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October 2005

October 31, 2005

Looking at the Upcoming Holiday Shopping Season at Yahoo Shopping

In his non-stop series of interviews with influential people in the shopping search biz, Brian Smith from ComparisonEngines.com has posted a recent chat with Rob Solomon & Chris Saito from Yahoo Shopping that looks at Y's plans for the holiday shopping season including talk of Yahoo's new mobile shopping tool (launched in September) and their Shopping Gift Finder that became available in the Spring.

From the interview:

Q. How do you expect most people to shop – browse or search?

Rob: “People are still doing both, but search is a much bigger driver; people end up on the site through search queries, search engine optimization (SEO), and search engine marketing (SEM). More people start in a search destination and then get into search and browse. Probably 65-70% of people are searching,”

Chris: “Certain categories lend themselves to browsing – like apparel. Browse is driven by category.”

Rob: “We view vertical search as one of the most important things that we’re doing. Browsing is a big


Btw, on an somewhat unrelated note, I taught a class today and Yahoo Shopping SmartSort (now two years old) continues to "wow" them when demonstrated. It's also great to see that Yahoo continues to update the reviews that the service uses. Yahoo Mindset from Yahoo Research, released in May, uses the same type of interface and intent-driven technology.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:14 PM | Permalink

AllRecipes.com Cooks Up Smart Searches for Ask.com

I recently blogged that Ask Jeeves was offering a new Smart Search with direct links to recipes from the AllRecipes.com database. Today, the Dayton Business Journal offers a profile of this recipe/cooking vertical.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:46 PM | Permalink

The Yahoo Media Content Beat: Harry Potter Exclusive Video Clip and New Content from "The Week"

A couple of quick items from the Yahoo media content beat.

First, Yahoo is the exclusive home of a new video clip from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire film.

Second, The Week will produce, "a daily roundup of print and online business news" for Yahoo Finance, according to Crain's NY Business.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:20 PM | Permalink

Special Logos From Engines For a "Scary" Halloween

Spooky and scary logos from Ask Jeeves, Google, and Yahoo today for Halloween.

AJ Baseball

AJ Baseball

AJ Baseball

Posted by Gary Price at 8:43 PM | Permalink

Review: Google and Yahoo Hiring Booms

Those of you who look at our blog regularly know that we try to post interesting and "telling" job openings at Google, Yahoo, and elsewhere. Chris has already blogged about Google WILL hire programs to support Open Office despite reports to the contrary. That's part of the story. This afternoon, Elinor Mills at News.com talks about the hiring rampages at both Google and Yahoo in the article: Google hiring like it's 1999.

In its most recent quarter, which ended Sept. 30, Google added 800 employees, bringing its global work force to 4,989. That's more than triple the total from just two years ago.

Btw, Google employed 2668 as of Sept 30, 2004.

According to Hoover's, Yahoo had more than 7600 employees in 2004, growing about 38%.

Here's a quick review of a few (and I mean just a few) recent Google and Yahoo job related stories and employment postings from various sources:
+ Via News.com: Google Hires New Public-Affairs Chief
+ Via News.com: Google hires another China exec

+ Via SEW Blog: Google Hiring Mac Developers
+ Via SEW Blog: Google Begins Hiring for Some Sort of Facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan
+ Via SEW Blog: Google Seeks Sales Team For Payment Solution
+ Via SEW Blog: Google TV Job Posting: Gone After a Day Online

And some very recent postings:
+ Google: Creative Maximizer Coordinator
Now, that's a job title! Work in Chicago!
+ Google: Gmail Coordinator and Froogle Coordinators (Temp Jobs)
+ Google: Inside Sales Representative, Google Payment Solutions - New York
+ Google: Google Earth Inside Sales Representative

+ Yahoo: AJAX Web Developer - My Yahoo
+ Yahoo: Senior Editor, Yahoo! Tech: Yahoo! Inc
+ Yahoo: Yahoo! Research Scientist, Search Content Analysis Team
+ Yahoo: Product Manager, Yahoo! Search Submit
+ Yahoo: Product Manager, Yahoo! Global Search Syndication
+ Yahoo: Principal Software Engineer - Chinese Search Technology
+ Yahoo: Director, UED for PC Client -- Yahoo!

Posted by Gary Price at 7:59 PM | Permalink

Is Google Ad-Server Shopping?

The New York Times gave Google about a million miles of ink this weekend with Google Wants to Dominate Madison Avenue, Too [subscription required].

Does the search (and everything else) giant have designs to dominate online ad serving, too? We've heard tell that (in alphabetical order) Bachelor #1 is Accipter; Bachelor #2 is Doubleclick's DART; and Bachelor #3 is Falk.

None of the parties involved are commenting, of course. Yet the potential of that sort of acquisition is anything but far-fetched. Sure, Google has stated interest in making deeper inroads into print advertising, and is dropping tantalizing hints about television -- not to mention Google Base.

All this without yet having the ability to serve a wide variety of display advertising online? It can't be long now before they buy -- or make -- some sort of solution.

Pamela Parker reminded me of the cross-platform possibilities such an acquisition would afford. All these companies can serve ads to wireless or iTV platforms (or have at least said they can).

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Looksmart Goes Vertical

Looksmart is turning itself into an About.com style portal, launching 161 vertical search sites in 12 categories including automotive, cities, food, health, home, sports and travel. Unlike About, Lookmart's vertical sites are not put together by human editors, but are assembled using technology.

"We decided if we could do this on a highly automated basis, we thought it would be a very good business," Looksmart CEO Dave Hills (also former COO and president of sales at About) told ClickZ's Pamela Parker.

The company continues to run its paid search and contextual advertising network.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:57 PM | Permalink

IBM, Google Partner on Enterprise Search

IBM plans to integrate its OmniFind corporate search system with Google's free desktop search and make the package available to enterprise search customers. Infoworld reports:

By linking the IBM enterprise search system with Google's PC search tool, users will be able to search for information not only on corporate repositories, such as databases, content management systems, applications and the open Web, but also on their desktops.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:47 PM | Permalink

Google Working on Open Office, After All

Despite recent articles claiming that a Sun-Google hosted desktop productivity suite and common operating system, "is way off base," word comes today that Google plans to hire programmers to improve OpenOffice.org, the Sun developed Microsoft Office counterpart.

It sounds like a typical tentative first-step for Google. From the News.com article:

"We want to hire a couple of folks to help make OpenOffice better," DiBona said.

Google has shown an affinity for open-source software, which are programs developed in the open and available for free. Many of the company's programmers came of age in the open-source era, so advancing the open-source agenda comes naturally, DiBona said. But the company also has business reasons to justify its open-source embrace.

"We use a fair amount of open-source software at Google. We want to make sure that's a healthy community. And we want to make sure open source preserves competitiveness within the industry," he said.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:35 PM | Permalink

Checking Out Books in Libraries

Many libraries throughout the world offer online access to their catalogs. The oddly-named RedLightGreen taps into thousands of these catalogs, allowing you to find books on any imaginable subject, and then do very interesting things with your search results. Gary Price offers a rundown of this alternative to Google Scholar in today's SearchDay article, Searching for Library Books with RedLightGreen.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:12 AM | Permalink

October 30, 2005

The "About" Yahoo Search Page

Not sure if I'm late to the party on this one but I just noticed that Yahoo offers this page that lists all of Yahoo's seach services. The page has a section for searchers (links to tips, options, Yahoo Next, etc.) and another set of links for "site owners" (webmaster info, ad info). The page also has a links to the Yahoo Search Blog, job openings, press mentions, and more.

Don't forget that Yahoo also offers this A-Z index of their entire range of services.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:35 PM | Permalink

Google Wants to Make TV Ads More Relevant

Well, what would a weekend be without some good ol' solid Google speculation? According to the New York Times article: Google Wants to Dominate Madison Avenue, Too Google wants to use its technology to make ads on TV (and just about everywhere else) more relevant. Thanks to Nick for the heads-up on the article.

As Nick points out, it's a good read. Here are just a few points that caught my attention:

...Google is also preparing to disrupt the advertising business itself, by replacing creative salesmanship with cold number-crunching. Its premise so far is that advertising is most effective when seen only by people who are interested in what's for sale, based on what they are searching for or reading about on the Web. Because Google's ad-buying clients pay for ads only when users click on them, they can precisely measure their effectiveness - and are willing to pay more for ads that really sell their products.
Now it [Google] is preparing to extend its technology to nearly every other medium, most significantly television. It is looking toward a world of digital cable boxes and Internet-delivered television that will allow it to show commercials tailored for each viewer, as it does now for each Web page it displays.
This proposition, he [Eric Schmidt] continued, is applicable to other media. "If we can figure out a way to improve the quality of ads on television with ads that have real value for end-users, we should do it," he said. While he is watching television, for example, "Why do I see women's clothing ads?" he said. "Why don't I see just men's clothing ads?" --Eric Schmidt

Posted by Gary Price at 1:01 PM | Permalink

October 28, 2005

New Yahoo MyWeb 2.0 Bookmarklet & Blog Post Link

Kudos to Nick (of Threadwatch fame) on the creation of a Yahoo! MyWeb 2.0 Bookmarklet & Blog Post tool. Nick's even made the source code available. Happy saving and tagging.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:55 PM | Permalink

Word-of-iPod

iPods owners are significantly more likely to create and spread online consumer-generated media (CGM), and that will likely increase with the incorporation of video content into their iPods, says Intelliseek.

From the study:

"iPod users are twice as likely to have authored a blog than consumers who do not own MP3 players, and they outpace other MP3 owners on creating and posting content online. iPod users are also 2.5 times as likely to exchange text messages on cellular phones (59% vs. 24% of non-owners), three times as likely to take photos with a camera phone (45% vs. 15%), and three times as likely to download video clips and movies to a personal computer (47% versus 16%)."

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How Much Is Your Blog Worth?

Ever wonder about the dollar value of your blog? Dane Carlson built a caluculator on Technorati's API to ostensibly figure out the worth of your blog, based on Tristan Louis' recent research.

This blog is valueless, according to the tool.

Oh, well.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Search Forums Roundup: Oct. 28, 2005

Today's SearchDay,

Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Base, Classified Ads? - Is "Jagger" A Major Google Marketing Error? - Tracking Your AdSense Statistics - New Keyword Popularity Tool Debuts, and more.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:09 AM | Permalink

Accessing Flight Info on the Web

Since we first blogged about Google offering direct links to online travel databases (Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz) a few days ago if city pairs are placed in the web search box, others have picked up on yet another Google test.  The new service is primarily about accessing pricing info, timetables etc.  This is DIFFERENT than the flight info "shortcuts", "Smart Answers," etc., that most of the major web engines, the airlines themselves, and others have been offering for several years.

For example, if you enter an airline and flight number into Yahoo, Google, or Ask Jeeves info about where the flight is located and when it will be landing is provided. Most of this data applies to flights in the U.S./Canada aviation system. So, if it's a European flight heading to the U.S. or Canada it should be in there. Exceptions do exist and not every service provides access to every airline.

Here are a few examples:

Other services, aside from the airline sites themselves, provide near real-time tracking info with data direct from FAA computers and other sources.
Examples:

Need mobile flight tracking info?  Here are a few options

Airport Delays and Status (U.S. Only)

Postscript: Thanks to reader Neurophys, here's what it likely to become my favorite web based flight tracking tool, FlightAware. Impressive!!!

Posted by Gary Price at 2:34 AM | Permalink

October 27, 2005

Reading About Search Marketing

Most people in the search marketing business learned how to do it by plunging directly into a search optimization or advertising campaign, and adjusting and adapting on the fly. Until recently, there were few good books that offered advice for newcomers.

That's changing, and I've recently reviewed a bunch of good search marketing books. Part two of my collection of search-related book reviews, A Compilation of Search Marketing Book Reviews, looks at ten books that even pros can benefit from reading.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:49 AM | Permalink

Cool! 3-D Imagery of the Moon Now Available via NASA's World Wind

Before Google Earth and Google Satellite began receiving the well deserved attention it receives each day, a similar 3-D open source, imagery program named World Wind was online providing access to aerial and satellite imagery from a variety of sources. If you're interested in learning more, I blogged this interesting app back in April. So, you might be wondering why I'm bringing it up again? Two words, new content! Yesterday, at the NASA Ames Lab in California, 3-D imagery of the moon was released for the World Wind platform. World Wind is free software to download and use.

The newly expanded NASA 'World Wind' computer program can 'transport' Web users to almost anyplace on the moon, when they zoom in from a global view to closer pictures of our natural satellite taken by the Clementine spacecraft in the 1990s. Computer programmers at NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley originally designed the World Wind program to deliver satellite images and data of Earth to the Internet..."We have just digested the best of the Clementine images, so we can now deliver the moon at 66 feet (20 meters) of resolution," said Patrick Hogan, manager of the World Wind Project Office at NASA Ames. "This is a first. No one has ever explored our moon in the 3-D interactive environment that World Wind creates," noted Hogan.

More about this new 3-D imagery and World Wind here. A World Wind wiki is also available.

Postscript: Now word on if/when this content will be available from other sources. Of course, we do know that a certain search engine has recently announced a deal to open a research center at the NASA Ames facility.

Postscript 2: Of course, Google Moon is one of many sources of imagery of the moon.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:39 AM | Permalink

Google Tweaks Web Search Features Page With Info About Inline Image Results

Since many of you follow every one of Google's move (even the very small ones), I thought I would toss out a small tweak that they made to their Web Search Features page today. The page now includes a mention of "inline" image results (from Google Images) being available in some cases at the top of Google Web Search results pages.

Actually, this is NOT a new feature but one that has been around since the beginning of the year. The page also points out the using terms like "pics [baseball], pictures [dogs] or images [bridges] in your query will almost always return images at the top of web results pages.

The concept of including inline image results on web results pages, if certain trigger words are used, is not new. Ask Jeeves has been offering this feature since 2003.

Yahoo does much the same. However, Yahoo takes it a step further and allow a small amount of natural language in the query string to bring back more precise results on image results pages and on some web results pages. Examples and more explanation here.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:24 AM | Permalink

October 26, 2005

Locating Haunted Houses with MSN Virtual Earth

Just in time for time for Halloween, members of the the Virtual Earth team (aka the Poly9 boys) have used a bunch of different sources and MSN Virtual Earth technology to build the "Haunted Map." It shows where haunted houses can be found all over the USA. Think of it as a geek treat for your Halloween trick-or-treat bag.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:24 PM | Permalink

Two from Yahoo: Plan a Trip With Yahoo and Print Flickr Images

Two news items from Sunnyvale (aka Yahoo HQ) this afternoon.

  • The Yahoo Search Blog has news of the Yahoo Trip Travel Planner (beta). Now, if I could find some time to take a trip. Basically, in just a few clicks create a personalized travel guide ready for printing. It sure would be nice in future releases you could download your guide to your PDA or Smartphone. Like many thing Yahoo, it's very easy to share travel guides with friends and other Yahoo users. I'm looking forward to diving more deeply into this one soon.

Posted by Gary Price at 7:18 PM | Permalink

Bill Gates Visits The Holy Land and Talks Search

The AP article: Gates Promises Tough Battle With Google, includes comments from Bill G. while in Israel.

He acknowledged the intense competition with Google, which dominates the highly profitable market for Web searches. But Gates said Web-search technology still has room to improve. "Internet search as it is today will be dramatically better in a few years, whether it's us or Google," he said. "We're both going to be making dramatic improvements there."

This is just about the same thing Bill G. told News.com at the beginning of the year when he said that the search of today is "nothing."

See Also: Gates Talks Google (via News.com)

See Also: Microsoft's Ballmer on Chair Throwing and Competing with Google

See Also: Full Text of Steve Ballmer's Recent Keynote Interview at Gartner/IT Expo

Posted by Gary Price at 6:58 PM | Permalink

Award Winning Jux2 Meta Engine Sells on eBay for over $100,000

The eBay auction for the award-winning Jux2 meta search engine (also a great tool for checking search engine overlap) has just ended and the winning bid was for $101,100 (Wow!!!) by a bidder named 3vCap. Congrats to Aaref Hilaly and the rest of the Jux2 team. For more about the now completed Jux2 auction (what was actually for sale, what you didn't get, etc.), see my post from about a week ago.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:47 PM | Permalink

2005 Eyeblaster Awards: Voting Open

Cast your vote for this year's Eyeblaster Creative Awards.

The '05 awards are divided into North American and international categories. Nominees of the, er, domestic variety include Liquid Advertising for Bard’s Tale and The Hulk, Modem Media for Delta, Peel Interactive for McDonald’s Dollar Double Cheeseburger, and True North for The Incredibles and Scrubs Season One. Overseas entries include The White Agency in Australia for NRL Bigpond, Feref UK for Ray, and Tyo Interactive in Japan for Maxell.

ClickZ is the EB Awards' returning media sponsor. The ceremony happens November 8 at the Show Nightclub on 41st street.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cheerioke

A new sub-chapter in the marriage of phone to Web. General Mills' Cheerioke lets you call in a song and then watch an avatar of your own design sing the recording back.

It's a viral play most cute and disturbing. And like many virals, the brand connetion is thin. "Start your morning on a high note." Yikes.

I sang a very bad rendition of "I Think We're Alone Now." I was afraid my cubicle neighbors would hear. I'm thinking office paranoia may deter widespread participation here.

Avatars are courtesy of Oddcast. Points go to those folks for upgrading the look of their virtual characters.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google Makes Digitized Archive of Interviews with TV Legends Available Online

Can a day go by without Google making an announcement? I'm not so sure.

Today's news from Mountain Viewis that more fully viewable content is now available on Google. Television lovers and historians are going to be, well, thrilled. Google is beginning to digitize an archive of interviews of key people in tv history. Google is working with the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation to digitize and make accessible interviews from the Foundation's Archive of American Television. Access to the content is free.

What's currently available? Some pretty cool stuff (assuming you're interested in television history).
Interviews include:

  • William Shatner

  • Alan Alda

  • Sid Caesar

  • Diahann Carroll

  • Ossie Davis

  • Phyllis Diller

  • Michael J. Fox

  • Andy Griffith

  • Florence Henderson

  • Angela Lansbury

  • Dick Van Dyke

  • Betty White

  • James Garner

  • Norman Lear

  • Grant Tinker,

  • Dick Wolf

  • Steven Bochco

At this point, the first 75 of the 284 historic films (which equals to about 240 viewing hours) can be watched on Google Video at http://video.google.com. To access include the search terms [academy of television] in your Google Video search query.

Kudos to Google for making this type of content available. I hope other services begin digitizing and making more accessible the thousands of hours of archived interviews, lectures, and more.

Postscript: Philipp let me know via email that this new content is not visible in Germany.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:00 AM | Permalink

Daily SearchCast On Hiatus Until Nov. 8; Webmaster Radio Hit Hard By Hurricane Wilma

As I blogged earlier, I'm on vacation this week, as is Chris Sherman while Gary Price is travelling at a conference. Despite his traveling, Gary was going to diligently keep the Daily SearchCast going this week, and we were considering having a guest host do it next week when both Gary and I were gone. However, Hurricane Wilma hit our podcasting partner Webmaster Radio hard. They're based out of Fort Lauderdale. Daron and gang over there have evacuated to Orlando. His home was one of the few in his neighborhood that came out OK, but the lack of services meant they needed to get out. For you Webmaster Radio listeners, Daron tells music will continue throughout this week, then shows should begin returning next week depending on how conditions develop. As for the Daily SearchCast, it will be back on November 8, when I've returned from vacation and hopefully (and everyone in Fort Lauderdale and South Florida) are more on their feet. And just in case we've got people who only get news about the podcast by listening to it, here's a short MP3 file that recaps what I just wrote.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:12 AM | Permalink

Microsoft Announces MSN Book Search; Joins Open Content Alliance

Microsoft, yes good old Gates, Ballmer and crew, are getting in on the online books digitization game and more. I can't say that I'm totally surprised. When Google first announced Google Print and then expanded the program to Google Print for Libraries last December, I wondered if/when Microsoft would get in on the book digitization act. Well, today is the day. Here are a few facts that I just learned via a news release and a call with Microsoft's GM of Search Content Acquisitions, Danielle Tiedt.

Here Comes MSN Book Search
MSN will launch MSN Book Search (MSNBS) sometime in first half of 2006. In the early stages, MSNBS will be found as a separate vertical on the MSN Search page (just like Image, News, etc.) but eventually MSN hopes to include book results in web results pages.

The material that MSNBS will come from the Open Content Alliance (OCA) that Microsoft is formally joining today.

Yahoo and others are also part of the OCA. A few weeks ago, OCA's man in charge, Brewster Kahle, asked for more in the participation in the alliance and it looks like he got some from a heavy hitter.

As expected, the first materials that will be available via MSN Book Search will be content in the public domain coming via the OCA database.

According to Tiedt, Microsoft has currently committed to fund the scanning of 150K books. In the case of these books (public domain content), Microsoft is making deals on their own with libraries (we don't know which ones) who will provide the content. Then, some (but not all of this material, depending on the library and the actual content) will be available as part of the OCA database. Every library that provides a copy of the book for scanning will also recieve a file for local use.

The Internet Archive will handle all of the scanning for the entire project. In terms of who hosts what, those details need to be worked out between MSN, Yahoo and likely others. Remember, as was noted in my article a few weeks ago:

The OCA project differs from other digitization projects in that the database of scanned material will be available for anyone to use on any site. Yes, it's an open access database! You could even create a focused database (let's say one on American literature) and use it on your own web site.

Other Libraries and More Content
OK, that's the public domain OCA stuff but MSN's plans are wider ranging. As noted earlier, Microsoft also wants to scan the full text of in-copyright books (a list of participating libraries is not available) and make it available online. Sound familiar? Looks like some direct competition for Google Print. Btw, this initiative goes beyond books and MSN also has plans for content from academic publishers, periodicals, aggregators, etc. Of course, getting the right business model in place and getting players to agree will be a challenge. Yes, in this case it looks like some competition for Google Scholar and the Yahoo Subscriptions program.

Making everyone happy and then keeping them happy is going to be a very tough job. Tiedt suggested that business models for access to in-copyright content that might be considered include pay-per-page, pay-per-chapter, monthly subscriptions, etc. We'll just have to wait and see.

One thing I hope MSN does (that Google is already doing and doing well) is working with libraries (of all types), who are already paying (via institutional subscriptions) for access to massive amounts of articles, etc. and then make them available (for free via MSNBS) to anyone with access to that specific library usually using a library card.

Of course, LOTS of details, both practical and legal need to be worked out but Tiedt told me to begin looking for this type of content in the MSN Book Search database in the second-half of 2006.

Both during my phone conversation and the text of the news release itself make special note of copyright issues:

Microsoft will clearly respect all copyrights and work with each partner providing the information to work out mutually agreeable protections for copyrights.

Again, we'll see.

Additionally, my phone conversation and the news release also place a great deal of attention on the usability of the material accessed via MSN Book Search.

"We look to combine a powerful book search experience with our deep software investments in advanced reading technologies, productivity and community based applications such as MSN Messenger, and new capabilities in the Windows platform to help people access precisely the information they are looking for wherever they are in the world."

That paragraph will sure open a nice size box of speculation. Will the new MS operating system include built-in tools to make book content easier to find and utilize? I also find the comment about sharing material via MSN Messenger very interesting since MSN and Yahoo just announced an agreement that will allow both IM systems to talk to each other. So, in just a few weeks we see MSN and Yahoo both getting involved in both the Open Content Alliance and in the IM game. Interesting. The question for me is what type of usability? Copy and paste? Copy into an IM message? Annotate? Print? Save? I hope so. Howerver, these are all questions for the future.

Bottom Lines

  • Let's watch and see what Google has to say.

  • It will also be interesting to see how this plan (particulary for in-copyright material) goes over with the publishing community. They've already seem warm to the OCA project but will in get the same response Google Print (for Libraries) has received recently?

  • I've said time and time again that Google Print and now MSN Book Search just a few of the large book digitization players. Companies like ebrary (some awesome content and software) and NetLibrary are also in the game.

Of course, Project Gutenberg has been digitizing books since 1973.

Postscript: While Microsoft and the OCA were being discussed in San Francisco, Google Print was the topic of the night at the Internet Librarian conferences. Paula Hane has more.

Postscript 2: The Open Library
"...check out OpenLibrary.org for a cool bookviewer and the vision book-- it tells the story of what we envision." --Brewster Kahle

See Also: Microsoft to offer book search (via News.com)

Posted by Gary Price at 12:01 AM | Permalink

October 25, 2005

Google's New "Travel" OneBox

Looks like John "The Search" Battelle has caught yet another Google onebox on web search results pages. This new (I haven't noticed it before) feature offers direct links to several travel databases (Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz) when you enter in city pairs. Say Seattle and Boston.

It also works for non-US destinations. However, if you want to go from Portland, Maine to Phoenix, this feature will not work for you. You get no option to change from Portland, Oregon to Maine. The default travel database is to Expedia which is owned by IAC/InterActive that also owns Ask.com. Interesting. I wonder when Ask will turn this idea into a Smart Search. Maybe they have it now but I can't seem to find it. Also, another revenue stream for Google. Travel services and Google have always seemed to make sense to me. Heck, maybe my April Fools day post about Google Jet will soon become a reality. (-: Of course, we know it's no joke that Google has purchased a 767. Finally, JB I'm right with you friend about the comments you open your post with.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:32 PM | Permalink

Google Funds Open Source Development Initiative at Two Oregon Universities

A news release from Google (they never slow down) announces that the folks in Mountain View are getting together with the two universities in Oregon to support open source technology developement. Google is making a $350,000 contribution, "to a joint open source technology initiative of Oregon State University and Portland State University.

From the announcement:

With the grant, the universities will collaborate to encourage open source software and hardware development, develop academic curricula and provide computing infrastructure to open source projects worldwide.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:53 PM | Permalink

Is Google Print Headed for Congressional Hearings?

The Google Print story (specifically, the Google Print for Libraries aspect of it) continues to make headlines. No, not another lawsuit but this time a letter from the National Consumer League (NCL) calling for congressional hearings on the matter.

Highlights from the announcement:

In a letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary subcommittees overseeing intellectual property issues, the nation's oldest consumer advocacy group raised concerns about a forthcoming ambitious effort to catalogue the entire collections of four major American libraries. The letter, signed by National Consumers League President Linda Golodner, acknowledges the tremendous potential value in Google Inc.'s bold vision for the new initiative, in which the complete collection of works at the university libraries of Stanford, Michigan, and Harvard, and of the New York Public Library, would be scanned and made available electronically to the public. The Washington-based advocacy group warned, however, that the project, which will resume scanning on November 1, 2005 poses dramatic threats to the principle of copyrights; fairness to authors; and cultural selectivity, exclusion, and censorship...We do not doubt Google's good intentions," wrote Golodner. "But any database which represents itself as being a 'full' or 'complete' record of American culture as reflected in the collections of four major research libraries must, in fact, be complete.

The full text of the letters from the NCL to:
Honorable Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property (PDF) and
Senator Orrin Hatch, Chairman, Subcommittee on Intellectual Property (PDF) are also available. Smart move for Google to have just opened a lobbying office in DC. (-:

Posted by Gary Price at 2:37 PM | Permalink

Google Base: It's An Early-Stage Test Project from Google

UPDATE: We've postscripted (see below) with an official statement from Google about the Google Base test.

Lots and lots of talk in the blogosphere today about the new (is it?) Google Base. As always, Barry does a great job pulling it all together here. What is Google Base? From what screen caps show it's a new database service that Google is making available to the public. Sell a house? Sell a car? Whatever. Lookout eBay, However, it might be more than that. Look

Any type of info could be posted and attributes added to it to make it easier to find. Google is getting into a bit of semi-structured info. I've said for a long time that for tags to really succeed, a more structured form of tagging would be needed. In this case, a user could develop their own search fields (the structure) and then add the needed info. Sounds like Google has got the right idea. Of course, that doesn't answer the question, will people take advantage of the additional structure versus just tossing in random keywords into a single field.

OK, now back to Google Base.

From SER:

This new tool will be introduced during the 'Google Zeitgeist'05 Partner Forum' to be held today at Google HQ in California. We expect that 'Google Purchases' [hey, I spotted that domain two weeek's ago] --the new micropayments service among users-- will be also introduced as a complement to 'Google Base'.

As of 12pm PDST, the system is not online and even a few screen shots are gone.

Phillip has much more over at Google Blogoscoped including screen caps from Dirson and others. Btw, Google has owned the domain Googlebase.com since June.

Want to discuss, check out this thread in the SEW Forums.

Postscript: A Google spokesperson shared the following with me via email. Looks like it's a test that also did what Google does so well, keep people talking.

This is an early-stage test of a product that enables content owners to easily send their content to Google. Like our web crawl and the recently released Google Sitemaps program, we are working to provide content owners an easy way to give us access to their content. We're continually exploring new opportunities to expand our offerings, but we don't have anything to announce at this time.

Postscript 2: OK, so that's the "official word" from Google. However, the WSJ's Kevin Delaney has more in the article (sub only): Google Tests New Service To Build Content Database.
Key Points from Kevin's article:

  • "Google Base would let users submit information to a searchable Google database, according to images of Web pages from the service that were posted on several Web logs and which Google confirmed were legitimate."

  • "But the existence of Google Base heightens anticipation of the Mountain View, Calif., company's long-expected entry into direct competition with online auctioneer eBay, which also owns a minority stake in classified listings site Craigslist Inc."

  • "It's going to slowly chip away at eBay's growth and opportunities, especially in international markets where there is a tremendous amount of growth at Google," said Brian Blair, principal at Wedge Partners LLC, a New York research firm.

Ok, now let the speculation continue! (-: Is it time to forget crawlers for certain types of content? Will the typical user take the time to send material directly to Google? What about eBay? Just some of the MANY questions, no answers, and Google isn't talking. Again, the idea of allowing a user to actually develop a structure for the data sure seems to make sense to me.

Postscript 3: More from News.com

Posted by Gary Price at 1:04 PM | Permalink

Great Google Print Controversy Bibliography & Google Scholar Citing Issues

Two highly-respected librarians/info scientists have new resources out today that might be of interest to some of you.

Charles's W. Bailey Jr., compiler of the wonderful Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography (SEPB) has just published the first edition of: The Google Print Controversy: A Bibliography.

This bibliography presents selected English-language electronic works about Google Print that are freely available on the Internet. It has a special focus on the legal issues associated with this project.

Next, Peter Jacso, a librarian at the University of Hawaii was interviewed for an article in The Scientist (sub. reguired) that discussed the future of citation analysis, in many respects what link analysis is based on. In the article, inlcudes comments about Google Scholar. This special post by Dr. Jacso goes into great depth about what he told The Scientist and why he said it. The post includes screen shots and examples.

Dr Jacso writes:

I provide here some background illustrations and comments to my correctly quoted remark that Google Scholar (GS) does a really horrible job matching cited and citing references.


Postscript: If you're interested in learning more about citation analysis:
+ "The Most Highly Cited" a new profile/interview of Dr. Eugene Garfield, the founder of citation analysis.

+ A compilation with more interview and direct links to some of Dr. Garfield's writing including the classic, "Citation Indexes for Science: A New Dimension in Documentation through Association of Ideas." Many more of Garfield's early publications, here.

Postscript: Another good bibliography of Google Print related material is Open Access News. Google Print material is mixed among other material, but there's plenty in there.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:34 PM | Permalink

Full Text of Steve Ballmer's Keynote Interview

We've posted a bunch of quotes from Steve Ballmer's keynote interview at the Gartner/IT Expo last week. Now, if you would like to read the full-text of his comments, a transcript is available here. Using edit/find will locate numerous mentions of the words Google and search.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:16 PM | Permalink

Shopping Search Engines and Consumer Trust

Shopping search engines pioneered the idea of displaying an online merchant's reputation based on ratings provided by shoppers who actually bought products from a merchant. But how trustworthy are these reputation rankings? How do the shopping search engines prevent merchants from gaming their reviews, or other merchants slamming their competitors? In today's SearchDay article, Shopping Search and Merchant Reputations, guest writer Shari Thurow reports on a recent Search Engine Strategies panel that focused on these issues.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:20 AM | Permalink

Several Social Bookmarking/Tagging/Community Search Services Reviewed

PCMag.com offers a roundup of reviews of several social bookmarking/tagging/community search services in the article:
Share and Play Tag on the New Web Playground. The services discussed are:

Hard to pick a "clear winner" in these reviews. Since all services are free, try them all and see which one works best for you.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:17 AM | Permalink

Talk of Sun-Google Hosted Productivity Suite: "Way off Base"

The eWeek article: Rumors of Sun-Google Hosted Desktop Suite Quashed, offers a look at the constant (the article users the word "rampant") specultation about a Sun-Google hosted desktop productivity suite and common operating system, "is way off base."

From the article:

Insiders with knowledge of the joint plans to promote and enhance the OpenOffice.org desktop productivity suite say it is far more likely that Sun and Google will find ways to promote both OpenOffice.org and Google Toolbar, including having Toolbar included as part of OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, and even OpenSolaris and Sun's branded Solaris products...John Loiacono, executive vice president for software at Sun, has said that possible future collaboration projects under discussion with Google include work on OpenOffice. org, as well as cooperative arrangements in which each company will point its customers to the other's technology. "This is just Phase 1 of a multiphase approach," he told eWEEK.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:04 AM | Permalink

Subject Experts Review Wikipedia Entries

The Guardian article: Can you trust Wikipedia?, asked subject experts to review Wikipedia enteries in their areas of expertise. Some very interesting reading. As I mentioned last week, I plan to do a podcast interview with Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, sometimes in November.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:20 AM | Permalink

October 24, 2005

Driving Directions using MSN Virtual Earth

I just noticed a new addition of a new service to the Via VirtualEarth gallery that provides access to driving directions using Virtual Earth (U.S. only, for now) The demo (using AJAX) was created by François Joffre. Try clicking on any of the numbered items for more close-up look or text info. François explains some of the tech stuff on his Map Bazaar blog. He also points out that a new release (no word as to when it's coming) of MSN Virtual Earth will "officially" include a driving directions tool.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:09 PM | Permalink

InfoSpace Announces New Pay-Per-Call Solution

Stories from Clickz and DMNews.com report that InfoSpace has partnered with Jambo to announce a new pay-per-call program.

Technology provider Jambo will create a unique, trackable local phone number for each listing on the Infospace site. Calls made through this number will be tracked through Jambo's servers, and delivered to the merchant with a branded message appended to the beginning to the call, letting the merchant know the lead came from Infospace...Once a merchant begins getting calls, Jambo will follow up, either with a human sales person or via an automated phone call inviting them to sign up with Jambo for enhanced services. Merchants can pay a per-call fee to get higher placement in search results on Infospace, as well as on other directories, local and vertical search engines in Jambo's network. Jambo customers also get detailed demographic and geographic information about each caller.

More in the official news release from Jambo.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:43 PM | Permalink

AdAge Cynically Leverages Blogosphere

Combine dubious research (comprised of admitted "best-guess extrapolation"), a couple of expert quotes, and the word "blog" in the headline.

What do you get? Plenty of pick-up in the blogosphere, and likely, plenty of traffic to a say-nothing bit AdAge.com "research."

Oh, what the heck. I'll link to it, too.

I'll allow bloggers are an egocentric bunch. Probably most blog about blogging as well as their topic of choice. However I'd rather see reputable news outlets think twice about their content -- and their reputations -- before throwing this particular brand of bone into the blogosphere.

My cynicism begins with the story's lead: "Blog this."

AdAge's study is a classic example of "lies, damn lies and statistics." It's light on sources or methodology, but lightening fast at leaping to alarmist conclusions. You'd think the American work force had stopped playing computer solitaire, surfing eBay, checking online personals, programming their cell phones or taking long lunches. From this bit of reportage-lite, you'd think blogs were the root cause of a lack of productivity in the U.S. workforce.

Surely AdAge can come up with a more respectable way to build traffic to its site. Perhaps by letting its print edition paid subscribers in at no extra cost?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 23, 2005

Germany: Publishers Plan Online Book Service

This Reuters article out of Germany: Publishers to build own online book network, comes as no real surprise. Why? Back in June, we blogged about a trade group of German publishers considering their own book digitization program. It looks like what was discussed several months ago is now a go.

The German association of book publishers is planning to build a network by next year that will allow the full texts of their books to be searched online by search engines but will not hand the texts over to these companies...In the longer term, the German association wants to build its own search engine to offer services which could rival those offered by Google, Yahoo or Lycos, and even offer readers the chance to borrow books online. "We don't want Google to hold the texts in its servers; we want the publishers to keep them," Matthias Ulmer, who is leading the project, told Reuters in an interview at this week's Frankfurt Book Fair.

That's not to say that some German publishers are going to join the Google Print program. In fact, last week Google launched a Google Print "only" interface for Germany. They also introduced info Google Print for Germany a few months ago. This Deutsche Welle has info about Langenscheidt, a German dictionary publisher, going to begin with 160 dictionaries being added to Google Print.

Btw, all of this is not to be confused with a European program to digitize materials that we blogged about here.

Finally, let's not forget that Google is not the only organization making digitized books available on the web. NetLibraryand ebrary have been doing it for years and in many cases allow users to read the full text, in some cases print the text, and annotate what they read. I mentioned both of these services (available from home via many libraries) http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/051003-192507">in my original post about the Google Library Program.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:24 PM | Permalink

October 22, 2005

Exalead Part Deux: An Intro to "Smart Bookmarks"

When I wrote my post about Exalead releasing a new home page the other day I mentioned that you can add up "favorites" to your Exalead home page. Shortcuts allow you to view a hyperlinked static images of up to 18 pages to the Exalead home page.

OK, that's cool but why mention this again? Because it gets cooler. You can turn these "favorites" into direct links that allow you to run the a search in other engines like Google, MSN Search, whatever engines you like, without having to reenter your search terms. With some extra "hacking" you could create all sorts of interersting "specialty" searches. Technically, Exalead calls these "Smart Bookmarks." Setting them up is easy. I've prepared a page of step-by-step instructions here.

Unfortunately, at least for now, your shortcuts are only available on one specific computer. Hopefully, this will change soon and Exalead can initiate a login procedure to let you move your favorites from one computer to the next.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:55 PM | Permalink

Ask Jeeves Celebrates Start of World Series with Special Logo

To celebrate the opening of the Major League Baseball World Series that begins later today, Ask Jeeves is online with a special logo. Search terms like World Series, and baseball statistics reveal Smart Answers at the top of the results pages. I wonder if the Mr. Jeeves logo will still be around for the Super Bowl?
AJ Baseball

Posted by Gary Price at 6:18 PM | Permalink

Talking Search with MSN Search Geeks

Over on Channel 9, Scoble has posted a one-hour video "frank" talk about search with Andy Edmonds and Erik Selberg* from the MSN Search team.

Scoble writes:

They talk about how the engine works, and what they're doing to beat the competition. Watch me give them a bit of heck about being behind the other major engines.

*For those of you who are web search "historians," Selberg was one of the original developers (with Oren Etzioni) of MetaCrawler at the University of Washington about 10 years ago. More about MetaCrawler here.

Postscript: On a somewhat unrelated note, I noticed that Microsoft's Web Search and Data Mining team in Silicon Valley now has a web page. It lists several of their projects along with lots of papers to read. More? Here are the pages for similar teams in Redmond and Asia.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:06 PM | Permalink

Finding and Accessing Content for your iPod with Yahoo Video Search

More to play with. If you're looking for video content for your new Video iPod, Andy Volk from Yahoo Video Search explains on the Yahoo Search blog how you can leverage a MediaRSS feed from Yahoo and use it with iTunes 6 to have new video content (video podcasts if you like) coming directly into your iTuness app. Volk's post offers step by step directions and screen caps.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:41 PM | Permalink

MSN Shopping Receives Upgrade Down Under

A post on the MSN Shopping Insider Blog points out that the shopping database on ninemsn, MSN's site in Australia, has been retooled and is now live. The Australian shopping site is utilizing the same platform that's in use on the U.S. site. According to the post, ninemsn Shopping is home to 200,000 products from more than 200 retailers. An intro to the new site is available here.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:16 AM | Permalink

October 21, 2005

Letting MSN Search Know About Trademark Concerns

I noticed a new page today on the MSN Web Search Help site titled, "Submit a Trademark Concern." It offers a step-by-step guide on how to contact Microsoft over these types of issues.

From the site:

We require our advertisers to comply with MSN’s trademark guidelines and to refrain from infringing upon the trademark rights of others. Occasionally, however, we are notified of an advertiser’s potentially improper use of someone else’s trademark. If you notify Microsoft of your concern that an advertiser's listing or associated keyword represents an improper use of a trademark, Microsoft will review the advertiser's keyword and listing for compliance with our trademark usage guidelines. If appropriate, Microsoft will remove the advertiser's keyword and/or listing, or require that the content of the listing be modified.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:15 PM | Permalink

VIew Interviews with Dave Winer, Brewster Kahle, and Others

If you're looking for some weekend viewing and/or listening and/or reading you might want to check out NerdTV from PBS (Public Broadcasting Service).

You can view the programs online, download them podcasts, and also access the transcripts. The program consists of interviews by Robert X. Cringley with Internet "big names" and pioneers. The program has been online for several weeks and will continue for about eight more weeks. You've got to love how the video has been edited. View the whole show online or just watch the "juicy" or "nerdy" part (perfect for the short attention-span types.

Four programs already online that might be of special note to some of you:

  • Dave Winer
    • "Father of RSS and Web Logging"

  • Tim O'Reilly

    • "Open Source Pioneer"

  • Brewster Kahle

    • "Internet Archive Founder"

  • Max Levchin

    • "Co-founder of PayPal"

I could go on but go check out the list for yourself. Btw, Eric Schmidt (you've heard of him (-:) will be interviewed in about 6 weeks.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:01 PM | Permalink

Danny's On Vacation!

That's it, I'm done! More or less, for the next two weeks. I'm heading back to California with my family for a break. I'll be online very briefly one day next week, to catch up and blog a few items. Readers, have no fear. Gary's around, then Chris, keeping things fresh as we mentioned before in this schedule. Those after me for a briefing, to pitch a story and so on? Wait until I get back, or hit up Gary or Chris (but look at that schedule, because they're around in only limited fashion, as well). Want to speak at SES Chicago? DO NOT THINK OF EVEN MESSAGING ME UNTIL YOU'VE READ THIS PAGE. Please? Please!

That page has the entire production schedule and where I stand with things. It's too late to pitch a new session. Agenda goes up next week.

I'm contacting returning and short-list speakers first, so please all of that group, just sit tight while I get to you. That page also explains when session openings beyond my short list candidates will be posted.

Messaging me now will not NOT NOT get you on the short list. You're just slowing me down. Messaging me while I'm on vacation will show me down further. Plus, sending a message pretty much means you'll get lost under the email morass I'll be digging out from under.

Just wait until the schedule tells you to pitch, and you'll be fine. That's why I have the schedule.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:01 PM | Permalink

SEW Forums Live In Anaheim Next Week

Just a reminder that our SEW Forums Live Anaheim 2005 event happen at the Disneyland Hotel next week. Unlike our SES shows, SEWF Live isn't a huge four day extravaganza like our SES shows. Instead, it's meant as an easy, low-cost informal networking event designed especially for those who can come by from the local area.

A general session kicks off at 2:30pm where Search Engine Watch Forums editor Elisabeth Osmelowski will have a panel taking questions and offering advice and thoughts on anything. After a break, there will also be another short open panel session involving some of our SEWF moderators from the area -- we've got quite a contingent out there! -- and some from afar (Disneyland is tempting some to come on out). I'm on vacation in the area at that time, so I'm swinging over to take part.

More networking runs from 5pm to 7pm during the networking cocktail reception, which Yahoo is kindly backing. After that, Disneyland's just a monorail ride away!

More info here. Registration here. Discussion among our forum members on the event -- who's going, what to wear, where to go around the event -- and more is covered in this thread.

Need an idea of other SEMs living from the desert to the sea to all of Southern California (a good evening)? Check the SEO World Map. And add yourself to it, no matter where you are! Listings just went over the 300 mark.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 5:40 PM | Permalink

Mid-October 2005 Search News Recap Posted

If you're a Search Engine Watch member, 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 at 5:34 PM | Permalink

Daily SearchCast, Oct. 21, 2005: Craigslist Versus Oodle, MSNing In Holland And Korea, New Keyword Research Feature From Google, Yahoo Search Marketing Chief Ted Meisel To Depart, Indexing Isn't Reprinting, Great Gobs Of Google Earnings & More!

Today's search podcast covers the dispute between Craiglist and Oodle, whether they really "MSN You" in Holland and Korea, a new keyword research tool from Google, Yahoo dropping the $20 monthly minimum spend requirement for paid search, Yahoo Search Marketing chief Ted Meisel leaving, Google's latest, greatest earnings, the different between indexing books and reprinting them 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. Below are links with more information about the stories that were discussed.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:43 PM | Permalink

Office Depot Sues Staples Over Google Ads

Via Threadwatch, Office Depot Sues Staples Over Ads Placed on Google (paid sub. required) from the Wall Street Journal covers Office Depot filing suit earlier this month in US District Court in Palm Beach, Florida accusing Staples of trademark infringement, false advertising, unfair competition and deceptive trade practices over ads linked to words that are also Office Depot trademarks. Staples apparently had ads coming up for searches on [viking], which is an Office Depot subsidiary. Ads led to Staples-owned web sites.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:24 PM | Permalink

AlmondNet Gains Second Search Behavioral Ad Patent

AlmondNet has gained a second patent related to delivering up ads across the web based on things a person has searched for. More via this press release. More on AlmondNet here: New Search Behavioral Network Launched.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:17 PM | Permalink

Spending A Day With An SEM Firm

A Day in the Life of a Search Engine Marketing Agency from sees a DM News reporter spending time at icrossing's New York office and among some of its 54 employees. I know, I know -- the cynical gang out there will see it as a nice coup for icrossing to get some ink, and no doubt other firms will pitch other publications to do the same. But you'll find plenty interesting to read, from the guy monitoring A/B test results to the person hunting for more search inventory by spotting even more search terms.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:52 PM | Permalink

Seeing Flash The Search Engine Way

Phil Bradley points to this site designed to help you understand how search engines view your Flash content.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:41 PM | Permalink

China Says No To Wikipedia, Dislikes Taiwan Change On Google Maps & Chinese Activist Takes Yahoo's Yang To Task For Helping Maintain "Evil System"

Wikipedia is apparently no longer accessible to those in Shanghai and other parts of China, reports say, while Boing Boing reports a Chinese activist takes Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang to task in an open letter for turning over information about a journalist, seeing that as "helping the Communist party maintain an evil system of control over freedom of information and speech." And now that Taiwan's happy not to be a Chinese province on Google Maps, China's disappointed a the move.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:35 PM | Permalink

SMA-NA Election Results In

Thanks to Nacho Hernandez, who just sent me the SMA-NAN election results. Here are the winners:

  • President and Chair: Ian McAnerin
  • Secretary Treasurer: Debra Mastaler
  • VP Public and Media Relations: Jeff Nelson
  • Internet Chair: Benjamin Pfeiffer

Term of office will be for one year. Nothing at the SMA-NA site yet, but I'm sure it will come.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:02 PM | Permalink

Indexing Versus Caching & How Google Print Doesn't Reprint

I've written before that legal concerns about book indexing and Google Print may have repercussions for web indexing. Kevin Werback and David Winer look at this again, afresh. A look at this, plus the crucial difference between indexing (making something searchable) and caching (reprinting content). Google's library scanning program makes things searchable in Google Print but reprinted.

Breaking Apart at the Seams from Kevin stresses as I've done that indexing the words on a web page isn't that much different than indexing the words on a printed page. He wonders if a lawsuit preventing book indexing might a type of unraveling of sharing content online in general.

A turning point for the web? from Dave goes much longer to counter the notion that an opt-out approach is acceptable. Unfortunately, he's just not getting some of the points of what's involved correct. Specifically:

If you publish a site, Google reads the whole site into its cache and then lets you find things in it. Generally people who publish sites know this, and want Google to do this.

Google's index and its cache are two different things, and it's critical -- absolutely critical -- they not be confused like this.

When any search engine visits a web page, it effectively makes a copy of that page which is stored in the index. But the index literally breaks apart the page. It stores where words were located, were they in bold, what other words were they near, were the words in a hyperlink and so on.

Nothing in the index is anything you as a human being could read. I've described the index in searching classes to being like a "big book of the web." But it's not, really. It's more like a giant spreadsheet, where all the words of a page are in one row of the spreadsheet, each word to a different column, then the next page in the row below that, and so on. It's not something a human being would read.

Aside from the index, Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves also make "cached" copies of pages available. You can see a copy of the exact page the search engine spidered. These cached pages are kept separate from the index. They are useful for when a page is down or for a copyright holder wants to see if someone has stolen and cloaked their content to feed to a spider. But the legality of showing such cached pages is also in question. No one today has challenged them in court. The reason seems to be that Google, which mainstreamed cached copies, lets site owners opt out of caching if they want.

All major search engines also let you opt out of being in their indexes, as well -- a completely different thing -- and another reason why the index shouldn't be confused with the cache. To take Google as an example, you can:

  • Have your page listed in the index (available to be found through searches) and have your page available as a cached copy
  • Have your page listed in the index but not cached
  • Have your page NOT listed in the index and thus also not cached.

The ability to opt-out of the index is another reason why we really haven't had a major search engine sued over web search indexing. In addition, site owners as Dave notes generally want to be indexed, so they can get traffic. In fact, the reason so many are upset over the current indexing update at Google is that they feel changes are causing them to lose traffic. But whether it is LEGAL to do this type of indexing (as opposed to caching) still really hasn't been tested.

So indexing and caching are NOT the same. Back to Dave's piece. He writes:

Google clearly does not have the right to make a copy of the book and republish it without the permission of or compensation to the copyright owner. The publishers appear to be on the right side of this one, and while I'm not a lawyer, I can't imagine that they won't prevail in court.

I'm not a lawyer either, but I can completely imagine that Google might win. Maybe not, but it's hardly far-fetched or doubtful, and even some lawyers feel they may win.

Here's the thing. Google is NOT, repeat NOT, republishing copies of books that it scans out of libraries. This is a fundamental mistake that many people seem to be making.

Google is scanning books into an index, just as it spiders web pages and adds them to its index. It is making the books searchable by doing this, but that process does not republish the books in a way you can read.

Think about it in web search terms. You can find a matching book, but there's NO hyperlink to click on that will take you to an online version of the book itself. There's just a snippet -- maybe -- of the text surrounding the words matching what you looked for.

Want the actual book? Google Print won't give it to you. Instead, you have to go someplace and buy it or find it in a library. Google Print merely tells you the book may be what you're looking for.

The only exception to this is if a publisher OPTS-IN. Not opt-out. If a publisher chooses, then -- and only then for books that are in copyright -- will Google display some of the actual book. The exact amount is left up to the publisher.

So, I've covered that indexing means making a book (or web page) searchable while caching means making a page (or a book) viewable online, without having to go to the source material (the book or the page). Let's recap then how both systems work:

Search Type Indexing Caching Snippets/
Descriptions
Web Opt-Out Opt-Out Opt-Out
Books Opt-Out Opt-In Opt-Out

As you can see, book search is actually more opt-in than web search is. Books themselves aren't cached or shown. But they are made searchable without permission.

That systems has worked on the web, because of the aforementioned feeling that site owners want traffic. As for book publishers, Why Don't Book Publishers Object To Web Indexing? from me earlier covers how many seem not to mind getting traffic through an opt-out system on the web, as well.

It remains to a court to decide whether it should be workable when it comes to book indexing. If not, then absolutely, you might see search engines ponder if web indexing itself -- which really hasn't been legally tested -- is something they'll need to require an opt-in for. And if that's the case, web indexing will get pretty bad, since many publishers will simply fail to make the opt-in effort.

What's that third column, the snippets/description one? That's the place where I think book publishers might prevail, and certainly a change that Google should consider. Legal Experts Say Google Library Digitization Project Likely OK; Will It Revolve Around Snippets? covers how it's possible that in some cases, even the limited description that Google puts on pages might give away some of the value of a book and thus real harm might be proven to a publisher. Solution? Make showing descriptions an opt-IN thing.

Lastly, Dave makes a couple of other comments:

It's time to realize that Google is no longer the little company we used to love. They're now a huge company that pushes individuals around like a lot of other huge companies. They need some balance to their power. And it's ridiculous to blindly take their side on every issue. Sometimes they're wrong, and I believe this is one of those times. It's certainly worth considering the possibility that they're wrong.

Absolutely, Google is a big giant company, not some tiny lovable start-up. If anyone still has that idea, definitely get it out of your mind now. But whether you think they push others around or not may depend on what area we're talking about. And whether a company of any type should be hated because they're big is another issue, as well. Nor should it be assumed that Google is always right. The most definitely are not.

As for this:

This situation is much like the disagreement we had with Google a few months back, when they wanted to put ads on our sites without permission and without paying....and right now they're putting ads on your content without your permission, without compensating you. Now how do you feel about that?

Dave is talking about Google's AutoLink. I'd disagree that the links Google may insert if someone clicks on the right button in the Google Toolbar are ads, so don't freak out if you aren't familiar with AutoLink and are suddenly scanning your pages to find how Google got real AdSense ads on it. They didn't.

I would agree that Google should to the opt-out route with AutoLink, as I wrote before. But it's also a harder argument to have, when there's been the incredible popularity of GreaseMonkey for Firefox, which can insert links into pages. Plenty of people use CustomizeGoogle, which inserts links into Google's own pages. Fair turnabout, some who hate AutoLink would say. Yes, it is -- but then it also weakens the argument that Google itself can't let people put links into pages with its own tools.

Postscript: Ray Gordon writes to say he has filed a complaint arguing that web search on an opt-out basis is in violation of copyright. You can read the filings here. I've skimmed them, and he seems more concerned about usenet material (rather than web material) that can't be removed, apparently because others may have reprinted his own posts.

Postscript 2: Dan Thies writes that an search index is even less readable than a spreadsheet, and he's correct. I was trying to keep things simple yet familiar to illustrate the difference between words arranged on a page for reading and words indexed to make a search engine. As Dan says, he understands I was keeping things simple -- but he also takes you deeper into how inaccessible to a "reader" a real index actually is.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:33 AM | Permalink

More On Why Craiglist Said No To Oodle

Craigslist targets Oodle for 'scraping' its listings at the San Jose Mercury News looks at why Craiglist asked Oodle to stop scraping its listings, which we wrote about earlier.

Craiglist said some in its own community seemed to resent the listings profiting something outside the community. Of course, since Oodle was actually sending traffic to Craiglist, Craiglist itself was profiting a bit off of Oodle -- in the same way it profits with attention from traffic any search engine sends it.

Craiglist also said Oodle's crawling was putting a resource intensive burden on it and made use of the Craiglist name in marketing and press releases. Other sites might also be on the Craigslist hitlist, it's also hinted at, though Craiglist didn't name any.

It's also interesting to hear that in contrast to Craiglist, eBay's actually paying Oodle to carry its listings. That's also ironic given that eBay fought a suit to keep Bidder's Edge from carrying its listings back in 2000, helping cause Bidder's Edge