acquires Local-Vertical Search Company Openlist
New York-based Openlist, a local, vertical search engine, was acquired by Marchex, which provides search and contextual marketing but also owns a network of thousands of "direct navigation" domains. Little-known Openlist was co-founded by former Jupiter analyst Matthew Berk as Local-i and has been around for roughly two years. The deal is worth $13 million in cash and stock and Berk, among several others, now joins Marchex. One can think of Openlist as Citysearch built by aggregation. I think that Openlist is doing some of the most interesting work in Local right now; and the acquisition makes Marchex a potentially... - Kozoru To Launch Chat-Based Search Technology, Byoms
Internet search is in many ways fairly standard now, and although existing search engines bring out new features, or new engines appear, it isn't often that you see anything that's really different. However kozoru is launching a chat based search resource called byoms or 'build your own mobile search', with a public beta going live on June 5th. This is something of a departure from traditional search, by allowing users to run their own searches using a chat client.... - Fixing AOL Search
Jason Calacanis has written a forthright piece on the importance of fixing AOL search. He's examined Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL search, and in particular looked at the position of the first organic result, down to the number of pixels from the top and the left, together with useful screen shots. Danny wrote on the same subject of the positioning of results a couple of years ago. There's absolutely no doubt that the positioning of organic results is very important, but as a searcher there are other things that I worry about rather more....
Posted by Detlev Johnson on May 30, 2006, 2:55 PM | Permalink
Calacanis Dings AOL Search
Jason Calacanis has written a forthright piece on the importance of fixing AOL search. He's examined Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL Search, and in particular looked at the position of the first organic result, down to the number of pixels from the top and the left, together with useful screen shots. Danny wrote on the same subject of the positioning of results a couple of years ago. There's absolutely no doubt that the positioning of organic results is very important, but as a searcher there are other things that I worry about rather more.
I ran the same search as Jason across all four search engines, and I think he's being slightly harsh on AOL Search, basing his criticism on one search. However, I fully agree with him that it's not good news for AOL Search that the first search result is below the fold (meaning you have to scroll down to see it); as a searcher I want information presented to me as quickly and effectively as possible - I don't want to hunt around on a page looking for my results.
However, as a searcher I do have other concerns, namely that I want good results that answer my question as quickly as possible and secondly, that I get information about the sites that are being returned to enable me to better decide which one I visit. Obviously I'm hopeful that the first organic result is on topic and trustworthy, especially if I've run a tight search. That isn't always going to be the case however, so I may need some guidance.
Looking at the AOL results I get a title, a line of description (two if I'm lucky) and a URL. Although Google gives me the same information, I also often get update details, a cached version and the chance to search for similar pages. At Yahoo I get the title, a short description of the content showing my search term in context, the opportunity to look at the category the result is in, a cached version and the ability to search for more from that site. I also get the chance to run other searches with their 'also try' option at the top of the page. Over at MSN Search I just get title, brief description and sometimes the chance to see a cached version.
Expanding out my search from those four to Ask for example I find the same problem that Jason found with AOL - my first search results are below adverts and sponsored results and just below the fold. While I still don't get much by way of description I can do a quick peek to see what the page looks like and I immediately get opportunities to narrow or broaden my search. Over at Exalead I also get a thumbnail shot of the page and various useful ways of refining my search.
As a searcher, that's really what interests me the most. Yes, of course, position of search results on the page is very important, but as important, or even moreso in my opinion, is greater information about the results, the ability to quickly refine a search, and of course accurate and on topic results. Jason finishes his piece by saying that AOL needs to love their users more; I heartily agree (and thank him for saying so) but I think the same can be said of most search engine companies. If you want to love me, give me good results, sound information on which to base the decision on which result to visit, and the ability to help me focus my search more effectively.
Postscript From Danny: See also Revisiting Search Engine Ad Breaks for a recent look at a related issue, the percentage of ads to editorial. AOL doesn't do well under that measure, either.
Posted by Phil Bradley on May 30, 2006, 8:59 AM | Permalink
Marchex Acquires Local-Vertical Search Company Openlist
New York-based Openlist, a local, vertical search engine, was acquired by Marchex, which provides search and contextual marketing but also owns a network of thousands of "direct navigation" domains. Little-known Openlist was co-founded by former Jupiter analyst Matthew Berk as Local-i and has been around for roughly two years.
The deal is worth $13 million in cash and stock and Berk, among several others, now joins Marchex. One can think of Openlist as Citysearch built by aggregation. I think that Openlist is doing some of the most interesting work in Local right now; and the acquisition makes Marchex a potentially more formidable company in both local and vertical search.
You can read a more extensive post about the deal and the two companies on my blog.
Posted by Greg Sterling on May 30, 2006, 8:49 AM | Permalink
Google Sitemaps: Links To You Can't Hurt You
The Google Sitemaps team posted to their blog in response to a question at SearchEngineWatch Seattle. Interestingly, they note that links from bad neighborhoods do not harm a site's rankings, only links to bad neighborhoods. It has long been theorized that links from bad neighborhoods do cause ranking problems and this goes against conventional thinking.
Link networks often populate quality content sites with paid text links as part of their program. If at all possible, Google obviously wouldn't want to remove quality content from their search engine. One solution is to make outbound links from quality sites that sell links worth nothing towards building rankings for destination sites.
We've heard this from Matt Cutts before: "Link-selling sites can lose their ability to give reputation (e.g. PageRank and anchortext)." If a link from such a site loses it's ability to transfer PageRank, it can make sense that it doesn't harm a site's PageRank either. But that is not a foregone conclusion. The information comes from the Sitemaps team, and not Matt Cutts' anti-spam force.
In the above entry by Matt, he recommends the use of the "nofollow" link attribute to safely purchase links purely for traffic purposes. This infers links from bad neighborhoods indeed can harm a site's rankings in Google. Perhaps Matt implies this to deter link buying, but the advice is good insofar as links from bad neighborhoods also raises the profile of sites that eventually would come under scrutiny by Google. It can also be assumed that text links from bad neighborhoods can harm a site's rankings in other major search engines than Google.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on May 30, 2006, 8:22 AM | Permalink
Latest Google Payments Rumor: Google Checkout
Rumors have been flying since yesterday about Google's plan for a payment system and recent developments. Although unsubstantiated at this time, the talk is not new. Google itself has made some overtures about a pending payment system, and we can expect one to arrive sometime in the near future.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on May 30, 2006, 8:08 AM | Permalink
Yahoo Issues Late May 2006 Weather Report
Yahoo! announced late yesterday that they have begun an update to their Web Search index. You can expect some changes to your Yahoo! rankings over the next several days, and if you want to provide feedback, they supply a new form that you can use to do so. The form field is limited to 6 lines of text, so prepare only short commentary, but you can specify whether your issues are technical in nature, a suggestion or just general feedback.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on May 30, 2006, 6:58 AM | Permalink
Kozoru To Launch Chat-Based Search Technology, Byoms
Internet search is in many ways fairly standard now, and although existing search engines bring out new features, or new engines appear, it isn't often that you see anything that's really different. However kozoru is launching a chat based search resource called byoms or 'build your own mobile search', with a public beta going live on June 5th. This is something of a departure from traditional search, by allowing users to run their own searches using a chat client.
There are a lot of interesting implications for searchers, given that IM is becoming much more widespread within a library setting. I'll talk more about byoms when it goes live and will look in detail at how a user can create a feed, how it compares with traditional search tools and the implications that it has for searchers.
Posted by Phil Bradley on May 30, 2006, 5:33 AM | Permalink
Free New AdWords Alerts Service
A free alert service kicks off with two alerts related to Google AdWords and AdSense. You can get daily email alerts with the costs of the expensive AdWords both by bid and by cost per day (not necessarily the most expensive, since Google doesn't report that. Instead, you get terms checked and found to be fairly pricey). There's also an alert by keyword service that emails you when new advertisers appear for a keyword you supply. Assuming you don't mind a flurry of email when tracking popular categories, this can be handy.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on May 29, 2006, 1:11 PM | Permalink
Ask Recognizing Memorial Day
The Ask homepage has recognized Memorial Day with an image and link to customized search results. While Memorial Day is specifically an American holiday, Thanksgiving is also specifically American and most search engines had fun with their logo on that day last year. Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft apparently skipped the day for custom search, while Ask has nicely provided references to the history of Memorial Day, recipes and other observance tips.
Postscript: We can expect most holidays to be highlighted on Ask in the future. Our friend Gary Price wrote in to explain the Memorial Day reference at Ask is part of their Smart Answers feature which automatically includes Holidays such as Labor Day, Boxing Day, Good Friday and Purim. Smart Answers really seems like a throwback to the past with Ask(Jeeves) having started life as a directory of answers to approximately 200,000 questions. They originally provided editor qualified sites as "answers" and backfilled as a meta search engine to supplement and in the cases queries didn't trigger a response from the directory itself.
Postscript 2: To clarify, Smart Answers are different insofar as one doesn't need to pose a question. They also can provide access to more information, including Smart Answers with drop down menus to more Smart Answers. A query like dogs provides a drop down menu that navigates to more Smart Answers on specific breeds.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on May 29, 2006, 12:55 PM | Permalink
Mazeltov Barry & Yisha!
If all seems quiet from hard-working chief news correspondent Barry Schwartz, that's because he's off on his honeymoon. Barry married Yisha yesterday, concluding the engagement he started with a wedding proposal on Ask last year. Congrats from all of us at Search Engine Watch to the happy couple! If you'd like to send your best wishes, pop by our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Rustybrick Getting Hitched This Weekend!Posted by Danny Sullivan on May 29, 2006, 11:01 AM | Permalink
WikiMapia: Google Maps and Wikipedia Mashup
Coming on the heels of the recently launched Microsoft MapCruncher, WikiMapia uses the Google Maps API and a Wiki interface. This enables users to enter or edit information with map hotspots. They ask that you refrain from adding anything that wouldn't be useful to everyone. Currently, the entries mainly consist of empty hotspots on buildings of interest, but a UK PacMan was also spotted. The search functionality only works searching tags applied to entries. There just aren't enough entries yet. I searched [cropcircle] from the main screen, and it limited the hotspots to the single entry with that tag. If WikiMapia gets populated, the search would obviously become more elaborate.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on May 29, 2006, 10:27 AM | Permalink
Political Actions By Google In Washington Seen As Naive
Threatening everything from net neutrality to regulating companies with operations in China, tech companies must take their cause to Washington. The LA Times details lessons learned by Microsoft over its antitrust woes and characterizes Google has having taken serious missteps by irritating Republicans in power with its employees modestly contributing nearly entirely to Democrats and under staffing its DC operations. Google countered that they are "not a partisan presence in Washington," and "recently announced the hiring of Bush White House aide Jamie Brown for a senior position." The general sense is that Google will take lessons learned from Microsoft and will continue to develop its lobbying efforts which began in earnest late last year.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on May 29, 2006, 9:50 AM | Permalink
Google Pressures CHMoogle Into Name Change
The chemistry search engine CHMoogle encountered opposition to its trademark filing by Google, and decided to resort to eMolecules rather than take on the search giant. Although eMolecules' attorneys could argue the different audience and content wouldn't cause consumer confusion, the complaint against them met its mark with CEO Klaus Gubernator. A legal proceeding would distract the company from its mission addressing the lack of "cheminformatics" in Web-wide search engines.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on May 29, 2006, 9:26 AM | Permalink
A Google Powered TV Guide
Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, comments that their mission is to provide access to everything, including television content. Using Google search capability, coupled (for instance) with Media Center or an XBox, this vision could potentially be realized. There are questions, of course, about Internet connections fast enough to withstand the bulky data transfer that such content requires. This may ultimately get supported by a new format of advertising that Google is continually testing on a weekly basis.
Posted by Detlev Johnson on May 29, 2006, 9:08 AM | Permalink
