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December 17, 2006 - December 23, 2006

Wikipedia and Amazon Taking on Google

Update: Liana Evans of Seach Marketing Gurus has done a great job of journalism and corrected some of the errors that myself and others posted about this story. You can read about it here.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales plans, in partnership with Amazon, on launching a search engine early next year, accordiing to the London Times

Wales contends that Google has developed flaws as it has grown. And believes he can use his wiki methodology to compete with Google, Yahoo and MSN.

He told the Times that computer algorithms do not make as good selections as humans and if people get to use his alternative they may prefer it.

“But we have a really great method for doing that ourselves,” Wales told The Times. “We just look at the page. It usually only takes a second to figure out if the page is good, so the key here is building a community of trust that can do that.”

"The reputation already fostered by his Wikipedia community and the transparency of his technology will build sufficient trust in his search engine to bring in advertising revenue and make the Wikiasari venture profitable" The Times reported.

The project has been called Wikiasari - a combination of Hawaian and Japanese for "quick" "rummaging search". How this plays out should provide entertainment in the new year.

Update: Michael Arrington at TechCrunch has come up with a screen shot of the new engine. Looks like sponsored listings at the right, related links at the top and organic results where they normally appear.

There is also more detail and comments from Wales.

Posted by Frank Watson on December 23, 2006, 6:47 PM | Permalink

Australian Court Ruling Could Impact Search

The Australian Federal Court ruled the other day that a web site providing links to available illegal video downloads is culpible as well as the ISP that hosted the site.

Electronic Frontiers Australia, a civil-liberties group, said the ruling could have impact on search engines such as Google.

The Associated Press report stated:

The full bench of the Federal Court, the country's second-highest court, has upheld a lower court ruling that Stephen Cooper, the operator of the Web site in question, as well as Comcen, the Internet service provider that hosted it, were guilty under Australian copyright law.
They were accused of authorizing copyright infringement because they provided a search engine whose results linked to songs available for illegal download, even though the Web site did not store the music files directly.

Cooper had argued that his Web site performed a function comparable to search engines such as Google Inc., which is based in Mountain View, Calif.

EFA chairman Dale Clapperton said Australia holds internet users to a higher standard. The legal interpretation of liability is untested for search engines like Google.

Posted by Frank Watson on December 22, 2006, 10:31 PM | Permalink

Google Upgrades Blogger With Privacy Features & More

Now you can restrict reader access to your blog, with new privacy settings to allow you to create a 'subscriber list' of sorts to any blog hosted at Blogspot. The default settings for Blogger allow anyone to read your posts, but the new "Blog Readers" tab allows bloggers to only allow readers they choose (via email address). Also included in the Blogger feature update is the ability to "label" posts, which is essentially "tagging" or categorizing posts. Other additions include new templates and the ability to add photos more easily.

You can read more about the upgrades at the Google Blog.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski on December 22, 2006, 11:55 AM | Permalink

Do top news stories drive top news searches?

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press has just released an analysis of ongoing public opinion polls that identifies "What Was -- and Wasn't on the Public's Mind" in 2006.

If you compare Pew's list of the top 10 public opinion stories of 2006 with the lists of top searches in Google News, Yahoo News, AOL News, or any of the other news search engines compiled by Enid Burns of ClickZ Stats, you'll see that some things on the public's mind prompted news searches and some some apparently didn't.

For example, Pew identifies "deepening gloom about Iraq" as one of "the strongest 2006 trends in public opinion." And Iraq is in the list of top 10 news searches at Yahoo News, AOL News, Microsoft Live, Ask.com and Lycos for 2006. But, Iraq is missing from the list of top 10 searches in Google News for the year.

Pew also says, "Gas prices dominated the public's attention -- as long as they were on the upswing." And "gas prices" was the top new topic at AOL News, as well as one of the top news searches at Ask.com and Lycos in 2006. But it didn't make the top 10 lists for Google News, Yahoo News, or Microsoft Live.

So, do top news stories drive top news searches? On some news search engines, it appears they do. On others, the jury is still out.

Maybe they are just below the cut off for the top 10 list. Or maybe the users of some news search engines are more interested in "hard news," while the users of other news search engines are more interested in "celebrity gossip."

Or, maybe I should stop speculating and just admit that Danny Sullivan over at Search Engline Land is right: The top 10 lists reported by some of the search engines are "heavily filtered."

According to Occam's razor, "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one."

Posted by Greg Jarboe on December 22, 2006, 10:32 AM | Permalink

News search terms vs. web search terms

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land has written a detailed analysis entitled "The Lies Of Top Search Terms Of The Year" that provides another explanation of why the top news search terms for 2006 don't match the top web search terms highlighted in press releases issued by Google, Yahoo, AOL and other search engines.

According to Danny, "The short answer, as I've written before, is that they are all heavily filtered. That's why you don't see popular terms like 'sex' and 'porn' and navigational queries like 'google' showing up."

If you are trying to figure out which news search terms to use in an online press release or news article, Danny's column also offers an advanced SEO tip that can help you quickly -- and at no cost. He shows you how to use Google Trends to identify news search terms as well as web search terms.

For example, his first chart uses Google Trends to show the relative search volume for bebo, myspace, google, and sex. But, below that, Google Trends also displays a second chart showing the relative news reference volume for the same keywords.

Danny uses Google Trends to show the similarities and differences of other keywords -- including bebo, myspace, world cup, metacafe, radioblog, yahoo, hotmail and amazon. If you use Danny's technique, you can identify potential news search terms, as well.

Of course, I should offer two words of caution.

First, as Google Trends itself says at the bottom of a page of results, "Google Trends aims to provide insights into broad search patterns. As a Google Labs product, it is still in the early stages of development. Also, it is based upon just a portion of our searches, and several approximations are used when computing your results. Please keep this in mind when using it."

Second, there is a lag of about a month in the Google Trends data. So, don't use it to find potential search terms for breaking news. To do this, use either the Google Suggest for Google News or the Yahoo News “also try” feature. They seem to be much more up to date.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on December 22, 2006, 9:52 AM | Permalink

Search Forums Roundup: Dec. 22, 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 Website Optimizer: Better Then You Think? - Will DMOZ Be Back? - Google AdSense: No Images To Be Lined Up With AdSense Ads - Pandia's Christmas Wish List To Google and more.

Posted by Chris Sherman on December 22, 2006, 2:10 AM | Permalink

Bringing Small Businesses Online

TheStreet.com has an article on the growing trend of small businesses advertising themselves on Craigslist. As opposed to individuals buying and selling merchandise, this involves local businesses creating posts that list business information or possibly product or inventory info.

Essentially, this utilizes Craigslist as a place to have a free landing page. But this kind of advertising precariously places such pages where they can be bounced around as newer posts push them down chronological listings.

More effective for some small businesses have been free landing page and microsite offerings that have grown in number over the past year, as the name of the game for many search engine marketers will be to get more small businesses online.

This comes with the thought that a significant chunk of revenue growth for search engine marketers will come from new business - those local and small businesses that have thus far steered clear of online marketing because they aren't inclined to do it, or they simply don't have websites. Bringing a business online with free development and hosting tools is thought to hook them, and to develop early loyalties as a place to also do their online marketing.

Enter the free landing page development and hosting offerings. Yahoo! has done this for a while with its free local listings product, and Google came out with Page Creator in February which it recently upgraded with its new "hosted business pages" tool. Companies that have introduced similar solutions include vFlyer and Affinity Internet.

Many of the small businesses in this boat are service businesses that traditionally advertise in the yellow pages. In many cases these businesses are better equipped to handle a phone call than a click, which can be an abstract concept to some. A recent study done by Nielsen//NetRaings and WebVisible suggest as much.

So in addition to more free website development and hosting services, we could see more click-to-call functionality in paid search. In the last month alone, we've seen this from Google and LiveDeal. Look for more to emerge throughout '07.

Posted by Mike Boland on December 22, 2006, 12:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

'Tis the Season for Top Ten Lists

UK-based local search engine 192.com has released a list of its top local searches for the holiday season. Some search term top ten lists, which always pour in at this time of year, can be a good indication of consumer buying activity (some, it must be noted, are heavily filtered as Danny Sullivan points out over at Search Engine Land).

“Royal Mail” tops the list, as the pragmatic requirements of the season occupy a significant portion of people's time and mindshare. But the more fun elements of the holiday season are also represented further down the list with “Restaurants” and “Toy Shop”. Golf clubs and jewelry also seem to be the most popular gifts in the UK this year (assuming people are visiting, rather than buying and gifting, beauty salons and hotels).

Here is the entire list:

1. Royal Mail

2. Garden centers and florists

3. Beauty salons

4. Restaurants

5. Hotels

6. Golf

7. Taxis

8. Toy shop

9. Jewelers

10. Churches

Other interesting lists that have come out in the past week include Google's and Yahoo!'s top search terms for the year explored earlier in the week by Greg Jarboe. AdAge listed its top 10 Internet acquisitions of 2006; The Seeking Alpha Blog has a top 10 list of tech storylines that defined '06 (social media and video are not surprisingly at the top); while Sebastien Provencher's new social/local media blog, Praized.com, looks forward to the top trends that will shape '07.

If Provencher is right, online video and social networking will continue to shape the direction of the media world and particularly local search. Local advertising's marriage with social networking was seen this year and it could grow considerably in '07, as more small businesses see the value in viral marketing on a local level.

We could see this and other intersecting trends in '07 and as innovation continues throughout the media world, and adoption levels for many developing forms of media (online video, mobile local search, social search, etc.) approach mainstream status.

Posted by Mike Boland on December 21, 2006, 3:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Germans Drop Quaero Partnership With France

Seems the Germans can't get along with the French - what a surprise. The joint venture to create a European search engine to take on Google - Quaero - is now left in the hands of the French alone.

No one is openly stating what has happened but the Germans have been working on another search project - Theseus - the king in Greek mythology who found his way through the labyrinth. A skill anyone in search needs.

Neither the French or the Germans have openly admitted the reasons for the split - or in some cases that a split has even occurred. While France spokespeople have said there are people in Germany who are still working on the project.

Both efforts are being made to tilt at the European dominance of Google. Obviously the nationalism that motivated the efforts initially have only become tighter with each wanting to do their own.

The German contributions included work on voice recognition.

Posted by Frank Watson on December 21, 2006, 3:18 PM | Permalink

Jake Baillie Leaving TrueLocal

I just received the email about Jake Baillie leaving TrueLocal for a boutique venture capital company.

Guess we are going to need a new member on the arbitrage panel. He will be missed in the space and hope he still attends the conferences.

His letter read:

I'm both pleased and saddened to announce my departure from TrueLocal to you. Last week the opportunity to do something that I've always wanted to do was presented to me - manage a small internet fund that incubates and provides funding to seed-stage new media and technology companies.

On January 1, myself and several employees from TrueLocal will be
forming STN Labs, which will do exactly that.

As managing director, my role will be to evaluate, fund, and help these
small and inventive companies become self-sufficient. We're starting out
with a stable of existing investments which will be announced shortly,
and beginning in April, we will evaluate new opportunities. We're
looking to take on several entrepreneurs in residence in the short-term,
as well as providing investments to companies in the 50K-500K range.

Throughout the remainder of December and January, I will be
transitioning out of TrueLocal. Please feel free to contact me directly
if you have any further questions or concerns about my transition. In
the new year, I'll be sending out another email with my new contact
information and more details on STN Labs.

Thanks for all of your support of TrueLocal, and here's to a safe and
prosperous new year!

Posted by Frank Watson on December 21, 2006, 12:56 PM | Permalink

Bloggers must disclose sponsored posts

Anick Jesdanun, an AP Internet writer, reports that PayPerPost, a company that connects advertisers with bloggers willing to write about their products for pay, will now require disclosures "amid criticism and a regulatory threat."

Under the new policy, bloggers must disclose that they are accepting payment, either in the write-up or in a general disclosure policy on the blogger's site.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on December 21, 2006, 10:50 AM | Permalink

Wall Street Journal getting comfortable with blogs

Mark Glaser, who writes the PBS MediaShift column, says "the Journal has found subjects that work as blogs, and they've figured out a method for doing quick editorial oversight."

Glaser interveiwed Bill Grueskin, the managing editor of WSJ.com, who told him, “We've all come around to seeing how powerful blogs can be and how they generate their own momentum.”

The Journal also plans to move to more analysis in print and breaking news online. There are even moves underway to change the way reporters at the Dow Jones newswire, the print Journal and online Journal do their jobs! Glaser writes, "Instead of all three reporters covering the same news conferences and earnings reports, the basic bare-bones stories will be left to the wire reporters, leaving the others to add to the stories as they develop."

With the Wall Street Journal finally one of the news sources aggregated by Google News, this could have significant impact in the coming year.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on December 21, 2006, 10:32 AM | Permalink

Dow Jones adds Blinkx video search

Michael Cohn of Red Herring reports that video search specialist blinkx teamed up yesterday with Dow Jones to make financial news videos available from Dow Jones properties like The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, and MarketWatch via blinkx and its customer Lycos.

Cohn notes, "While most of the content on the Wall Street Journal Online as well as Barron's Online is available by paid subscription only, the video content is freely searchable."

Posted by Greg Jarboe on December 21, 2006, 10:27 AM | Permalink

NYTimes.com hires former Yahoo executive

Leon Lazaroff of Bloomberg reports that The New York Times has named Murray Gaylord, a former Yahoo executive, to oversee marketing of the NYTimes.com web site.

"The move is part of New York Times's efforts to increase sales at its digital operations as advertisers spend more on the Internet and less on print publications," writes Lazaroff.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on December 21, 2006, 10:20 AM | Permalink

The Holiday Wish List

After Peace for all mankind, what do web publishers really want for the Holidays?

Harmony: buying that truly works the same way, across all engines.
Understanding: the ability to see how keyword buys relate to each other.
Brotherhood: some way to take that Understanding into my banner buys.
Love: that targeters and branders all get along.

Posted by on December 21, 2006, 10:13 AM | Permalink

Regifting SEO tools, calculators and images for the holidays

Are you searching for some cheap Christmas gift ideas or last-minute Hanukkah gifts for search engine marketers, great bloggers, or conference speakers? I am. Here are some free SEO tools, a free online calculator, and royalty-free images that someone gave me during the past year that I'm now regifting to friends and colleagues just in time for the holidays.

First, for all the search engine marketers on my holiday gift shopping list, I plan to regift the free SEO tools created by SEOmoz. This includes the Keyword Difficulty tool and Page Strength tool that were both reviewed by Barry Schwartz back in July. It also includes an IP Location Lookup, which isn't an SEO tool, but is still very useful.

The SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty tool issues a percentage score and provides a detailed analysis of the top ranking sites at Google and Yahoo. It can be used to analyze the competitive landscape of a particular search term or phrase. The SEOmoz Page Strength tool is designed to satisfy the curiosity of search engine marketers seeking a better metric to quickly assess a site/page's value. And the SEOmoz IP Location Lookup determines the geographic location of an IP address using a bit of AJAX and Google Maps.

Next, for all the great bloggers who deserve to get corporate holiday gifts this year, I'm regifting the Blog Juice Calculator created by Text Link Ads. Barry Schwartz reviewed this fun little tool back in October.

The Blog Juice Calculator allows you to compare your blog with others based on Bloglines RSS subscriber data, Alexa rank, Technorati rank, and Technorati inlinks. It was the first “link bait” project by R. Marie Cox for Text Link Ads.

Finally, for the many, many conference speakers who I hang out with at Search Engine Strategies, WebmasterWorld, and AdTech, I plan to regift iStockphoto. Guy Kawasaki, a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, touted this collection of royalty-free images during his keynote presentation back in November at WebmasterWorld's PubCon in Las Vegas.

iStockphoto features photographs, vector illustrations, Flash files, and video clips. To search for images, just enter the keyword in the search box at the top. Web-ready images only cost $1 and video clips are available for as little as $5.

Okay, so maybe it's a little cheesy of me to be regifting free SEO tools, a free online calculator, and royalty-free images to friends and colleagues. But, try searching for something more creative than free holiday screensavers at this time of year. It ain't easy.

Next year, I plan to celebrate Festivus. It's got to be less hectic to participate in the “airing of grievances” and the “feats of strength” than it is to find cheap Christmas gift ideas or last-minute Hanukkah gifts for dozens of search engine marketers, great bloggers, and conference speakers.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on December 20, 2006, 2:54 PM | Permalink

MySpace creates "friends" for newspaper

Roy Greenslade of the Guardian Unlimited in the UK reports that a small newspaper in Scotland, the Fife Herald, set up its own MySpace page and recruited some 400 new "friends" within weeks. Adam Morris, one of the newspaper's staffers, notes: "It's a totally untapped market for local papers, and it opens up new lines of communication," especially among younger readers.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on December 20, 2006, 10:40 AM | Permalink

The Link Building Conundrum - Eric Ward's View

Over the past year, there has been much talk about link building, in most cases specifically related to buying links. As Barry discussed and I commented on last week, the most recent hotly discussed topic has been around the subject of reciprocal linking. According to some interpretations of the Google Blog post from last week, reciprocal linking is now an "official no-no" when it comes to Google's ranking algorithm.

Last night, Webmasterrardio.fm's show "The Pulse" included a guest speaker who is very well acquainted with linking: Eric Ward. Eric gave some great insight into his opinions on the subject of reciprocal linking and link building best practices.

Eric was welcomed to the show by Co-Hosts Barry Schwartz, Ben Pfeiffer, and me. He introduced himself and his history (find out more about his link building history), and discussed his approach to building links which he feels is a bit different from the “norm” these days. He understands the fear of reciprocal linking that is being raised by some of Google's recent statements. Yet he feels that is there is concern, then maybe the worried party should question why they built the reciprocal links to begin with.

The trouble, Eric feels, is when people enter into a reciprocal link engagement with the initial intent to fool or game the Google algorithm in order to improve the rank of the site. He feels that this was never the original intent of reciprocal linking, when the practice started before Google even existed. The key point, however, is that it is difficult for the search engines to determine intent in a reciprocal relationship without looking further.

Eric surmises that the algorithms need more than just the presence of a few reciprocal (A>B>A) links in order to determine intent. He gave some examples of ways that search engines may be able to look for what he calls “signals of intent,” such as looking for further links and finding the presence of link farms or other sites that have been flagged in the past. If they do, then they should possibly return to look more closely at other relationships.

Eric also briefly introduced what he calls the “Matt Cutts rule,” asking webmasters to consider if they would try to get a particular link with Matt Cutts sitting on their shoulder. When asked if there is a difference between penalization and devaluation (remembered that word today), Eric felt that it would be “foolish and reckless” of Google to penalize a site without some “pretty heavy analysis.” He notes that he has seen sites drop in rankings due to what he believes is a temporary devaluation of some links that had helped the site in the past, while Google investigates those sites further.

The last question asked was how he would pick a high quality link. He brought up an example of getting links from .edu top level domains. He suggested putting oneself in the search engine's position: can they trust the link even if from an .edu site? If the page has links to YouTube, MySpace, and Napster, for example, it is pretty likely that it is a student page, which may be cause for concern if a commercial link appears along side. However, if the page is obviously a part of a Veterinarian School, for example, the “algorithmic footprint” left by the page's other outbound links may indicate that it is more trustworthy. Great stuff.

Eric summarized by saying that people should understand that any tactic used for link building could lead to potential repercussions. There are places that sites should have links anyway, he recommends, regardless if the engine will give credit for them or not.

Added: I just noticed Rand's excellent post on this subject, which also led to Danny's equally detailed opinion.

Posted by Chris Boggs on December 20, 2006, 10:26 AM | Permalink

Visits by college students to MySpace power its lead in page views

comScore Networks has released a study that analyzes the impact of visits from university locations to the top two Web properties, Fox Interactive Media (which includes MySpace) and Yahoo!

College students account for 8% of all Web content consumed by U.S. Internet users, as measured in page views. At MySpace, the top Internet property in November on the basis of page views, 12% of content is viewed at university locations, while only 6% of page views at Yahoo! occurs at university locations.

If college student usage is omitted, the data tells a very different story: Yahoo!, with 35.6 billion page views for November, would rank higher than MySpace with 34.9 billion.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on December 20, 2006, 10:20 AM | Permalink

Podzinger Powers Search Capabilities for Thames Valley

Yesterday, Podzinger announced that it is powering the search for Thames Valley pod.tv This is Podzinger's first venture outside the United States. Podzinger expects to continue expanding its reach through similar partnerships.

Thames Valley pod.tv is the UK's fastest growing video podcast webTV site and provides commercially sponsored content in a variety of areas including art, music, cooking, gardening, and business.

Podzinger uses speech-to-text technology that creates a text index of the video sound track. With Podzinger, users through keyword searches can find keyword-specific content anywhere in either audios or videos. The searcher can jump directly to the point where their keyword is spoken without having to listen or view and entire audio or video clip. Instead of relying on a paragraph of text or a series of tags to describe the show, Podzinger directly searches the content.

Posted by Amanda Watlington on December 20, 2006, 8:44 AM | Permalink

YouTube and Google Video Subscriptions in Outlook Email

In October 2006 comScore Media Metrix ) reported that more than 63 million people worldwide, age 15 and over, visited YouTube.com. Fueling this growth are the 65,000 new videos being uploaded daily just to YouTube. Among the tools available for users looking for ways to manage the increasing flood of video content is the new inclue! Media Inbox, version 1.2 that integrates with the Outlook email program.

The inclue! Media Inbox is one of a few RSS (real simple syndication) readers that can be used with Outlook and Outlook Express. It includes features whereby users can enter a keyword search and get video updates delivered from Google Video and YouTube. Inclue! also supports audio. Viewers can create their own channels and view the videos or listen to the audio directly in Outlook.

You Tube and Google Video are all about sharing video experiences. The phenomenal growth of video-sharing sites and the number of videos being added to these sites daily has created a need for tools like inclue! that will enable users to better manage video content. Today, video content can be shared through email, embedded in blogs or posted to a site either as individual videos or as part of playlists. Viewers can subscribe to RSS feeds of their favorite video channels. They can even create their own playlists and receive alerts with tools like inclue!. when new video is posted.

Effective distribution and optimization of video content today relies heavily on the tagging that users add when posting a new video. The more accurate the tags are on each video, the easier the video is to find. With the growth of tools like inclue! it is incumbent on search marketers to develop a rich understanding of emerging tactics for video search optimization.

Posted by Amanda Watlington on December 20, 2006, 8:33 AM | Permalink

Wanted: Passionate Users. Pay: Much Less than Founder Money!

Danny Sullivan's approach to his "keynote conversations" with top executives at Search Engine Strategies conferences draws from Lord Nelson's favored strategy: "Never mind maneuvers, go straight at them!" His conversation with industry gadfly Jason Calacanis was true to form, both informing and entertaining the audience. Andrew Goodman attended the keynote and offers his always acerbic observations on the conversation in today's SearchDay article, A Keynote Conversation with Danny Sullivan and Jason Calacanis.

Posted by Chris Sherman on December 20, 2006, 2:26 AM | Permalink

BlowSearch Adds More Features

While it may be a small member of the search community, BlowSearch has provided some innovative elements to its products. They were leaders in the site exclusion for advertisers not wanting traffic from specific sites that did not convert for them.

Their email announcement today states:

The new reporting features include:
Traffic Source Selection has been directly integrated into the Traffic
Source Report page
Advanced report generation tools that allow you to select ad type,
campaign, listing and date range
One-click access from your campaign manager directly to the reporting
page for quicker access to campaign data
Added ability to export report data to Excel file
Combined multiple individual reports into single activity report for
improved ease-of-use and easier access to critical data

They have also enhanced their "Traffic Source Selection" tool.

Posted by Frank Watson on December 19, 2006, 4:41 PM | Permalink

Ask.com Using Ask X As Testing Ground

As the about page explains, this is Ask's "double-secret sandbox for testing Ask experiences of the future".

The layout is new with a tri-panel interface, similar somewhat to AskCity, another recently launched Ask addition.

Ask details the development below though when doing searches there were only 2 panels for a search of AussieWebmaster, one for Danny Sullivan brought all three.

# Left: A search control panel that stays with you, complete with Zoom Related Search and Search Suggestions that update as you type.

# Middle: Results front and center to provide clutter-free information without having to scroll down the page, and Binoculars to preview results.

# Right: A preview of other types of search results, including video, news, images, blogs, shopping, encyclopedia and more.

Posted by Frank Watson on December 19, 2006, 3:46 PM | Permalink

Flogs: fake blogs that pose as a consumer creation

Search marketers know all about splogs -- spam blogs. Well, there's a new term to add to our growing glossary of terms.

Stuart Elliott of The New York Times tipped his cap yesterday to Tom Siebert, a reporter for MediaPost, for coining the word “flog.” A flog is "a fake blog that poses as a consumer creation but is actually produced by professionals to sell products."

Another flog was exposed last week, when bloggers discovered that a video blog that praised the Sony PSP was created by Zipatoni, an agency. The video blog pretended to be the work of Charlie, an amateur hip-hop artist.

Other notorious flogs include the ones created earlier this year by Edelman on behalf of Wal-Mart. One flog posed as the travel diary of a couple, but didn't disclose that they were being paid for their positive posts. The deception earned a rebuke from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association for violating its code of ethics.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on December 19, 2006, 2:53 PM | Permalink

Malicious Tagging and the Slippery Slope

Malicious tagging is defined as "injecting keywords or for self-promotion in general." We wonder where the slippery slope begins on this one.

See this announcement for papers at upcoming AIR conference.

The fight continues against adversarial information retrieval (AIR), which is more commonly known as spamdexing. All to be applauded, but what about malicious tagging in general? Yes, you get irrelevant garbage. You know it when you see it, right? Thinking about what constitutes malicious tagging is worth time and effort.

What about making sure we don't create "type II errors" where tagging is incorrectly treated as malicious? What if you are...selling 10,000 different items that are all the same thing? Advertising geographically-based businesses? Researching a topic and sharing it with colleagues? Enjoying a special but very common hobby?

It seems like tagging makes sense and might seem malicious as you spread the joy. We'd like to know where and when this transforms from a good thing exactly.

Posted by on December 19, 2006, 1:37 PM | Permalink

Does this MSN Behavioral Search Matter?

Read the latest from MSN about its Behavioral Search, in recent MediaPost interview.

It's interesting that behavioral search produced CTRs up to 76% higher than before. This is still based on whomever signs up for Passport. Call me ignorant, but this seems like a small and maybe even unrepresentative group. Let's say it is better than NOT having a group who self-reports age, sex and even more about their interests. Is it valid to connect the interests and searches back to these profiles for people who don't participate in Passport?

Posted by on December 19, 2006, 1:28 PM | Permalink

Insider Training

Another leftover from Chicago SES. SEMPO's In-House group held a quick get-together in Chicago. For those who figured out where this meeting room was located, they were able to gather away from the vendors and consultants. They heard about the steady rise in company-managed SEM efforts from Duane Forrester. SEMPO is seeking to extend its training efforts and incorporate more practical training for company insiders, check out the training group at SEMPO.org.

Posted by on December 19, 2006, 1:21 PM | Permalink

SimplyHeadlines.com emerges from "stealth mode"

SimplyHeadlines, which calls itself “the Newspaper for the Extremely Busy,” emerged from stealth mode earlier this month with the launch of Version 2.0.

SimplyHeadlines is a free, personalized daily email newspaper featuring news from thousands of diverse sources such as the New York Times, iVillage, Men's Health, Bloomberg, BBC and Defamer, among others. Unlike similar services, users can also add non-news related items, such as local weather, personalized stock quotes, keyword news clipping, comics, sudoku and other features to make SimplyHeadlines their customized, personal newspaper.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on December 19, 2006, 11:42 AM | Permalink

Digg extends its reach beyond news

Oliver Luft of journalism.co.uk reports that Digg has "spread its reach beyond news stories to begin rating and aggregating podcasts."

Digg, which gets 10 million unique users a month, has also introduced a Top 10 Stories feature which allows users to see the most popular stories at any given time, including stories that are no longer on the home page but are still receiving votes and are topics of discussion.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on December 19, 2006, 11:30 AM | Permalink

Mixing user-submitted content and traditional content

Bambi Francisco of MarketWatch says, "Navel-gazers will be the stars in 2007."

Or, to put her cryptic headline into context, "Today, however perilous it may be, businesses are relying more on the audience, or the user -- to use the au courant term -- to tap into their self-absorbed, I-am-somebody, navel-gazing inclinations. Turn your readers into writers, is one of the mantras of Wikia, a wiki-hosting service."

Well, flaming your readers is one way to boost the number of comments on your blog, I guess.

But, if you can get past the provocative opening, her commentary is full of some interesting news nuggets, including this one: "About 30% of online news site Topix.net comes from user-generated or reader comments. That's expected to jump to about 50% next year, Topix.net's CEO Rich Skrenta tells me."

Now, you won't get an argument from me about that.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on December 19, 2006, 11:10 AM | Permalink

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of CSS, Ajax and Web2.0

The buzzwords in the title of this post are transforming web design, letting web sites offer slick new interfaces with lots of interactivity and sizzle. But they can also have an impact on the visibility of a site to search engines, potentially impacting rankings. Today's SearchDay article, Web 2.0 Technologies and Search Visibility, covers a recent Search Engine Strategies panel that focused on these issues.

Posted by Chris Sherman on December 19, 2006, 2:22 AM | Permalink

Searches Up, Dude! Ask.com Sponsors Surf Contest

Search and surfing will converge in Half Moon Bay, California in early 2007, when the Mavericks Surf Contest takes place. Known to surf pros and fans of the sport as the world's premiere big-wave surf event, this season's contest offers everyone the chance to surf Ask.com for all the details and get a variety of results from various Ask sources, including maps and directions online or via Ask.com Mobile search.

"Ask.com® is excited to be an integral part of the preeminent big-wave surfing event, and, as a leading search engine, to be the official go-to source for information for all things Mavericks," said Greg Ott, vice president of marketing. A quick search for Mavericks Surf Contest on Ask.com® will give fans quick access to webcasts and viewing locations, videos, bios on the surfers and the history of the event. In addition, with Ask.com® and Ask.com Mobile(tm), fans can find Mavericks images, news, maps, walking and driving directions, blogs and other information across the Web for fans everywhere. "We're excited to support this great surfing event, as well as to be a resource for all the Mavericks fans," remarked Ott.

On just 24 hours notice between January 1 and March 31, 2007, 24 legendary big-wave surfers will make the pilgrimage to the treacherous Mavericks surf break to compete for the famed title, and $75,000 in prizes to be distributed to the top surfers.

Surfers and fans alike can track the waves and stay informed on contest announcements at the official website maverickssurf.com.

Note: You would think that I got this info directly from Ask.com, since I receive a lot of press releases from the search engines, but no -- this one actually came from an PR company who has me on their list as an action sports journalist. So I just had to post since it was related to my two favorite things: search and outdoor sports.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski on December 18, 2006, 5:42 PM | Permalink

Yahoo! Helps Children's Charity Search Engine For Christmas

DonorsChoose.org and DonorsChooseGift.org got a visit from a purple-clad Santa this week.

In place of the gifts they usually give to their high-end customers, Yahoo! turned to the charity search engine and sent gift cards of donations to the charity of your choice.

The people seeking donations are various school based requests for aid that teachers from around the US make through the Donors Choose interface.

"Teachers ask. You choose. Students learn." is the slogan.

The cobranded card congratulated the recipients. "you have received a DonorsChoose gift certificate. At our not-for-profit web site, public school teachers submit propsals for materials or experiences their students need to learn. These proposals become classroom reality when concerned individuals like you choose one to fund," the card read.

The site allows you to search propsals by location or area of interest. Simple but clever, this idea could take off - after I used the gift card donation code I went back and gave a little more.

Hopefully this one becomes contagious.

Posted by Frank Watson on December 18, 2006, 4:49 PM | Permalink

Kevin Rose Launches New Look For Digg Homepage

Digg just had a remodel. As Kevin Rose describes in his blog today, the site no longer uses fixed widths, while prominent spots have been made for podcasts and videos.

With new separate sections for News, Videos and Podcasts, finding what you want will be quicker, Rose said.

Rose includes a video explaining the changes and can be seen at his blog.

Posted by Frank Watson on December 18, 2006, 3:57 PM | Permalink

Google Officially Says "No" to Reciprocal Linking?

Barry again had the scoop on a hot story over the weekend which has spawned a discussion in the WebmasterWorld Forums. On Friday, there was a post from Stephanie from the Dublin Google Search Quality team at the Google Blog (en Francais aussi - si chouette!) regarding "Building link based popularity." As mentioned, the topic has started a heated discussion at WMW, but the post really isn't stating anything completely new, in the opinion of some.

The Google Blog post provides essentially the same rhetoric that has been being fed through Matt Cutts' blog and the Google blog, as well as at conferences, to SEOs and webmasters alike over the past year by Google: don't buy links or participate in link schemes. It seems as if Google is hinting that they are now officially incorporating within their algorithm something which seeks out reciprocal links as well as link networks. Again, this isn't really new news, and savvy SEO's are either incorporating this possibility into their strategy or ignoring it – assuming that this is possibly a Google smoke screen used to try and minimize the SPAM found in their results from people that are experts at clandestinely leveraging links for rankings.

The focus on this post seems to be on the subject of reciprocal links, however. In the WMW thread, many posters bring up the idea that reciprocal links have been around far longer than Google itself, and that it is impossible for Google to judge the intent of every reciprocal relationship. If Google wants webmasters to link to relevant sites, there are many cases, especially in the SEO industry for example, where reciprocal links may occur purely for the purpose of giving the user more relevant content. Site owners should probably not be penalized for willing to exchange links in this relevant and helpful manner.

Google will likely respond that is that is the case, people should use the “no follow” attribute to ensure that the search engine doesn't assume that the link was obtained for the purpose of trying to improve PageRank and potentially actual results pages rankings. This is however not a realistic expectation. SEO's, as with any other industry, would probably prefer that any link may have the dual purpose of both helping with traffic as well as with rankings. Would Google be willing to give as much credence in their algorithm for on topic links that are attributed by “nofollow?” If not, then asking webmasters to employ them unilaterally is probably unfair.

Again, this is just an opinion, but for Google to not be clear about exactly what types of link exchanges and schemes they consider to be against the rules isn't really helping SEOs and webmasters. They have had an excellent year in helping marketers, especially with the improvement of the Sitemaps system and release of the Webmaster Tools portal, but these constant smoke screens about linking seem to indicate more of a problem in dealing with identifying valuable links than they may care to admit.

Posted by Chris Boggs on December 18, 2006, 2:26 PM | Permalink

Google AdSense Outlaws Pics By Ads

The Google AdSense team sent out a letter today detailling their new position on using images to draw attention to the ads on a publishers page.

"We ask that publishers not line up images and ads in a way that suggests a relationship between the images and the ads. If your visitors believe that the images and the ads are directly associated, or that the advertiser is offering the exact item found in the neighboring image, they may click the ad expecting to find something that isn't actually being offered. That's not a good experience for users or advertisers," the email stated.

The information can also be found at the Inside Adsense blog.

Details and examples are given so people cannot mistake what is being discussed.

Posted by Frank Watson on December 18, 2006, 2:21 PM | Permalink

2006 Top Searches

Following Yahoo's release on December 4 of its top searches for 2006, last week AOL, Lycos and MSN Live released their top searches for the year 2006. Google still has their 2005 review at Zeitgeist, along with recent monthly totals. Ask.com presents weekly lists, but has yet to release a 2006 year in review.

A closer look at these lists reveals some interesting questions about the differences in the data from engine to engine.

Looking at the slight differences between this data can be an interesting project, and can probably yield some good insight into both the user demographics of each of the engines

Paris Hilton is an interesting example to use in showing how search engines classify types of searches. In Yahoo! and in AOL, Paris is listed as a celebrity, yet she is found in top News searches for MSN Live. Does this mean that people search Live's (formerly search.msn.com) News category when they look for everyone's favorite socialite?

More can undoubtedly be read into the top overall searches reported for each portal. AOL reports: "weather" (does this mean they included all weather-inclusive searches or just the term "weather?"); Yahoo! says Britney Spears is number one (hmm...wonder if that includes people misspelling it?); MSN Live claims that the world wanted to know about Ronaldinho more than anyone or thing else; and Lycos puts Poker at number one. Again, others can fill in the blanks as to what they think the demographics most closely associated with each portal are.

It will be interesting to see what the top Google searches are. It would also be nice to have some more details as to how many misspellings were included in searches and perhaps how many of the searches for each top term were actually contained in a longer keyword phrase.

See also the discussions about this at the Yahoo! Search Blog, and the MSN Blog post that introduced their list. AOL has opened up the floor for discussion at the AOL Search Blog (thanks Susan for the link!). Lycos provides a platform for discussion which can be found at the Lycos 50 Blog. (Thanks Carolyn!)

(Note this story was edited after I discovered that Paris Hilton did make the top celebrity list at AOL. For some reason I missed that originally. Apologies to the AOL team for this oversight. CB)

Posted by Chris Boggs on December 18, 2006, 10:58 AM | Permalink

Google Buys Swiss Mapping Company

Adding to the Google Maps and Earth, Endoxon was acquired by Google today. The Swiss-based mapping company offers Google a base of operations in Europe to further their mapping division.

Endoxon also provides the mapping for the Swiss local search engine, local.ch, that launched this year.

The addition also brings experienced personnel in the European market which will help Google develop their mapping of Europe.

Google announced the acquisition today.

Posted by Frank Watson on December 18, 2006, 10:46 AM | Permalink

Keyword Research Best Practices

Barry pointed out a great response to thread at Search Engine Watch forums by Paid Search Guru Ian McAnerin. A member had asked Forum visitors which industries they "would not touch with a 10 foot SEO pole?"

Ian answers led to some additional excellent discussion at SEW and a couple of gems in the SER comments.

Keyword research is a topic that is considered to be very basic by many in the SEO and Paid Search fields. This is likely due to the fact that it has been one of the few constants since the early days of SEO, when tools began to appear that were geared towards finding the right keywords. Since, many writing about the subject have indicated the same core needs: relevancy and popularity, including Danny from way back when, Kevin Lee, Shari Thurow, and most recently Christine Churchill.

Ian's post at Search Engine Watch makes three main points: First that some industries may be too difficult to venture into without specialized experience; secondly, you may not want to venture into some industries due to business concerns (he cites Realtors as being especially “difficult” when it comes to payment or buying in to the value); and lastly that your personal belief set may be in conflict with the particular industry, such as Hate or Porn sites, for example.

Ian comment raised some good follow up questions, and he defends his opinion that one should “cut their teeth” by targeting more localized terms. The whole topic leads well to a discussion of the core competency of keyword research. When venturing into a new space, it is likely that many SEO's are at a slight disadvantage due to being unfamiliar with terms. When deciding on whether to accept a project, it actually takes a fair amount of diligence on the part of any SEO; otherwise they may be simply saying “sure we'll get you ranked.” This could be an alarm signal.

Using geo-modified keywords as the target can also prove to be difficult if not properly done. In some cases, there may be a majority of searchers using the city or town before the more general term (i.e.: Timbuktu hotel) while in others, people may use it more often after the term. The fact is that without excellent and trusted keyword research, only trial and error will lead to the required log files that report the actual activity. This trial and error period can be greatly eased by having an unlimited paid search budget to run all keywords on broad match across all engines for at least 2 or three months. Unfortunately not everyone has the budget to do that. However, running these types of campaigns on a local basis may be somewhat helpful.

One comment that was very insightful at the SER blog was that “generally the most competitive websites have the highest cost in PPC advertising. Find the biggest spenders and you have the stiffest competition.” Although this is a generalization, it holds fairly true. When making a decision as to whether to venture into an industry for SEO, a quick check of the results pages for Paid Search listings can save a good amount of time for small SEO/SEM shops.

Posted by Chris Boggs on December 18, 2006, 9:09 AM | Permalink

NHN Corp Has Expansion Plans Starting With Japanese Search

NHN Corp, whose sites include Naver the leading Korean search engine, announced expansion plans starting with the Japanese market, according to an Associated Press report.

Naver uses a community based method for its search results with users helping each other find answers. This method works well within the Asian culture, according to the NHN CEO.

"In the search sector, we can provide users with a meaningful service based on a social and cultural foundation," NHN CEO Chae Hwi-young said. "In this regard, Japan could be a model very similar to South Korea. I believe Japan is where we can excel more than anywhere else."

NHN also plans to enter the English, Chinese, Arabic, Vietnamese and other markets.

The Japanese engine will launch late 2007.

Posted by Frank Watson on December 18, 2006, 12:15 AM | Permalink

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