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September 5, 2006

Search Headlines & Links: September 5, 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...

  • Google Updates Terminology Of Last Visit Date In Cache Results
    Vanessa Fox posted an update at the Google Webmaster Central Blog on what the date and time displayed on the Google Cache page really means. The date displayed technically shows the last time Google "retrieved" data off the page, meaning if you have a page that hasn't been updated, and Google visits the page and sees that it was not updated, then Google will not retrieve any new information from that page and it won't update the date displayed on the cache page. Here is an example of the cache page of Search Engine Watch, carefully look at the date...
  • New Look YellowPages.ca Comes Out Of Beta
    Canada's Yellow Pages Group took its new search-driven yellow pages redesign out of beta over the weekend. Here's what we wrote when the new site initially launched. The press release outlines the new site's features and capabilities. Yellow Pages Group also operates the popular voice-driven mobile local search portal "Hello Yellow," as well as Canadian city guides and several vertical/classifieds sites. It is Canada's monopoly yellow pages publisher. Local search competitor TrueLocal just launched a Canadian version of its site last week. You can read more on my blog....
  • Netscape Search Inserts Netscape News Above Web Results
    What's this? Netscape Search has changed? So says Netscape's Jason Calacanis. What's new? From what Jason says and I can see, the big difference is that there's a new "Netscape.com results" section at the top of the page that shows you top voted stories from the Netscape community news service....
  • Google's Click To Call In UK
    I reported yesterday that Google seems to have launched Click To Call in the UK. A search on jet2 should bring back an ad from Directline Holidays with a green phone, clicking on the phone will allow you to enter your phone number for a call back from that advertiser. Click to call was launched by Google in the US in February 2006. I have screen captures and more details at the Search Engine Roundtable....
  • Google Opens Tesseract OCR Software
    The Google Code Blog announced that Google has "re-released" the Tesseract OCR software to the open source community. OCR, optical character recognition, is the technology for converting text on a physical paper into computer based text. So if you have a ton of papers you typed up in your college days and you want them stored in digital format, you can use OCR to translate those documents for you....
  • Speakers Wanted For SES Multimedia & Mobile Edition 2006
    I've still got openings on a few panels for our SES Multimedia & Mobile Edition 2006 show this October in Los Angeles. In particular, I'm looking for those involved with mobile SEO, though I also have a space on our video SEO, image SEO and possibly the podcast SEO sessions. More details are here. Pitches are being taken through Thursday, September 7 (IE, get them to me before Friday, September 8)....
  • Bringo Click To Call Service Attempts To Help Consumers Foil Voice Response Systems
    If you're a credit card issuer, a cell phone carrier or an airline you use IVR (interactive voice response) phone trees to resolve calls and avoid sending what you deem to be unnecessary calls to your call center. Live agents are expensive. But almost every consumer hates dealing with IVR systems. They're often frustrating, don't resolve issues and delay what consumers ultimately want, which is to talk to a live customer service agent....
  • Google To Fingerprint Voices With PC Microphones
    This weekend The Register published an article named Google developing eavesdropping software. The article describes how Google uses existing PC microphones fingerprinting technology to show relevant ads that appeal more to you. The article goes on to explain how the sound fingerprinting works; it "breaks sound into a five-second snippets to pick out audio from a TV, reducing the snippet to a digital "fingerprint", which it matches on an internet server." Privacy folks are worried about the repercussions of such software. Postscript Barry: I should link to Google Paper Explains Listening To Your TV Can Help It Put Ads &...
  • Yahoo Answers Launches In The UK
    The Guardian Unlimited reports that Yahoo, today, launched the Yahoo Answers product in the UK. The UK version is now available at http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/ and is also available on the left hand navigation of Yahoo UK's home page. Reportedly, Yahoo will be launching a campaign around the Answers product in the that is the "largest advertising campaign in Britain since the dotcom boom."...
  • YouTube Hires Yahoo's Treasurer, Gideon Yu
    TheStreet.com reports on a Wall Street Journal story that YouTube has hired away Yahoo's Treasurer, Gideon Yu. Gideon Yu is to begin working at YouTube this month, Yahoo said he "is taking advantage of what's a good career opportunity for him to step up to another level."...
  • Google Says They Will Give Brazil Orkut Data
    The Washington Post reports that Google will give over the Orkut data of specific users including; IP addresses with time and date stamps that can help trace a specific user and registration information including names and e-mail addresses. This comes after Brazil gave Google 15 days to comply or else be fined $23,000 per day....
  • New Engine 'ChaCha' Offers Real-Time Answers From Live 'Guides'
    Part Wikipedia, part Yahoo Answers and part About.com, ChaCha is a new search engine with a compelling hook – real-time results from human beings. The site launches (in "Alpha") today and offers users two ways to search: traditional algorithmic results or help from live "guides." Users interact with guides via an embedded instant messaging window in the search results page....

Headlines & News From Elsewhere

Posted by Danny Sullivan at September 5, 2006 4:57 PM