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July 7, 2006

July 7, 2006

New Landing Page Quality Score Announced for Google AdWords Advertisers

The Google AdWords blog has announced new changes that will be seen next week that will result in some advertisers faced with higher minimum bids to keep their campaigns running on AdWords, as a result in changes being made to the landing page quality score algorithm. While a small number of advertisers will be affected, AdWords is targeting those landing pages that offer a poor user experience to those who click the ads.

It is suspected that those doing click arbitrage will likely be amongst the first to be affected, as many offer landing pages with nothing or little else other than Google or Yahoo ads. Click arbitrage involves buying inexpensive pay per click traffic, such as from Google AdWords. The advertiser then hopes that each visitor will hit the landing page and then click a higher-paying ad (often Google AdSense or Yahoo ContentMatch) to leave the page. As a result, many click arbitragers have either no content on the page other than the ads or just enough content to influence the AdSense ads.

Next week, the new algo for the landing page quality score will be released, and affected advertisers will see their minimum bid prices changed in the AdWords account. Google stresses only a small number of advertisers will be affected, and offers assistance for those advertisers who feel they have been wrongly impacted by the new changes. All advertisers can access the landing page quality guidelines here.

For a more detailed look at how these changes to the scoring will affect both publishers and those doing click arbitrage, see New landing page quality score could affect click aribtrage publishers at JenSense.

Posted by Jennifer Slegg at 11:25 PM | Permalink

SuperPages For Sale

Verizon has formally filed with the SEC to sell its directory unit, which contains the print yellow pages and online yellow pages/local search businesses. A likely sale could bring as much as $15 billion. And because AT&T does not look like it's going to spin off its directory business, SuperPages could fetch a significant premium.

Verizon has been by far the most experimental and innovative of the US directory publishers to date, embracing PPC marketing and PPCall (including in the print directory). It has also sought to expand the product definition by integrating web search, Shopping.com, eBay listings, ratings and reviews and other content to broaden the utility and usage frequency of SuperPages.com.

Indeed, the company has sought to expand from the notion of a “yellow pages” site into something more like a local shopping portal. The company has also reconceived its role, vis-à-vis local businesses, from strictly a yellow pages publisher to a local marketing agency, which sells print and online yellow pages in addition to other products (including SEM).

Read a longer version of this post on my blog.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 7:29 PM | Permalink

Specialty Search Roundup #6

Another week and another set of specialty databases and "research" news for your review. These items have been posted to ResourceShelf during the past week or so. They have also tossed in non-searchable but useful (and fun) reference newsletter and a link to a new mobile version of Reuters for the U.S. Finally, don't forget that The World eBook Fair is now underway offering free, full text and downloadable access (PDF files) to more than 300,000 titles. Why now? This summer Project Gutenberg celebrates its 35th anniversary. The World eBook Fair lasts through August 4th.

  • Foreign Language Test Database "The Foreign Language Test Database is a searchable database of secondary and college level tests in languages other than English."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 6:17 PM | Permalink

Search Headlines & Links: July 7, 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...

  • Conference Coverage: SES Latino 2006
    The first ever Search Engine Strategies Latino will be taking place this Monday and Tuesday in Miami, Florida. Danny will be moderating some sessions and I will be covering the Landscape & Tactics tracks at the Search Engine Roundtable. Nacho Hernandez from iHispanic is hosting the event. You can view the conference schedule by clicking here. Want to discuss? Join our Search Engine Watch Forums thread....
  • Google Health Scrapbook: Google's Health Portal
    Via PaidContent and VC Ratings, Google is working on a health portal named the Google Health Scrapbook. From what I understand there will be a "directory" for patients, doctors, vendors and pharmaceutical each. Google "users will be able to log in with their own account information and do things such as add a new medical provider, check their medical records or pay their bills." Google has been rumored to be working on a health portal for a while. With the hire of Adam Bosworth, Google's Architect, Google Health we expected more. But when Google released Google Co-Op, those rumors were...
  • Google Checkout Could Increase Costs For The Shopping Comparison Engines
    Google Checkout adoption will translate to higher costs for the shopping comparison engines. Some of the costs will be passed onto merchants, and I’m not sure they’ll stand for it. The shopping comparison engines are some of the biggest purchasers of pay per click (PPC) listings on Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM). Companies like Shopping.com, Shopzilla, and NexTag are also some of the savviest search marketers in the biz, looking at revenue derived from each and every click. Whether you call it arbitrage or not, many of the shopping comparison engines purchase keywords to drive traffic to their...
  • W3C Selling PageRank Or Thanking Supporters?
    Nathan Weinberg linked to a post by Emad Fanous who notes that the W3C is selling PageRank 9 and PR7 links. You can buy a link on this page also and earn yourself a PR9 link from the w3.org site. How much is it? $1,000 per year and if you do that, you will also get yourself a free PR7 link on this page. How about that for a good deal? :) I'll stop being sarcastic now... Things to note: (1) The links do not carry the nofollow attribute (2) It seems like anyone can buy the links. See the...
  • Google's Q&A Database Different From Web Search Database
    This morning I posted at SER that Google was displaying results for a particular site in the Q&A section of the Google SERPs but at the same time does not have any pages of that site listed in the Google web search index....
  • Search Forums Roundup: July 7, 2006
    Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Checkout: Exaggerated Claims? - Spam is an Arms Race - So Confused About 302 Redirects - Are Outbound Links Rewarded? - A Guide to Keyword Analysis, and more....
  • AOL Podcast Search Beta Live
    TVEyes' podcast search engine Podscope.com has been launched as a service on AOL Search in Beta. You can access the AOL Podcast Beta Search after accepting the license agreement, you will then be directed to http://podcast.search.aol.com/. A search will provide a method to listen to podcast excerpts with a link to hear the whole podcast. You can submit your podcast to AOL here. You can also learn more about AOL Podcast Search beta here....
  • Business.com Adds NoFollow To Many Links
    Threadwatch reports that Business.com has added the nofollow attribute, a method of telling search engines not to count particular links as a "vote," to many of its outbound links. Aaron Wall discusses how the use of the nofollow in this sense "muddies their credibility," by saying, we have links on our web site that we posted but we don't trust them. It turns out that only those that pay business.com for a directory listing gets a link without the nofollow added to it. Everyone else who is accepted into the directory, is tagged as untrusted....
  • Lawsuits Over The Google Party Jet; Arguments Over Bed Sizes On Board
    New details out now about the Google Jet we've written about before, the used 767 that Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have purchased. Turns out, there are lawsuits filed over the retrofit of the plane, and with them, news of hammocks hanging from the ceiling and an apparent fight between the cofounders over bed sizes that Google CEO Eric Schmidt had to referee....
  • Dr. Stephen Hawking Turns To Yahoo Answers For How Humans Will Survive
    Wow. Dr. Stephen Hawking, yes, the real Stephen Hawking, has turned to Yahoo Answers for help. How can the human race survive the next hundred years?, he asks, in a question that Yahoo reassures us is really from the famous physicist and not a joke. And stay tuned, because Yahoo's planning to get U2's Bono to post later today. How's it going for Hawking? There were 15,867 answers when I looked. That means his next question should be, "How can I review all these answers?" The answer is to sit back and let the Yahoo Answers community itself do it....
  • Smarter.com Updates Site
    Smarter.com made 4 major changes to its website. The company introduced a new design, new ranking methodology, clustering beta, and limited crawling. While Smarter is one of the little guys in the shopping comparison engine industry (Shopping.com and Shopzilla being the leaders according to comScore data), these are bold moves which show how serious the company is about becoming a major player....
  • Search Engine Optimization in an Hour a Day
    If you're just getting started with search marketing, it can be tough to know where to start or which sources of information to trust. Things change quickly, and what worked yesterday doesn't always work today. Fortunately, there are some fundamental approaches and techniques that always seem to work, and a new book does a great job of laying a foundation for search engine success. Even better, the book avoids jargon and stays away from the countless hotly debated "tactics" that often cause more harm than good. I've got a review of this new book in today's SearchDay article, A Beginner's...
  • Google In Another Dictionary: Merriam-Webster
    The LA Times reports that the term 'Google' has been added to the Merriam-Webster, the dictionary I grew up on. The other day we reported that Google was added to the Oxford English Dictionary, the most authoritative dictionary of the English language....

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

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 5:46 PM | Permalink

WOM Heats Up for Global Warming Flick

I just received an e-mail from a friend urging me in the strongest terms to see the new Al Gore movie "An Inconvenient Truth." To wit: "This movie really does a great job at explaining how and why global warming is happening. I believe that every single person on this planet should see this movie. If we don't start making changes now, we are in for a climate catastrophe - in our lifetime. Seriously. This is not an exaggeration - it is reality. It's almost too big to fully understand. It's terrifying. But we can do something about it."

After reading a recent Berkeley Daily Planet story, which described how high school kids were creating posters promoting the movie and putting them up in vacant store windows, I thought... "Wow... serious word of mouth!"

It's like the liberal version of the grassroots groundswell that propelled "The Passion of the Christ" to become such a hit.

Judging from my exchange with my e-mailing friend, these expressions of support aren't orchestrated, but the film's Web site, climatecrisis.net, definitely provides plenty of material for those of a mind to spread the word.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 5:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Halliburton Site: CGM, Spoof or Real Deal?

halliburton.jpgIf ever there was a company ripe for a CGM spoof, it's gotta be Halliburton.

This site looks legit, until you look more closely. It contains gems like The Halliburton SurvivaBall™ "a one-size-fits-all solution to global warming," also advertised as "a gated community for one."

Other links appear to actually be legit. Yet none of this is part of the official corporate site, haliburton.com. A whois lookup seems to confirm there's really no association with Dick Cheney's former corporation.

It sure would be interesting to know how -- and if -- the real Halliburton responds. And if they're even listening.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 5:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Daily SearchCast, July 7, 2006: Business.com's Nofollow On Non-Paid Links; Buying Links The W3C Way; Stephen Hawking On Yahoo Answers; A California King Bed For Google Force One & More!

Today's search podcast covers Business.com putting nofollow on non-paid links; buying links via the W3C; Dr. Stephen Hawking getting answers from Yahoo Answers?; just how big of a bed will fit into the Google founders' new jet and more!

Tune-in by listening to this MP3 file, listening via WebmasterRadio at 11:30am Eastern and repeated at 2pm Eastern Tuesday through Friday, via our Odeo channel or through iTunes via this link (or use alternative iTunes instructions explained here) or though our Yahoo Podcasts channel. Need more help tuning in live or finding the chat room? See the Daily SearchCast FAQ.

Below are links to items discussed:

  • Business.com Adds NoFollow To Many Links
    Threadwatch reports that Business.com has added the nofollow attribute, a method of telling search engines not to count particular links as a "vote," to many of its outbound links. Aaron Wall discusses how the use of the nofollow in this sense "muddies their credibility," by saying, we have links on our web site that we posted but we don't trust them. It turns out that only those that pay business.com for a directory listing gets a link without the nofollow added to it. Everyone else who is accepted into the directory, is tagged as untrusted....
  • W3C Selling PageRank Or Thanking Supporters?
    Nathan Weinberg linked to a post by Emad Fanous who notes that the W3C is selling PageRank 9 and PR7 links. You can buy a link on this page also and earn yourself a PR9 link from the w3.org site. How much is it? $1,000 per year and if you do that, you will also get yourself a free PR7 link on this page. How about that for a good deal? :) I'll stop being sarcastic now... Things to note: (1) The links do not carry the nofollow attribute (2) It seems like anyone can buy the links. See the...
  • Google's Q&A Database Different From Web Search Database
    This morning I posted at SER that Google was displaying results for a particular site in the Q&A section of the Google SERPs but at the same time does not have any pages of that site listed in the Google web search index....
  • AOL Podcast Search Beta Live
    TVEyes' podcast search engine Podscope.com has been launched as a service on AOL Search in Beta. You can access the AOL Podcast Beta Search after accepting the license agreement, you will then be directed to http://podcast.search.aol.com/. A search will provide a method to listen to podcast excerpts with a link to hear the whole podcast. You can submit your podcast to AOL here. You can also learn more about AOL Podcast Search beta here....
  • Smarter.com Updates Site
    Smarter.com made 4 major changes to its website. The company introduced a new design, new ranking methodology, clustering beta, and limited crawling. While Smarter is one of the little guys in the shopping comparison engine industry (Shopping.com and Shopzilla being the leaders according to comScore data), these are bold moves which show how serious the company is about becoming a major player....
  • Search Engine Optimization in an Hour a Day
    If you're just getting started with search marketing, it can be tough to know where to start or which sources of information to trust. Things change quickly, and what worked yesterday doesn't always work today. Fortunately, there are some fundamental approaches and techniques that always seem to work, and a new book does a great job of laying a foundation for search engine success. Even better, the book avoids jargon and stays away from the countless hotly debated "tactics" that often cause more harm than good. I've got a review of this new book in today's SearchDay article, A Beginner's...
  • Dr. Stephen Hawking Turns To Yahoo Answers For How Humans Will Survive
    Wow. Dr. Stephen Hawking, yes, the real Stephen Hawking, has turned to Yahoo Answers for help. How can the human race survive the next hundred years?, he asks, in a question that Yahoo reassures us is really from the famous physicist and not a joke. And stay tuned, because Yahoo's planning to get U2's Bono to post later today. How's it going for Hawking? There were 15,867 answers when I looked. That means his next question should be, "How can I review all these answers?" The answer is to sit back and let the Yahoo Answers community itself do it....
  • Google In Another Dictionary: Merriam-Webster
    The LA Times reports that the term 'Google' has been added to the Merriam-Webster, the dictionary I grew up on. The other day we reported that Google was added to the Oxford English Dictionary, the most authoritative dictionary of the English language....
  • Lawsuits Over The Google Party Jet; Arguments Over Bed Sizes On Board
    New details out now about the Google Jet we've written about before, the used 767 that Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have purchased. Turns out, there are lawsuits filed over the retrofit of the plane, and with them, news of hammocks hanging from the ceiling and an apparent fight between the cofounders over bed sizes that Google CEO Eric Schmidt had to referee....

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 5:24 PM | Permalink

Another CGM Contest Spews Forth

mentos.jpg
This one I actually like. In fact, it's the first CGM contest I've seen in a long while that seems to have a halfway decent reason for existing.

If you spend any time slumming around YouTube, then you know about the Mentos/Diet Coke mini-craze. Two guys put together a video of themselves creating complicated geysers and mist clouds of vapourized corn syrup using only Mentos and a two-liter bottle of Coke. Many amateur chemist-videographers followed suit, and now scattered across the video aggregation sites are hundreds of short movies showing the curious results of dropping Mentos into sugared soda water.

With its new contest, Mentos will now do what Cingular, Intel and others have done before: invite video creators to make movies featuring its brand, in exchange for a shot at winning something or other. What's different here is that the Freshmaker is working with a CGM concept that already has a some momentum behind it, rather than trying to invent one out of thin air.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Conference Coverage: SES Latino 2006

The first ever Search Engine Strategies Latino will be taking place this Monday and Tuesday in Miami, Florida. Danny will be moderating some sessions and I will be covering the Landscape & Tactics tracks at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Nacho Hernandez from iHispanic is hosting the event. You can view the conference schedule by clicking here.

Want to discuss? Join our Search Engine Watch Forums thread.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 1:38 PM | Permalink

Google Health Scrapbook: Google's Health Portal

Via PaidContent and VC Ratings, Google is working on a health portal named the Google Health Scrapbook. From what I understand there will be a "directory" for patients, doctors, vendors and pharmaceutical each. Google "users will be able to log in with their own account information and do things such as add a new medical provider, check their medical records or pay their bills."

Google has been rumored to be working on a health portal for a while. With the hire of Adam Bosworth, Google's Architect, Google Health we expected more. But when Google released Google Co-Op, those rumors were shattered. These new reports will revitalize the rumors that Google is working on a health portal.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 1:23 PM | Permalink

Nonprofits Fume over Congressional E-mail Barrier

Advocacy groups are up-in-arms over a new e-mail obstacle congressional offices have enabled. They're calling it "Logic Puzzle;" essentially, as detailed last month in the Washington Post, if you want to send your elected federal officials a message via e-mail, you've got to answer some simple arithmetic (3x1=x, that sorta thing).

A story/opinion piece on Personal Democracy Forum describes it this way:

While easy for most people to solve, the puzzle is designed to force you to go to the lawmaker's own website to send your message, rather than sending it from an organizational site where you have helpful background information and assistance drafting language. Nonprofits see this in terms of our basic constitutional right to freely petition government, and agree that blocking software must go.

Of course we should always be able to freely contact the folks we elect as our representatives, and solving a puzzle beforehand, though painless for many of us, seems uncalled for. The thing is, the steady onslaught in cookie-cutter messages sent through advocacy group Web sites is taking up more and more time to wade through.

Consider this: Last year, I wrote a piece for Personal Democracy Forum (I was associate editor there at the time) about the efforts by advocacy groups on the left and right to inspire supporters to contact key senators regarding John Bolton's nomination for UN Ambassador. I spoke with a few Capitol Hill staffers, and their sentiments were all pretty similar. The comments of Senator Lincoln Chafee's press secretary sum up the general consensus. He told me that although the staff gives some attention to emails and calls initiated by advocacy groups, "after a while when you have so many calls and emails and blast faxes from one phone number, impact subsides.”

One of the main problems is that a good chunk of these digital missives are sent by people outside a Congressperson's region or state. And, the truth is, they're not going to take someone's opinion into consideration if he can't vote for 'em.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yup, It's Official. Google Checkout Verboten on eBay

checkoutlogo.gif
If small merchants can't use Google Checkout on eBay, will they still adopt the fledgling service (which is partially designed to reward AdWords spending)? And how much does the ban hurt (in terms of transaction fees) all by itself? EBay does a whole lotta commerce, after all. Those are the questions on people's minds today, after the yesterday's revelation that eBay (parent to PayPal, of course) has decided to ban the rival service. (Page on acceptable and non-acceptable payment types here.)

There are a lot of complexities to this. What's to keep these small merchants from offering PayPal and Checkout on their sites that are separate from eBay? But, then again, PayPal still offers some functionality (like a shopping cart) that goes beyond what Google is making available. And to what extent was Google interested in courting small merchants, anyway, given that many of the charter stores are big names (and also big Google advertisers, no doubt)?

Posted by Pamela Parker at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google Checkout Could Increase Costs For The Shopping Comparison Engines

Google Checkout adoption will translate to higher costs for the shopping comparison engines. Some of the costs will be passed onto merchants, and I’m not sure they’ll stand for it.

The shopping comparison engines are some of the biggest purchasers of pay per click (PPC) listings on Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM). Companies like Shopping.com, Shopzilla, and NexTag are also some of the savviest search marketers in the biz, looking at revenue derived from each and every click. Whether you call it arbitrage or not, many of the shopping comparison engines purchase keywords to drive traffic to their sites and then monetize that traffic through their own PPC listings, ideally at a higher rate than what they paid Google or Yahoo!.

As PPC rates on the general search engines have risen over the last couple years, the shopping comparison engines have had to raise their own PPC rates to cover their increased costs. A number of people I trust say that this is faulty logic, but I would say that the rise in PPC costs on the general search engines is definitely one factor in the rise in PPC rates on the shopping comparison engines.

Google Adwords ranks PPC ads “based on their maximum cost-per-click (CPC) and Quality Score on Google.com. (For the top positions above Google search results, we use the actual CPC.) The Quality Score is determined by the keyword’s performance history on Google: its clickthrough rate (CTR), relevance of ad text, historical keyword performance, landing page quality, and other relevancy factors.” (Full Explanation).

Now here comes Google Checkout. If you’re an AdWords advertiser, you can hook up your Adwords and Checkout accounts and display a Google Checkout shopping cart icon in your Adwords ads. If Google Checkout takes off, consumers will start to look for ads that have the Checkout icon, thus driving up the CTR of these ads. Because CTR is one determinant of ranking on Adwords, the merchants who list the icon should move up in ranking.

The comparison engines will not be able to show the Google Checkout shopping cart icon in their listings (unless some special deal is struck). This means that to effectively compete with the merchants who are displaying the icon, the shopping comparison engines will have to increase their maximum CPC bid, driving up costs.

If the shopping comparison engines are paying more on Google Adwords, they are going to have to raise the minimum price floors they charge merchants. Merchants are already pissed at the perceived high costs on the shopping comparison engines (I say perceived because I don’t think that all advertisers are properly tracking costs or optimizing listings and therefore could actually afford to bid a lot higher) so rate increases are always met with disdain.

Most of the large shopping comparison engines will increase their pricing in preparation for the holiday season. This is a normal phenomenon because conversion rate goes up during the holiday shopping season, but I think the engines also raise their rates to cover their own click costs. Now add the Google Checkout factor and shopping comparison engines might have to raise their rates even more.

To see a sample of what the Google Checkout shopping cart icon looks like in an AdWords ad, see my full Google Checkout post.

Posted by Brian Smith at 11:32 AM | Permalink

W3C Selling PageRank Or Thanking Supporters?

Nathan Weinberg linked to a post by Emad Fanous who notes that the W3C is selling PageRank 9 and PR7 links. You can buy a link on this page also and earn yourself a PR9 link from the w3.org site. How much is it? $1,000 per year and if you do that, you will also get yourself a free PR7 link on this page. How about that for a good deal? :) I'll stop being sarcastic now...

Things to note:
(1) The links do not carry the nofollow attribute
(2) It seems like anyone can buy the links. See the links listed, "Website Templates Company," "KVM Switches Online," "Cheap Web Hosting Provider," oh and a familiar face, "SEO Book," to name a few.

Is there a difference between having links to "supporters" and selling links to anyone? This is not for me to decide.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:14 AM | Permalink

Google's Q&A Database Different From Web Search Database

This morning I posted at SER that Google was displaying results for a particular site in the Q&A section of the Google SERPs but at the same time does not have any pages of that site listed in the Google web search index.

The details of this were posted in comments at Matt Cutts' blog. The site comes up for a search on % of African American in Los Angeles but does not come up for a site command search.

This may prove that Google uses a different index for the Q&A feature and the web search results.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:23 AM | Permalink

Search Forums Roundup: July 7, 2006

Today's SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week's hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Checkout: Exaggerated Claims? - Spam is an Arms Race - So Confused About 302 Redirects - Are Outbound Links Rewarded? - A Guide to Keyword Analysis, and more.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:05 AM | Permalink

AOL Podcast Search Beta Live

TVEyes' podcast search engine Podscope.com has been launched as a service on AOL Search in beta. You can access the AOL Podcast Beta Search after accepting the license agreement, you will then be directed to http://podcast.search.aol.com/.

A search will provide a method to listen to podcast excerpts with a link to hear the whole podcast. You can submit your podcast to AOL here. You can also learn more about AOL Podcast Search beta here.

AOL and TVEyes entered into an agreement to offer the service back in September 2005.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:55 AM | Permalink

Business.com Adds Nofollow To Many Links

Threadwatch reports that Business.com has added the nofollow attribute, a method of telling search engines not to count particular links as a "vote," to many of its outbound links. Aaron Wall discusses how the use of the nofollow in this sense "muddies their credibility" by saying they have links in their directory that they don't trust. But it appears that only those that pay Business.com for a directory listing get a link without the nofollow added to it. Everyone else who is accepted into the directory, is tagged as untrusted. That's the exact opposite of how Google's Matt Cutts has said he thinks nofollow should work.

Postscript: Business.com - Use of "No Follow" Tags Explained has Business.com explaining why it uses nofollow in some cases and not in others.

Postscript 2: Business.com's "No Follow" Policy Revision has Business.com changing how it uses nofollow.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:41 AM | Permalink

Lawsuits Over The Google Party Jet; Arguments Over Bed Sizes On Board

New details out now about the Google Jet we've written about before, the used 767 that Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have purchased. Turns out, there are lawsuits filed over the retrofit of the plane, and with them, news of hammocks hanging from the ceiling and an apparent fight between the cofounders over bed sizes that Google CEO Eric Schmidt had to referee.

Via Threadwatch, this all comes not from a Valleywag post but instead the Wall Street Journal. Lawsuits Fly Over Google Founders' Big Private Plane is the story (paid sub. required), complete with a floor plan of the refurbishment.

One lawsuit involves the aviation designer Leslie Jennings who was overseeing the redesign. He was fired last October by Blue City Holdings, the legal owner of the plane, saying he wasn't doing his job and later alleging cost overruns. Blue City Holdings then filed a lawsuit against Jennings to enforce confidentiality provisions of the project.

And the money quote from the article?

Mr. Jennings says Messrs. Brin and Page "had some strange requests," including hammocks hung from the ceiling of the plane. At one point he witnessed a dispute between them over whether Mr. Brin should have a "California king" size bed, he says. Mr. Jennings says Mr. Schmidt stepped in to resolve that by saying, "Sergey, you can have whatever bed you want in your room; Larry, you can have whatever kind of bed you want in your bedroom. Let's move on." Mr. Jennings says Mr. Schmidt at another point told him, "It's a party airplane."

As for the plane itself, it was in San Antonio, but no one knows where it is today. Blue City Holdings has kept its location out of at least one public tracking database. But the time for refurbishment is pretty much up, so it might take to the skies soon.

The Wall Street Journal went to town on this one. Aside from the story, you can watch reporter Kevin Delaney talk in a video about the story (this appears to be free for anyone to view and pretty informative). You can also read the lawsuits filed in Texas and California (links are to PDF files, both appear to be free to view).

FYI, we have a Search Engine Watch Forum discussion on the jet: Name The Google Jet. Feel free to comment or discuss more there. At the moment, GoogleJet is the leading nickname for the plane, followed by GoogleBot One and Joogle. Hmm -- maybe Air AdSense?

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:35 AM | Permalink

Dr. Stephen Hawking Turns To Yahoo Answers For How Humans Will Survive; Bono Posts Too

Wow. Dr. Stephen Hawking, yes, the real Stephen Hawking, has turned to Yahoo Answers for help. How can the human race survive the next hundred years?, he asks, in a question that Yahoo reassures us is really from the famous physicist and not a joke. And stay tuned, because Yahoo's planning to get U2's Bono to post later today.

How's it going for Hawking? There were 15,867 answers when I looked. That means his next question should be, "How can I review all these answers?" The answer is to sit back and let the Yahoo Answers community itself do it. It will be interesting to see what's voted as the best answer.

For more on Yahoo Answers, see my past article, Look Out Wikipedia, Here Comes Yahoo Answers!

Postscript: Bono has added his post now on ending poverty, says Yahoo. Hawking Seeks Answers on Yahoo from the Associated Press also has some nice background on his involvement and how Yahoo staffers will help him sift through responses.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:13 AM | Permalink

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