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July 18, 2006

July 18, 2006

Search Headlines & Links: July 18, 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:

  • Daily SearchCast, July 18, 2006: Google Maps Jump Into Regular Google; Avast Ye Click Pirates; Google: "We Are Idiots;" Yahoo's New Home Page, Finance & More!
    Today's search podcast covers Google Maps getting mixed into regular Google; ahoy, matey, here come the click pirates to rob from the rich advertisers and give to, well, the pirates; Eric Schmidt admits to Google idiocy [but does he really believe it]; Yahoo updates its home page and Yahoo Finance; Google sends an advertiser pai relief; is your mom Googling you? 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...
  • Search Engine Watch Server Change
    About a year ago, Incisive Media purchased Search Engine Watch from Jupitermedia. Part of the purchase meant that Jupitermedia would continue to host Search Engine Watch for a year. With that time up, we're finally moving. This is a heads-up that the change is happening....
  • Keyword Prices Continue To Fall: Down 8.6 Percent
    Fathom Online released a keyword price index update that shows keyword prices fell again quarter over quarter by 8.6 percent. Prices on average fell from $1.39 on March 31 to $1.27 on June 30. Last report also showed keyword prices dropping $1.43 at the end of 2005 to $1.39 in the first quarter of 2006, but folks blamed seasonality for the price drop. The reason for this drop? Marketers are bidding smarter says Matt McMahon, VP Marketing Services at Fathom....
  • Mom's Googling: Be Careful!
    Andy Beal points to an article published at the Los Angeles Times named Oops, Mom Googled Me. The story is about how a mom decided to Google her daughter. What she found was an article from her daughter named "9 Tips For Surviving The Holidays At Your Republican Parents’ Home" (you can see the article by scrolling down on this page)....
  • Click Pirates Making A Mockery Of The Text Ad Space
    Peter Da Vanzo uncovers a disturbing practice where there are people out there clicking on ads, with the sole desire to hurt advertisers and enrich themselves....
  • Malware Search Engine Powered By Google
    H.D. Moore of Metasploit designed a vertical search engine using the Google API to search specifically for malware. The search engine can be found here....
  • The Google Idiots Are Damn Smart
    Spotted via Battelle, the folks running Google are a bunch of idiots! At least that is what Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt wants you to think. Schmidt remarked to reporters the other day, “So, yes we are IDIOTS — and please WRITE THAT DOWN.” Huh? Write it down? What does that get you? Schmidt continues, “We have every known problem that a growth company has — quicker…Write down all the obvious problems, we have every one of them. So we make a list of them (potential problems) and we anticipate them.” Sarcasm, personally, I think it is great. Some people may...
  • Search Marketing in Latin America
    Latin America is a tempting market for search marketers, with more than 80 million users and ever increasing broadband penetration. But this market also poses unique challenges that need to be addressed for campaigns to be successful. A panel of experts discussed the search landscape in Latin America at last week's Search Engine Strategies Latino conference, and guest writer Sara Holoubek has excellent coverage of the session in today's SearchDay article, Search, The South American Way....
  • AFP Content Still In Google News, Probably Via AFP's Own Partners
    "Despite suit, Google News still indexing AFP content" from IDG News Service covers Agence France Press content still appearing in Google News after the company said last year that it would no longer carry AFP content, following a copyright infringement lawsuit. The problem seems to be that AFP content is distributed by other publishers, such as the New York Times....
  • Problems Connecting To Google From The UK
    Barry noted on Search Engine Roundtable that some people in the UK are having problems connecting to Google. I'm one of those unlucky ones, and so far, it remains a mystery to Google about what's going on....
  • Yahoo Finance Upgrades Features & Charts
    Part of the launch of the new Yahoo homepage, Yahoo has added some features to Yahoo Finance. Those features include new tools to manage charts, an improved "investors chat room" and financial video news. SearchViews explains that Yahoo "hopes to tone down the wild west atmosphere of boards by introducing a way to rate posts on a scale of 1 to 5 stars, with lower rated posts to be filtered out." Part of the upgrade includes access to adding Yahoo badges to your site, something we beta tested in mid-May....

Headlines & News From Elsewhere

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:12 PM | Permalink

Daily SearchCast, July 18, 2006: Google Maps Jump Into Regular Google; Avast Ye Click Pirates; Google: "We Are Idiots;" Yahoo's New Home Page, Finance & More!

Today's search podcast covers Google Maps getting mixed into regular Google; ahoy, matey, here come the click pirates to rob from the rich advertisers and give to, well, the pirates; Eric Schmidt admits to Google idiocy [but does he really believe it]; Yahoo updates its home page and Yahoo Finance; Google sends an advertiser pai relief; is your mom Googling you? 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:

  • Google Maps Added As OneBox Result
    Rob over in our Search Engine Watch forums thread Google Maps + Reviews In Main Search Results and Philipp Lenssen reports that Google seems to have added a new Google Maps "OneBox" display for some results. Philipp shows how a search on sf mortgage broker brings up a Google Maps like UI at the top of the results. In the past, it would have just brought up links to local results and not a full-fledged map. I tested it out on my own company and it also brings up the Google Maps OneBox. You can see the difference between local...
  • Report: Click Fraud Rises in Q2 & High-Priced Keywords Click Fraud Rate At 20.2%
    The Click Fraud Index issued an updated report on the state of click fraud. In the second quarter click fraud rose four points to 14.1 percent, compared with the Q1 results of 13.7 percent. In addition, this time they broke out click fraud rates in terms of high-prices keywords versus low-price keywords. For terms that cost over $2.00 per click, high-priced keywords, the click fraud rate is higher than the average, at 20.2 percent. Click fraud is less of an issue at Google and Yahoo, tier one providers at 12.8 percent but did rise from 12.1 percent in Q1. Tier...
  • Click Pirates Making A Mockery Of The Text Ad Space
    Peter Da Vanzo uncovers a disturbing practice where there are people out there clicking on ads, with the sole desire to hurt advertisers and enrich themselves....
  • Malware Search Engine Powered By Google
    H.D. Moore of Metasploit designed a vertical search engine using the Google API to search specifically for malware. The search engine can be found here....
  • The Google Idiots Are Damn Smart
    Spotted via Battelle, the folks running Google are a bunch of idiots! At least that is what Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt wants you to think. Schmidt remarked to reporters the other day, “So, yes we are IDIOTS — and please WRITE THAT DOWN.” Huh? Write it down? What does that get you? Schmidt continues, “We have every known problem that a growth company has — quicker…Write down all the obvious problems, we have every one of them. So we make a list of them (potential problems) and we anticipate them.” Sarcasm, personally, I think it is great. Some people may...
  • Google Hiring Television Engineers & Wireless Software Engineer
    Search Engine Watch Forums moderator evilgreenmonkey (brand new moderator) has informed me that Google posted two new interesting jobs for the London office for Software Engineer, Television Technology & Wireless Software Engineer in Test....
  • More On MySpace After A Search Partner
    Mining for Gold on MySpace from BusinessWeek gives a few more details on the story we covered earlier about MySpace seeking a partner to power searches. The story says RevenueScience is powering search there currently, though when I did my earlier post, neither Yahoo nor RevenueScience confirmed that. RevenueScience did confirm they do contextual/behavioral targeting, but that's an entirely other type of service. The story also gives new, amazing stats that MySpace generates 5 percent of all searches on the web. Hmm. Just a month ago, this was said to be 0.6% of all searches, according to comScore. And...
  • AdWords Adds Category Site Selection Feature
    The Inside AdWords blog announced that you can now tell them what category of sites you want your ads to be displayed on. For example, if you run a karate site that sells Samurai swords, then you can tell AdWords to display your ads on sites that talk about the sport of karate. Now, I did not look if karate is a category under "sports" but if it is, then you can choose it. More details on how to use this feature at the AdWords support page....
  • Yahoo Officially Launches New Home Page Design
    Yahoo has officially launched the new design they have been beta testing since mid-February. If you go to www.yahoo.com you will get the new design even if you have never seen it before. Yahoo launched the design in the UK & Ireland earlier this month. TechCrunch notes in the comments that the new design has been live in India for weeks now. The full press release is posted below....
  • Yahoo Finance Upgrades Features & Charts
    Part of the launch of the new Yahoo homepage, Yahoo has added some features to Yahoo Finance. Those features include new tools to manage charts, an improved "investors chat room" and financial video news. SearchViews explains that Yahoo "hopes to tone down the wild west atmosphere of boards by introducing a way to rate posts on a scale of 1 to 5 stars, with lower rated posts to be filtered out." Part of the upgrade includes access to adding Yahoo badges to your site, something we beta tested in mid-May....
  • Yahoo Tests Redirecting Some Searches To Site Explorer & Yahoo Search Update
    Yahoo is testing out redirecting some of those who conduct a link command or site command search at search.yahoo.com to the Yahoo Site Explorer tool. I reported this and just now received confirmation from Yahoo that they are testing out this solution with a "percentage of users" conducting these searches. Yahoo has always wanted to move these special searches off the main search.yahoo.com page and onto the Site Explorer front. On other Yahoo news, Yahoo just announced a weather report stating, "we rolled out an index update last night. As usual, you may see some changes in ranking as well...
  • Find Great Podcasts
    Podcasts are a very good way of keeping up to date with what is going on, they're entertaining, you can play them in the background while you're doing other things - but have you ever tried to find them? Quite frankly, it's been pretty messy and not a lot of fun. However the article "Find great podcasts" is a very useful summary of podcast search engines, directories, and other resources. The comments also provide a useful collection of resources that can be used to find that elusive podcast....
  • AFP Content Still In Google News, Probably Via AFP's Own Partners
    "Despite suit, Google News still indexing AFP content" from IDG News Service covers Agence France Press content still appearing in Google News after the company said last year that it would no longer carry AFP content, following a copyright infringement lawsuit. The problem seems to be that AFP content is distributed by other publishers, such as the New York Times....
  • Hawaiian Airlines Cries Search Engine Foul Over Use Of "Hawaiian" On Competitor Web Site
    Hawaiian Airlines is alleging that new rival Go because Go made use of the word "Hawaiian" too often and thus might be influencing search results....
  • Mom's Googling: Be Careful!
    Andy Beal points to an article published at the Los Angeles Times named Oops, Mom Googled Me. The story is about how a mom decided to Google her daughter. What she found was an article from her daughter named "9 Tips For Surviving The Holidays At Your Republican Parents’ Home" (you can see the article by scrolling down on this page)....
  • Google Sends Aspirin After AdWords Changes Causes Headache
    Earlier this week, Al Scillitani posted at Marketing Pilgrim about how all the recent Google AdWords changes were giving him a headache. Today, he posted how in response, he'd been sent some acetaminophen in response from Google. I thought it was interesting enough to note in today's search headlines roundup but not that big of a deal overall. How wrong I was :) Over 3,000 Diggs later, the story's got legs. Adam Lasnik from Google's search quality team says he's the culprit. Adam's actually got nothing to do with AdWords, but the gesture was funny anyway....

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:03 PM | Permalink

Search Engine Watch Server Change

About a year ago, Incisive Media purchased Search Engine Watch from Jupitermedia. Part of the purchase meant that Jupitermedia would continue to host Search Engine Watch for a year. With that time up, we're finally moving. This is a heads-up that the change is happening.

The Search Engine Watch Forums (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com) already moved about two weeks ago. It was pretty painless and not noticed by most people.

The main Search Engine Watch site (http://searchenginewatch.com) is being moved right now. I was just told that our DNS was changed. That means over the next day, people will be invisibly sent to the new servers hosting our content, rather than the old Jupitermedia-hosted ones.

If all goes well, you won't notice the move. It should happen automatically for you. At the moment, the content on both sites is the same and will stay that way until tomorrow, at which point everyone really should be sent automatically to the new site.

How do you know if you are at the new site? Scroll down to the search box in the left-hand column. If you see an option to search and sort "results in date order," you're being routed to the new site (note that on the Search Engine Watch Blog -- http://blog.searchenginewatch.com -- the search box is yet again different).

How also to know? Chances are things will break. We have a lot of redirections in place, and we're checking to make sure that everything is working fine. But inevitably, something will go wrong.

Spotted a bug, a problem? Use this form and let us know, and we'll get it solved.

Finally, the Search Engine Watch Blog hasn't switched yet. That will happen in a few days, and I'll post a notice there, when it does.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:29 PM | Permalink

Keyword Prices Continue To Fall: Down 8.6 Percent

Fathom Online released a keyword price index update that shows keyword prices fell again quarter over quarter by 8.6 percent. Prices on average fell from $1.39 on March 31 to $1.27 on June 30. Last report also showed keyword prices dropping $1.43 at the end of 2005 to $1.39 in the first quarter of 2006, but folks blamed seasonality for the price drop. The reason for this drop? Marketers are bidding smarter says Matt McMahon, VP Marketing Services at Fathom.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 12:25 PM | Permalink

Mom's Googling: Be Careful!

Andy Beal points to an article published at the Los Angeles Times named Oops, Mom Googled Me. The story is about how a mom decided to Google her daughter. What she found was an article from her daughter named "9 Tips For Surviving The Holidays At Your Republican Parents’ Home" (you can see the article by scrolling down on this page).

You can see from that article how her parents would be upset with her, so upset that they stopped talking to her. Why? Well, her father reasoned, "If you don't want her to write about you, don't talk to her, because that's what writers do. They write down what we say."

So, let this be a lesson to all you writers and bloggers, be careful, your parents are now on the internet and searching for what you're doing!

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:19 AM | Permalink

Click Pirates Making A Mockery Of The Text Ad Space

Peter Da Vanzo uncovers a disturbing practice where there are people out there clicking on ads, with the sole desire to hurt advertisers and enrich themselves.

It is not simply a competitive thing or something large scale with normal cases of click fraud that we have reported in the past. There are people out there that I want to call "Click Pirates" who click on ads, knowingly and proudly, stealing from advertisers, plus they encourage others to join with them in this quest.

Peter pulled out remarks from these people in a thread (site seems to be down now) that include remarks such as,

Let's steal from the people with a lot of money, not ourselves”

“If it were illegal, they would be at my door to arrest me”

“The most of the persons who are clicking are there to get any money because they need, not only to made a hobbie from this. Most of the "policers" here forgotted it and are breaking hope for a lot of people when they do their witch hunt. I am so sad about that.”

The worse part is that this is becoming more organized, like underground click fraud gangs. They come together, steal from advertisers and split the loot.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:03 AM | Permalink

Malware Search Engine Powered By Google

H.D. Moore of Metasploit designed a vertical search engine using the Google API to search specifically for malware. The search engine can be found here.

This follows news last week of a private search engine having been developed to do the same thing.

Ryan Naraine at eWeek has an excellent write up on how the engine works, describing that the search engine has been coded with 300 malware signatures with hopes to increase that to 6,000. The engine then searches the web according to Google and finds executable files that match those signatures.


Steven Bryant from Google Watch notes that Metasploit changed the logo to "censored" it after possibly receiving a cease and desist letter from Google. Here is the before and after.

google-malware.png

Looks to me that Metasploit is having fun with this. I really don't know if Google complained to Metasploit that he used the colors of the Google logo for this logo. But it is funny, nonetheless.

Now, is this a good thing for the public to have access to? I got other news to report, you can debate that question yourself.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:47 AM | Permalink

The Google Idiots Are Damn Smart

Spotted via Battelle, the folks running Google are a bunch of idiots! At least that is what Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt wants you to think. Schmidt remarked to reporters the other day, “So, yes we are IDIOTS — and please WRITE THAT DOWN.” Huh? Write it down? What does that get you? Schmidt continues, “We have every known problem that a growth company has — quicker…Write down all the obvious problems, we have every one of them. So we make a list of them (potential problems) and we anticipate them.”

Sarcasm, personally, I think it is great. Some people may be a little disturbed by this unusual happenstance but I think overall, it brings Google back to being human. Google wants that, I suspect. Yes, people are idiots, they make mistakes, they have problems and they work on solutions to fix those problems. Smart idiots are better than dumb idiots. Now it is up to you to decide for yourself which type of idiots would the Google's leaders be classified as.

You can listen to the complete interview (39 minutes) by clicking here (MP3 file), or review some of the highlights that Reuters has posted. I have not listened to it, so I did not write any of this based on the tone of his voice.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:34 AM | Permalink

Search Marketing in Latin America

Latin America is a tempting market for search marketers, with more than 80 million users and ever increasing broadband penetration. But this market also poses unique challenges that need to be addressed for campaigns to be successful. A panel of experts discussed the search landscape in Latin America at last week's Search Engine Strategies Latino conference, and guest writer Sara Holoubek has excellent coverage of the session in today's SearchDay article, Search, The South American Way.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:17 AM | Permalink

AFP Content Still In Google News, Probably Via AFP's Own Partners

"Despite suit, Google News still indexing AFP content" from IDG News Service covers Agence France Press content still appearing in Google News after the company said last year that it would no longer carry AFP content, following a copyright infringement lawsuit. The problem seems to be that AFP content is distributed by other publishers, such as the New York Times.

There's no foolproof way for Google to flag these articles as AFP content and thus remove them. Honestly, it's down to AFP itself to teach its distributors to learn out to use the meta robots tag to flag this content as not to be indexed.

Then again, I'm sure that over time, the situation will resolve itself. After all, if AFP is stupid enough not to understand the value of search traffic, smarter publications that do understand this like the New York Times itself will overtake it as people turn to them for content online.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 5:18 AM | Permalink

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