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July 13, 2006

July 13, 2006

Google Radio

The Internets are alight with speculation about Google radio ads, since Tim at TechToolBlog reported receiving a survey that touched on talent brokering for voice work. Back in May at Google Press Day, CEO Eric Schmidt told me (and other reporters hanging on his every word) that he envisioned a system whereby advertisers could upload audio creative to Google that would be distributed to multiple platforms. The idea that the company would help provision voice talent would be perfectly consistent with this approach, given the lack of resources available to many of Google's small business customers. (As others have mentioned, SpotRunner /A> -- the next logical acquisition for Google -- aims to handle the creative and distribution issue for TV.)

Then again, given Google's fondness for technology, maybe the company could do dynamically-generated audio creative like IHT.com is considering.

Posted by Pamela Parker on 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Search Headlines & Links: July 13, 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:

  • Daily SearchCast, July 13, 2006: SES Latino; Yahoo's Expansion To US Hispanic Sites; Google Does Radio Ads Survey & More!
    Today's search podcast covers the SES Latino show that just concluded in Miami; a new Yahoo deal to reach Hispanics; Google & radio ad moves; search engine office expansions; Google Force One revisited and more!
  • Google Adds Supports For NOODP Tag To Opt Out Of ODP Titles
    Singing for joy! Google has now added support for the NOODP tag that MSN initiated on May 22nd of this year. Yes, Danny asked for this back in June, and now Google has granted our wish. If you have one of those pesky titles pulled from the ODP (dmoz.org) directory, don't fret it, just add the NOODP tag. How do you do it? Just add <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP"> to your page source. If you want to just exclude MSN use <META NAME="msnbot" CONTENT="NOODP"> if you just want to exclude Google use <META NAME="googlebot" CONTENT="NOODP">....
  • Speculation: Google To Begin Selling Radio Ads Through AdWords Soon
    TechToolBlog said he received a survey from Google specifically asking questions about radio ads. Most of the questions in the survey are related to radio ads, see the screen captures here or the close ups Donna Bogatin has done here. He said that last time Google sent out a survey, it was about print ads, and then they ran print ads soon after. Keep in mind, DMarc Broadcasting, currently sells radio ads, but this seems like Google may begin pushing AdWords advertisers into the radio ad game....
  • AdSense Consulting Group Fed Up With Google AdSense
    Wired has a story on AdSense, not Google AdSense, but AdSense Consulting, the company who registered AdSense.com back in 1996....
  • More Details On Google Sitemaps Query Stats
    DaveN at ThreadWatch posted his love/hate for Google Sitemaps, but what I find to be the most interesting part is the discussion taking place in his post at his blog. Vanessa Fox, Google Engineering, from the Inside Google Sitemaps blog posted a comment at Dave's blog explaining why a the Sitemaps query stats may say you come up for a popular term even though you don't mention that term or phrase on your pages of your site....
  • Yahoo Reaches Out To U.S. Hispanics Via Deal With Hispanic Digital Network
    ClickZ reports that Yahoo has reached a deal with Hispanic Digital Network (HDN) to supply web search and sponsored search listings for HDN's 70+ Spanish-language Web sites. Reportedly, this gives Yahoo access to 2.8 million U.S. Hispanic visitors per month. The ads will be both in Spanish and English, not based on geo-location but based on the language used in the query. Yahoo would like to see more Spanish content web sites developed in the future, according to Peter Celeste, regional general manager for the Americas for Yahoo Search and Search Marketing. For more information on the Hispanic market, check...
  • Counting Links At The Search Engines
    Rand has an excellent post on how to get your hands dirty by manually checking your links at the various search engines. He reviews Google's link command and how bad it is. He also reviews MSN's link command and explains how you can add modifiers to the link or linkdomain commands (i.e. exclude site A from the command). Rand then reviews the Yahoo link command, and explains that although Yahoo has Site Explorer, the "most accurate" result set still comes from search.yahoo.com. He recommends you use search.yahoo.com and then append &b=999 to the end of the URL manually. Like MSN,...

Headlines & News From Elsewhere

Posted by Danny Sullivan on 3:31 PM | Permalink

Daily SearchCast, July 13, 2006: SES Latino; Yahoo's Expansion To US Hispanic Sites; Google Does Radio Ads Survey & More!

Today's search podcast covers the SES Latino show that just concluded in Miami; a new Yahoo deal to reach Hispanics; Google & radio ad moves; search engine office expansions; Google Force One revisited 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:

  • Search Engine Strategies Latino, Miami, Florida - Day One
    Day one of the first ever Search Engine Strategies Latino edition is pretty much complete. The networking cocktail is taking place now, there is a Google party tonight and also some Yahoo boat thing. I have managed to cover the Landscape & Tactics tracks, so here is the roundup. + The Opportunity: Tapping Into US Hispanics & Latin America Via Search + Search Landscape: US Hispanics + Search Landscape: Latin America + The Challenges Of Search Marketing To US Hispanics & Latin Americans I also took pictures of the sessions and outside of the hotel, you can see them here....
  • Search Engine Strategies Latino, Miami, Florida - Day Two
    The conference has officially ended, it was a really great event. Huge congrats to Nacho for running this. I am writing this quickly, because they are breaking down the room as I type this. Here are the sessions I covered today. + Translate Or Create: Strategies For Those With English-Language Sites + Domain Issues - Latin American Version + Spanish / Portuguese Language Ad Issues + SEO & Spanish / Portuguese Language Issues Again, pictures of the event tagged with seslatino at Flickr....
  • Cartoon Barry Interactive by SitePal, Search Engine Roundtable
  • Yahoo Reaches Out To U.S. Hispanics Via Deal With Hispanic Digital Network
    ClickZ reports that Yahoo has reached a deal with Hispanic Digital Network (HDN) to supply web search and sponsored search listings for HDN's 70+ Spanish-language Web sites. Reportedly, this gives Yahoo access to 2.8 million U.S. Hispanic visitors per month. The ads will be both in Spanish and English, not based on geo-location but based on the language used in the query. Yahoo would like to see more Spanish content web sites developed in the future, according to Peter Celeste, regional general manager for the Americas for Yahoo Search and Search Marketing. For more information on the Hispanic market, check...
  • Speculation: Google To Begin Selling Radio Ads Through AdWords Soon
    TechToolBlog said he received a survey from Google specifically asking questions about radio ads. Most of the questions in the survey are related to radio ads, see the screen captures here or the close ups Donna Bogatin has done here. He said that last time Google sent out a survey, it was about print ads, and then they ran print ads soon after. Keep in mind, DMarc Broadcasting, currently sells radio ads, but this seems like Google may begin pushing AdWords advertisers into the radio ad game....
  • New Landing Page Quality Score Announced for Google AdWords Advertisers
    The Google AdWords blog has announced new changes that will be seen next week that will result in some advertisers faced with higher minimum bids to keep their campaigns running on AdWords, as a result in changes being made to the landing page quality score algorithm. While a small number of advertisers will be affected, AdWords is targeting those landing pages that offer a poor user experience to those who click the ads....
  • Judge Orders Google To Disclose Advertiser's Information
    Out-Law reports that Google was ordered by Justice Rimer to hand over the information on an advertiser to Helen Grant for copyright infringement. Helen Grant "complained that a Google advert led to a service which she claimed violated her copyright in a forthcoming book." A search brought up a site named Realityunlocked.com, "which offered a free download of an earlier draft of the book, and that the site violated the Trust's copyright." Google asked Grant to take the issue to court, this way Google does not have to worry about the privacy issues with handing over the information....
  • Click Packages Draw Local Advertisers Into Search
    The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reports on the "bundle of clicks" search distribution packages that all the major yellow pages publishers in the U.S. are now selling to their local advertisers. Here's an amazing quote from Simon Greenman, SVP of digital products at R.H. Donnelly, "Our strategy is to connect our customers with their customers wherever they may be." That's a radical statement for a yellow pages executive to make because he's not asserting that print yellow pages is the best lead generation vehicle "and we also have Internet." He's saying Donnelly is "agnostic."...
  • SuperPages For Sale
    Verizon has formally filed with the SEC to sell its directory unit, which contains the print yellow pages and online yellow pages/local search businesses. A likely sale could bring as much as $15 billion. And because AT&T does not look like it's going to spin off its directory business, SuperPages could fetch a significant premium....
  • SuperPages Upgrades Maps With Microsoft
    I never saw a press release. But today I discovered that SuperPages, which had dynamic mapping almost before anyone else in local (though it was "cludgey"), has upgraded the mapping on its site using the Microsoft Virtual Earth platform. The "new" maps are much nicer and easier to use than the last time I checked, which was admittedly a long time ago. While there is aerial photography, there's no "Birds Eye" view here. YellowPages.com licensed Virtual Earth, including Birds Eye, several months ago....
  • Google Maps Adds Click To Zoom
    Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal points out that Google Maps has added another way to zoom: double clicking. Of course you can still zoom with the mouse rollerball. Here's the official statement from the Google Maps API Blog. Google Earth and Google Maps are now apparently running off the same platform, which should permit more integration of Earth features into Maps over time....
  • Yahoo Buys Land In Santa Clara
    The San Jose Business Journal reports that Yahoo has purchased 42.5 acres in Santa Clara. The price of the land was not disclosed, but we do know they bought it from San Francisco's TMG Partners. Yahoo's CFO, Sue Decker, said: "We see this as an attractive asset that provides attractive additional capacity and flexibility for Yahoo's future. We are planning for future growth and will analyze several different scenarios over the coming year regarding the development of the property."...
  • Google To Set Up Offices In Michigan
    The NY Times reports (also try Reuters) that Google will house up to 1,000 employees in a new facility in Michigan. The office is to reside in downtown Ann Arbor, "the hometown of the University of Michigan, where Larry Page, one of Google?s founders, earned his undergraduate degree in engineering." The Times reports that the majority of the building will be used for "technology and call center, with about 40,000 square feet needed to house the library digitization project."...
  • Google Drive Revealed?
    Yesterday, Cocaman posted a screen capture of what was named Platypus or GDrive. From the looks of the screen capture it seems like an internal tool used at Google is getting ready for prime time. The page is now offline, of course, but the screen capture read;...
  • The Matt Cutts Hard Drive Collection
  • Matt Cutts Of Google Comments On Recent Listings Issues
    Last week we reported that Google may have revealed the spam scores to the world. Well, Matt Cutts came back from vacation and he confirmed the data "was real." He promised not to "comment on what any of it means" but at least we know Google is part of the borg. Just kidding. I doubt we will see a treasure like that again, but if we do, it would be interesting to see if Google does add "extra settings for fun," such as ?initial_time_travel_wormhole=?Wednesday, December 31 1969 11:11 pm."...
  • Weird Results Counts On Google
    I've written before about Google giving strange results counts and why maybe it's time for them to go. Yesterday, I came across the oddest ones ever, when doing some typical searches to gauge the size of the index....
  • MySpace More Popular Than Google Or Yahoo
    Bill Tancer over at his HitWise blog has data that claims MySpace Moves Into #1 Position for all Internet Sites. This is incredibly important, MySpace.com is more popular that Yahoo Mail, and MySpace's growth of visits has surpassed Google towards the end of May of this year. But as Bill points out, what is most revealing is that the "top search terms driving traffic to all Internet sites" is MySpace and MySpace.com with 1.28%, compared with last years top search term being eBay at .31%. See all the details at HitWise....
  • AdSense Consulting Group Fed Up With Google AdSense
    Wired has a story on AdSense, not Google AdSense, but AdSense Consulting, the company who registered AdSense.com back in 1996....
  • Google Jet Plane Security Threat? And Testing A Sofa In Mountain View
    Josh Gerstein at the New York sun has an update on the suit over Google Jet disclosure. Basically, Google's founders argue that the information given up by aircraft designer can be could put the lives of those on the plane in danger. Google asked for a court order to keep the designer quiet. Well, the judge declined to hear or rule on the case - go figure. Read more about it from Danny's earlier post. Postscript From Danny: The security concerns voiced in the case made me wonder out details getting out about Google Force One compare to Air Force...
  • Google boys are "sofa king" rich

Posted by Danny Sullivan on 3:18 PM | Permalink

Google Adds Supports For NOODP Tag To Opt Out Of ODP Titles

Singing for joy! Google has now added support for the NOODP tag that MSN initiated on May 22nd of this year. Yes, Danny asked for this back in June, and now Google has granted our wish. If you have one of those pesky titles pulled from the ODP (dmoz.org) directory, don't fret it, just add the NOODP tag.

How do you do it? Just add <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP"> to your page source. If you want to just exclude MSN use <META NAME="msnbot" CONTENT="NOODP"> if you just want to exclude Google use <META NAME="googlebot" CONTENT="NOODP">.

Keep in mind, it takes time for Google to spider your pages and then determine if you do not want to use the ODP title. So if you add the tag today, it may take several weeks to have an impact.

Webmasters, this can have a huge affect on your organic traffic. If you have a poor ODP title and Google uses it in the results, by tweaking your title, your click-through rate from Google can potentially dramatically increase.

More details at Inside Google Sitemaps blog and the help section at Google.

Postscript: There is a bit of confusion that this tag only tells Google not to display the ODP description in the search results. This is not correct, Google will not display both the description and the title from the ODP in the Google search results with the implementation of this tag.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on 1:19 PM | Permalink

Report: Apples are More "Apple-y" than Oranges

OK, OK. I've been getting a lot of flak over my story covering a new Nielsen/NetRatings study on the number of people who download podcasts.

I realize it's not an apples-to-apples comparison to say that more people have downloaded a podcast than have published a blog. It wasn't meant to be a cut on blogging, or to over-hype podcasting, which is how some people are taking it. It was meant more as a benchmark, since most people can get their head around the number of people who blog, or engage in online dating, and so they can better imagine how many people are downloading podcasts.

It would have been better to compare the number of podcast downloads to the number of blog readers, or the number of podcast producers to bloggers.

I got in touch with Nielsen/NetRatings, and found out that 14.4% of the U.S. population, or about 20.2 million people, have read a blog in the past month, compared to the 6.6%, or 9.2 million people, that have downloaded a podcast. How about them apples?

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speculation: Google To Begin Selling Radio Ads Through AdWords Soon

TechToolBlog said he received a survey from Google specifically asking questions about radio ads. Most of the questions in the survey are related to radio ads, see the screen captures here or the close ups Donna Bogatin has done here. He said that last time Google sent out a survey, it was about print ads, and then they ran print ads soon after. Keep in mind, DMarc Broadcasting, currently sells radio ads, but this seems like Google may begin pushing AdWords advertisers into the radio ad game.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on 9:42 AM | Permalink

AdSense Consulting Group Fed Up With Google AdSense

Wired has a story on AdSense, not Google AdSense, but AdSense Consulting, the company who registered AdSense.com back in 1996.

If you visit adsense.com, you will notice Google does not own the site, and they do not provide Google AdSense services.

In fact, they have a message on the site that reads, "If you think you can get rich quick placing other people's ads on your site or blog, please contact Google who has taken and used our business name without permission or compensation."

I find it funny that Google AdSense, which is a contextual ad program, developed to provide relevant sales leads, has done the exact opposite for AdSense Consulting.

AdSense Consulting apparently gets hundreds of irrelevant phone calls and emails to answer Google AdSense customer support related questions, something nothing to do with their business. Sounds incredibly frustrating to me.

The article notes the company has now sold the domain to another company, which has not yet been named. Google declined to purchase it from her, apparently. Google also decided her site didn't qualify to carry AdSense ads, either.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on 9:32 AM | Permalink

More Details On Google Sitemaps Query Stats

DaveN at ThreadWatch posted his love/hate for Google Sitemaps, but what I find to be the most interesting part is the discussion taking place in his post at his blog. Vanessa Fox, Google Engineering, from the Inside Google Sitemaps blog posted a comment at Dave's blog explaining why a the Sitemaps query stats may say you come up for a popular term even though you don't mention that term or phrase on your pages of your site.

I do not want to miss anything from her comment so let me quote them.

(1) Stats are based on three week averages; "They are averaged over a three week period, so any big fluctuations during that period may make the stats seem off."

(2) "They are top overall queries. For instance, say your site isn?t about Britney Spears, but you?ve mentioned her a few times and so your site ranks for her (although likely doesn?t rank well). Your site is actually about purple apples. So, if a million people search for Britney and 10 people search for purple apples, then Britney is going to show as a top query. And you might look at that and say, my site isn?t even about her. How can that query be higher for my site than what my site is actually about? But in sheer number of searches, Britney is a top query for the site."

And to clarify number two, we have this comment;

My early morning, under-caffeinated guess is that you linked to this threadwatch story (http://www.threadwatch.org/node/7076) in your ?industry news? section and at some point, that may have been on the same page as links pointing to this post: http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/archives/2006/03/21/naked-truth-about-shoemony/ and possibly some anchor text pointing to your site includes the word ?nude? (the cached page info seems to indicate so). And when searching for christine dolce naked became a popular thing to do, your site may have been an early one to have all the keywords.

This explains a bit more about how Google Sitemaps query stats data works.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on 9:21 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Reaches Out To U.S. Hispanics Via Deal With Hispanic Digital Network

ClickZ reports that Yahoo has reached a deal with Hispanic Digital Network (HDN) to supply web search and sponsored search listings for HDN's 70+ Spanish-language Web sites. Reportedly, this gives Yahoo access to 2.8 million U.S. Hispanic visitors per month. The ads will be both in Spanish and English, not based on geo-location but based on the language used in the query. Yahoo would like to see more Spanish content web sites developed in the future, according to Peter Celeste, regional general manager for the Americas for Yahoo Search and Search Marketing.

For more information on the Hispanic market, check out our coverage of SES Latino from Monday and Tuesday.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on 9:02 AM | Permalink

Counting Links At The Search Engines

Rand has an excellent post on how to get your hands dirty by manually checking your links at the various search engines. He reviews Google's link command and how bad it is. He also reviews MSN's link command and explains how you can add modifiers to the link or linkdomain commands (i.e. exclude site A from the command). Rand then reviews the Yahoo link command, and explains that although Yahoo has Site Explorer, the "most accurate" result set still comes from search.yahoo.com. He recommends you use search.yahoo.com and then append &b=999 to the end of the URL manually. Like MSN, you can add modifiers to the Yahoo link commands. This is a great post for those who want a refresher on the link commands available to you, plus learn a few new tips on them.

Posted by Barry Schwartz on 8:52 AM | Permalink

Search Headlines & Links: July 12, 2006

Below, a recap of stories posted yesterday to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with other items we've spotted but not blogged separately:

From The SEW Blog...

  • Yahoo's Livesearch Added To Firefox
    Yahoo launched Livesearch on AllTheWeb back in May. Danny has a detailed post about how it is similar to Lookahead and Google Suggest. Anyway, as we suggested on May 16th, Livesearch capabilities from Yahoo has been added to a new version of Firefox 2.0. You can download the new Firefox here and give it a try. Also you can read more at the Yahoo Search Blog, which has links to more methods of downloads....
  • Google Video Launches In UK & Other Countries
    Silicon reports that Google Video has launched a localized version in the UK at http://video.google.co.uk/. There are also localized versions in Canada, Deutschland, España, France, Italia, Nederland, and Polska. Google's Joanna Shields, said in a statement: "By launching Google Video in these new markets we will enable more people in more countries to search for, upload and share video content in more languages."...
  • Interactive Review of SEOMoz's Page Strength Tool
    Rand posted information about a new tool he launched named the Page Strength Tool. It is pretty cool, and why can't it replace PageRank? :) Anyway, here is my interactive review of the tool, you can find more details about what the tool exactly measures here....
  • Google Pages & Yahoo Geocities Phishing Attacks
    We learn from VNUnet.com that there are phishing scams on Google Pages and we also learn from Slashdot that Yahoo's Geocities has a similar issue. A email goes out telling people they can win a "$500 cash prize, and that the money can be paid automatically if they click on the embedded web link."...
  • Martin Child, VP Of Sales & Marketing Leaves Yahoo Search Marketing
    Brand Republic reports that Yahoo Search Marketing's vice-president of sales and marketing, Martin Child is leaving to work at Webloyalty. Child has been with Yahoo, Overture, for four and a half years prior to stepping down....
  • MySpace More Popular Than Google Or Yahoo
    Bill Tancer over at his HitWise blog has data that claims MySpace Moves Into #1 Position for all Internet Sites. This is incredibly important, MySpace.com is more popular that Yahoo Mail, and MySpace's growth of visits has surpassed Google towards the end of May of this year. But as Bill points out, what is most revealing is that the "top search terms driving traffic to all Internet sites" is MySpace and MySpace.com with 1.28%, compared with last years top search term being eBay at .31%. See all the details at HitWise....
  • ShopLocal Taps Topix for Geotargeted Ads
    By Greg Sterling, Jul. 12, 2006 | Search Ads: Local , Search Types: Local | Edit
  • This isn't search, but it is local. ShopLocal has partnered with news aggregator Topix.net to offer dynamic banner ads that are targeted by ZIP. The program services national advertisers trying to drive consumers into their local stores. An example dynamic skyscraper ad is visible here. ShopLocal is providing the ad content and Topix provides the local news pages on which the ads appear. Here's the press release. Read a somewhat longer post on my blog....

Headlines & News From Elsewhere

Posted by Danny Sullivan on 6:53 AM | Permalink

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