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November 22, 2006

Search Headlines & Links: Nov. 22, 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...

  • Thanksgiving Programming Note
  • Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States, and Happy Thanksgiving to all celebrating! Barry and I will be off the blog because of the holiday, so there will be no postings from us or a daily search headlines recap. Barry may be back to do light postings and/or headlines on Friday, unless he takes my advice to relax and take that day off as well! I'll be back on Monday....
  • Mid-November 2006 Search News Recap Posted
    If you're a Search Engine Watch member, the latest edition of Search Engine Update newsletter has been posted. It recaps top stories in search from the first part of this month....
  • SEM Certification & Training Courses
    The move toward offering certification and training in search marketing is accelerating. Here's a rundown on some new courses and developments I've heard of recently....
  • Google Finance's Untrusted Links & Spotting Nofollow
    For several months, I've been using the Search Status plug-in for Firefox to highlight links that are flagged with the nofollow attribute, a way for site owners to say they don't vouch for or necessarily trust a link. You see the web in a entirely new light after discovering how often and where people are saying "I don't trust this." And today, I finally noticed it happening over on Google Finance. The image above show how Google Finance looks when links with nofollow are highlighted in red, for the page on Google stock price. All the news stories --...
  • Search Popularity Stats, Sliced & Diced
    Catch up time on search engine popularity stats. comScore and NetRatings put out October 2006 figures this week, plus Hitwise released those earlier this month. Google's still tops, Yahoo still strong, Microsoft is still dropping and Ask surpasses AOL's search share, according to comScore. Below, the trend from all of them over the past year, plus my long-promised compare-and-contrast charts....
  • Baidu Wins Copyright Case Against Music Companies
    Melanie Colburn writes that Music Labels Lose Copyright Suit Against Baidu, which started back when Five Music Companies Sue Baidu in September of 2005. Baidu was previously ordered to stop these music downloads but it appears the ruling was overturn because all Baidu is providing are links to 3rd party sites that facilitate the music downloads, whereas Baidu does not participate in the downloads themselves. More details at the BBC News....
  • Link Exchanges Are Spam Links According To Microsoft
    The other day I reported that Microsoft Banning Sites from Live.com For Link Exchanges, where I uncovered an email sent to a Webmaster. The email stated that a particular site was removed from the Live.com Search index because the site was "acquiring links through posting to or exchanging links with sites unrelated to your site content." The email also added that these types of links are "spam links," and is the reason the site was delisted from the index....
  • Google Says AdWords Not Basing Keyword Prices On Conversion Metrics
    I reported this morning at SERoundtable that AdWordsAdvisor Denies Google Uses Conversion Tracking & Analytics To Determine Minimum Bids. Yes, Google has come out on the Internet to make it clear to everyone that Google is not using data from their conversion tracking scripts of Google Analytics to determine the minimum price of keywords. This was a recent rumor that began with the new AdWords algorithm coming into play....
  • Social Search Manipulation: Case Study
    Niall Kennedy has one of the most thorough write-ups on why search spam exists with his article "The Spam Farms of the Social Web." The article explains how he stumbled upon a spam site, researched the site to death, guesstimates on how much money they can make and services that help you make it rank well. This includes a look at blogs, digg, del.icio.us, other social sites, link building tactics, directory inclusion, content writing, and more....

Headlines & News From Elsewhere

Posted by Danny Sullivan at November 22, 2006 4:00 PM