July 3, 2006
July 3, 2006
Off For The Fourth Of July
Due to the Fourth Of July holiday in the US tomorrow, most of the Search Engine Watch Blog staff will be off and not posting. See you when we get back on the 5th, and a Happy Fourth to our American readers who are celebrating!
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 5:23 PM | Permalink
Search Headlines & Links: July 3, 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...
- 'Point
and Search' Redux
After my most recent post on "point and search" mobile technology, prompted by last week's NY Times' article on GeoVector's efforts in Japan, Search Engine Watch alum (now Director of Online Information Resources at Ask) Gary Price directed me to a number of his earlier posts on mobile search using camera phones. In this post he discusses Google's voice search patent, "point and search" mobile technology from Microsoft and several-other camera phone search tools.... - Ending
Click Fraud with Pay-Per-Percentage
In Pay-Per-Percentage vs. PPC, Shimon Sandler points out an interesting new paper from the folks at Microsoft Research - Pay-Per-Percentage of Impressions: An Advertising Method that is Highly Robust to Fraud (pdf) As Shimon notes, the idea is that this type of advertising approach would be "immune to both click fraud and impression fraud," and would use something called "pre-fix match" instead of broad match.... - Yahoo
China To Be Sued For Linking To Sites Selling Pirated Music
Spotted via TechCrunch, Bloomberg reports that Yahoo China is to be sued for linking to sites that sell pirated music. The article claims "about 90 percent of all recordings in China are illegal, with sales of pirated music worth about $400 million annually," according to the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry. A new law in China that came into effect on July 1 "fines distributors of illegally copied music, movies and other material over the Internet as much as 100,000 yuan ($12,500)."... - New York
Times Looks At Google's Hardware & Infrastructure
A New York Times article has a detailed analysis of Google's infrastructure and discussion with Urs Hölzle, senior vice president for operations at Google. Here are some of the key points I pulled from that article. + Google tends builds from ground up versus buying. + Google's computing costs are half those of other large Internet companies and a tenth those of traditional corporate technology users. + Critics call Google's philosophy "unnecessary and inefficient." + "Google is reducing cost while maintaining performance by shifting the burden of reliability from hardware to software — individual hardware components can fail, but software... - Matt
Cutts Is Back From Vacation
We all missed him, Matt Cutts has returned from his long vacation. Hopefully he can get back in the saddle and begin working on those issues at Google. :) Seriously, we all miss you Matt, thanks for coming back and winking (blinking that is) at us.... - BBC News
Features Article On Google Search Spam
A BBC News front-page article named Google to stay focused on search brings the issues of search spam to the public. The article explains how seventy-percent of Google's focus in on Web search and then goes into several paragraphs on how search spam is a huge issue. The article quotes Douglas Merrill, of Google engineering, saying, "Spam is an arms race," explaining that "spammers are highly motivated. There is a lot of money at stake."... - Google
Page Creator Now Supporting AdSense
Google Page Creator, which I recently reported did not support AdSense, now does. Garett Rogers has invitations sent out to Google Page Creator accounts from Google, notifying them that they now accept AdSense. Honestly, when I read this, it made me sad. Why? One word, "MFAs". Below is a copy of that email invitation.... - Google's
Non Search Products A Flop
BusinessWeek reports that when Google launches a new non-search product, the competition "shivers," Google has yet to lead in market share for any of those non-search products. Google's Gtalk is currently ranked number ten with two percent market share, Google Finance is the "40th-most-visited finance site," and Gmail "is the system of choice for only about one-quarter the number of people who use MSN and Yahoo e-mail." So with all these product launches, is Google a threat? Read more at BusinessWeek.... -
KinderStart.com Case May Proceed To Court?
News.com reports that the KinderStart.com case may proceed to court, based on this past Friday's hearing. Kinderstart.com initially sued Google for a site penalty that downgraded the site's rankings in the Google search results. Kinderstart.com claims Google violated antitrust laws, "What Google is trying to do is take out the competition," Kinderstart.com's lawyer said. The judge gave KinderStart.com's lawyers until September 29th to make revisions to the complaint. The judge said, "You can't just file a blanket lawsuit and say, 'We think we're going to find some stuff.'" Also see news brief at ComputerWorld.... - Daily SearchCast, June 30, 2006
- Daily SearchCast, June 29, 2006
Other Things We Read, Didn't Blog But You Might Want To Read...
- No search headlines today because of a light work schedule due to tomorrow's Fourth Of July holiday in the US. Sorry!
Posted by Danny Sullivan at 5:21 PM | Permalink
'Point and Search' Redux
After my most recent post on "point and search" mobile technology, prompted by last week's NY Times' article on GeoVector's efforts in Japan, Search Engine Watch alum (now Director of Online Information Resources at Ask) Gary Price directed me to a number of his earlier posts on mobile search using camera phones. In this post he discusses Google's voice search patent, "point and search" mobile technology from Microsoft and several-other camera phone search tools.
Last week, when I was out, I was also contacted by representatives of Intelligent Spatial Technologies Inc., who pointed out (pun intended) that they also have a mobile local search technology based on pointing. The company claims in its press release it's more versatile than GeoVector's offering in Japan.
There are several use cases (or, if you prefer, "modalities") now developing in the mobile search world: SMS, free ad supported directory assistance, automated voice-driven mobile search, the wireless web and the perhaps more provocative "point and search." Because of the multiplicity user scenarios, some or all of these models may co-exist for awhile. (It's likely that we'll also see blending of models and technologies.)
I believe, however, that a couple of models/user experiences will emerge as superior, drive more adoption and come to dominate the space. Those models will attract ad dollars accordingly. It's too early to pick winners yet.
Posted by Greg Sterling at 4:05 PM | Permalink
Ending Click Fraud with Pay-Per-Percentage
In Pay-Per-Percentage vs. PPC, Shimon Sandler points out an interesting new paper from the folks at Microsoft Research - Pay-Per-Percentage of Impressions: An Advertising Method that is Highly Robust to Fraud (pdf)
As Shimon notes, the idea is that this type of advertising approach would be "immune to both click fraud and impression fraud," and would use something called "pre-fix match" instead of broad match.
The author of the paper is Joshua Goodman, who is a Principal Researcher, and the head of the Microsoft Learning for Messaging and Adversarial Problems (LMAP) team, and who has an impressive page of other publications listed on the Microsoft domain, including a recent one on Finding Advertising Keywords on Web Pages (pdf).
What does pay-per-impressions mean? Simply, someone can can for a percentage of all impressions for certain keywords or keyword phrases over a period of time.
In this system, an advertiser picks a keyword, e.g. “cameras” and purchases, perhaps through bidding, a certain percentage of all impressions for that keyword. For instance, an advertiser might pay $1.00 to MSN Search. In return, the advertiser might receive 10% of all impressions for “camera” for 1 week. What does this mean? It means that for 1 week, one out of ten times that someone searches for the word “camera”, they will see the ad.
The number of real impressions that an advertiser receives would not be affected by the number of fake impressions. The paper describes how this mechanism would need to work to avoid impression fraud, and how a broad match-type of system could function under a pay-per-percentage type system.
The paper points out that if an pay-per-percentage system is adopted, that it wouldn't replace pay-per-click or pay-per-impression, but would rather be another choice that an advertiser can make. A method is described in the paper that would allow these types of systems to function side-by-side.
It also looks at something that the author calls "misinformation fraud" which is when a competitor performs searches to boost the apparent rate of search volume that an advertising system might display as indicative of how popular a word or phrase is, and affiliate fraud.
It's an interesting and thoughful paper, well worth a read if you use paid search to attract visitors to you web site. Thanks for pointing it out, Shimon.
Postscript: Donna Bogatin, from Digital Micro-Market also pointed this paper out on July 1st, and has an interesting post from yesterday asking Google to show that they are taking a stand against click-fraud in Click fraud prevention: The next great search engine differentiator?.
The Microsoft paper was published as part of a workshop last year sponsored by Yahoo, but really doesn't seem to have received much attention at the time, though Dr. Garcia (Orion) wrote about it at the Search Engine Watch Forums, along with other papers from the same workshop in December, in a post titled Searcher Perceptions & Paid Links.
Posted by Bill Slawski at 12:49 PM | Permalink
Yahoo China To Be Sued For Linking To Sites Selling Pirated Music
Spotted via TechCrunch, Bloomberg reports that Yahoo China is to be sued for linking to sites that sell pirated music. The article claims "about 90 percent of all recordings in China are illegal, with sales of pirated music worth about $400 million annually," according to the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry. A new law in China that came into effect on July 1 "fines distributors of illegally copied music, movies and other material over the Internet as much as 100,000 yuan ($12,500)."
Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:47 AM | Permalink
New York Times Looks At Google's Hardware & Infrastructure
A New York Times article has a detailed analysis of Google's infrastructure and discussion with Urs Hölzle, senior vice president for operations at Google. Here are some of the key points I pulled from that article.
+ Google tends builds from ground up versus buying.
+ Google's computing costs are half those of other large Internet companies and a tenth those of traditional corporate technology users.
+ Critics call Google's philosophy "unnecessary and inefficient."
+ "Google is reducing cost while maintaining performance by shifting the burden of reliability from hardware to software — individual hardware components can fail, but software automatically shifts the local task and the data to other machines."
+ Google is among Advanced Micro's five largest clients.
Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:51 AM | Permalink
Matt Cutts Is Back From Vacation
We all missed him, Matt Cutts has returned from his long vacation. Hopefully he can get back in the saddle and begin working on those issues at Google. :) Seriously, we all miss you Matt, thanks for coming back and winking (blinking that is) at us.
Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:47 AM | Permalink
BBC News Features Article On Google Search Spam
A BBC News front-page article named Google to stay focused on search brings the issues of search spam to the public. The article explains how seventy-percent of Google's focus in on Web search and then goes into several paragraphs on how search spam is a huge issue. The article quotes Douglas Merrill, of Google engineering, saying, "Spam is an arms race," explaining that "spammers are highly motivated. There is a lot of money at stake."
Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:38 AM | Permalink
Google Page Creator Now Supporting AdSense
Google Page Creator, which I recently reported did not support AdSense, now does. Garett Rogers has invitations sent out to Google Page Creator accounts from Google, notifying them that they now accept AdSense. Honestly, when I read this, it made me sad. Why? One word, "MFAs". Below is a copy of that email invitation.
Hi,We're happy to let you know that Google Page Creator is now compatible with AdSense. Please feel free to add the AdSense code to your Page Creator web pages. If you don't know how to implement the AdSense code with Google Page Creator, please follow the instructions below:
1. Log into your AdSense account at www.google.com/adsense
2. From the AdSense Setup tab, customize and generate your AdSense code
3. Copy the generated code from the 'Your AdSense code' box
4. Log into your Google Page Creator account
5. Select the web page you'd like to display AdSense ads
6. Select the field where you'd like the ads to appear
7. Click 'Edit HTML'
8. Paste the AdSense code in the HTML source code of the page
9. Save your updated web page
10. Publish your web pageAfter taking the steps above, your ads should appear shortly. If you have trouble implementing the Ad Sense code onto your web page, please feel free to respond to this email.
Good luck,
The Google AdSense Team
Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:27 AM | Permalink
Google's Non Search Products A Flop
BusinessWeek reports that when Google launches a new non-search product, the competition "shivers," Google has yet to lead in market share for any of those non-search products. Google's Gtalk is currently ranked number ten with two percent market share, Google Finance is the "40th-most-visited finance site," and Gmail "is the system of choice for only about one-quarter the number of people who use MSN and Yahoo e-mail." So with all these product launches, is Google a threat? Read more at BusinessWeek.
Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:18 AM | Permalink
KinderStart.com Case May Proceed To Court?
News.com reports that the KinderStart.com case might proceed to court, based on this past Friday's hearing. Kinderstart.com initially sued Google for a site penalty that downgraded the site's rankings in the Google search results. Kinderstart.com claims Google violated antitrust laws, "What Google is trying to do is take out the competition," Kinderstart.com's lawyer said. The judge gave KinderStart.com's lawyers until September 29th to make revisions to the complaint. The judge said, "You can't just file a blanket lawsuit and say, 'We think we're going to find some stuff.'" Also see news brief at ComputerWorld.
Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:55 AM | Permalink
