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June 15, 2006

Search Headlines & Links: June 15, 2006

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

From The SEW Blog...

  • Specialty Search Roundup #3
    From Traffic Cams to Digitizing to the Kennedy Library to Archival Records: A Selection of Specialty Database via ResourceShelf Yes it's time once again for a Gary Price, specialty search database and portal roundup. Here's a look at a few recent postings that he published on ResourceShelf. Real Time Data: TrafficLand Continues to Expand, Aggregating Traffic Cams Around the Nation Cool! ResourceShelf real time compilation continues. Future Projects: Plans to Digitize Entire Contents of John F. Kennedy Library Announced Business: Entrepreneurship Research Portal from the E.W. Kauffman Foundation U.S. Congress: Congressional Documents Online “The Rutgers - Camden School of Law...
  • Daily SearchCast, June 15, 2006: You Got Digg In My Netscape; When NYT Met SEO; Google's New US Government Search; Searching For Products By Color & More!
    Today's search podcast covers Netscape transforming into a Digg-like community news site; the New York Times and its industrial-strength search engine optimization work; Google relaunches its US government search service; searching for products by color and more!
  • Yahoo Asks Web Searchers How Clean Are The Search Results
    Gary Price captured a screen shot of Yahoo polling search users on how clean the Yahoo search results page looks. The question asked is "How clean and uncluttered do you find this page?" With a five point scale, 1 being cluttered and 5 being clean. View the full screen capture by clicking here....
  • The Dilbert Google Logo Story
    Remember the Google Dilbert logos? If you do, and you want to read the story behind it, check out Doug Edwards' post at Xooglers. Doug also notes some controversy over Google selling coffee mugs (Danny's posted pictures of one here) with the Dilbert logo. You can see the old story about Google on at InternetNews.com from May 20, 2002. Edwards begins the tale of Google logo changes here and talks at the end about how recently the Dilbert strip poked fun at Google. The story of Google and Dilbert continues to this second installment, ending with today's post....
  • Google's UK Chief Kate Burns Leaving For More Family Time
    Last time I saw Kate Burns last year, she was about six months pregnant. Now Google managing director of UK, Benelux and Ireland is leaving the company to spend more time with that growing family. Best of luck, Kate! More details in Burns set to leave Google director role from Brand Republic....
  • MSN's Hand Crafted Results
    "MSN Hiring People to Hand Code SERPS" at SEO Blackhat is a nice catch from the MSN Search jobs page talking about needing people to help hand-craft results. Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped reacts with "Oh my." I react with "Hallelujah."...
  • Google Relaunches US Government Search, Now With Personalized Home Page
    Google launched its search engine for US government information, informally known as Google Uncle Sam, many years ago. It's been running since at least 1999. But now the service has received an update giving it a personalized home page and formal branding as Google US Government Search....
  • SEMPO & Fair Issac Team Up To Study Click Fraud
    ClickZ reports that SEMPO and Fair Issac have teamed up to study PPC click fraud. Fair Issac is the organization that developed FICO scores to measure of credit risk, a service used by most credit agencies. ClickZ explains that the study will use several "artificial intelligence methods to determine the extent of click fraud and to develop a solution for the search marketing industry," developed by Fair Issac....
  • Yahoo Sued For Trademark Infringement Using Google AdWords
    DenverPost.com reports that Yahoo was sued by lovecity.com for bidding on the lovecity.com trademark in Google AdWords. Reportedly, Yahoo placed bids on "www.lovecity" and "lovecity.com," so when someone searches on those phrases, Yahoo Personals would come up in the search ads on Google and Google's search ad network. I tried a search on www.lovecity and saw two competing dating services but not Yahoo, come up in the sponsored listings section. I actually find it humorous that Yahoo would go this far, only because the left hand does not talk to the right hand....
  • Google Buys Headquarters For $319 Million
    Last night I was notified of a SEC Filing showing Google has entered into an agreement to purchase their headquarters (The GooglePlex) for $319 million. Of the $319 million, $10 million was already placed into escrow on June 9. Google is technically buying 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway and 1200-1500 Crittenden Lane, Mountain View, California, about 978,066 square feet of land. In addition to the $319 million price tag, Google has to pay $315,000 per month to the city; $140,000 per month for ground lease and $175,000 per month for rent with rent increases of 4 percent to 7 percent. More details...
  • Netscape Aims To Be Digg 2.0, Slashdot 3.0 With Community News Model
    I was never a big Slashdot fan, given that I found the conversations about search often had comments from people who didn't know what they were talking about. Digg came along and hardly won me over. Having one of my stories Dugg over there reinforced the idea that Digg was Slashdot 2.0 in all the wrong ways. Now AOL is trying to revive its flagging Netscape brand by turning it into a Digg-clone or Slashdot 3.0, if you will. You'll find the new version here....
  • SEO for All the News That's Fit to Search
    The New York Times has one of the most popular news web sites, but until this year that was largely because of the strength of its brand. After its acquisition of About.com, the Times embarked on an aggressive campaign to make its web site more search friendly, a complex process that's paid off with notable traffic gains for the company. Today's SearchDay article, Getting The New York Times More Search Engine Friendly, takes a look behind the scenes at how the Times and its vice president of enterprise search, Marshall Simmonds, pulled it off....
  • New Yahoo Publisher Network Changes Focus on New Publishers
    Yahoo Publisher Network released a new version of the control panel today which focuses on helping a new user get the most out of Yahoo, both within and outside the Publisher Network realm. For new publishers many how-tos, help guides and demos were added. But also included is a new Publisher Services tab which promotes other areas of Yahoo....
  • Google's Complete Plays Of Shakespeare Less Than Compleat
    The Google blog 'Inside Google Book Search' announced in No holds bard that it is now possible to explore Shakespeare with Google - The complete plays of Shakespeare now at your fingertips. Well no, not exactly. I've spent some time playing around with this resource and it's less than impressive for a number of reasons....
  • Yahoo, MapQuest Bring Where 2.0 Back to Earth
    Excuse the pun, of sorts. Many of the speakers and panelists over the past couple of days at Where 2.0 demonstrated a range of cool technologies or whiz-bang features that probably don't have a hope of becoming breakout, mass market consumer applications. That doesn't mean they aren't interesting or useful. But the question is: where will these companies be in 5 years?...

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

Posted by Danny Sullivan at June 15, 2006 4:01 PM