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July 28, 2006

July 28, 2006

Trulia Distributing Its Maps To Local Realtors

As described on the Trulia Blog and The Future of Real Estate Marketing Blog, vertical real estate search site Trulia is making its maps with listings available for no cost to local brokers and realtors. The maps themselves are built on the Google Maps API and reflect local real estate listings drawn from broker feeds and crawling.

Here's what Trulia says about the new maps distribution:

"How does it work? Visit the Tools For Your Site section of Trulia and click on TruliaMap. Enter your website URL and we’ll quickly tell you whether we’ve indexed your listings. You can then customize a TruliaMap to make it your own. Options include size (narrow or wide), colors, and even an option to have the map automatically animate through your listings."

Local realtors thus get a customized map on their sites featuring their listings. This is a smart (and natural) move because it will provide off-site distribution and branding for Trulia and encourage other local realtors and brokers to get their listings onto the site. It also makes participating local realtor sites much richer for users (The Real Estate Marketing Blog also suggests they add the Zillow API for house valuations). Trulia has essentially shunned the MLS services in favor of dealing directly with local agents.

Trulia offers one of the most feature rich and user friendly real estate sites in the market today.

Google Maps API and Google Maps have been wildly popular so, by the same token, why shouldn't a useful application built on top of Google Maps? But I wonder how Google will feel about this "re-syndication"?

Posted by Greg Sterling at 5:46 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Launches New Slurp Crawler

The Yahoo Search blog announced the launch of a new crawler (aka Yahoo Slurp) that is faster and more efficient then then its previous robotic arm. This crawler is still named Slurp, but it crawls faster and uses up less bandwidth. Yahoo says we can expect a "25% reduction in the number of requests and bandwidth consumed by the crawler."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 3:59 PM | Permalink

Search Headlines & Links: July 28, 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...

  • Daily SearchCast, July 28, 2006: Google Class Action Suit Over Click Fraud Settled; Google Radio Ads; Anti-Phishing Protection In Search Results & More!
    Today's search podcast covers the class action lawsuit settlement against Google over click fraud getting final approval; Google ramping up radio ad testing; putting anti-phishing warnings into your search results; ranking woes and more!
  • TrustWatch Extension Puts Phishing Warnings Into Google, Yahoo & MSN Results
    Using Firefox or Flock? Now you can get an extension from TrustWatch that will may help you spot phishing scams in your search results at Google, Yahoo and MSN....
  • Google Testing Radio Ad Sales In Detroit
    Google rides the radio waves, from News.com looks at how Google AdSense for radio is now being tested in Detroit, before a planned rollout of the program to all Google advertisers. Technically, Google's been running radio ads ever since it acquired dMarc Broadcasting in January. It's not like dMarc stopped doing what it was already doing when Google bought it. The real change is that Google is integrating the ability for any existing advertiser to make radio ad purchases on a bid basis. For more on Google's radio plans, see Googleplex Irvine & "AdSense Audio" For Radio Ads and Speculation:...
  • Google Guess, Google Real Estate - New Google Coming Services Found?
    Via Google Blogoscoped, What's in Google's Sandbox? from Tony Ruscoe has him stumbling upon new services that Google may plan to release such as Google Events, Google Real Estate Search and "Google Guess."...
  • Google Hands Over Email In Hate Case
    Feds Retrieve Google Records after Gmail Used for Hate Speech from eWeek covers how the US FBI asked for and was given an email and some session information from someone accused of sending a threatening letter to the NAACP....
  • Google Click Fraud Settlement Approved
    Download fileJust got word from Google that the settlement in the class action lawsuit over click fraud has been approved. I'm dashing out, so this is just a short post to give you a heads-up. So far, I haven't seen any news stories on it. Settlement is here (PDF file), the $30 million in attorney fees is approved, apparently around 500 companies choosing to opt-out. I'll postscript more tomorrow or do a fresh post when stories appear. Google statement: We're pleased Judge Griffin has affirmed the settlement as appropriate and fair to advertisers. We look forward to continuing to manage...
  • What Drives Searchers to Buy Cars?
    The automotive industry is the largest player in the search world, in both natural search engine optimization and in the paid search arena. Until recently, auto manufacturers weren't a major presence in search results, with most search marketing campaigns conducted by independent aggregators who focused on providing quotes, helping consumers locate dealers and so on. Recently, however, the major manufacturers have begun to flex their search muscles, much to the consternation of aggregators, who are feeling crowded. A new study from Yahoo and comScore looked at searcher behavior in the automotive sector, analyzing activity, user preferences, and how purchases were...

Headlines & News From Elsewhere

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:00 PM | Permalink

Daily SearchCast, July 28, 2006: Google Class Action Suit Over Click Fraud Settled; Google Radio Ads; Anti-Phishing Protection In Search Results & More!

Today's search podcast covers the class action lawsuit settlement against Google over click fraud getting final approval; Google ramping up radio ad testing; putting anti-phishing warnings into your search results; ranking woes 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:

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:53 PM | Permalink

TrustWatch Extension Puts Phishing Warnings Into Google, Yahoo & MSN Results

Using Firefox or Flock? Now you can get an extension from TrustWatch that will may help you spot phishing scams in your search results at Google, Yahoo and MSN.

TrustWatch & MSN Offer Anti-Phishing Tools To Searchers & Surfers covers how TrustWatch already does this on its own Ask-powered search engine. But the extension lets you get TrustWatch info inserted into results at Google, Yahoo and MSN (but oddly not Ask).

That article above also explains how MSN has an anti-phishing tool you can download. There are several others, as covered in these past articles:

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:06 AM | Permalink

Google Testing Radio Ad Sales In Detroit

Google rides the radio waves, from News.com looks at how Google AdSense for radio is now being tested in Detroit, before a planned rollout of the program to all Google advertisers.

Technically, Google's been running radio ads ever since it acquired dMarc Broadcasting in January. It's not like dMarc stopped doing what it was already doing when Google bought it. The real change is that Google is integrating the ability for any existing advertiser to make radio ad purchases on a bid basis.

For more on Google's radio plans, see Googleplex Irvine & "AdSense Audio" For Radio Ads and Speculation: Google To Begin Selling Radio Ads Through AdWords Soon.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:36 AM | Permalink

Google Guess, Google Real Estate - New Google Coming Services Found?

Via Google Blogoscoped, What's in Google's Sandbox? from Tony Ruscoe has him stumbling upon new services that Google may plan to release such as Google Events, Google Real Estate Search and "Google Guess."

Want to try it out yourself? Go to https://sandbox.google.com/. It looks like Google Checkout, but ignore that. Don't try to sign in with an existing Google Account that you have. You need to create a new one just for this sandbox service, Ruscoe says. And that seems to involve registering your credit card, so I gave it a pass.

Postscript: Tony contacted me to say there's a way to register via the sandbox area and not have to enter credit card details. He emailed:

This isn't the case. All you need to do is remove everything after the "service=sierra" parameter from the URL you're directed to (which is for the Google Checkout service) and you'll be able to register an account without entering your credit card details... or just follow this link:

https://sandbox.google.com/accounts/NewAccount

You'll then be able to append "?service=codename" to that URL to add each of the services I included in my post.

I went to https://sandbox.google.com/accounts/NewAccount, opened a new account, then went back and did this:

https://sandbox.google.com/accounts/NewAccount?service=re

See the part in bold? The re part? That's the codename for one of these Google services, which Tony has listed in his post. Doing that let me sign up for Google Real Estate Search. After the screen to enroll came up, I got an error message and kicked back out into a personalized Google home page.

That's OK. Now go to https://sandbox.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount and sign back in. The next screen will show your account, and you'll see that Google Real Estate Search is now one of your subscribed services. Clicking on the link doesn't do anything, but at least you can make cool screenshots like everyone else :)

To add more services, keep going back as above and use different code names.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:24 AM | Permalink

Google Hands Over Email In Hate Case

Feds Retrieve Google Records after Gmail Used for Hate Speech from eWeek covers how the US FBI asked for and was given an email and some session information from someone accused of sending a threatening letter to the NAACP.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:14 AM | Permalink

Search Forums Roundup: July 28, 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 Ranking In Other Countries - Yahoo! Korea Create Webzari Site Explorer - Google Showing Click Fraud Numbers In AdWords - Site Redesign - Does It Always Mean Lost Ranking?, and more.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 1:03 AM | Permalink

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