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July 24, 2006

July 24, 2006

Search Headlines & Links: July 24, 2006

Below, a recap of stories posted from June 21st through today to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with other items we've spotted but not blogged separately:

From The SEW Blog...

  • Become.com Launches Search Zoom Filtering Feature

    No longer do you have to weed through hundreds or thousands of search results to find a discussion forum or product specs for Aston Martin's Vanquish. With Become, you can search for 'Aston Martin Vanquish' or any other product and then filter by Product Reveiws, Buying Guides, Discussion Forums, and Product Details. As Jon Glick, Become's Sr. Director of Product Search told me, "users can see what type of listing it is before going into it." I think this is an extremely useful feature. My original search results for 'Aston Martin Vanquish' (yes, I'm obsessed) contained 171, 573 results vs....

  • Google And Yahoo: Consistency Or Wow?

    An article over at the New York Times 'In the race with Google, it's consistency vs 'wow'' discusses the differing approaches of Google and Yahoo to the introduction of new technology and resources. The fact that Google hasn't added some of the basics to its mapping service in comparison to the Yahoo and AOL offerings is the starting point for an indepth discussion on how both engines (MSN, AOL and Ask get very short shrift) are trying to increase their user base....

  • Only 11 Percent Of Searchers Use One Word Queries

    OneStat.com published a report detailing that only 11.4 percent of searchers use one-word queries, two-word queries 28.9% leads the bunch, followed by three-word queries at 27.85%, four-word queries with 17.1%, five-word with 8.25% and six-word queries with 3.7%. The report also breaks down number of queries used by country; Canadians are more likely to search with four-word queries, Germans use two-word queries 40% of the time and then 28% use one-word queries. OneStat's research was "based on a sample of 2 million visitors divided into 20,000 visitors of 100 countries each day." More details at OneStat.com....

  • Google Base Becomes More eBay Like With Rich Text Feature

    The Google Base blog announced Friday that Google Base's editor now has the ability to add rich text. Next time you log into Google Base to add or update your listings manually, you should see a WYSIWYG editor. It does not appear those who do bulk uploads, can pass along rich text. It's important to note, however, that at this time, we're not enabling any scripting, data input controls, or frames. Also, HTML descriptions are only available for single item posts....

  • Judge Hears Objections To Google's Click Fraud Settlement

    Associate Press reports that now that the independent report is out, a judge will consider the fifty-plus objections to the Lane's Gifts v. Google settlement. The judge will hear out advertisers today and tomorrow before finalizing that settlement....

  • SEOMoz Spills The Beans On Pricing An SEO Campaign

    Rand posted a blog entry named How to Price an SEO Campaign. He actually broke down his pricing methodology for everyone to see. I have personally never seen this done to this extent before in this industry. SEOs and SEMs can learn a lot about how to price their campaigns and proposals by Rand's post. Rand breaks down a consulting contract versus an implementation contact. His post is very detailed and can give many SEMs an idea on how to improve their contracts. Check out Rand's post here....

  • Google Test Expandable "More" Link

    Philipp Lenssen reports Google is testing an expandable box that opens with options, when you click on the "more" link from the Google.com home page. The more link currently takes people to the more google products page, but this link, is a little DHTML popup that has links to these products directly on the page. The pop up cannot possibly have all of the products listed, so they have a link to "even more" products that probably links to the page. A screen shot is at Philipp's site....

  • Tracking Packages

    The MSN Search weblog has now announced that it is possible to use the system for tracking packages, or more specifically, packages from FedEx, DHL, UPS and USPS. Searchers can simply enter a tracking ID and some other tracking keywords and the Package Tracking Instant Answer will correctly construct the link. An example given is 'Where is UPS tracking number?' Additionally you could use the RSS feed for the search to really keep up to date on where your package has gone. Google has had this feature for a while now, although it doesn't have an option for DHL....

  • GoDaddy Launches Private Label Domain Park Program

    GoDaddy has long placed ads on registered domains that customers have parked at GoDaddy. Now, GoDaddy is allowing webmasters of sign up for a paid monthly subscription to CashParking, that would see webmasters get a share of the profits made from all clicks on the parked domain....

  • Independent Report: Google Click Fraud Detection Practices Are "Reasonable"

    The Google Blog just posted the independent study on their click fraud detection practices that shows Google makes reasonable efforts to detect click fraud. The report was part of an agreement of the Lane's Gifts v. Google settlement and was performed by Dr. Alexander Tuzhilin, Professor of Information Systems at NYU. Obviously Google is pretty happy about this report and I didn't have time to go through the full 47 page report, but if you have time, I bet you as Search Engine Marketer can learn a ton about the AdWords system. Possibly, Danny will dig into this deeper next...

  • Search Forums Roundup: July 21, 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 Maps + Reviews In Main Search Results - Yahoo Panama Release Delayed - Microsoft: MSN - Strider Search Defender - Buying Brand Name Keywords On Adwords, and more....

  • More 3D Maps, an iTunes Video Podcast Directory, .CA Goes Mobile & Wildfires Database: Specialty Search Wrap Up

    This weeks specialty search wrap up from Resource Shelf includes more 3D mapping tools, a iTunes video podcast directory, the Canadian government mobile edition, a resource for locating primary sources with international news and a wildfires and forest fire real time database....

  • Microsoft's MSN Revenue Declined 3% Year Over Year

    ClickZ reports that MSN's revenue declined 3 percent year-over-year. CFO Chris Liddell makes it clear that Microsoft adCenter will be funded well, stating, "it's not far off that we're going to have 100 percent of our business on adCenter." Microsoft plans on spending $500 million on adCenter, Windows Live, MSN Search and other online services this year. Next quarter results should be interesting....

  • Google Finance Leaks Version Two Information

    Garett Rogers stumbled upon a link in Google Finance at the top right corner that said "v2 (test)" in red font. The link points to http://0.frontend-live.sfe.scrooge.hs.borg.google.com/finance, which seems to not be accessible from my location, or outside of Google's network. Notice the sign of the borg again? borg.google.com from before. So, now we have rumors that Google is going to be launching a version two of Google Finance soon. Maybe it includes stock indices from other worlds? :)...

  • Site Diagnostics Tab Added to Google AdSense Console

    Google has added a new tab, a tab they have been beta testing for a couple months, named Site Diagnostics. What this tool does is show you which pages the AdSense crawler is having problems getting to. Why would they crawler have a problem getting to those pages? The several possible reasons include a robots.txt file blocking then, password protected pages, server down or slow and other reasons explained in the AdSense help pages. I have posted screen captures at the Search Engine Roundtable....

  • Google Adds RSS To Google Base Results

    I wrote about Google adding drop down menus to some search results at the Search Engine Roundtable last night and then discovered something new. At least I think it is new. If you go to a Google Base landing page, like this one for Clinical trials results, you may notice a new button at the top right of the page. The button is an RSS feed icon, that links to RSS results for that query refinement in Google Base. I personally have never seen that feature there before, I asked a few people and they haven't either - so I...

Headlines & News From Elsewhere

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 4:06 PM | Permalink

Become.com Launches Search Zoom Filtering Feature

No longer do you have to weed through hundreds or thousands of search results to find a discussion forum or product specs for Aston Martin's Vanquish. With Become, you can search for 'Aston Martin Vanquish' or any other product and then filter by Product Reveiws, Buying Guides, Discussion Forums, and Product Details.

As Jon Glick, Become's Sr. Director of Product Search told me, "users can see what type of listing it is before going into it." I think this is an extremely useful feature. My original search results for 'Aston Martin Vanquish' (yes, I'm obsessed) contained 171, 573 results vs. the 51 returns for discussion forums (which I really wanted). This is a search engine starting to answer my questions as opposed to just returning a bunch of irrelevant results.

So how does this work? Jon immediately went over my head in his explanation (all of you know how sophomoric my tech undertanding is), but here's what I was able to grok. The 4 month project started with human input to define the parameters for a buying guide or discussion forum (a buying guide has characteristics X, Y, and Z while a discussion forum has characteristics D, R, Q, and Y). Then the machine learning takes over, looking at each and every page that Become.com crawls to try to put it in a bucket. But this has to be done in an efficient manner balancing precision and recall and this has to be done for all 4 filters. And then there's the added issue that one web page can be both a product review and product detail page (think Amazon's product pages). As a marketer, I have no idea how difficult this is to pull off, but it didn't sound easy and I don't see many other companies with a similar feature set.

What immediately came to mind when Jon explained Search Zoom was Kosmix's filtering and personalization options. Kosmix also crawls the web, searching over 3.2b pages, and has what I'd consider advanced filtering options. The company also looks at individual web pages, not just the website as a whole.

So if I find the results from Become's Search Zoom so helpful, why don't the general search engines do this? Jon explained "If you’re a general purpose search engine, you can’t have 30 buttons across the top. As a vertical search engine, we just wanted to limit the choices to the decisions that people who need to make a buying decision need. We have a more constrained problem. We can help people in ways that Google as a general search engine can't."

With Search Zoom, Become has an extremely useful and easy to understand product which it should try to syndicate. As I mentioned last week in reference to Zillow's partnership with Yahoo!, biz dev deals are an attractive alternative to spending millions on the PPC engines. First on the biz dev list should be Shopping.com. Become is syndicating Shopping.com's price comparison listings to supplement its own...there's already a relationship. Shopping.com recently added a 'Buying Guides' section. This could be 227x better with Become's assistance.

Posted by Brian Smith at 1:00 PM | Permalink

Google Versus Yahoo: Consistency Or Wow In Product Development?

An article over at the New York Times 'In the race with Google, it's consistency vs 'wow'' discusses the differing approaches of Google and Yahoo to the introduction of new technology and resources. The fact that Google hasn't added some of the basics to its mapping service in comparison to the Yahoo and AOL offerings is the starting point for an indepth discussion on how both engines (MSN, AOL and Ask get very short shrift) are trying to increase their user base.

Alan Eustace (Senior VP at Google for engineering and research) is quoted as saying "We are trying to come up with something that is new and different, that makes people say ‘Wow.’ " Yahoo on the other hand is taking a rather different approach of ensuring that their services are predictable and consistent.

Although the article doesn't use the analogy it does remind me very much of the tortoise and the hare story, with Google of course being the hare, bouncing along, playing to the audience, not really looking where he's going, but getting there very quickly. The Yahoo tortoise carefully places one foot in front of the other, and it isn't very exciting, but you know where you'll be with it.

Is one approach better than the other? Clearly there are examples that can be drawn from both camps; the speed of Google mapping with its click and drag approach certainly did draw 'wow' responses. 'Wow' is exciting - it gives bloggers something to write about, teachers something new to teach and industry commentators something to talk about on the conference podium. On the other hand consistency is rather dull, but ultimately important if you want to provide a raft of integrated services.

I'm as guilty as the rest - when demonstrating features from search engines I like to demonstrate all the 'wow' functionality, and the delegates love it and enjoy playing with it. But at the end of the day, when it comes to answering quiz questions they tend to go for the resources and functions that work, and that they can rely on.

What I'd like to see is a situation where I can look at a search engine, with all of its offerings, search syntax, extra resources and so on and go 'Wow - all this stuff works well together, and it's really exciting', but perhaps that's asking too much?

Posted by Phil Bradley at 12:36 PM | Permalink

Only 11 Percent Of Searchers Use One Word Queries

OneStat.com published a report detailing that only 11.4 percent of searchers use one-word queries, two-word queries 28.9% leads the bunch, followed by three-word queries at 27.85%, four-word queries with 17.1%, five-word with 8.25% and six-word queries with 3.7%. The report also breaks down number of queries used by country; Canadians are more likely to search with four-word queries, Germans use two-word queries 40% of the time and then 28% use one-word queries. OneStat's research was "based on a sample of 2 million visitors divided into 20,000 visitors of 100 countries each day." More details at OneStat.com.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:58 AM | Permalink

Google Base Becomes More eBay Like With Rich Text Feature

The Google Base blog announced Friday that Google Base's editor now has the ability to add rich text. Next time you log into Google Base to add or update your listings manually, you should see a WYSIWYG editor. It does not appear those who do bulk uploads, can pass along rich text.

It's important to note, however, that at this time, we're not enabling any scripting, data input controls, or frames. Also, HTML descriptions are only available for single item posts.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:22 AM | Permalink

Judge Hears Objections To Google's Click Fraud Settlement

The Associated Press reports that now that the independent report is out, a judge will consider the fifty-plus objections to the Lane's Gifts v. Google settlement. The judge will hear out advertisers today and tomorrow before finalizing that settlement.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:15 AM | Permalink

SEOMoz Spills The Beans On Pricing An SEO Campaign

Rand posted a blog entry named How to Price an SEO Campaign. He actually broke down his pricing methodology for everyone to see. I have personally never seen this done to this extent before in this industry. SEOs and SEMs can learn a lot about how to price their campaigns and proposals by Rand's post. Rand breaks down a consulting contract versus an implementation contact. His post is very detailed and can give many SEMs an idea on how to improve their contracts. Check out Rand's post here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:09 AM | Permalink

Google Test Expandable "More" Link

Philipp Lenssen reports Google is testing an expandable box that opens with options, when you click on the "more" link from the Google.com home page. The more link currently takes people to the more google products page, but this link, is a little DHTML popup that has links to these products directly on the page. The pop up cannot possibly have all of the products listed, so they have a link to "even more" products that probably links to the page. A screen shot is at Philipp's site.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:03 AM | Permalink

Tracking Packages Via MSN Search

The MSN Search weblog has now announced that it is possible to use the system for tracking packages, or more specifically, packages from FedEx, DHL, UPS and USPS. Searchers can simply enter a tracking ID and some other tracking keywords and the Package Tracking Instant Answer will correctly construct the link. An example given is 'Where is UPS tracking number?' Additionally you could use the RSS feed for the search to really keep up to date on where your package has gone. Google has had this feature for years now, although it doesn't have an option for DHL.

Postscript from Danny: Yahoo added a package tracking command in 2004. It also doesn't cover DHL. Bloglines added tracking in March 2005, and parent Ask.com offers it as well, Ask's Gary Price tells us. He sends this example. Unfortunately, there's no help information that I can find on Ask that explains this further, not even in the Smart Answers section. Finally, check out PackageMapper.com, which we mentioned earlier this year. It provides the actual route your package is taking (though it wasn't loading when I tried today).

Posted by Phil Bradley at 4:49 AM | Permalink

GoDaddy Launches Private Label Domain Park Program

GoDaddy has long placed ads on registered domains that customers have parked at GoDaddy. Now, GoDaddy is allowing webmasters to sign up for a paid monthly subscription to CashParking, that would see webmasters get a share of the profits made from all clicks on the parked domain.

The unique aspect of GoDaddy's program is that they are giving the domain parking service to those who may only have a small number of domains in their portfolios, while Google normally only accepts those into the program with domain portfolios numbering hundreds of thousands of page views per month.

GoDaddy's domain parking program is serviced by Google's AdSense for Domains program (formerly known as Domain Park), with ads being displayed with the Google AdWords program. And example of the GoDaddy landing page can be found at fishinginia.com

For more analysis on the CashParking program, please see JenSense.

Posted by Jennifer Slegg at 2:44 AM | Permalink

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