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June 18, 2006 - June 24, 2006


Mind-Blowing/Expanding AdverGame

Honda.jpgBoy, is this thing hyper-cute, not to mention insane.

The game takes forever to load, and the promotional links don't work, presumably because it's on the production company's site (London's unit9).

Note to self: when the weekend's over, find out what the Honda tie-in is.

Update: Of course! Zach reminds me it's based on Honda's award-winning Grrr! campaign, which ran on U.K. television last year.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb on June 24, 2006, 9:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Search Headlines & Links: June 23, 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 23, 2006: Google Sells Baidu Stake While Expanding Its Own Numbers In China; Google Testing Ads In Video; & More!
    Today's search podcast covers Google selling its stake in the Chinese Baidu search engine; Google planning to expand employees for its own Chinese efforts; Google testing ads in video content; looking at issues with filtering adult content in video and web search and more! Tune-in by listening to this MP3 file, listening via WebmasterRadio at 11:30am Eastern and repeated at 2pm Eastern Tuesday through Friday, via our Odeo channel or through iTunes via this link (or use alternative iTunes instructions explained here) or though our Yahoo Podcasts channel. Need more help tuning in live or finding the chat room? See...
  • Yahoo Says Searchers are Better Patients
    New research from Yahoo tells us that the majority of people who searched for health information subsequently visited their doctor (61%) and that 71% of these folks went equipped with pointed, action oriented questions. Searchers also use twice as many resources to learn about health issues than the average consumer. Other key findings include:...
  • 'Social Directory,' 'Directed Blogging'?: Whatever You Call It Yelp Has Got It Down
    The odds were against Yelp when it entered the local search/directory market just under two years ago. (As an aside, I am using a the label "social directory" for sites like Yelp, InsiderPages and Judysbook because they layer community on top of a traditional directory advertising model.) Two years ago the market was already relatively mature with sites like the venerable Citysearch, the search engines and portals offering local search and/or online yellow pages. In addition, all the yellow pages publishers had sites themselves. Then there were online communities like Craigslist, not to mention newspaper sites with their local content....
  • PhotoBucket Has 44% Share of Photo Sharing Sites: Beating Yahoo & Flickr
    The Hitwise blog posted what I found to be surprising statistics on what is the most popular photo sharing site. I would have thought Yahoo Photos or Flickr would be a one of the most popular services, but it looks like PhotoBucket has almost 44% of the share, compared with Yahoo Photos with only 18% share in the number two spot. Even more surprising, to me at least, is that Flickr has barely 6% share, ranking number six in the list. Hitwise tells me that Photobucket surpassed Yahoo! Photos in January 2006, and its share of visits increased by 34%...
  • Technorati Betting: New Link Bait Idea
    Omar emailed me that he has posted a Technorati Blog Betting competition. Basically, you bet as much as you like, on the chances that a particular blog will be at the number one spot. As ThreadWatch notes Matt Cutts has 6 to 1 odds in this competition. They currently have Matt Cutts, Robert Scoble, Engadget, and some others in the competition. This site, nor is my site in the running. Currently, the Technorati top 100 shows me at #35, Philipp at #29, ShoeMoney at #52, John Battelle at #63 and Danny (SEW) at #69....
  • Google To Have 1000 Employees In China By 2007
    Pacific Epoch reports that Google expect to have over 1,000 employees in Google China by 2007. By the end of this year, Google hopes to have 200 employees based in China. Google will have three research and development centers in China, they will be based in Beijing, Shanghai and Taiwan according the article....
  • Ask.com Too Strict With Child & Sex Keywords?
    The Hammer of Trust writes that Ask.com is way too strict for searches on keywords about sex and children. For example, a search on Ask.com on [laws against pedophilia] brings back a message that reads, "This query does not comply with Ask.com Terms of Service." The "Go" button following the message links you to Ask.com Terms of Service. Other similar searches do the same thing, such as , talking to your children about sex, blocking porn from kids and warning your kids about sex offenders. I also tried searching on preventing child pornography and that also was blocked. It is...
  • Japan's Softbank Mobile Phones To Use Yahoo As Content Portal
    MarketWatch reports that Softbank, who acquired Vodafone, will be using Yahoo to "bring the broad world of the Internet" to their mobile users. The mobile phones will have some sort of direct link to the Yahoo portal, to bring the content of that portal to Softbank's mobile users....
  • Google Mixes Up Referrals Buttons
    I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that Google has mixed up the referral buttons with the Google AdSense referral program. For example, I have inserted the code to display the Google Pack referral button on this page but instead it is displaying the graphics and materials for the Google Firefox referrals. This was first reported at WebmasterWorld yesterday at 11:50am (EST). It continues to be a problem to this minute....
  • Child Porn Suit Dropped Against Google
    The Associate Press reports that the suit brought against Google for profiting on child pornography has been dropped. Jeffrey Toback, of the Nassau County Legislature, filed the suit in early May. Toback said he dropped the suit because "Google has offered to sit down and discuss the issues. They didn't want to do that while litigation was pending, so we're taking them up on their offer."...
  • Search Forums Roundup: June 23, 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: Google AdWords Scheduling/Day Parting Now Live - SEO Training- Is It Worthwhile? - Age of Links - Quality and Authority: Relevance Alone Is Not Enough, and more....
  • Google Testing Ad Supported Premium Video
    Google is running a test offering about 2,000 premium videos available for free streaming viewing, inserting a persistent banner-type ad at the top of the screen and showing an additional post-roll video ad once the premium content has finished streaming. The test is expected to last about a week, according to Peter Chane, group business product manager, Google Video. , inserting a persistent banner-type ad at the top of the screen and showing an additional post-roll video ad once the premium content has finished streaming. The test is expected to last about a week, according to Peter Chane, group business...
  • Video Search, Smut and Censorship
    Earlier this week, ZDNet News published an article discussing the presence and availability of explicit content on video search sites like, YouTube, Yahoo Video and Google Video. "A weeklong review of some of the top user-generated video sites by CNET News.com unearthed scenes of beheadings, masturbation, bloody car accidents, bondage and sadomasochism," wrote the reporter, Greg Sandoval. He did say that this review found no child pornography....
  • Specialty Search Roundup #4
    Another week has gone by and the world of databases of special interest to the web researcher have appeared on ResourceShelf. Here's a look at a few of them along with a couple of database news items via ResourceShelf. By the way, the ResourceShelf site itself has also been updated and enhanced with a new look this week....
  • AdWords Tweaks & Bug Fixes Documented
    I reported this morning at the Search Engine Roundtable on Small But Important New Google AdWords Features & Fixes. eWhisper at WebmasterWorld tracked the small, sometimes unnoticed, changes within Google AdWords and put together a list. Here is that list. + Local time zone added to MCC reports. + Bug fixed where the 'account' box didn't show on sub mcc reports. + Add your GAP business to Google Local (although, not sure why this wasn't attached to base so the pin was unnecessary) + HTTPs errors fixed on internal help pages (note, the only place I can tell the error...
  • Google Disposes Of Stake In Baidu
    Reuters reports that Google has sold its "modest investment in Baidu." Google owned about two-percent of Baidu.com, worth about $63 million, and "disposed" of that investment on May 25th. Google spokesperson, Debbie Frost said, "It has always been our goal to grow our own successful business in China and we are very focused on that."...

Other Things We Read, Didn't Blog But You Might Want To Read...

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 23, 2006, 4:15 PM | Permalink


Daily SearchCast, June 23, 2006: Google Sells Baidu Stake While Expanding Its Own Numbers In China; Google Testing Ads In Video; & More!

Today's search podcast covers Google selling its stake in the Chinese Baidu search engine; Google planning to expand employees for its own Chinese efforts; Google testing ads in video content; looking at issues with filtering adult content in video and web search and more!

Tune-in by listening to this MP3 file, listening via WebmasterRadio at 11:30am Eastern and repeated at 2pm Eastern Tuesday through Friday, via our Odeo channel or through iTunes via this link (or use alternative iTunes instructions explained here) 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:

  • Google Disposes Of Stake In Baidu
    Reuters reports that Google has sold its "modest investment in Baidu." Google owned about two-percent of Baidu.com, worth about $63 million, and "disposed" of that investment on May 25th. Google spokesperson, Debbie Frost said, "It has always been our goal to grow our own successful business in China and we are very focused on that."...
  • Google To Have 1000 Employees In China By 2007
    Pacific Epoch reports that Google expect to have over 1,000 employees in Google China by 2007. By the end of this year, Google hopes to have 200 employees based in China. Google will have three research and development centers in China, they will be based in Beijing, Shanghai and Taiwan according the article....
  • AdWords Tweaks & Bug Fixes Documented
    I reported this morning at the Search Engine Roundtable on Small But Important New Google AdWords Features & Fixes. eWhisper at WebmasterWorld tracked the small, sometimes unnoticed, changes within Google AdWords and put together a list. Here is that list. + Local time zone added to MCC reports. + Bug fixed where the 'account' box didn't show on sub mcc reports. + Add your GAP business to Google Local (although, not sure why this wasn't attached to base so the pin was unnecessary) + HTTPs errors fixed on internal help pages (note, the only place I can tell the error...
  • Google Testing Ad Supported Premium Video
    Google is running a test offering about 2,000 premium videos available for free streaming viewing, inserting a persistent banner-type ad at the top of the screen and showing an additional post-roll video ad once the premium content has finished streaming. The test is expected to last about a week, according to Peter Chane, group business product manager, Google Video. , inserting a persistent banner-type ad at the top of the screen and showing an additional post-roll video ad once the premium content has finished streaming. The test is expected to last about a week, according to Peter Chane, group business...
  • Child Porn Suit Dropped Against Google
    The Associate Press reports that the suit brought against Google for profiting on child pornography has been dropped. Jeffrey Toback, of the Nassau County Legislature, filed the suit in early May. Toback said he dropped the suit because "Google has offered to sit down and discuss the issues. They didn't want to do that while litigation was pending, so we're taking them up on their offer."...
  • Video Search, Smut and Censorship
    Earlier this week, ZDNet News published an article discussing the presence and availability of explicit content on video search sites like, YouTube, Yahoo Video and Google Video. "A weeklong review of some of the top user-generated video sites by CNET News.com unearthed scenes of beheadings, masturbation, bloody car accidents, bondage and sadomasochism," wrote the reporter, Greg Sandoval. He did say that this review found no child pornography....
  • Ask.com Too Strict With Child & Sex Keywords?
    The Hammer of Trust writes that Ask.com is way too strict for searches on keywords about sex and children. For example, a search on Ask.com on [laws against pedophilia] brings back a message that reads, "This query does not comply with Ask.com Terms of Service." The "Go" button following the message links you to Ask.com Terms of Service. Other similar searches do the same thing, such as , talking to your children about sex, blocking porn from kids and warning your kids about sex offenders. I also tried searching on preventing child pornography and that also was blocked. It is...
  • PhotoBucket Has 44% Share of Photo Sharing Sites: Beating Yahoo & Flickr
    The Hitwise blog posted what I found to be surprising statistics on what is the most popular photo sharing site. I would have thought Yahoo Photos or Flickr would be a one of the most popular services, but it looks like PhotoBucket has almost 44% of the share, compared with Yahoo Photos with only 18% share in the number two spot. Even more surprising, to me at least, is that Flickr has barely 6% share, ranking number six in the list. Hitwise tells me that Photobucket surpassed Yahoo! Photos in January 2006, and its share of visits increased by 34%...
  • Japan's Softbank Mobile Phones To Use Yahoo As Content Portal
    MarketWatch reports that Softbank, who acquired Vodafone, will be using Yahoo to "bring the broad world of the Internet" to their mobile users. The mobile phones will have some sort of direct link to the Yahoo portal, to bring the content of that portal to Softbank's mobile users....
  • Google Mixes Up Referrals Buttons
    I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that Google has mixed up the referral buttons with the Google AdSense referral program. For example, I have inserted the code to display the Google Pack referral button on this page but instead it is displaying the graphics and materials for the Google Firefox referrals. This was first reported at WebmasterWorld yesterday at 11:50am (EST). It continues to be a problem to this minute....
  • Specialty Search Roundup #4
    Another week has gone by and the world of databases of special interest to the web researcher have appeared on ResourceShelf. Here's a look at a few of them along with a couple of database news items via ResourceShelf. By the way, the ResourceShelf site itself has also been updated and enhanced with a new look this week....
  • Technorati Betting: New Link Bait Idea
    Omar emailed me that he has posted a Technorati Blog Betting competition. Basically, you bet as much as you like, on the chances that a particular blog will be at the number one spot. As ThreadWatch notes Matt Cutts has 6 to 1 odds in this competition. They currently have Matt Cutts, Robert Scoble, Engadget, and some others in the competition. This site, nor is my site in the running. Currently, the Technorati top 100 shows me at #35, Philipp at #29, ShoeMoney at #52, John Battelle at #63 and Danny (SEW) at #69....

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 23, 2006, 4:12 PM | Permalink


Yahoo Says Searchers are Better Patients

New research from Yahoo tells us that the majority of people who searched for health information subsequently visited their doctor (61%) and that 71% of these folks went equipped with pointed, action oriented questions. Searchers also use twice as many resources to learn about health issues than the average consumer.

Other key findings include:

  • 20% of consumers were driven to search online because they saw an advertisement and wanted more information.
  • Searchers are 130% more likely to have seen an online display ad and view it as informational.
  • 70% of searchers will question their doctor if they are prescribed a brand different from what they searched for online.

The research was commissioned by Yahoo! in conjunction with Hall & Partners Healthcare to gain a deeper understanding of health searcher?s attitudes and behaviors, and how this impacts doctor visits and prescriptions. The study surveyed over 5,600 online health seekers with extra focus on those searching for Allergy, Depression and High Cholesterol information. Although demographics differed by condition, attitudes and behavior on search were essentially the same.

Posted by Chris Sherman on June 23, 2006, 3:12 PM | Permalink


Candidate Creates Special Video for E-Mail

devalpatrick.jpgThe Internet enables political advertisers unprecedented abilities to get their messages out quickly and unencumbered by media interpretation. And while political candidates have begun to show an interest in employing Web video, most have simply repurposed TV spots
for their Web sites and video ads.

Massachusetts Democratic gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick broke that mold recently with an attack e-mail linking to a video produced for that express purpose. In it, the candidate speaks from his campaign headquarters about his opponent Christopher Gabrieli's choice to not accept public funding in order to spend as much as he'd like on his campaign.

As a Boston Globe article described it, "The video shows Patrick sitting in his campaign office alongside busy campaign volunteers. He is slumped forward slightly, speaking directly, sometimes emphatically, to the camera. At the end, he asks the viewer to join the campaign's first canvassing effort this Saturday."

I spoke with Brian Reich, director of Boston Operations for political consulting firm Mindshare Interactive Campaigns about what he considered to be an innovative approach to video e-mail. "He could have put a TV commercial up, but instead he recorded something special for this e-mail."

There's very little cost for this type of effort in comparison to creating a TV ad, plus recipients have the ability to pass along an e-mail message to spread the word. It'll be interesting to see if other candidates this year take Patrick's lead here and use Web video in this compelling way.

Posted by Kate Kaye on June 23, 2006, 1:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


'Social Directory,' 'Directed Blogging'?: Whatever You Call It Yelp Has Got It Down

The odds were against Yelp when it entered the local search/directory market just under two years ago. (As an aside, I am using a the label "social directory" for sites like Yelp, InsiderPages and Judysbook because they layer community on top of a traditional directory advertising model.) Two years ago the market was already relatively mature with sites like the venerable Citysearch, the search engines and portals offering local search and/or online yellow pages. In addition, all the yellow pages publishers had sites themselves. Then there were online communities like Craigslist, not to mention newspaper sites with their local content.

So if one were to have handicapped Yelp in the beginning, one would have said it's a long shot (including this one) to achieve usage, visibility and scale. Cut to two years later and Yelp is doing it. The site started out in the San Francisco Bay Area and is now rolling out nationally. While not the most heavily trafficked local search/directory site, it arguably has one of the most engaged audiences of any of the companies in its space.

The site looks like a party. It's got lots of personality compared to some of its competitors, which seem "cold" by comparison. And it's not uncommon to find 10, 20, 30 even 40 or more reviews of numerous businesses vs. the typical one, two or five reviews on many of Yelp's competitors.

Sitting with executives from one of the big search sites several years ago, we discussed the challenge of getting user reviews from a base of zero. It's been proven that if a site has lots of community content or reviews, more will follow ? people are more inclined to go into a crowded restaurant than an empty one. But building that base of content and developing that momentum is the challenge.

Yelp has found a "formula" that appears to have worked. The site has MySpace-like profiles (its users are somewhat older on average) that offer a fairly wide range of personal expression, including photo sharing. In that way it resembles a blogging site. But that profile content sits on top of local business and entertainment content, built on a conventional directory advertising model. The "culture" and subject matter of Yelp is "directed." Thus one could describe it ? and they do internally ? as a "directed blogging" site.

In addition, Yelp has held local parties to build offline community and awareness. I've not attended any of those but my understanding is that they've been popular and quite successful for the site. And apparently these "Yelp parties" continue in some cases without the active involvement of the site.

In addition, Yelp has one of the best map-based local search tools. There's no "flyover" or zoom from space capability, but the user experience is generally very good.

If you want more information on these social directory sites, including how to gain access as an advertiser, read Phil Stelter's Local Search column this week in ClickZ.

Posted by Greg Sterling on June 23, 2006, 12:46 PM | Permalink


Google Tests Ad-supported Video

Google is running another ad test this week, this time for Google Video. Under the Free Today program, selected clips from the Google Video Store will be available for free download, instead of the usual fee, which ranges from $0.30 to $14.99. The current free offerings were previously priced as high as $4.95.

The catch, of course, is the free videos include ads. There is a persistent text and image branding unit above the video content, which links to the advertiser's site. There is also a :15 to :30 post-roll video ad. Ads are from a single advertiser; the winning bidder in an auction, according to a Google spokesperson.

The ad-supported clips will not be able to be saved to a file, as the paid downloads are. The free videos are promoted on the Google Video home page

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on June 23, 2006, 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)


PhotoBucket Has 44% Share of Photo Sharing Sites: Beating Yahoo & Flickr

The Hitwise blog posted what I found to be surprising statistics on what is the most popular photo sharing site. I would have thought Yahoo Photos or Flickr would be a one of the most popular services, but it looks like PhotoBucket has almost 44% of the share, compared with Yahoo Photos with only 18% share in the number two spot. Even more surprising, to me at least, is that Flickr has barely 6% share, ranking number six in the list. Hitwise tells me that Photobucket surpassed Yahoo! Photos in January 2006, and its share of visits increased by 34% in the four months from February 2006 to May 2006. Flickr increased 44% in the past four months, which explains why I thought Flickr was more popular then its current rank. More details at the Hitwise blog.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 23, 2006, 11:10 AM | Permalink


Technorati Betting: New Link Bait Idea

Omar emailed me that he has posted a Technorati Blog Betting competition. Basically, you bet as much as you like, on the chances that a particular blog will be at the number one spot. As Threadwatch notes, Matt Cutts has 6 to 1 odds in this competition. They currently have Matt Cutts, Robert Scoble, Engadget, and some others in the competition. This site, nor is my site in the running. Currently, the Technorati top 100 shows me at #35, Philipp at #29, ShoeMoney at #52, John Battelle at #63 and Danny (SEW) at #69.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 23, 2006, 11:00 AM | Permalink


Google To Have 1000 Employees In China By 2007

Pacific Epoch reports that Google expect to have over 1,000 employees in Google China by 2007. By the end of this year, Google hopes to have 200 employees based in China. Google will have three research and development centers in China, they will be based in Beijing, Shanghai and Taiwan according the article.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 23, 2006, 9:59 AM | Permalink


Ask.com Too Strict With Child & Sex Keywords?

The Hammer of Trust writes that Ask.com is way too strict for searches on keywords about sex and children. For example, a search on Ask.com on [laws against pedophilia] brings back a message that reads, "This query does not comply with Ask.com Terms of Service." The "Go" button following the message links you to Ask.com Terms of Service. Other similar searches do the same thing, such as , talking to your children about sex, blocking porn from kids and warning your kids about sex offenders. I also tried searching on preventing child pornography and that also was blocked.

It is important to note that all these queries bring back results at both Google and Yahoo. Is Ask.com way too strict here? It appears that way. But is it better than being hit with a child pornography suit like Google was?

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 23, 2006, 9:09 AM | Permalink


Japan's Softbank Mobile Phones To Use Yahoo As Content Portal

MarketWatch reports that Softbank, who acquired Vodafone, will be using Yahoo to "bring the broad world of the Internet" to their mobile users. The mobile phones will have some sort of direct link to the Yahoo portal, to bring the content of that portal to Softbank's mobile users.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 23, 2006, 9:00 AM | Permalink


Google Mixes Up Referrals Buttons

I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that Google has mixed up the referral buttons with the Google AdSense referral program. For example, I have inserted the code to display the Google Pack referral button on this page but instead it is displaying the graphics and materials for the Google Firefox referrals.

This was first reported at WebmasterWorld yesterday at 11:50am (EST). It continues to be a problem to this minute.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 23, 2006, 8:46 AM | Permalink


Child Porn Suit Dropped Against Google

The Associated Press reports that the suit brought against Google for profiting on child pornography has been dropped. Jeffrey Toback, of the Nassau County Legislature, filed the suit in early May. Toback said he dropped the suit because "Google has offered to sit down and discuss the issues. They didn't want to do that while litigation was pending, so we're taking them up on their offer."

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 23, 2006, 8:35 AM | Permalink


Search Forums Roundup: June 23, 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: Google AdWords Scheduling/Day Parting Now Live - SEO Training- Is It Worthwhile? - Age of Links - Quality and Authority: Relevance Alone Is Not Enough, and more.

Posted by Chris Sherman on June 23, 2006, 7:34 AM | Permalink


Google Testing Ad Supported Premium Video

Google is running a test offering about 2,000 premium videos available for free streaming viewing, inserting a persistent banner-type ad at the top of the screen and showing an additional post-roll video ad once the premium content has finished streaming. The test is expected to last about a week, according to Peter Chane, group business product manager, Google Video.

Currently, premium content on Google Video is available via a pay-to-own model that allows users to download and replay ad-free programming at any time. These videos usually cost between $0.99 and $14.99, but you own them once you pay for them. The test program only allows users to stream the content in real-time, and you can't save videos once viewed.

For this test, Google has allowed advertisers to choose the content that their ads are sponsoring. Likewise, content owners have the option to vet an advertiser to make sure the ad is appropriate for the content. Over time, Chane expects that this human-intensive process will become much more automated.

Google intends to run many similar tests over the course of the coming year. The goal is to find ways to expand the amount of premium content available on Google Video and see if free, ad-spondored content attracts certain types of viewing audiences, said Chane.

Posted by Chris Sherman on June 22, 2006, 8:41 PM | Permalink


Video Search, Smut and Censorship

Earlier this week, ZDNet News published an article discussing the presence and availability of explicit content on video search sites like, YouTube, Yahoo Video and Google Video. "A weeklong review of some of the top user-generated video sites by CNET News.com unearthed scenes of beheadings, masturbation, bloody car accidents, bondage and sadomasochism," wrote the reporter, Greg Sandoval. He did say that this review found no child pornography.

There are a number of issues that the article directly and indirectly raises. (I spoke to Sandoval during his interview process.) Perhaps the primary issue for marketers and the video sites that want their ad dollars is a practical one. There has been considerable press and discussion about the reluctance of mainstream brands to associate themselves with user-generated video content that they can't control. And there have been celebrated cases, for example on MTV-owned iFilm, where "run of site" video ads for mainstream brands have appeared as pre-roll in front of adult content.

To attract more advertising and address this criticism and the hesitation from marketers, MySpace, for example, has recently created "safe content areas" ? safe for marketers that is ? where no questionable content appears. Companies are chomping at the bit to reach the massive MySpace audience but do not want their brands associated or juxtaposed with violent, pornographic or otherwise questionable content.

As of today, Google is testing advertising on premium video content but doesn't offer it where user-generated content is involved (to address this same issue).

It's not completely fair to lump all sites together. Not all video search sites have the same range and types of content and, again to be fair, on those video sites where adult content is available, it's typically behind a warning or "safe search" filter. But those filters can be easily changed. And, somewhat shockingly, violent content (e.g., beheadings) is not similarly gated.

Video sites need to determine whether and how to treat explicit or "over 18" content in terms of the advertiser proposition. But beyond this, there are practical "enforcement" issues as well. If you've many thousands of videos coming into your site on a daily basis, like YouTube, there's time and cost involved in mounting an effort to screen all those videos before they're posted. One approach would be to monitor the tags and flag those streams that indicated questionable content for later human editorial review.

The simple approach, of course, would be to simply ban all "non-family friendly" content and thus create a video site that was safe for advertisers and kids. But then there's that little thing called the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

All pornography is not illegal; child pornography is. Yet pornography is offensive to many people. However, the discussion of what constitutes "pornography" takes us down a complicated and winding path that invariably invokes U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famous 1964 quote in Jacobellis v. Ohio about the difficulty of defining pornography in the abstract: "I know it when I see it."

As a parent I'm not eager for my two young daughters to discover explicit content online when they years from now simply, out of curiosity, start entering sexually oriented words in a search box or video site. (I did the quaint equivalent as a kid in middle school looking up "sex words" in the dictionary.) But as a former lawyer with sensitivity to the complexity of questions of censorship and free expression I recognize that there's a practical and philosophical quagmire for Google, Yahoo and others around whether to show adult and other non-mainstream content on video sites. It's somewhat analogous to the question of whether to go into China and participate in the censorship of websites.

If you start "banning videos" what do you allow and what do you omit? Do you allow violence but not sex ? I just as equally would like to protect my daughters from beheading scenes. Do you allow sexual content but not extreme violence? Beheading videos from Al Qaeda are arguably "news content." And if you permit nudity, where is the line?

Monitoring and making judgments about the content of videos is not unlike the challenge of monitoring trademark infringement within paid search advertising: difficult, time consuming and inherently flawed.

I'm not suggesting there is no line and no limits but Google, YouTube, AOL, Yahoo and others need to find that line carefully, balancing the competing interests (legal, philosophical, financial) that weigh on this cluster of issues. I certainly don't have the answer and right now, apparently, neither do they.

Posted by Greg Sterling on June 22, 2006, 7:28 PM | Permalink


Jambo Tests Radio Pay-Per-Call Ads

Jambo is testing pay-per-call ads in the radio environment, buying up remnant spots from a newish reverse auction firm called Bid4Spots. Business categories covered under the tests include DIRECTV installers, mortgage lenders, and attorneys; and advertisers can specify such targeting factors as market, daypart, demographic and station format.

If this test and others like it go well, radio advertising may eventually migrate to a scenario where marketers, the lead-focused ones anyway, will pay only for pre-qualified calls. (link to press release)

Posted by Zachary Rodgers on June 22, 2006, 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Specialty Search Roundup #4

Another week has gone by and the world of databases of special interest to the web researcher have appeared on ResourceShelf. Here's a look at a few of them along with a couple of database news items via ResourceShelf. By the way, the ResourceShelf site itself has also been updated and enhanced with a new look this week.

Past specialty search roundups:

+ Specialty Search Roundup #3
+ Specialty Search Roundup #2
+ Specialty Search Roundup #1

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 22, 2006, 3:56 PM | Permalink


AdWords Tweaks & Bug Fixes Documented

I reported this morning at the Search Engine Roundtable on Small But Important New Google AdWords Features & Fixes. eWhisper at WebmasterWorld tracked the small, sometimes unnoticed, changes within Google AdWords and put together a list. Here is that list.

+ Local time zone added to MCC reports.
+ Bug fixed where the 'account' box didn't show on sub mcc reports.
+ Add your GAP business to Google Local (although, not sure why this wasn't attached to base so the pin was unnecessary)
+ HTTPs errors fixed on internal help pages (note, the only place I can tell the error now occurs is on the help home page).
+ Possible negative keywords under the AdWords keyword tool.
+ Ability to add keywords to an AdGroup when accessing the keyword tool from the tools menu.
+ 'add custom text' under the site spidering section of the keyword tool.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 22, 2006, 3:46 PM | Permalink


Google Disposes Of Stake In Baidu

Reuters reports that Google has sold its "modest investment in Baidu." Google owned about two-percent of Baidu.com, worth about $63 million, and "disposed" of that investment on May 25th. Google spokesperson, Debbie Frost said, "It has always been our goal to grow our own successful business in China and we are very focused on that."

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 22, 2006, 3:13 PM | Permalink


Search Headlines & Links: June 22, 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 22, 2006: Ask Not On Google Answers About Google; Should Google Dump Results Counts?; Google And Adobe Partner & More!
    Today's search podcast covers Google Answers not allowing questions about Google; Google's inaccurate results counts; Google partnering with Adobe on distribution; the Matt Cutts vacation countdown and more! Tune-in by listening to this MP3 file, listening via WebmasterRadio at 11:30am Eastern and repeated at 2pm Eastern Tuesday through Friday, via our Odeo channel or through iTunes via this link (or use alternative iTunes instructions explained here) or though our Yahoo Podcasts channel. Need more help tuning in live or finding the chat room? See the Daily SearchCast FAQ.
  • When's Matt Cutts Back From Vacation Countdown Clock
    Thomas Bindl does what I was hoping someone would do -- make a countdown clock for when Google's Matt Cutts is returning from his vacation, spotted via Threadwatch. I've seen a number of posts in various places suggesting that Google has been having its recent spam and indexing problems because Matt's finally taken a nice, long break. Bull. Matt's great, a huge resource to Google, but the problems going on seem far more fundamental than Matt being away. If they really are due to him being gone, then Google has even bigger issues to deal with. Still, plenty of us...
  • Google, Kill The Web Search Counts!
    Number one on my 25 Things I Hate About Google list from March was "web search counts that make no sense." This week's fiasco with the "5 billion spam pages" in Google only underscores that those counts really are a big issue that can be noticed by more than a few tech heads. Fix them or get rid of them, I say....
  • Google Search Appliance Now Available In Australia and New Zealand
    The Google Search Appliance is now available in Australia and in New Zealand. The Google Search Appliance starts at $74,486 AUD in Australia and starts at $87,702 NZD in New Zealand or $30,000 US in America. The full release can be found here....
  • Google Updates Toolbar Privacy Policy
    It appears to me that Google updated the Google Toolbar Privacy Policy yesterday. I know the dates do not reflect that on the page, but if you take a look at the current version and compare it to the cached version from Jun 16, 2006 you will notice a lot of changes. Below are some of the larger changes to the privacy policy....
  • What the Critics Said
    The web has made it easy to seek out criticism to help us decide what to watch, listen to or read. But as with web search in general, finding the best sources of criticism can sometimes be a frustrating experience. In today's SearchDay article, Searching for Critical Acclaim, I take an in-depth look at a service that aggregates reviews of movies, books, music and more and assigns a unique score that represents the collective critical opinion on the quality of each reviewed title....
  • More Stats & Features From Google Sitemaps
    The Inside Google Sitemaps Blog announced more features and statistics added to the Google Sitemaps product. The features mainly include additional statistics, but you can also find additional tools. Here is a quick rundown of the new items you can find at Google Sitemaps. + Unlimited crawl errors in reports + More query stats, a lot more, including reporting on subfolders + Common words report increased to show 75 words from 20 + Submit up to 500 sitemaps under one Google Account, up from 200 + Adsbot-Google useragent added to robots.txt tool + Added a rate this tool poll. That...
  • Google Answers: Ask Whatever You Like, Except About Google
    We wrote earlier about Google pulling a question at Google Answers about Google. Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped followed-up further and found that Google officially disallows people to ask questions about the company because the researchers at Google Answers aren't Google employees. Got that? Freelance researchers are apparently qualified to answer questions about any other company in the world, but when it comes to Google, special treatment is required. Incredible....
  • Google Partners With Adobe For Toolbar Distribution In Shockwave, Other Product To Be Named
    Both Adobe (PDF link) and Google have announced a new deal where Adobe will distribute the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer as part of Adobe Macromedia Shockwave Player downloads. That was supposed to begin yesterday, and bundling with other Adobe products will happen in the future. Wait a minute? Weren't Yahoo and Adobe buddy-buddies? Yes -- a special version of the Yahoo Toolbar is built into the popular Adobe Acrobat Reader program, through a deal dating back to October 2004....
  • New Search Patents: June 22, 2006 - Google File System, Microsoft Blocks, and Yahoo Autonotifications
    Google patents the Google File System, Microsoft claims a Functional Object Model for mobile devices, and Yahoo! (Overture) describes an autonotification process to inform advertisers of when a certain condition has been met concerning one of their ads....
  • Wall Street Journal Piece On Tracking
    Mylene Mangalindan of the Wall Street Journal wrote a solid piece on Monday that was unfortunately buried at the end of the annual All Things Digital section. If you're a multi-channel internet marketer, read her article, Ad Vantage (Paid reg. required). The piece looks at potential pitfalls of advertising online without proper analytics tracking and covers such topics as Garden Harware?s difficulties tracking which search advertising or comparison shopping clicks actually convert (PriceGrabber and Shopping.com are singled out), eBay?s solution for search marketing (seems they developed a system in-house after leaving Efficient Frontier), Alibris? problems with affiliate sales (not all...

Other Things We Read, Didn't Blog But You Might Want To Read...

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 22, 2006, 2:41 PM | Permalink


Daily SearchCast, June 22, 2006: Ask Not On Google Answers About Google; Should Google Dump Results Counts?; Google And Adobe Partner & More!

Today's search podcast covers Google Answers not allowing questions about Google; Google's inaccurate results counts; Google partnering with Adobe on distribution; the Matt Cutts vacation countdown and more!

Tune-in by listening to this MP3 file, listening via WebmasterRadio at 11:30am Eastern and repeated at 2pm Eastern Tuesday through Friday, via our Odeo channel or through iTunes via this link (or use alternative iTunes instructions explained here) 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:

  • Google Answers: Ask Whatever You Like, Except About Google
    We wrote earlier about Google pulling a question at Google Answers about Google. Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped followed-up further and found that Google officially disallows people to ask questions about the company because the researchers at Google Answers aren't Google employees. Got that? Freelance researchers are apparently qualified to answer questions about any other company in the world, but when it comes to Google, special treatment is required. Incredible....
  • Google, Kill The Web Search Counts!
    Number one on my 25 Things I Hate About Google list from March was "web search counts that make no sense." This week's fiasco with the "5 billion spam pages" in Google only underscores that those counts really are a big issue that can be noticed by more than a few tech heads. Fix them or get rid of them, I say....
  • More Stats & Features From Google Sitemaps
    The Inside Google Sitemaps Blog announced more features and statistics added to the Google Sitemaps product. The features mainly include additional statistics, but you can also find additional tools. Here is a quick rundown of the new items you can find at Google Sitemaps. + Unlimited crawl errors in reports + More query stats, a lot more, including reporting on subfolders + Common words report increased to show 75 words from 20 + Submit up to 500 sitemaps under one Google Account, up from 200 + Adsbot-Google useragent added to robots.txt tool + Added a rate this tool poll. That...
  • Google Partners With Adobe For Toolbar Distribution In Shockwave, Other Product To Be Named
    Both Adobe (PDF link) and Google have announced a new deal where Adobe will distribute the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer as part of Adobe Macromedia Shockwave Player downloads. That was supposed to begin yesterday, and bundling with other Adobe products will happen in the future. Wait a minute? Weren't Yahoo and Adobe buddy-buddies? Yes -- a special version of the Yahoo Toolbar is built into the popular Adobe Acrobat Reader program, through a deal dating back to October 2004....
  • Google Updates Toolbar Privacy Policy
    It appears to me that Google updated the Google Toolbar Privacy Policy yesterday. I know the dates do not reflect that on the page, but if you take a look at the current version and compare it to the cached version from Jun 16, 2006 you will notice a lot of changes. Below are some of the larger changes to the privacy policy....
  • New Search Patents: June 22, 2006 - Google File System, Microsoft Blocks, and Yahoo Autonotifications
    Google patents the Google File System, Microsoft claims a Functional Object Model for mobile devices, and Yahoo! (Overture) describes an autonotification process to inform advertisers of when a certain condition has been met concerning one of their ads....
  • Wall Street Journal Piece On Tracking
    Mylene Mangalindan of the Wall Street Journal wrote a solid piece on Monday that was unfortunately buried at the end of the annual All Things Digital section. If you're a multi-channel internet marketer, read her article, Ad Vantage (Paid reg. required). The piece looks at potential pitfalls of advertising online without proper analytics tracking and covers such topics as Garden Harware?s difficulties tracking which search advertising or comparison shopping clicks actually convert (PriceGrabber and Shopping.com are singled out), eBay?s solution for search marketing (seems they developed a system in-house after leaving Efficient Frontier), Alibris? problems with affiliate sales (not all...
  • What the Critics Said
    The web has made it easy to seek out criticism to help us decide what to watch, listen to or read. But as with web search in general, finding the best sources of criticism can sometimes be a frustrating experience. In today's SearchDay article, Searching for Critical Acclaim, I take an in-depth look at a service that aggregates reviews of movies, books, music and more and assigns a unique score that represents the collective critical opinion on the quality of each reviewed title....
  • When's Matt Cutts Back From Vacation Countdown Clock
    Thomas Bindl does what I was hoping someone would do -- make a countdown clock for when Google's Matt Cutts is returning from his vacation, spotted via Threadwatch. I've seen a number of posts in various places suggesting that Google has been having its recent spam and indexing problems because Matt's finally taken a nice, long break. Bull. Matt's great, a huge resource to Google, but the problems going on seem far more fundamental than Matt being away. If they really are due to him being gone, then Google has even bigger issues to deal with. Still, plenty of us...

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 22, 2006, 2:32 PM | Permalink


Yahoo E-Mail - Send Verification

Y verification.jpgAlthough this has apparently been around for a few months, I hardly ever use my Yahoo e-mail account, so it was news to me.

When I hit 'send,' a verification page intercepted the process. While we're all familiar with services from companies such as SpamArrest and Vanquish that ask non-whitelisted senders to verify themselves before a message can be delivered, this is the first time I've had to verify myself as a sender on my own e-mail provider's site.

Naturally, to get this far in the process, I was already logged in to Yahoo e-mail as a registered user. And my Yahoo e-mail account dates all the way back to practically my earliest days on the Web -- the post-Mosaic era.

Hey, Yahoo. Don't I get any credit for over a decade of good behavior?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb on June 22, 2006, 2:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Review This Shoe

shoes.com.jpgWho's not getting into CGM?

Shoes.com is encouraging customers to review shoes with a weekly $250 gift certificate offer. Get ready for shopping sites in all sorts of categories to follow suit. Comparison engines, local search plays and, of course, Amazon, are all solidly on the bandwagon.

In the future, everyone will write at least 15MB of user reviews.

Right?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb on June 22, 2006, 1:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


American Apparel in Second Life: Driving Gamers to the Web Site

aa.jpgI just spoke with Wes Keltner of The Ad Option, the firm that brokered American Apparrel's much blogged integration with Second Life. An interesting tidbit he shared, which I haven't seen discussed elsewhere, is that AA will eventually run two promos offering savings on real world orders from its Web site.

Here's how it'll work: virtual American Apparel clothing -- the shirts, lingerie, etc. bought in game space -- will come with note cards that have Web promo codes written on them. One will give in-game customers 15 percent off a shirt in real life. Another will give them free shipping from the company's Web site. Each of the campaigns will run for roughly one month inside Second Life to drive traffic to the site.

One interesting aspect to the promos is they'll let American Apparel track some of the bottom line impact of its new brand presence in the virtual world.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers on June 22, 2006, 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


When's Matt Cutts Back From Vacation Countdown Clock

Thomas Bindl does what I was hoping someone would do -- make a countdown clock for when Google's Matt Cutts is returning from his vacation, spotted via Threadwatch. I've seen a number of posts in various places suggesting that Google has been having its recent spam and indexing problems because Matt's finally taken a nice, long break. Bull. Matt's great, a huge resource to Google, but the problems going on seem far more fundamental than Matt being away. If they really are due to him being gone, then Google has even bigger issues to deal with. Still, plenty of us will be happy to see him return and jump back into the search conversation.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 22, 2006, 10:46 AM | Permalink


Google, Kill The Web Search Counts!

Number one on my 25 Things I Hate About Google list from March was "web search counts that make no sense." This week's fiasco with the "5 billion spam pages" in Google only underscores that those counts really are a big issue that can be noticed by more than a few tech heads. Fix them or get rid of them, I say.

Adam Lasnik from Google's search quality team has been running around to various public forums explaining that it really wasn't 5 billion pages that got indexed from one master domain but instead a counting glitch that makes the problem seem worse than it was. We noted Monday that he commented over at Threadwatch:

We have noticed that some site: queries are showing bizarre results and it's turned out to be tied to a bad data push. We're fixing it now....

I'm saying that the results counts are drastically off.

Adam's also been at Digg:

Our engineers recently noticed that our site: queries (number of results listed for a search) were showing bizarre results. This has turned out to be tied to a bad data push, and we're fixing this right now.

In the case being discussed above, the number in "about [x billion]" is currently incorrect. We haven't indexed anywhere close to as many pages of these sites as is currently suggested. It's a significant results estimation error, thankfully limited in scope but clearly pretty stark when it appears.

And over at John Battelle's blog:

Compounding the issue, our result count estimates in these contexts was MANY orders of magnitude off. For example, the one site that supposedly had 5.5 billion pages in the index actually had under 1/100,000th of that.

John's post is probably the most important illustration of why those counts really do matter, given that he took them at face value -- and so many others will, as well.

When I saw the story on Monday, I doubted Google really had indexed so many pages, especially given the known problems with the site: command recently. While Google doesn't report the total number of pages it indexes any longer, it wasn't that long ago when 5 billion pages would have been over half the reported size, as John noted:

5 billion pages is the entire size of the Google index just a year or so ago. The last claim, before they stopped MAKING claims, was 8 billion...think about that.

Now sure, maybe Google really did index that many pages. Maybe they've expanded so much that there's plenty of room. More likely, adding that massive amount of pages really should have caused a lot more good pages to go missing, to make room for them. There would have been a ton of screaming *widely* across the web from site owners big and small.

I know, I know -- some believe Google's running out of space, and Eric Schmidt even commented on a "machine crisis" which the company later denied was an issue with web search. Certainly many webmasters have long been reporting missing pages in the wake of shifting to Google's BigDaddy crawling infrastructure. But many webmaster also have not been having problems.

Maybe Google is so screwed up that it IS picking up billions of spam pages from a few sites and dumping good stuff. However, I think that's unlikely. I think lots of pages did get in from this site, though maybe in the millions rather than billions. And perhaps collectively, millions of pages of spam from a number of sites are pushing good stuff out. But that 5 billion figure for this particular site (and its subdomains)? I do think it was a counting error.

That counting error is a big problem in and of itself. As said, many people take the counts at face value, even trying to use these meaningless figures in court cases as Fox News once did or the US Attorney General once did before the US Supreme Court.

Enough is enough. Make the figures accurate or stop reporting them at all. Last year, I lobbied for Google to drop the index count on its home page, something that eventually happened. Now they should strongly consider doing the same thing with results count.

Time For Results Counts / Number Of Matches To Go? from Gary Price last year talked about this perhaps being a good next move for Google and the other search engines to make. Certainly the time now seems right.

Google, like Yahoo won't let you go past the first 1,000 matches anyway (Ask goes to 200; MSN to 250). So who cares about showing how many matches there are? Counts like these are remnants of the days when search engines first appeared and showing that they had lots of matches helped perhaps make you think they must be good or comprehensive. But if the counts mean nothing, why keep using them?

Ah -- but it's only an issue with the counts if you do a site: command, you might say. Certainly we've known about a bug with that since May. We've been told some of it has been fixed, but clearly bugs are still being worked out.

But are regular search counts accurate? If I search for djkfdkjfdkjddfdfdd, I get told there are no matches. So if I shift to -djkfdkjfdkjddfdfdd, I should get a count of all pages in the index that don't contain that word -- and since we know there are no pages with it in the index -- I should get a count of ALL pages Google has indexed. And that count?

Results 1 - 10 of about 25,270,000,000 for -djkfdkjfdkjddfdfdd. (0.07 seconds) 

So there we have it -- Google has 25 billion pages indexed. Maybe. Or maybe not. This type of search sometimes has produced figures in the past that you knew couldn't be right. Plus, as I wrote before, Google's long had counting problems. I don't know whether to trust that count or not. And if I can't trust it, why offer it to me? Especially why offer it to me if after a glitch, you have to run around doing damage control to say the count is wildly inaccurate. Just get rid of it.

Instead, this is what I want to see in the future:

Results 1 - 10 

OK? And how about giving an option to have a number show up next to a result, for those who want it. That would be nice if I want to refer to the exact position of a particular listing to someone else. But the total number of matches? It's meaningless. And the time it took to search? Chest thumping we don't need anymore.

One exception, however. Google Sitemaps has just added a bunch of expanded reporting. I want them to go further and let site owners get accurate index counts through that system.

Keep in mind that a site: command is incredibly processor intensive. It's not something most searchers do, so spending the time, energy and machine power to get hyper-accurate results for regular Google searches isn't a priority.

Instead, move site: searches to work within Google Sitemaps, and you take the burden off your main machines. It's also something you can perhaps have scheduled to run as a report, something generated en masse during slower periods for anyone who wants to get that type of data. If three people all want site:amazon.com data, you run that once and give all three the info on a scheduled basis.

Yahoo rolled out a similar Yahoo Site Explorer tool last September. It was a good move. It would be a good move for Google to also make, along with dropping the general results counting on Google results pages.

Want to comment? Please join our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Get Rid Of Results Counts On Google?

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 22, 2006, 10:32 AM | Permalink


Google Search Appliance Now Available In Australia and New Zealand

The Google Search Appliance is now available in Australia and in New Zealand. The Google Search Appliance starts at $74,486 AUD in Australia and starts at $87,702 NZD in New Zealand or $30,000 US in America. The full release can be found here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 22, 2006, 9:23 AM | Permalink


Google Updates Toolbar Privacy Policy

It appears to me that Google updated the Google Toolbar Privacy Policy yesterday. I know the dates do not reflect that on the page, but if you take a look at the current version and compare it to the cached version from Jun 16, 2006 you will notice a lot of changes. Below are some of the larger changes to the privacy policy.

+ Removed a bullet that read;

We do not associate any of the information that Toolbar sends with other personal information about you. However, it is possible that a URL or other page information sent to Google may itself contain personal information. For information about how some web sites embed personal information in web requests, click here.

+ Added/Changed Significantly the following bullets;

(1) Toolbar Features that give you access to other Google services such as Blogger and Gmail are subject to the separate Privacy Policies of those products. Features that require use of a Google Account, like Bookmarks, store information with your Account as explained in the main Google Privacy Policy. Other features, like SMS This, that let you transmit data from the Toolbar may log that data transmission, as explained in the FAQ.
(2) Third party site custom buttons send information such as search queries to sites that are not operated by Google or covered by Google's Privacy Policy.
(3) If you have Google Toolbar Version 4.0 or above, your copy of Google Toolbar includes a unique application number. When you install Google Toolbar, this number and a message indicating whether the installation succeeded are sent back to Google. Also, when Google Toolbar automatically checks to see if a new version is available, the current version number and the unique application number are sent to Google. The unique application number is required for Google Toolbar to work and cannot be disabled.
(4) Except for information sent through Toolbar for use with a separate Account-based service such as Gmail, we do not associate any of the information that Toolbar sends with other personal information about you. However, it is possible that a URL or other page information sent to Google may itself contain personal information. For information about how this may happen, click here.

Those are the changes I noticed.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 22, 2006, 9:03 AM | Permalink


What the Critics Said

The web has made it easy to seek out criticism to help us decide what to watch, listen to or read. But as with web search in general, finding the best sources of criticism can sometimes be a frustrating experience. In today's SearchDay article, Searching for Critical Acclaim, I take an in-depth look at a service that aggregates reviews of movies, books, music and more and assigns a unique score that represents the collective critical opinion on the quality of each reviewed title.

Posted by Chris Sherman on June 22, 2006, 8:36 AM | Permalink


More Stats & Features From Google Sitemaps

The Inside Google Sitemaps Blog announced more features and statistics added to the Google Sitemaps product. The features mainly include additional statistics, but you can also find additional tools. Here is a quick rundown of the new items you can find at Google Sitemaps.

+ Unlimited crawl errors in reports
+ More query stats, a lot more, including reporting on subfolders
+ Common words report increased to show 75 words from 20
+ Submit up to 500 sitemaps under one Google Account, up from 200
+ Adsbot-Google useragent added to robots.txt tool
+ Added a rate this tool poll.

That is it.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 22, 2006, 8:32 AM | Permalink


Google Answers: Ask Whatever You Like, Except About Google

We wrote earlier about Google pulling a question at Google Answers about Google. Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped followed-up further and found that Google officially disallows people to ask questions about the company because the researchers at Google Answers aren't Google employees.

Got that? Freelance researchers are apparently qualified to answer questions about any other company in the world, but when it comes to Google, special treatment is required. Incredible.

In Google Answers Question Removed, Philipp says he was told:

Questions about Google, Google Search, and search engine optimization are not allowed because Google Answers researchers are not employees of Google. Researchers don?t have access to any ?inside? information. The information they do have access to is available for free on the Google help pages or by writing to Google support.

And Steve Hall, who started this all when his question was rejected earlier this week, was told:

We'd like to clarify the reason for removal of this question. Please note that Google Answers researchers are not employees of Google. They are independent contractors, and they only have access to information about Google and Google Search that is publicly available. Therefore, all users with questions about Google and/or Google Search are directed to these Google support pages.

In the comments to Steve's post, someone raises a good point that Google might have this policy to help keep those getting responses from thinking they are getting "official" information from Google. I can understand that. But that can also be dealt with differently than just removing questions wholescale. And no questions on search engine optimization, as Philipp was told? Please.

For the record, the Google Answers FAQ says this about questions that aren't allowed:

Google Answers discourages and may remove questions that:

  • request private information about individuals
  • want assistance in conducting illegal activities
  • are meant to sell or advertise products
  • refer or relate to adult content
  • are homework or exam questions
  • seek specific information about Google or Google Answers (email answers-support@google.com instead)

Fair to say, I think that last line should go. People should be able to ask about Google and Google Answers, at the very least because such restrictions make the entire system seem silly.

More important, the Google help pages and other information about Google do NOT have everything you'd want to know about Google. Consider:

  • How does Google technically perform censorship in China? (Answer -- see this good New York Times article, with info not on the Google web site that I know of)
     
  • How did a web site recently get so many spam pages indexed so quickly in Google? (Answer -- our article is one of many that explains its both a glitch with Google's site: command plus probably just a big problem with Google's spam control pages, something not covered on the Google web site)
     
  • Is it cloaking if the New York Times puts up a page in front of those clicking from Google to reach paid articles? (Answer -- it's a matter of debate, as going on in our Search Engine Watch Forums. Google has general guidelines, but there's no agreement on whether these apply. And there's nothing on the Google site giving a definitive answer).

Out of curiosity, I did a little searching at Google Answers to see if much was getting through about Google. Not much, that I could see. But this question caught my eye, Mod Rewrite code for the .htaccess file. It asks:

I have a website called www.greathostels.com it is written in php i need to know the code to put in the htaccess file to make it search engine friendly using mod_rewrite as at the moment its not effectivly spidered.

The answer was a list of pointers to other sites, all of which look pretty useful to me, someone who is not an expert. But the person asking also raised a good point:

If asking a Php code question i think the answer should be provided by someone who knows PhP code.

Which got him this over-the-top response:

Apparently you negelected to read the FAQs for the Google Answers service:

"Are Researchers experts in their field?"

"All Google Researchers are tested to ensure that they are expert searchers with excellent communication skills. Some of them also have expertise in various fields. Your question may be answered by an expert in a particular field or by an expert searcher. Either way, if you are unsatisfied with your answer for any reason, you may apply for a full refund." http://answers.google.com/answers/faq.html#experts

Our job is to provide an answer to your question. If we personally lack the expertise to do so, we seek out authoritative resources on the internet.

Therefore, I referred you to an authoritative site which provided information which was extremely specific to your question. To imply that the authors of The SEO Toolset website are not experts in their topic, when they authored precisely the information you requested, and created precisely the URL Rewriting Tool which you so badly need, is the heighth of insolence and absurdity.

I would request that my answer be removed by the editors, simply to remove the taint of my association with you, but they tend not to remove answers which have satisfactorily answered the question.

If you ever plan to use this service again, I suggest you register under a different username, given the fact that other researchers will be more than reluctant to deal with someone who doesn't bother to inform themselves about what to expect from the service.

Ouch. I can understand the researcher feeling slighted. But it's also a fair opinion to have, that it would be nice if an actual expert in the area answered the question. Which brings it back to Google's censorship of questions about itself. It's OK for people to research things like PHP and rewriting, even if they have no expertise in them -- but Google itself is too sensitive a topic?

Oh, but remember, people can write to Google Support to get real expert advice. You mean like I did when Gmail went down for me last week? You mean like Tom Foremski did over at Silicon Valley Watcher when Gmail went down for him yesterday? I don't think he got a response. I know I didn't -- and this is now a week after I had my problem.

Instead, I hunted and hunted through support areas and eventually guessed that a solution for an entirely different problem might work for me. It did. But go read my Getting Gmail To Resume POP Access With Captcha Unlock article, because it explains just how lame the Gmail support documentation is in terms of helping people with this problem. And yet, that's what Google Answers thinks is fine for people to use instead of being able to ask questions?

And as for company questions, while asking about Google is off limits, these are fine:

Apparently, having researchers answer questions about other companies without inside information is OK. It's only Google itself that needs special protection.

What do you think? Should the policy change? I'm going to ask in two places and will postscript links here. The first will be our Search Engine Watch Forums. The second will be Yahoo Answers, where there are no restrictions about asking about Google -- or Yahoo -- that I can see. Perhaps that's one of the reasons it's growing by leaps-and-bounds, as covered in my recent article, Look Out Wikipedia, Here Comes Yahoo Answers!

Want to comment? Come join:

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 22, 2006, 8:15 AM | Permalink


Google Partners With Adobe For Toolbar Distribution In Shockwave, Other Product To Be Named

Both Adobe (PDF link) and Google have announced a new deal where Adobe will distribute the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer as part of Adobe Macromedia Shockwave Player downloads. That was supposed to begin yesterday, and bundling with other Adobe products will happen in the future.

Wait a minute? Weren't Yahoo and Adobe buddy-buddies? Yes -- a special version of the Yahoo Toolbar is built into the popular Adobe Acrobat Reader program, through a deal dating back to October 2004.

In January of this year, Google began distributing Adobe Reader as part of the Google Pack without the Yahoo Toolbar being part of it. Google told me (article for SEW members) then that the Adobe-Yahoo agreement only covered the distribution Adobe did.

So is the Yahoo-Adobe deal completely over? No. Reuters reports that Adobe says that will continue:

Adobe previously included Yahoo Inc.'s toolbar as an option with the Shockwave Player, Adobe spokeswoman Katie Juran said. Adobe still offers the Yahoo toolbar as an option for its Flash Player and Adobe Reader products, she said.

I just uninstalled Acrobat Reader and downloaded a fresh copy. I definitely see the Yahoo Toolbar as part of the latest installation.

As for the Abobe-Google deal, the bundling with Google Pack wasn't based on payment, Google told me at the time. This latest deal is a financial arrangement, though exactly how much money is changing hands is not disclosed.

As for the distribution, I downloaded Shockwave and got no prompt for the Google Toolbar to be added. Of course, I already had it in Internet Explorer, and that seems to be why I didn't get a separate install. The Shockwave FAQ suggests that you should see a separate install process and that this won't happen if you have the Google Toolbar already.

That FAQ also notes that the Yahoo Toolbar, previously bundled with Shockwave, has now been dropped. In addition, it says that that third parties that distribute Shockwave do not have to bundle the Google Toolbar with those distributions.

The Google Blog post also says:

Starting today, Adobe is offering the Google Toolbar to its customers as a free download -- a great way to take Google search with you anywhere on the web.

So far, that seems to be true within Shockwave. But it's also a bit overstated. The Google Toolbar on its own is not offered anywhere on the Adobe products page, nor does a search for "google toolbar" flag any page for those who just want the toolbar on its own

The best, most specific information is part of the Shockwave FAQ that I've mentioned. There is at least a direct link to the Google Toolbar download page. But that's much different that the idea the Google Blog suggests, that people visiting Adobe might be getting a pitch for the Google Toolbar on its own. Not yet, not so far.

Postscript Barry:

I was sent a screen capture of this in action, you can view the screen capture at tcal.net.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 22, 2006, 6:48 AM | Permalink


New Search Patents: June 22, 2006 - Google File System, Microsoft Blocks, and Yahoo Autonotifications

Google patents the Google File System, Microsoft claims a Functional Object Model for mobile devices, and Yahoo! (Overture) describes an autonotification process to inform advertisers of when a certain condition has been met concerning one of their ads.

Google

The authors of a paper on the Google File System (pdf) are listed as the inventors of this patent filing. Another similarity between the two documents is that both cite mostly the same reference documents. The patent and paper appear to cover much of the same ground. This looks like the patent for the Google File System.

Leasing scheme for data-modifying operations
Invented by Sanjay Ghemawat, Howard Gobioff, and Shun-Tak Leung
Assigned to Google
US Patent 7,065,618
Granted on June 20, 2006
Filed on June 30, 2003

Abstract

A system may facilitate performance of a data-modifying operation in a file network that includes multiple servers that store replicas of data. One of the servers may serve as a primary replica for one of the replicas of data and at least one other one of the servers may serve as at least one secondary replica for the replica of data. The system may send data associated with the data-modifying operation to the primary replica and the at least one secondary replica based on a network topology and independently send a data-modifying control signal that requests execution of the data-modifying operation using the data associated with the data-modifying operation to the primary replica and the at least one secondary replica.


Microsoft

When presenting a web page on a mobile device, it's sometimes best not to display the whole page. But trying to decide which parts to show, and which not to display can be difficult. More information is sometimes needed about the web page.

Microsoft has been experimenting with ways to identify what different parts of a web page do based upon the layout and functions of parts of pages, and a paper from Microsoft that has seen some popularity recently on this type of analysis has been one on Block-level Link Analysis (pdf).

It wasn't a surprise to see Wei-Ying Ma's name on this patent application, as one of the authors of that paper, and an earlier paper on VIPS: a Vision-based Page Segmentation Algorithm.

Another Wei-Ying Ma paper on that topic is Efficient Browsing of Web Search Results on Mobile Devices Based on Block Importance Model (pdf). It cites a function based analysis like the one described in this patent, and points to a document that explains some of the concepts - Function-Based Object Model Towards Website Adaptation (pdf). The other inventor listed in this patent, Jin-Lin Chen, is one of the authors of that paper. Taking a look at those papers may make understanding this patent easier.

Segmenting and indexing web pages using function-based object models
Invented by Jin-Lin Chen and Wei-Ying Ma
Assigned to Microsoft
US Patent 7,065,707
Granted on June 20, 2006
Filed on June 24, 2002

Abstract

By understanding a website author's intention through an analysis of the function of a website, website content can be adapted for presentation or rendering in a manner that more closely appreciates and respects the function behind the website. A website's function is analyzed so that its content can be adapted to different client environments. A function-based object model (FOM) identifies objects associated with a website, and analyzes those objects in terms of their functions. Desktop oriented websites are adapted for mobile devices based on the FOM and on a mobile control intermediary language. While the FOM attempts to understand a website author's intention based on functional analysis of web content, the mobile control intermediary language enables the author to create web content that can be presented in various mobile devices by processing the objects, by extracting forms from the objects, and by generating a file in the mobile control intermediary language for each form.

Yahoo

This patent describes an autonotification system, enabling automated messages to be sent to an advertiser regarding their paid search listings when certain pre-defined conditions are met. Here are the areas those conditions listed in the patent encompass:

  1. Position: related to the position of a listing,
  2. Cost: related to the accumulated costs for some listings,
  3. Account-balance: related to the funds remaining in advertiser's account (e.g., to pay for listings that are clicked on),
  4. Impressions: the number of impressions received by some listings,
  5. Clicks: the number of clicks received by some listings,
  6. CTR: the click through rate of some listings,
  7. CPC-too-high: if the cost per click (CPC) of a listing can be reduced without impacting its rank,
  8. Average CPC too high: the average CPC, the total cost divided by the total clicks, is higher than some threshold,
  9. Rank-CPC: related to the CPC for a given rank and term.


Automatic advertiser notification for a system for providing place and price protection in a search result list generated by a computer network search engine
Invented by Narinder Pal Singh, Scott W. Snell, Douglas T. Huffman, Darren J. Davis, Thomas A. Soulanille, and Dominic Dough-Ming Cheung.
Assigned to Overture Services, Inc.
US Patent 7,065,500
Granted on June 20, 2006
Filed on September 26, 2001

Abstract

A notification method in a computer database system includes receiving a notification instruction from an owner associated with a search listing stored in the computer database system, monitoring conditions specified by the notification instruction for the search listing, and sending a notification to the owner upon detection of a changed condition of the search listing.

My usual reminder about patents: Some of the processes and technology described in patents are created in house, and some are developed with the assistance of contractors and partners. A percentage are never developed in a tangible manner, but may serve as a way to attempt to exclude others from using the technology, or even to possibly mislead competitors into exploring an area that they might not have an interest in (sometimes skepticism is good.)

There are times when a Google or Yahoo acquires a company to gain access to the intellectual property of that company, or the intellectual prowess and expertise of that company's employees. And sometimes patents are just purchased.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski on June 22, 2006, 3:41 AM | Permalink


Dispatch from Supernova

Oliver Luckett from Revver, which has been hosting the famous Diet Coke and Mentos video from EepyBird, says the video's creators have now netted $23,000 in revenues from their video over 13 days. In fact, Mentos has now come forward to sponsor EepyBird, Luckett said.

Posted by Pamela Parker on June 21, 2006, 7:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Wall Street Journal Piece On Tracking

Mylene Mangalindan of the Wall Street Journal wrote a solid piece on Monday that was unfortunately buried at the end of the annual All Things Digital section. If you're a multi-channel internet marketer, read her article, Ad Vantage (Paid reg. required).

The piece looks at potential pitfalls of advertising online without proper analytics tracking and covers such topics as Garden Harware’s difficulties tracking which search advertising or comparison shopping clicks actually convert (PriceGrabber and Shopping.com are singled out), eBay’s solution for search marketing (seems they developed a system in-house after leaving Efficient Frontier), Alibris‘ problems with affiliate sales (not all affiliates drive valuable traffic), and Limoges Jewelry’s success using Mercent’s tracking systems (sales up, costs down).

What isn?t discussed is a potentially more troublesome problem which the analytics systems from WebTrends, CoreMetrics, Atlas, and Omniture [IPO coming soon] don?t necessarily solve: crediting sales to the right marketing channel. As marketers participate in more online marketing channels (PPC marketing on the main search engines, PPC marketing on the shopping comparison engines, lead gen marketplaces, affiliate marketing programs, etc.), giving credit where credit is due and therefore maintaining an accurate picture of ROI from each channel gets very tricky. And this issue will only get worse as companies shift more marketing dollars online.

I got into online marketing 11 years ago because I viewed it as metrics oriented, results driven spending with a strong level of transparency of information. Fast forward to today, though, and tell me how sure you are that you?re not 'double counting' that sale from the consumer who clicked on the Google Adwords ad, then the Shopping.com ad, then purchased directly from your site 2 days later?

Posted by Brian Smith on June 21, 2006, 6:14 PM | Permalink


Search Headlines & Links: June 21, 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...

  • Mid-June 2006 Search News Recap Posted
    If you're a Search Engine Watch member (thanks for your support!), the latest edition of Search Engine Update newsletter has been posted. It recaps top stories in search from the first part of this month....
  • Daily SearchCast, June 21, 2006: Can Search Build Brands?; Microsoft Execs Surprise Departure; What Search Engine Do Those At Search Engines Use & More!
  • Today's search podcast covers issues on if search can build brand; Microsoft loses a key exec; do people at Google really only search with Google? and more!
  • Google AdSense Tests CPA Ads, Commission Based Ads
  • Philipp Lenssen reports that some AdSense publishers were invited to partake in AdSense ads that pay based on action, like an affiliate network. These CPA (cost per action) invites were first detailed at SeekingAlpha.com and the ads do not compete with the contextual network, they run on a separate network named the Content Referral network. Jennifer may have more details later on this news, but in the meantime you can read my coverage from the forum buzz....
  • The Search & Branding Tug-Of-War, Again
    "Cannes Lions Diary: Search under scrutiny" from the Financial Times at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival covers what we've seen before, traditional ad buyers worried that search is going to rob their budgets while search engines planning to do that theft try to distract with a "search is a brand thing" message....
  • Nielsen//NetRatings Stats Keep Google On Top In May 2006
    Last month, Nielsen/NetRatings had Google hitting the 50 percent mark of percentage of searches handled in the United States (when rounded up from 49.8%). This month, Google slips back down very slightly to 49 percent. I've warned before that you should be wary of month-to-month changes. That said, here's the rundown, which gives Yahoo a percentage gain to Google's loss:...
  • Martin Taylor, VP Of Windows Live & MSN Marketing Leaves Microsoft
    ClickZ reports on a Bloomberg story about Martin Taylor, the vice president of Windows Live and MSN marketing group has left MSN. Reportedly, Taylor was good friends with CEO Steve Ballmer and was a possible candidate in the future for that position. The ClickZ article says, "The wording of the Microsoft statement seems to imply the company, and not Taylor, made "the difficult decision to part ways."" But why then would Taylor just be appointed the VP position and credited with being the "a go-to guy for problem areas," in late March? I dunno. Interesting and I wonder what type...
  • Microsoft Employees Use Google More Than MSN?
    Philipp Lenssen reported on a Andrew Hitchcock post that detailed search engine usage by search engine firm. It appears that Microsoft employees prefer Google to MSN Search when searching the web. At Microsoft 66.31 percent use Google, 19.65 percent use MSN and 10.18 percent use Yahoo. Yahoo employees aren't afraid to use Google search either, with 29.80 percent of searches conducted on Google and 68.87 percent on Yahoo Search. Google employees seem to be 100 percent loyal to Google search, based on the data....
  • Chinese Authorities Temporarily Shut Down Two Large Chinese Portals
    PaidContent reports that two of the largest Chinese portals have been temporarily shut down by the Chinese authorities for not passing a "an on-the-spot censorship test." The chief editors of Sina.com and Sohu.com "were summoned to the State Council Information Office," that morning. While on the topic of Chinese censorship, take a look at the list Philipp compiled of Censored Domains in Google.cn....
  • InfoSpace Rebrands, Upgrades Local Search Site
    InfoSpace, which also owns and operates the Dogpile metasearch engine, has cleaned up its interface and yesterday rebranded its local search engine as "Infospacefindit." The chief purpose behind the rebranding according to the company is to create consistency between its mobile and online local search platforms. In addition, the online platform is moving from one that more resembles an Internet yellow pages product to a local search engine. The company has struggled to gain market share in local search online but has a very strong position in mobile....
  • Mashups and Other Fun with Flickr
    A big part of the appeal of Flickr, Yahoo's photo sharing service, is its ease of use. It's not only easy to upload and work with your own images, but it's also a snap to search for and play around with images uploaded by others?in relatively sophisticated ways, if you take advantage of the Flickr API to create mashups that combine images with other applications. In today's SearchDay article, Hacking Flickr I review a new book that's part of the O'Reilly Hacks series that shows you how to take maximum advantage of Flickr's capabilities....
  • Zillow Announces 'Zillow Labs'
    Everybody's going "Web2.0." Real estate vertical search engine and valuation site Zillow.com has launched Zillow Labs, "a sandbox where developers and others can try out new, cutting-edge projects. You can help by testing them, then sharing your suggestions, comments and even your own tools." Right now the tools include a Firefox plug-in, a Google Toolbar button and a search box you can add to your site....
  • Don't Vote For Us As Best Search Marketing Blog At MarketingSherpa!
    That's right. We don't want your vote in the "Blogs On Search Marketing" or "Best Podcast" categories of MarketingSherpa's awards, happening right now. We couldn't take them if we wanted to, since we didn't make the short list. Then again, neither did John Battelle's blog, nor Threadwatch, nor Matt Cutts, nor many of the others we list in our blog roll. I guess either:...
  • Google CEO Eric Schmidt In Featured Session At SES San Jose 2006
    I'm very pleased to announce that Google's CEO Eric Schmidt will be in a featured session at our upcoming Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2006 show this August. "A Conversation With Eric Schmidt" will happen from 10am to 10:45am on August 9, the third day of our four day show. During the session, I'll be talking with Eric about how Google is growing and dealing with challenges and issues in search, especially given its stature as the leader in the space. Eric's session hasn't yet been posted to the conference agenda, but that will change shortly. You'll find full...

Other Things We Read, Didn't Blog But You Might Want To Read...

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 21, 2006, 3:20 PM | Permalink


Mid-June 2006 Search News Recap Posted

If you're a Search Engine Watch member (thanks for your support!), the latest edition of Search Engine Update newsletter has been posted. It recaps top stories in search from the first part of this month.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 21, 2006, 3:10 PM | Permalink


ClickZ Video Ad Forum - Speaker Podcasts

Our video advertising event last week was sensational -- great content, fantastic speakers, sold out crowd.

If you couldn't make it, you might want to click over to Ernie Landante's blog. He interviewed a number of speakers at the event and is posting a new podcast every day this week.

Enjoy!

Posted by Rebecca Lieb on June 21, 2006, 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Daily SearchCast, June 21, 2006: Can Search Build Brands?; Microsoft Execs Surprise Departure; What Search Engine Do Those At Search Engines Use & More!

Today's search podcast covers issues on if search can build brand; Microsoft loses a key exec; do people at Google really only search with Google? and more!

Tune-in by listening to this MP3 file, listening via WebmasterRadio at 11:30am Eastern and repeated at 2pm Eastern Tuesday through Friday, via our Odeo channel or through iTunes via this link (or use alternative iTunes instructions explained here) 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:

  • The Search & Branding Tug-Of-War, Again
    "Cannes Lions Diary: Search under scrutiny" from the Financial Times at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival covers what we've seen before, traditional ad buyers worried that search is going to rob their budgets while search engines planning to do that theft try to distract with a "search is a brand thing" message....
  • Nielsen//NetRatings Stats Keep Google On Top In May 2006
    Last month, Nielsen/NetRatings had Google hitting the 50 percent mark of percentage of searches handled in the United States (when rounded up from 49.8%). This month, Google slips back down very slightly to 49 percent. I've warned before that you should be wary of month-to-month changes. That said, here's the rundown, which gives Yahoo a percentage gain to Google's loss:...
  • Chinese Authorities Temporarily Shut Down Two Large Chinese Portals
    PaidContent reports that two of the largest Chinese portals have been temporarily shut down by the Chinese authorities for not passing a "an on-the-spot censorship test." The chief editors of Sina.com and Sohu.com "were summoned to the State Council Information Office," that morning. While on the topic of Chinese censorship, take a look at the list Philipp compiled of Censored Domains in Google.cn....
  • Martin Taylor, VP Of Windows Live & MSN Marketing Leaves Microsoft
    ClickZ reports on a Bloomberg story about Martin Taylor, the vice president of Windows Live and MSN marketing group has left MSN. Reportedly, Taylor was good friends with CEO Steve Ballmer and was a possible candidate in the future for that position. The ClickZ article says, "The wording of the Microsoft statement seems to imply the company, and not Taylor, made "the difficult decision to part ways."" But why then would Taylor just be appointed the VP position and credited with being the "a go-to guy for problem areas," in late March? I dunno. Interesting and I wonder what type...
  • Microsoft Employees Use Google More Than MSN?
    Philipp Lenssen reported on a Andrew Hitchcock post that detailed search engine usage by search engine firm. It appears that Microsoft employees prefer Google to MSN Search when searching the web. At Microsoft 66.31 percent use Google, 19.65 percent use MSN and 10.18 percent use Yahoo. Yahoo employees aren't afraid to use Google search either, with 29.80 percent of searches conducted on Google and 68.87 percent on Yahoo Search. Google employees seem to be 100 percent loyal to Google search, based on the data....
  • InfoSpace Rebrands, Upgrades Local Search Site
    InfoSpace, which also owns and operates the Dogpile metasearch engine, has cleaned up its interface and yesterday rebranded its local search engine as "Infospacefindit." The chief purpose behind the rebranding according to the company is to create consistency between its mobile and online local search platforms. In addition, the online platform is moving from one that more resembles an Internet yellow pages product to a local search engine. The company has struggled to gain market share in local search online but has a very strong position in mobile....
  • Mashups and Other Fun with Flickr
    A big part of the appeal of Flickr, Yahoo's photo sharing service, is its ease of use. It's not only easy to upload and work with your own images, but it's also a snap to search for and play around with images uploaded by others?in relatively sophisticated ways, if you take advantage of the Flickr API to create mashups that combine images with other applications. In today's SearchDay article, Hacking Flickr I review a new book that's part of the O'Reilly Hacks series that shows you how to take maximum advantage of Flickr's capabilities....
  • Zillow Announces 'Zillow Labs'
    Everybody's going "Web2.0." Real estate vertical search engine and valuation site Zillow.com has launched Zillow Labs, "a sandbox where developers and others can try out new, cutting-edge projects. You can help by testing them, then sharing your suggestions, comments and even your own tools." Right now the tools include a Firefox plug-in, a Google Toolbar button and a search box you can add to your site....
  • Don't Vote For Us As Best Search Marketing Blog At MarketingSherpa!
    That's right. We don't want your vote in the "Blogs On Search Marketing" or "Best Podcast" categories of MarketingSherpa's awards, happening right now. We couldn't take them if we wanted to, since we didn't make the short list. Then again, neither did John Battelle's blog, nor Threadwatch, nor Matt Cutts, nor many of the others we list in our blog roll. I guess either:...
  • Google CEO Eric Schmidt In Featured Session At SES San Jose 2006
    I'm very pleased to announce that Google's CEO Eric Schmidt will be in a featured session at our upcoming Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2006 show this August. "A Conversation With Eric Schmidt" will happen from 10am to 10:45am on August 9, the third day of our four day show. During the session, I'll be talking with Eric about how Google is growing and dealing with challenges and issues in search, especially given its stature as the leader in the space. Eric's session hasn't yet been posted to the conference agenda, but that will change shortly. You'll find full...

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 21, 2006, 2:50 PM | Permalink


Google AdSense Tests CPA Ads, Commission Based Ads

Philipp Lenssen reports that some AdSense publishers were invited to partake in AdSense ads that pay based on action, like an affiliate network. These CPA (cost per action) invites were first detailed at SeekingAlpha.com and the ads do not compete with the contextual network, they run on a separate network named the Content Referral network. Jennifer may have more details later on this news, but in the meantime you can read my coverage from the forum buzz.

Update from Jennifer Slegg: This beta test is on an invite-only basis, and is implemented through a separate ad unit. However, stats are not available real-time and must be emailed to participating publishers, meaning it will be difficult for publishers to gauge how effectively Content Referral ads are performing.

Google also confirmed the beta test: "We're always looking for new ways to provide effective and useful features to advertisers, publishers, and users. As part of these efforts we are currently testing a cost per action pricing model to give advertisers more flexibility and provide publishers another way to earn revenue through AdSense. We're pleased with how the test is progressing and will continue to gather feedback from advertisers and publishers."

For a much more detailed look into this new program, JenSense dives into all the particulars of Content Referrals.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 21, 2006, 1:34 PM | Permalink


The Search & Branding Tug-Of-War, Again

"Cannes Lions Diary: Search under scrutiny" from the Financial Times at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival covers what we've seen before, traditional ad buyers worried that search is going to rob their budgets while search engines planning to do that theft try to distract with a "search is a brand thing" message.

First, let's do the sound bites out of the event. Here's what Laura Desmond, chief executive of Mediavest USA (which the FT says "advises clients such as P&G, Masterfoods and Kraft on buying and planning media") is quoted as saying:

Google is going to have to change its business model soon. Search alone isn't where marketing is today. It is about search and branding and putting the two together.

As for the search engines, we have:

Damian Burns, head of European agency relations at Google, said: "There is a need for self-education among agencies and clients. But I don?t believe that you can have people being exposed to brands on search results day after day without that having an impact on brand building."

During one conference event, campaigns by IBM and an onscreen prompt by Donald Trump, presenter of ?The Apprentice?, the US reality show, for viewers to investigate a new coffee product online, were cited as examples of pairing television and search. In both cases, online searches for keywords related to the campaigns rose sharply after relevant keywords were used onscreen.

Speakers said marketers would in future have to time their spend on search engine keywords to coincide with television or press campaigns to get the best results.

OK, let's go back to Desmond. First, is Google in trouble for only doing search? Actually, the company does more than search. All those ads across the web, the contextually placed ones through AdSense, those aren't search. Moreover, some of those placements are image and video ads sold on a brand-building friendly CPM basis.

Now let's say Google really did only have search ads. Why would it be in trouble for failing to put search and branding together? I mean, search marketers haven't depending on branding value for their stunning success over the past 10 years. What, today suddenly you need to have a brand component?

Search marketing is a fundamental advertising activity that stands alone from others, as I've been stressing in keynote speeches recently. It works because it gets your message in front of people who are overtly expressing a need, often without any exposure at all to brand advertising that tries to build that need.

Saying search must address branding is like saying that direct marketing address branding. You don't need to have a brand lift for direct marketing to be successful. Neither do you need a brand lift with search.

Having said this, search certainly can help with branding. Scott Karp over at Publishing 2.0 has taken a fairly anti-branding stance in his Search Advertising Does NOT Build Brands post, and here's some of my counter-response to him in the comments:

What do you think made Zappos a brand name when it comes to buying shoes online? Those magazine ads you saw for them? That TV spot? Wait ? I don't think they do that stuff. What they do is a lot of spending to show up in search engines when you search for ?shoes? and related terms. You did a generic search, you keep seeing a particular provider, and you learn about that brand.

Hey, need an espresso machine? I learned an entire new brand, Whole Latte Love, simply because when I was doing searches, I kept coming across their site. J&Rs in New York? If you?re in Manhattan, you know that brand as well as I knew Fry?s living in California. But J&R was a mystery to me until I kept seeing them in some shopping search results before making a trip to New York. Now that brand is rooted in my mind, not because I saw some offline ad but because I saw them first in search. That brand did build in my mind, to me.

I've done panel after panel on the intersection of search and branding at our SES conferences. We have another one coming up for our San Jose show this August. Actual advertisers and brand holders continue to say there's a brand value in search. They don't say they'll build brand only with search. Nor do they say they want all the branding money to come away from other venues like TV and solely support search. In fact, they want TV ads to keep going -- those help fuel the searches they buy.

Instead, the real pushing point is that they want more of the ad spend. They have a type of advertising that converts incredibly well and, in my opinion, is incredibly undervalued still. If the ad spend pie isn't getting bigger, then it has to come from the traditional space -- a space itself which has to be feeling more pressure given the relatively poor metrics it can offer.

As for the search engines, they've been pimping brand value to traditional advertisers to woo spending since Overture's big study way back in 2001 (see here and here). There is brand value with search ads, of course -- but if they really wanted to help establish search as a serious fundamental marketing activity, then how about leaning on the Cannes Lions festival to recognize that with awards just for search. Here are this year's awards. Search isn't a category, not even within the Cyber area which does recognize things like email marketing.

For more on these issues, here's some selected reading:

Want more? We've got plenty. Check out our Search Ads: Branding & SEM Tips: Branding categories, if you are a Search Engine Watch member.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 21, 2006, 11:22 AM | Permalink


Nielsen//NetRatings Stats Keep Google On Top In May 2006

Last month, Nielsen/NetRatings had Google hitting the 50 percent mark of percentage of searches handled in the United States (when rounded up from 49.8%). This month, Google slips back down very slightly to 49 percent. I've warned before that you should be wary of month-to-month changes. That said, here's the rundown, which gives Yahoo a percentage gain to Google's loss:

Search Engine April 2006 May 2006
Google 49.8% 49.1%
Yahoo 21.9% 22.9%
MSN 10.7% 10.6%

More from the full release at the end of this post. Meanwhile, we already had May 2006 stats from Hitwise, so how do the two compare?

May 2006 Hitwise NetRatings
Google 59% 49%
Yahoo 22% 23%
MSN 12% 11%

comScore's May 2006 search query stats haven't yet been publicly released. Watch for them in a future post. Past NetRatings and comScore figures are here:

Yes, I'm working on getting the most recent stats added to those pages. Here's the full NetRatings release:

Nielsen//NetRatings today released May 2006 U.S. MegaView Search findings, including top search providers, ranked by total searches. Searches represent the total number of queries conducted at the Provider.

Table 1: Top 10 Search Providers for May 2006, Ranked by Searches (U.S.) Please view in a fixed-width font such as Courier.

+-----------------------+-----------+------------+-------------------+
| Provider | Searches | YOY Growth | Share of Searches |
| | (000) | | |
+-----------------------+-----------+------------+-------------------+
| Google Search | 2,783,169 | 32% | 49.1% |
| Yahoo! Search | 1,298,915 | 34% | 22.9% |
| MSN Search | 600,820 | 42% | 10.6% |
| AOL Search | 363,431 | N/A | 6.4% |
| Ask.com Search | 146,585 | 69% | 2.6% |
| My Way Search | 129,270 | 67% | 2.3% |
| iWon Search | 32,257 | 53% | 0.6% |
| Dogpile.com Search | 29,416 | -25% | 0.5% |
| EarthLink Search | 27,488 | -1% | 0.5% |
| SBC Yellow Pages | 24,513 | -21% | 0.4% |
+-----------------------+-----------+------------+-------------------+

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search, June 2006

Note: Due to a methodology change, year-over-year growth for AOL Search is unavailable.

Example: An estimated 2.8 billion search queries were conducted at Google Search, representing 49 percent of all search queries conducted during the given time period.

About Nielsen//NetRatings

NetRatings, Inc. (Nasdaq: NTRT) delivers leading Internet media and market research solutions, marketed globally under the Nielsen//NetRatings brand. With high quality, technology-driven products and services, Nielsen//NetRatings is the global standard for Internet audience measurement and premier source for online advertising intelligence, enabling clients to make informed business decisions regarding their Internet and digital strategies. The Nielsen//NetRatings portfolio includes panel-based and site-centric Internet audience measurement services, online advertising intelligence, user lifestyle and demographic data, e-commerce and transaction metrics, and custom data, research and analysis. For more information, please visit www.nielsen-netratings.com

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 21, 2006, 9:15 AM | Permalink


Chinese Authorities Temporarily Shut Down Two Large Chinese Portals

PaidContent reports that two of the largest Chinese portals have been temporarily shut down by the Chinese authorities for not passing a "an on-the-spot censorship test." The chief editors of Sina.com and Sohu.com "were summoned to the State Council Information Office," that morning.

While on the topic of Chinese censorship, take a look at the list Philipp compiled of Censored Domains in Google.cn.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 21, 2006, 9:07 AM | Permalink


Martin Taylor, VP Of Windows Live & MSN Marketing Leaves Microsoft

ClickZ reports on a Bloomberg story about Martin Taylor, the vice president of Windows Live and MSN marketing group has left MSN. Reportedly, Taylor was good friends with CEO Steve Ballmer and was a possible candidate in the future for that position. The ClickZ article says, "The wording of the Microsoft statement seems to imply the company, and not Taylor, made "the difficult decision to part ways."" But why then would Taylor just be appointed the VP position and credited with being the "a go-to guy for problem areas," in late March? I dunno. Interesting and I wonder what type of impact this will have on Microsoft's push into the search market.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 21, 2006, 8:58 AM | Permalink


Microsoft Employees Use Google More Than MSN?

Philipp Lenssen reported on a Andrew Hitchcock post that detailed search engine usage by search engine firm. It appears that Microsoft employees prefer Google to MSN Search when searching the web. At Microsoft 66.31 percent use Google, 19.65 percent use MSN and 10.18 percent use Yahoo. Yahoo employees aren't afraid to use Google search either, with 29.80 percent of searches conducted on Google and 68.87 percent on Yahoo Search. Google employees seem to be 100 percent loyal to Google search, based on the data.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 21, 2006, 8:48 AM | Permalink


Don't Vote For Us As Best Search Marketing Blog At MarketingSherpa!

That's right. We don't want your vote in the "Blogs On Search Marketing" or "Best Podcast" categories of MarketingSherpa's awards, happening right now. We couldn't take them if we wanted to, since we didn't make the short list. Then again, neither did John Battelle's blog, nor Threadwatch, nor Matt Cutts, nor many of the others we list in our blog roll. I guess either:

  1. Not one of the 1,028 readers who nominated blogs thought we were worthy (sniff, we'll try better, I suppose)
  2. Those readers who failed to nominate us and other good search marketing blogs need to better educate themselves (c'mon over -- we're fine reading)
  3. MarketingSherpa doesn't like us (sniff)

Barry's Search Engine Roundtable blog won last year and is nominated again, so give Barry your vote. Or give it to Brian's ComparisonEngines.com! Or Aaron's SEO Book blog, or Search Engine Lowdown or one of the others that are listed.

Postscript: And see? Our "don't vote for us" request would already ensure that someone like Heather Hamilton at Microsoft would vote for us -- if she could vote for us, you know, if we were on the list :) Sadly

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 21, 2006, 8:24 AM | Permalink


InfoSpace Rebrands, Upgrades Local Search Site

InfoSpace, which also owns and operates the Dogpile metasearch engine, has cleaned up its interface and yesterday rebranded its local search engine as "Infospacefindit." The chief purpose behind the rebranding according to the company is to create consistency between its mobile and online local search platforms. In addition, the online platform is moving from one that more resembles an Internet yellow pages product to a local search engine. The company has struggled to gain market share in local search online but has a very strong position in mobile.

Posted by Greg Sterling on June 21, 2006, 7:24 AM | Permalink


Mashups and Other Fun with Flickr

A big part of the appeal of Flickr, Yahoo's photo sharing service, is its ease of use. It's not only easy to upload and work with your own images, but it's also a snap to search for and play around with images uploaded by others—in relatively sophisticated ways, if you take advantage of the Flickr API to create mashups that combine images with other applications. In today's SearchDay article, Hacking Flickr I review a new book that's part of the O'Reilly Hacks series that shows you how to take maximum advantage of Flickr's capabilities.

Posted by Chris Sherman on June 21, 2006, 6:59 AM | Permalink


Zillow Announces 'Zillow Labs'

Everybody's going "Web2.0." Real estate vertical search engine and valuation site Zillow.com has launched Zillow Labs, "a sandbox where developers and others can try out new, cutting-edge projects. You can help by testing them, then sharing your suggestions, comments and even your own tools."

Right now the tools include a Firefox plug-in, a Google Toolbar button and a search box you can add to your site.

Posted by Greg Sterling on June 20, 2006, 3:30 PM | Permalink


Ask a Ninja's Got Audience

askaninja.jpg

According to Mark McCrey, founder and CEO of Podtrac.com, Ask A Ninja is the top podcast and has over 250 million unique viewers that download its content as it becomes available each week. Then there's a YouTube audience and other delivery not tracked by Podtrac.com. That's quite a brand, anyone brave enough to send him the question, "How does a ninja feel about taking preroll advertising?"

UPDATE Maybe because I was sitting in the nosebleed seats at the ARF conference yesterday, or possibly because the panel occurred right after lunch when I was given a plate of vegetables at lunch (everyone else had beef) and was a little dizzy from the lack of protein, but the 250 million figure is apparently overstated. According to a release Podtrack posted about Mark McCrey speaking at the conference, Ask A Ninja is the video "most watched on a portable device" though it also said that 82 percent of its viewers watch online. It's still a significant audience.

Posted by Enid Burns on June 20, 2006, 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Google CEO Eric Schmidt In Featured Session At SES San Jose 2006

I'm very pleased to announce that Google's CEO Eric Schmidt will be in a featured session at our upcoming Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2006 show this August.

"A Conversation With Eric Schmidt" will happen from 10am to 10:45am on August 9, the third day of our four day show. During the session, I'll be talking with Eric about how Google is growing and dealing with challenges and issues in search, especially given its stature as the leader in the space.

Eric's session hasn't yet been posted to the conference agenda, but that will change shortly. You'll find full details about the event at the SES San Jose 2006 web site.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 20, 2006, 2:41 PM | Permalink


Search Headlines & Links: June 20, 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...

  • Craigslist Adds Cities, Now 300 Strong
    According to an article in the Wall Street Journal (sub. req'd) over the weekend and a Monday posting on PaidContent, iconic local community and classifieds site Craigslist has added 72 new U.S. markets and more than 20 internationally. The site is now in 300 cities in the US and abroad and has 10 million uniques a month. Revenues for 2005 were estimated to be as high as $25 million. The Journal article is mystified as to why CL leaves "money on the table." But that's part of the homespun appeal of this now powerhouse local Internet brand. This ClickZ posting...
  • It's Not Just Google With Disappointing Results
    We have been poking hard at Google for disappointing search results, but Google is not the only search engine that has been disappointing me recently. You can group Yahoo and MSN and even Ask.com into the search engines that I have been disappointed with. Over at the Search Engine Roundtable, I cover what I call "forum buzz," the discussions taking place within the SEM/SEO community. I tend to pick up on algorithm shifts and post the details at my site. Today, I covered two threads, one I named Yahoo! Also Easy To Spam and the other MSN Asks Webmasters What...
  • Microsoft, Google & Others Call For Unified Federal Privacy Protection
    Microsoft bravely took part in the search privacy panel we did at our SES New York show earlier this year (coverage here and here), saying it would welcome better US federal protections on privacy issues. Why? It would let Microsoft and the searchers it serves know exactly what data government agencies could and could not have. Now Microsoft, along with Google and other tech companies, are pushing to make this happen....
  • Canada's YellowPages.ca Launches New Local Search Site
    Since this is Local Search Day at Search Engine Watch, here's some additional news. Canada's yellow pages publisher, Yellow Pages Group, which also operates city guides and a variety of other Canadian web destinations, has launched a new beta version of its flagship site, YellowPages.ca. The new interface is considerably more appealing and the new site has a number of improvements, outlined in the press release. YellowPages.ca provides the content for Google Maps/Local and MSN in Canada. You can also read some additional detail on my blog....
  • A Web of Local Search Services
    The major search engines tend to capture the lion's share of press, but there are dozens of other players in the local search space, offering myriad opportunities for search marketers trying to get in front of people searching for local products and services. I've got a review of an excellent guide to many of these services in today's SearchDay article, Who's Who in Local Search....
  • Google Pulls Question About Google From Google Answers
    Peter Da Vanzo reports on an individual who posted a question on Google Answers that was removed by Google. The question was, "What percentage of Google searches are contextual?" Specifically, the person wanted to know what percentage of Google searches give back results based on the content of a page someone is reading. You can see the thread title in the cache or via this image capture, at this moment in time, where the poster was willing to pay $20 for the answer. A Google editor removed the question, stating:...
  • Google Sub Sub Domain Issues Clearly Visible
    Threadwatch reveals some more examples of issues Google is having. They note a search on queer forum returns CraigsList 97 times out of the top 100 results. That is not all, a search on wedding forum returns about 50 of 100 results from CraigsList's site, just scroll down to number 50 and you will see. Is CraigsList spamming? No! Is Google suffering? :) Google is clearly having issues with sub sub domains. Continued coverage of Google's public index issues. Postscript From Danny: Comments at Threadwatch also note Yahoo has the same issue. MSN does not as badly (but that could...
  • New Search Patent Applications: June 19, 2006 - Autolinking, and Better Advertising through Deletion Predictions
    Four patent applications from Google describe fighting spam in emails, providing product review searches, moving large amounts of data, and autolinking. Yahoo matches, and raises with five patent filings. One on watching deletions to choose better ads, another on serving dynamic information through a additional browser interface, and three more on multimedia and RSS. Microsoft goes TV 2.0 with an electronic program guide, and describes a way of matching advertising content with certain search queries before those searches are made. IBM comes up with a unique way of presenting the results of a search from more than one search engine,...

Other Things We Read, Didn't Blog But You Might Want To Read...

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 20, 2006, 2:38 PM | Permalink


Daily SearchCast, June 20, 2006: Google's Got Spam! - Everyone's Got Spam! - Spam Spam Spam!; Oh Where Or Where Has My Google Answers Question Gone; Ask Helps Treasure Hunters & More!

Today's search podcast covers concerns that Google is letting too much spam through; concerns that all the search engines could do better; Google pulling a question about itself from Google Answers; search engines ask for federal guidelines on privacy; Ask helps treasure hunters and more!

Tune-in by listening to this MP3 file, listening via WebmasterRadio at 11:30am Eastern and repeated at 2pm Eastern Tuesday through Friday, via our Odeo channel or through iTunes via this link (or use alternative iTunes instructions explained here) 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:

  • Google Yanks Sites 5 Billion Pages After Spam Complaint
    I covered a DigitalPoint thread which uncovered several domains that was able to rank billions of pages at the top of the Google results within a couple of weeks. The methods deployed to rank the pages seemed to include excessive use of subdomains, cloaking, content theft scraping, alexa traffic boosting and blog comment spam. I listed the documented steps here. Some suspect that Google's new URL handling with the big daddy update allowed "old school" cloaking to begin working again....
  • Google Sub Sub Domain Issues Clearly Visible
    Threadwatch reveals some more examples of issues Google is having. They note a search on queer forum returns CraigsList 97 times out of the top 100 results. That is not all, a search on wedding forum returns about 50 of 100 results from CraigsList's site, just scroll down to number 50 and you will see. Is CraigsList spamming? No! Is Google suffering? :) Google is clearly having issues with sub sub domains. Continued coverage of Google's public index issues. Postscript From Danny: Comments at Threadwatch also note Yahoo has the same issue. MSN does not as badly (but that could...
  • Craigslist Adds Cities, Now 300 Strong
  • It's Not Just Google With Disappointing Results
    We have been poking hard at Google for disappointing search results, but Google is not the only search engine that has been disappointing me recently. You can group Yahoo and MSN and even Ask.com into the search engines that I have been disappointed with. Over at the Search Engine Roundtable I cover what I call, "forum buzz," the discussions taking place within the SEM/SEO community. I tend to pick up on algorithm shifts and post the details at my site. Today I covered two threads, one I named Yahoo! Also Easy To Spam and the other MSN Asks Webmasters What...
  • Google Pulls Question About Google From Google Answers
    Peter Da Vanzo reports on an individual who posted a question on Google Answers that was removed by Google. The question was, "What percentage of Google searches are contextual?" Specifically, the person wanted to know what percentage of Google searches give back results based on the content of a page someone is reading. You can see the thread title in the cache or via this image capture, at this moment in time, where the poster was willing to pay $20 for the answer. A Google editor removed the question, stating:...
  • Google Search Results Differ On Mac Versus PC?
    Threadwatch links to a blog post named Google SERPs Platform Dependant? that shows how a search for a query on Google, on the same network but on two computer operating systems, can product a different result set. The screen captures documented show the differences between a Mac and a PC....
  • Google's Mobile Operations Expected To See Largest Growth
    The Times Online UK reports that Google's mobile division, which is based in London, is expected to "become the biggest driver of new business" for Google. Search on mobile phones, wireless laptops and personal digital assistants (PDAs) are seen as a huge opportunity for many search companies. In Britain, there is a mobile phone for every person, but in some other areas, like Scandinavia, "mobile ownership is almost double that rate."...
  • Google To "Internationalize" All Products
    InsideGoogle reports that Google has asked University of Limerick based in Ireland to help find an "experienced localization guru" to help localize and "internationalize" all of Google's products. The PC World article goes into more details about the job, describing that job calls for an "executive with 10 or more years of product management experience to serve as group product director of internationalization."...
  • A Web of Local Search Services
    The major search engines tend to capture the lion's share of press, but there are dozens of other players in the local search space, offering myriad opportunities for search marketers trying to get in front of people searching for local products and services. I've got a review of an excellent guide to many of these services in today's SearchDay article, Who's Who in Local Search....
  • Canada's YellowPages.ca Launches New Local Search Site
    Since this is Local Search Day at Search Engine Watch, here's some additional news. Canada's yellow pages publisher, Yellow Pages Group, which also operates city guides and a variety of other Canadian web destinations, has launched a new beta version of its flagship site, YellowPages.ca. The new interface is considerably more appealing and the new site has a number of improvements, outlined in the press release. YellowPages.ca provides the content for Google
  • Microsoft, Google & Others Call For Unified Federal Privacy Protection
    Microsoft bravely took part in the search privacy panel we did at our SES New York show earlier this year (coverage here and here), saying it would welcome better US federal protections on privacy issues. Why? It would let Microsoft and the searchers it serves know exactly what data government agencies could and could not have. Now Microsoft, along with Google and other tech companies, are pushing to make this happen....
  • Ask.com Sponsors NBC's Treasure Hunters
    I was flipping through the channels (actually, my wife was, I wanted to watch the NBA finals) and saw some people wearing Ask.com t-shirts on TV. It was a new show on NBC named Treasure Hunters. The Ask blog says that Ask is the "Official Search Engine of Treasure Hunters." I did not watch the whole show, so I am not sure how beyond the t-shirts and commercials Ask promoted themselves in the show. Postscript: Got word back from an Ask rep on what took place. Team members conducted searches at Ask for "us presidents" and another for "mount theodore...
  • Summer Solstice 2006 At Stonehenge Tips & Info

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 20, 2006, 2:21 PM | Permalink


Craigslist Adds Cities, Now 300 Strong

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal (sub. req'd) over the weekend and a Monday posting on PaidContent, iconic local community and classifieds site Craigslist has added 72 new U.S. markets and more than 20 internationally. The site is now in 300 cities in the US and abroad and has 10 million uniques a month. Revenues for 2005 were estimated to be as high as $25 million. The Journal article is mystified as to why CL leaves "money on the table." But that's part of the homespun appeal of this now powerhouse local Internet brand.

This ClickZ posting speculates on whether Craigslist might eventually give a cut of ad revenues to users. The site reportedly has only 21 employees.

Posted by Greg Sterling on June 20, 2006, 11:57 AM | Permalink


It's Not Just Google With Disappointing Results

We have been poking hard at Google for disappointing search results, but Google is not the only search engine that has been disappointing me recently. You can group Yahoo and MSN and even Ask.com into the search engines that I have been disappointed with.

Over at the Search Engine Roundtable, I cover what I call "forum buzz," the discussions taking place within the SEM/SEO community. I tend to pick up on algorithm shifts and post the details at my site.

Today, I covered two threads, one I named Yahoo! Also Easy To Spam and the other MSN Asks Webmasters What Are Quality & Authoritative Sites. But what really got me was Danny's postscript on Google Sub Sub Domain Issues Clearly Visible showing Yahoo has a similar issue.

Typically, I have always had a search engine to fall back on when one wasn't "doing it for me." Today, I don't have that search engine. Google pushed me over the edge with the Sub Sub Domain Issues. Yahoo is easy to spam with comment spam (ummm, nofollow not working?), and MSN is being laughed at, IMO. Ask.com, they are good, but way too slow to update at this point.

To make it even worse, Google still refuses to take a stand on the whole cloaking debate. Just take a look at the back and forth in our Search Engine Watch Forums thread!

So where does that leave me? Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com are all disappointing right now. Tomorrow? Well, I can always hope for a better tomorrow. Who knows, maybe a new Google will come along? Maybe AltaVista will rise up again?

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 20, 2006, 11:25 AM | Permalink


Microsoft, Google & Others Call For Unified Federal Privacy Protection

Microsoft bravely took part in the search privacy panel we did at our SES New York show earlier this year (coverage here and here), saying it would welcome better US federal protections on privacy issues. Why? It would let Microsoft and the searchers it serves know exactly what data government agencies could and could not have. Now Microsoft, along with Google and other tech companies, are pushing to make this happen.

Calling for federal consumer privacy protection over at the Official Google Blog talks about Google getting behind the organized effort and points to a statement letter (PDF) asking for a unified federal approach to consumer privacy. The effort is by the Consumer Privacy Legislative Forum, part of the Center For Democracy & Technology.

Companies signing the statement are:

  • Kodak
  • eBay
  • Eli Lilly
  • Google
  • Hewitt and Associates
  • Hewlett-Packard
  • Intel
  • Microsoft
  • Oracle
  • Procter & Gamble
  • Sun
  • Symantec

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 20, 2006, 11:16 AM | Permalink


Canada's YellowPages.ca Launches New Local Search Site

Since this is Local Search Day at Search Engine Watch, here's some additional news. Canada's yellow pages publisher, Yellow Pages Group, which also operates city guides and a variety of other Canadian web destinations, has launched a new beta version of its flagship site, YellowPages.ca. The new interface is considerably more appealing and the new site has a number of improvements, outlined in the press release. YellowPages.ca provides the content for Google Maps/Local and MSN in Canada.

You can also read some additional detail on my blog.

Posted by Greg Sterling on June 20, 2006, 9:32 AM | Permalink


A Web of Local Search Services

The major search engines tend to capture the lion's share of press, but there are dozens of other players in the local search space, offering myriad opportunities for search marketers trying to get in front of people searching for local products and services. I've got a review of an excellent guide to many of these services in today's SearchDay article, Who's Who in Local Search.

Posted by Chris Sherman on June 20, 2006, 8:47 AM | Permalink


Google Pulls Question About Google From Google Answers

Peter Da Vanzo reports on an individual who posted a question on Google Answers that was removed by Google. The question was, "What percentage of Google searches are contextual?" Specifically, the person wanted to know what percentage of Google searches give back results based on the content of a page someone is reading.

You can see the thread title in the cache or via this image capture, at this moment in time, where the poster was willing to pay $20 for the answer. A Google editor removed the question, stating:

Hello hallsteve11-ga,

Thank you for your question ID 739118, titled "Percentage of Google searches that are "contextual"." We've removed your question because you can find the answer on our main site, free of charge. All publicly available information about Google is available at: http://www.google.com/about.html.

For additional questions about Google, please visit: http://www.google.com/support

Thank you for your interest in Google Answers. Please visit us again.

Sincerely,

The Google Answers Team

Is this a case of Google censoring a question that they don't feel comfortable being answered?

Postscript From Danny: I don't think there's anything "uncomfortable" about the question, especially since Google doesn't really contextually create search results anywhere. It does put ads on pages that are based by analyzing the content/context of those pages -- but those ads are not searches. Still, pulling the question makes no sense. If someone wants to ask a question on the service, let them answer it. And pointing at the Google About page doesn't answer the question at all!

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 20, 2006, 8:39 AM | Permalink


Google Sub Sub Domain Issues Clearly Visible

Threadwatch reveals some more examples of issues Google is having. They note a search on queer forum returns CraigsList 97 times out of the top 100 results. That is not all, a search on wedding forum returns about 50 of 100 results from CraigsList's site, just scroll down to number 50 and you will see.

Is CraigsList spamming? No! Is Google suffering? :) Google is clearly having issues with sub sub domains. Continued coverage of Google's public index issues.

Postscript From Danny: Comments at Threadwatch also note Yahoo has the same issue. MSN does not as badly (but that could be the result of spidering fewer pages) and Ask looks very good.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 20, 2006, 8:19 AM | Permalink


New Search Patent Applications: June 19, 2006 - Autolinking, and Better Advertising through Deletion Predictions

Four patent applications from Google describe fighting spam in emails, providing product review searches, moving large amounts of data, and autolinking. Yahoo matches, and raises with five patent filings. One on watching deletions to choose better ads, another on serving dynamic information through a additional browser interface, and three more on multimedia and RSS.

Microsoft goes TV 2.0 with an electronic program guide, and describes a way of matching advertising content with certain search queries before those searches are made. IBM comes up with a unique way of presenting the results of a search from more than one search engine, and a way of reducing the amount of irrelevant results in a search by analyzing an initial set of results, identifying an appropriate additional query term from those results, and searching the original results again but with the additional query term included in the search.

Go Daddy describes a way of fighting spam in emails. Xerox employs collaborative filtering from previous users' searches to predict search results. Apostolos Gerasoulis, from Ask.com, with a couple of co-inventors, ranks and displays pages (objects) based upon linkage and textual data, and then defines a way to identifiy and assign topics to them.

Google

Email Spam

Emails with links in them could be considered spam if the links point to pages that are in a conceptual category considered spammy. This patent application really doesn't describe the concept categorization part of the process. That's done in a related patent application mentioned within this document, and the related document lists Georges Harik as one inventor. Dr. Harik's name is on a very large percentage of the patent applications involving Gmail-type processes.

Method and system to detect e-mail spam using concept categorization of linked content
Invented by Johnny Chen
US Patent Application 20060122957
Published June 8, 2006
Filed December 3, 2004

Abstract

A system and method for detecting undesired electronic messages (e.g., spam) using concept categorization of hyperlinks is disclosed. A server receives an electronic message and retrieves web pages that correspond to hyperlinks in the message. The server performs concept categorization on the retrieved web pages based on semantic relationships in the received information to determine whether the electronic message meets predefined criteria associated with undesired messages.

Searching and Aggregating Product Reviews

If Google wanted to get into the product or services review business, the next patent filing describes a blue print for the process that might make an effective and innovative system.

Method and system for finding and aggregating reviews for a product
Invented by Jan Matthias Ruhl and Mayur D. Datar
US Patent Application 20060129446
Published June 15, 2006
Filed December 14, 2004

Abstract

The embodiments disclosed herein include new, more efficient ways to collect product reviews from the Internet, aggregate reviews for the same product, and provide an aggregated review to end users in a searchable format. One aspect of the invention is a graphical user interface on a computer that includes a plurality of portions of reviews for a product and a search input area for entering search terms to search for reviews of the product that contain the search terms.

Scaling and Distributing Data

Arvind Jain is the head of Research and Development in Google's Bangalore office, and has spoken at a number of conferences on infrastructure projects and issues involving such things as Google's crawl and indexing system, distributed file replication system, and compression techniques for large scale storage systems. He's listed as the inventor for this next Google filing.


System and method for scalable data distribution
Invented by Arvind Jain
US Patent Application 20060126201
Published June 15, 2006
Filed December 10, 2004

Abstract

A system having a resource manager, a plurality of masters, and a plurality of slaves, interconnected by a communications network. To distribute data, a master determined that a destination slave of the plurality slaves requires data. The master then generates a list of slaves from which to transfer the data to the destination slave. The master transmits the list to the resource manager. The resource manager is configured to select a source slave from the list based on available system resources. Once a source is selected by the resource manager, the master receives an instruction from the resource manager to initiate a transfer of the data from the source slave to the destination slave. The master then transmits an instruction to commence the transfer.

Autolinking

Google's Autolink raised a lot of eyebrows, and brought some negative reactions. A Search Engine Watch Blog post from Danny Sullivan, Google Toolbar's AutoLink & The Need For Opt-Out defined many of the issues around the toolbar feature. The following patent application explains how such a system might work from the search engine's perspective.

Providing useful information associated with an item in a document
Invented by Gueorgui Djabarov
US Patent Application 20060129910
Published June 15, 2006
Filed December 14, 2004

Abstract

A method includes recognizing an item within a first document based on a pattern associated with the item but not the exact content of the item. The method further includes identifying a link for the item and providing a second document that includes information associated with the item when the link for the item is selected.


Yahoo

Choosing Better Ads through User Behavior

Some queries involve the use of concepts and units, as described in at least five Yahoo patent filings (see previous patent posts in the Yahoo sections from Yahoo Units and Microsoft Redundancy Filters and More Yahoo Concepts and Google Predictive Searches.)

But sometimes a two term query isn't a concept as much as it is a couple of keywords that someone may use to search for something. If that person performs a second search after deleting one of the words, then the record of that deletion and second search might help Yahoo calculate "deletion probability scores" for words being used in these kind of two term queries.

This can be helpful when there isn't a good keyword based advertising match for that query, but there might be a good match individually for each of the terms that make up the query. The "deletion probability scores" can help determine which of the two terms to show keyword-based advertising for in search results.

System and methods for ranking the relative value of terms in a multi-term search query using deletion prediction
Invented by Rosemary Jones and Daniel C. Fain
US Patent Application 20060129534
Published June 15, 2006
Filed December 14, 2004

Abstract

The likely relevance of each term of a search-engine query of two or more terms is determined by their deletion probability scores. If the deletion probability scores are significantly different, the deletion probability score can be used to return targeted ads related to the more relevant term or terms along with the search results. Deletion probability scores are determined by first gathering historical records of search queries of two or more terms in which a subsequent query was submitted by the same user after one or more of the terms had been deleted. The deletion probability score for a particular term of a search query is calculated as the ratio of the number of times that particular term was itself deleted prior to a subsequent search by the same user divided by the number of times there were subsequent search queries by the same user in which any term or terms including that given term was deleted by the same user prior to the subsequent search. Terms are not limited to individual alphabetic words.

Browser Interface Helpers

This next document describes some ways to provide additional dynamic information to someone via a toolbar styled interface, while they are browsing pages on the web.

Method of controlling an Internet browser interface and a controllable browser interface
Invented by Thomas J. Shafron
Assigned to Yahoo
US Patent Application 20060129937
Published June 15, 2006
Filed February 2, 2006

Abstract

The present invention is directed to a method of dynamically controlling and displaying an Internet browser interface, and to a dynamically controllable Internet browser interface. In accordance with the present invention, a browser interface may be customized using a controlling software program that may be provided by an Internet content provider, an ISP, or that may reside on an Internet user's computer. The controlling software program enables the Internet user, the content provider, or the ISP to customize and control the information and/or functionality of a user's browser and browser interface.


RSS Enhancements

The following three Yahoo filings all list the same inventors, including John Thrall who is the head of media search engineering, for Yahoo Search. They provide different aspects of using RSS with multimedia files.

Syndicating multiple media objects with RSS
Invented by Andrew R. Volk, David D. Hall, and John J. Thrall
US Patent Application 20060129917
Published June 15, 2006
Filed December 1, 2005

Abstract

System and method for syndicating more than one media object in an element using Real Simple Syndication (RSS). In one embodiment, multiple media objects with at least one shared characteristic are syndicated under the same element. For example, a single media object can come in multiple formats and/or compression rates.

Syndicating multimedia information with RSS
Invented by Andrew R. Volk, David D. Hall, John J. Thrall
US Patent Application 20060129907
Published June 15, 2006
Filed December 1, 2005

Abstract

System and method for adding descriptive information to a Real Simple Syndication (RSS) document. The descriptive information describes the content of media objects syndicated through the document. The descriptive information can be used to provided additional information to a subscriber, and can be used in searching for syndicated media content.

RSS rendering via a media player
Invented by Andrew R. Volk, David D. Hall, John J. Thrall
US Patent Application 20060129916
Published June 15, 2006
Filed December 1, 2005

Abstract

System and method for syndicating media objects through a link to a media player using Real Simple Syndication (RSS). A content provider may not want to give direct access to a media object to a subscriber. Instead a content provider can give the subscriber a link to a media player that can access the media object.

Microsoft

Searching electronic program guide data
Invented by Pradhan S. Rao, David Hendler Sloo, Daniel Danker, and George K. Nyako
Assigned to Microsoft
US Patent Application 20060130098
Published June 15, 2006
Filed December 15, 2004

Abstract

Searching electronic program guide (EPG) data is described. The EPG data may be compartmentalized into channel metadata that describes characteristics of one or more channels and content metadata that describes characteristics of one or more content items. In a implementation, a method includes searching channel metadata and content metadata. A result of the searching is formed for output in conjunction with an electronic program guide (EPG).

System and method for indexing and prefiltering
Invented by Brian Burdick, Joshua J. Forman, Kevin P. Kornelson, Murali Vajjiravel, and Rajeev Prasad
Assigned to Microsoft
US Patent Application 20060129555
Published June 15, 2006
Filed December 9, 2004

Abstract

A method and system are provided for selecting advertisements for presentation to a user in response to a user search query. The system may include a keyword server for parsing the user search query and an index server for receiving the parsed search query. The index server may include an index of advertising phrases and pre-filtering components for comparing index entries to the parsed user search query in order to discard non-matching index entries and locate matching entries. The pre-filtering components may include either a phrase length pre-filtering component or a word hash pre-filtering component. The system may additionally include a listing server for sorting through the matching entries located by the index server and further filtering the matching entries for retrieval and presentation to the user.


IBM

Ring method, apparatus, and computer program product for managing federated search results in a heterogeneous environment
Invented by Wade Shelby Beavers and David Joseph Borrillo
Assigned to IBM
US Patent Application 20060129530
Published June 15, 2006
Filed December 9, 2004

Abstract

A method, apparatus and computer program product are provided for managing federated search results in a heterogeneous environment. A user enters a search term and the search term is submitted to multiple selected search engines. Search results are gathered from each selected search engine. A search ring is generated including a ring section to represent each of the selected search engines for enabling the user to view search results from one or more of the selected search engines.

Method and system for suggesting search engine keywords
Invented by Cary Lee Bates
Assigned to IBM
US Patent Application 20060129531
Published June 15, 2006
Filed December 9, 2004

Abstract

A search engine receives a search query having one or more keywords. The documents in the result set from that search query are analyzed to identify one or more additional keywords that further segment, or separate, the initial result set. These additional keywords are presented to the user who then selects whether to include or exclude documents matching the additional keywords. In this way, the number of documents in the initial result set is reduced in a relatively quick and effortless manner.

Go Daddy

Email filtering system and method
Invented by Brad Owen and Jason Steiner
US Patent Application 20060129644
Published June 15, 2006
Filed December 14, 2004

Abstract

Systems and methods of the present invention allow filtering out spam and phishing email messages based on the links embedded into the email messages. In a preferred embodiment, an Email Filter extracts links from the email message and obtains desirability values for the links. The Email Filter may route the email message based on desirability values. Such routing includes delivering the email message to a Recipient, delivering the message to a Quarantine Mailbox, or deleting the message.

Xerox

Personalized web search method
Invented by Lisa S. Purvis
Assigned to Xerox Corporation
US Patent Application 20060129533
Published June 15, 2006
Filed December 15, 2004

Abstract

A method for contextualizing search results is disclosed. The method includes performing a traditional web query that returns a set of result pages, using collaborative filtering techniques to generate a set of predicted pages, comparing the set of predicted pages with the set of result pages, and ranking the set of result pages so that result pages that are also included in the set of predicted pages are ranked higher than those that are not. Methods herein also contemplate using the search history of the user or others to refine the results of searches.


Ask.com

Relevancy-based database retrieval and display techniques
Invented by Tao Yang, Wei Wang, and Apostolos Gerasoulis
US Patent Application 20060129552
Published June 15, 2006
Filed February 2, 2006

Abstract

Techniques to retrieve, rank and display data objects retrieved form a database are described. In particular, methods to assign a global ranking value to a data object based on a combination of that object's link-based (e.g., vector-space cluster analysis) and text-based (e.g., word frequency) ranks are described. Additional techniques to determine a set of concepts, topics or key words associated with each retrieved data objects are described.


My usual reminder about patents: Some of the processes and technology described in patents are created in house, and some are developed with the assistance of contractors and partners. A percentage are never developed in a tangible manner, but may serve as a way to attempt to exclude others from using the technology, or even to possibly mislead competitors into exploring an area that they might not have an interest in (sometimes skepticism is good.)

There are times when a Google or Yahoo acquires a company to gain access to the intellectual property of that company, or the intellectual prowess and expertise of that company's employees. And sometimes patents are just purchased.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski on June 19, 2006, 8:42 PM | Permalink


Search Headlines & Links: June 19, 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...

  • Google's Mobile Operations Expected To See Largest Growth
    The Times Online UK reports that Google's mobile division, which is based in London, is expected to "become the biggest driver of new business" for Google. Search on mobile phones, wireless laptops and personal digital assistants (PDAs) are seen as a huge opportunity for many search companies. In Britain, there is a mobile phone for every person, but in some other areas, like Scandinavia, "mobile ownership is almost double that rate."...
  • Ask.com Sponsors NBC's Treasure Hunters
    I was flipping through the channels (actually, my wife was, I wanted to watch the NBA finals) and saw some people wearing Ask.com t-shirts on TV. It was a new show on NBC named Treasure Hunters. The Ask blog says that Ask is the "Official Search Engine of Treasure Hunters." I did not watch the whole show, so I am not sure how beyond the t-shirts and commercials Ask promoted themselves in the show. Postscript: Got word back from an Ask rep on what took place. Team members conducted searches at Ask for "us presidents" and another for "mount theodore...
  • Google Search Results Differ On Mac Versus PC?
    Threadwatch links to a blog post named Google SERPs Platform Dependant? that shows how a search for a query on Google, on the same network but on two computer operating systems, can product a different result set. The screen captures documented show the differences between a Mac and a PC....
  • Google To "Internationalize" All Products
    InsideGoogle reports that Google has asked University of Limerick based in Ireland to help find an "experienced localization guru" to help localize and "internationalize" all of Google's products. The PC World article goes into more details about the job, describing that job calls for an "executive with 10 or more years of product management experience to serve as group product director of internationalization."...
  • Google Yanks Sites 5 Billion Pages After Spam Complaint
    I covered a DigitalPoint thread which uncovered several domains that was able to rank billions of pages at the top of the Google results within a couple of weeks. The methods deployed to rank the pages seemed to include excessive use of subdomains, cloaking, content theft scraping, alexa traffic boosting and blog comment spam. I listed the documented steps here. Some suspect that Google's new URL handling with the big daddy update allowed "old school" cloaking to begin working again....

Other Things We Read, Didn't Blog But You Might Want To Read...

Posted by Danny Sullivan on June 19, 2006, 2:14 PM | Permalink


I Could See a Payday for Craigslist Users

buckmaster.jpgThis Saturday's Wall Street Journal featured an intriguing piece about Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster as told from the first person perspective of WSJ editorial board member Brian Carney (Zen and the Art of Classified Advertising, June 17). In it, Buckmaster comes off as a bit of an anomaly: a CEO who's not all that interested in turning a profit. The main objective of the company, says Buckmaster, is to serve its users.

The thing is, according to the article, "One industry analyst has estimated that Craigslist could generate 20 times [its 2005 revenue of $25 million] just by posting a couple of ads on each of its pages. If the estimate is to be believed, that's half a billion dollars a year being left on the table."

As folks who follow the online classifieds space are probably aware, and as Carney notes, "The money that does come in comes from businesses posting in just two categories of classifieds in three cities -- job listings in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles and, this week for the first time, brokered apartment rentals in New York."

Craigslist just added 100 new cities to its roster, too.

The article touches on the effect that free listings sites like Craigslist have had on newspaper publishers' bottom lines, but doesn't get in too deep.

Though facetious, Carney's conclusion is an interesting one:
"If Craigslist does what its users ask of it, and Craigslist doesn't need or seem to want all the ad revenue it declines to collect, maybe we, as end-users, should ask them to post some banner ads and give us the money instead. There's something wrong, I suppose, in that reasoning. But I like the idea."

Gather.com, another site with an altruistic bent, already gives its users a cut of its ad revenue. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if Craigslist were, in the future, to offer up a share of revenue to the very users who enable its existence.

Posted by Kate Kaye on June 19, 2006, 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Google's Mobile Operations Expected To See Largest Growth

The Times Online UK reports that Google's mobile division, which is based in London, is expected to "become the biggest driver of new business" for Google. Search on mobile phones, wireless laptops and personal digital assistants (PDAs) are seen as a huge opportunity for many search companies. In Britain, there is a mobile phone for every person, but in some other areas, like Scandinavia, "mobile ownership is almost double that rate."

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 19, 2006, 10:39 AM | Permalink


Ask.com Sponsors NBC's Treasure Hunters

I was flipping through the channels (actually, my wife was, I wanted to watch the NBA finals) and saw some people wearing Ask.com t-shirts on TV. It was a new show on NBC named Treasure Hunters.

The Ask blog says that Ask is the "Official Search Engine of Treasure Hunters." I did not watch the whole show, so I am not sure how beyond the t-shirts and commercials Ask promoted themselves in the show.

Postscript: Got word back from an Ask rep on what took place. Team members conducted searches at Ask for "us presidents" and another for "mount theodore roosevelt". They showed the Ask toolbar for viewers to follow the searches at home and to go to Ask.com to play along. Also, one team members yelled "we should have used Ask.com!"

Postscript #2: The Ask.com blog posted the encore presentation times with a link to watch the show online, while it is available. The show will be repeating Friday and Saturday at 8/7c on NBC. Also check out SearchEngineGuide's detailed review of the promotion.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 19, 2006, 10:24 AM | Permalink


Google Search Results Differ On Mac Versus PC?

Threadwatch links to a blog post named Google SERPs Platform Dependant? that shows how a search for a query on Google, on the same network but on two computer operating systems, can product a different result set. The screen captures documented show the differences between a Mac and a PC.

I personally ran the test and I found slightly different results for the keyword phrase "sports" on a Windows PC versus a Mac. Is this out of the ordinary, I do not think so. I have found that Google changes the results sets based on the following criteria;

(1) Geographic location
(2) Personalization preferences
(3) Data center accessing
(4) Browser
(5) Operating System
(6) and some other methods.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 19, 2006, 10:05 AM | Permalink


Google To "Internationalize" All Products

InsideGoogle reports that Google has asked University of Limerick based in Ireland to help find an "experienced localization guru" to help localize and "internationalize" all of Google's products. The PC World article goes into more details about the job, describing that job calls for an "executive with 10 or more years of product management experience to serve as group product director of internationalization."

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 19, 2006, 9:31 AM | Permalink


Google Yanks Sites 5 Billion Pages After Spam Complaint

I covered a DigitalPoint thread which uncovered several domains that was able to rank billions of pages at the top of the Google results within a couple of weeks. The methods deployed to rank the pages seemed to include excessive use of subdomains, cloaking, content theft scraping, alexa traffic boosting and blog comment spam. I listed the documented steps here. Some suspect that Google's new URL handling with the big daddy update allowed "old school" cloaking to begin working again.

A Threadwatch post shows screen captures of the spam and also has a comment from Google representative, Adam Lasnik. Adam directly responds to over 5 billion pages of this domain being indexed, saying:

We have noticed that some site: queries are showing bizarre results and it's turned out to be tied to a bad data push. We're fixing it now.

Yes, we are aware of the site command issues (Google's mentioned them itself). That may mean it is far less than 5 billion pages indexed in this case -- but still, plenty of pages got through.

If the site command is the issue or even if it is not, this is still indicative of other substantial problems plaguing Google that are making the rounds on discussion board and blogs lately.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on June 19, 2006, 9:09 AM | Permalink

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