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 4:57 PM | Permalink

August 31, 2006

Search Headlines & Links: August 31, 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...

  • Flickr #1 Photography Site In UK Hitwise is reporting that Flickr is the #1 photography site in the UK. This isn't really a surprise at all - what's more suprising is that it's taken a while to get there, and how it's got there. Flickr's UK market share has increased 39%, Photobucket's share decreased by 17% and Webshot's remained flat. This is apparently due good SEO and searches for soft porn using the brand name and various terms you can work out for yourself. In some respects this is worthy of nothing more than a wry smile and shrug of the shoulders. Unfortunately however, this may...
  • When Good Search Bots go Bad Most people realize the importance of creating a search engine friendly site, but many don't take the final step of assuring that search engine spiders or bots can fully access the site. Even worse, they fail to block bots from non-public parts of the site, or don't recognize rogue bots that are crawling a site to steal content or for other nefarious reasons. In today's SearchDay article, The Taming of the Bots, guest writer Tony Wright has coverage of a recent SES panel where search marketers and representatives from search engines offered tips on managing bots, whether their intent is...
  • Topix's Cool Year-Long News Archive Somewhat lost among all the search news earlier this month was Topix and its launch of an awesome year-long news archive. It's a great resource and much more than just a cool "click-o-gram" that you'll see at the top of news search pages. News search engines typically only let you go back in time for about a month. After that, new stuff flows in and the old stuff moves out. That's terrible if you want to find news articles about a particular event further back in time....
  • Ask.com Adds Emoticons Or Smiley To Smart Answers The Ask.com Blog posted that they have added a new Smart Answer to their suitcase, it is called an emoticon or smiley. You know they look like, :-) or ;-) or :D, you get my point. So now if you search on some of the more popular emoticon at Ask.com you will get a Smart Answer....
  • Google Uses AdWords Conversion Data To Fight AdSense Fraud? ShoeMoney blogged that at the Arbitrage Issues session at SES San Jose, during Q&A time, Kim Malone of Google said that the AdSense team may use AdWords conversion data to determine which sites are trying to fraud advertisers and users (often named Made for AdSense sites - MFAs)....
  • Search Engines Handle No Index Inconsistently Matt Cutts has a nice illustrated survey of how various major search engines deal with the meta noindex tag in Handling noindex meta tags. He finds inconsistency, with this being the summary:...
  • Keywords In URL May Help Rankings, Google's Matt Cutts Says The hotly debated SEO topic of, does having keywords in your file names help with your rankings, will probably start all over again. Matt Cutts of Google wrote at his blog, and I quote; Most bloggy sites tend to have words from the title of a post in the url; having keywords from the post title in the url also can help search engines judge the quality of a page....
  • Understanding Digg.com Valleywag has an excellent Cheatsheet on What is Digg? Basically, if someone asks you what is Digg, just send them there. It describes the basics, how it works, how to break it, Digg's competitors, the recent publicity on Digg, "How Digg fits the buzzwords," oh and don't say "I got digged," I believe it is "I was dugg." Full details on Digg at Valleywag....
  • Tips On Getting Listed In Local Search Results Patricia Hursh wrote a ClickZ column named Four Steps Every Business Can Take to Improve Local Search Results. The article goes over the what, why and how on Local Search. In short, how does one get included in the local results you see search engines providing? She recommends that you (1) update your business listings at Amacai, infoUSA, and Acxiom, (2) submit your site to local engines such as Google Local, MSN Local, Yahoo Local, Ask Local, and TrueLocal, (3) update your Internet Yellow Page listings at YellowPages.com, Verizon SuperPages, and SwitchBoard.com, and (4) make sure to have your address...
  • Google AdSense Sued by Suspended Publisher Steve Bryant at eWeek reports that a woman has sued Google after she was suspended from the program for clicking on her own ads. Theresa B. Bradley filed a lawsuit against Google for $250,000 for fraud and misrepresentation, even though she admits she clicked her own ads "to verify that the advertisers were not selling competing products"....

Headlines & News From Elsewhere

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:30 PM | Permalink

August 23, 2006

Daily SearchCast, August 23, 2006: Is Google Bad For Other Businesses? Will Brazil Close Google's Offices There? Isn't Yahoo Coupon Finder Cool? And More!

Today's search podcast covers whether Google is too dominant over businesses? Will Brazil close Google's offices there in a data dispute? Is Yahoo's coupon finder the coolest thing? The answer to these questions and more in this exciting episode of the Daily SearchCast! (Trixie sold separately. All Rights Reserved. Void where multilated by law).

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.

  • Aug. 23, 2006 Search News Forecast: Mostly Sunny! It's mellow. Techmeme's mellow, my feeds are mellow, the search news feels calm. The Google-Brazil thing is getting more chatter, and the Microsoft-Facebook deal's also getting chatter, and I'm sure some other items will come up. But I cautiously predict it will be mostly sunny in terms of search news....
  • Google's Dominance Of Big & Small Companies Fortune has a nice write up they named "How Google can make - or break - your company." Not only does this article go over how Google can break a small online retailer who depends on organic results, but also how they can break large firms like travel agencies, newspapers, realtors, advertising firms and software makers (even Microsoft). The article makes a good read if you have the time. If you have more time, also read Google Sees Content Deals As Key to Long-Term Growth at the Wall Street Journal, which explores more of Google's future and how you may...

  • Google Bitches Day: Celebrating "victims" of the world's biggest search company, Valleywag

  • Google Bitch #2: The Wispy Web Startup, Valleywag

  • Google Bitch #3: Publisher's Weakly, Valleywag

  • Brazil To Close Google Brazil's Offices Over Orkut Issues? A post in our SEW Forums and a report from Xinhau says that Brazil's federal prosecution service is moving to close Google's operations in Brazil. So far, there is no other news about this that we've seen. An injunction is apparently being requested ordering the release of information from Orkut, with a threat for closure of Google's Sao Paulo office if they don't comply. Postscript From Danny: Reuters has a story up now here: Google refuses to hand over data to Brazilian authorities. It covers that prosecutors want permission to file a civil lawsuit against Google, with a $61 million...
  • Google Keynote Conversation, Part Two Today's SearchDay article, CEO Schmidt: "Many People are Very Happy with Google Search", continues Andrew Goodman's coverage of Danny Sullivan's keynote conversation with Google's chief executive that began with yesterday's Google CEO Maps Missions, Stays on Message....
  • Facebook Partners With Microsoft In Ad Deal The New York Times reports that Microsoft is to provide and sell banner ads and sponsored ads on FaceBook, a popular social networking site "aimed primarily at college students." The ads will be "graphical ad placements as well as automated text-based advertisements targeted to content, and over time, aggregate user behavior on an anonymous basis." The Facebook deal is for three years and is at a smaller scale to Google's MySpace deal....
  • Facebook Does Ad Deal, But Not With Google, TechCrunch
  • Hitwise: Google & Yahoo Make Tiny Gains In July 2006 Today I look at figures from Hitwise, as part of my series on search engine rating figures that have recently been released and how to analyze them. For those just tuning in, on Monday, I covered comScore stats showing a Google decline in July 2006. On Tuesday, I talked about NetRatings also showing a decline, but a smaller one than comScore. The main point in both of those articles was to stress the need to look at data over a longer period of time than month-to-month and to examine figures from multiple services....
  • Gmail In Japanese Reuters reports that Google is releasing a localized Japanese-language version of Gmail in Japan today. I cannot find the URL to access it as of yet, but hopefully it will be announced shortly....
  • Why Canadians are the Best SEOs, SEOmoz
  • Say It Ain't So, Dave (But We Won't Believe You), Daggle
  • Google Releases Google Base API The Google Code blog announced that Google Base now has an API. You can access the API's details at http://code.google.com/apis/base/. The API is like other APIs in that you can now program your own applications to interact and interface with Google Base. So with this API you can create new Google Base data, edit, delete existing data, and query for data items. This can come in handy for retailers or anyone who wants data to be found within Google Base....
  • Yahoo Adds Coupon Shortcut, Making Finding Coupons Easy Adam Viener of ReveNews.com discovered a Yahoo! Shortcut which gives searchers quick and easy access to coupon codes. Adam highlighted a search for kodak gallery coupon codes. Here are some other examples: circuit city coupon, vistaprint coupon, netflix coupon code, and dell coupon code. This is a great service for consumers who are spared the trouble of weeding through creatively written sponsored listings and pages of organic listings claiming to have the best coupons and then returning out of date deals. This is also a potential win for Yahoo! as affiliate revenue can add up pretty quickly....
  • NearbyNow Brings New 'Inventory' To Local Search The "holy grail" of online shopping is local inventory information. Paradoxical as it may sound I say that because the overwhelming majority of transactions occur in local stores and that isn't going to change any time soon. Though e-commerce is growing fast, growing much faster is the influence of the Internet on offline transactions. Those Internet-influenced local transactions, worth more than $350 billion annually and climbing, typically start online in the form of price comparison shopping or product research....
  • My Nintendo DS Lite Enters The British Airways Lost Property Hell, Daggle
  • Search Medica - The GPs Search Engine Search Medica is a search engine that has been specifically designed for GPs (General Practitioners or Doctors) to use. Pulse, a UK weekly news magazine for doctors conducted research that seemed to suggest that doctors were unhappy with the results of the medical searches that they were running on traditional search engines. Consequently Search Medica has been produced in conjunction with doctors to provide them with a very specific and tailored search experience. It's still in beta testing at the moment, so has lots of requests for feedback. Although I've only taken a brief look at it (and I'm certainly...
  • Google To Party At Worldcon: Shiny! Man. I wrote earlier of Google doing a recruitment and PR push at the Star Trek Convention last week. I joked about wishing I could go to that and this week's Worldcon. Today, Google writes that it will be at Worldcon, recruiting and throwing a party as well. And they semi-taunt me about going in the post. Have a great time, everyone who is going. It'll definitely be shiny....

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 5:38 PM | Permalink

August 22, 2006

Daily SearchCast, August 22, 2006: AOL Firings Over Search Privacy Issue; Evaluating Search Engine Rating Figures; Saving Addresses For Mapping Sites & More!

Today's search podcast covers AOL firing execs over the search privacy issue; how to evaluate search engine popularity figures; Google gets your MTV into web sites; saving addresses for reuse on Google Maps & Yahoo Maps 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.

  • AOL Fires CTO & Two Employees After Search Records Slip Up The Wall Street Journal just reported that AOL has fired the Chief Technology Officer, Maureen Govern, and two other employees after releasing search records last week. The article named "AOL Fires Technology Chief After Web-Search Data Scandal" discloses that Maureen Govern, the CTO along with the researcher who released the data and the manager overseeing the research have been all fired. I am kind of surprised that AOL hit someone so high to the top, but it does make a statement, a statement AOL must make....
  • comScore Figures Show First Google Decline For Nearly A Year, But What To Believe? The latest search engine share figures from comScore are now out, and Google's nearly year-long continued rises have came to a halt in July 2006, according to comScore. But how much can you trust any of the figures that ratings services provide? In this post, I look at the latest comScore stats and begin a series about how to critically evaluate search share ratings....
  • NetRatings: Tiny Google Decline, But Not The First Time & Yahoo Growth Yesterday I looked at the latest figures out of comScore that showed Google seeing its first drop in search share for nearly a year. My review of rating service figures continues today with NetRatings. They also show a Google drop, but far less than the comScore figures....
  • Google AdSense Begins Running MTV & Viacom Video Ads for Select Publishers After recently announcing a partnership between Google & Viacom, their new video ads have begun displaying for a small group of specially chosen publishers. The videos, which run clips from a variety of shows from Comedy Central, MTV, MTV2, The N, and Nickelodeon channels, are interspersed with ads, and publishers are paid on a CPM basis on how many of the ads are viewed by the user....
  • David Brent's Microsoft training video, Sydney Morning Herald
  • Google Base Adds Click & Impression Metrics For Merchants The Google Base Blog announced that Google Base has been tracking clicks and impressions since early June. They are now displaying that data to merchants, so that they can see the number of times their Google Base items are viewed (impressions), clicked on and the pageviews of that item. An impression occurs each time a Froogle or Google Base result is displayed for that item, a click is tracked each time someone clicks on that listed item and a pageview occurs each time someone views the items page. The data is mostly just updated daily, but you can use it...
  • Google's Audio Player Philipp notes as does Ionut Alex that with the release of voicemail on Google Talk, you can now use that feature to play audio files over Google's network. Philipp describes a method of easily doing this. One thing to note, as a Mac user. This does not rendered on Apple's Safari web browser, even thought Google Video works fine....
  • Saving Addresses At Google & Yahoo Maps Matt McGee posted an entry on a fairly new feature at Google Maps, that allows you to save locations for later use. He notes that Yahoo has had this feature for a while. In addition, the Google Blog has announced this feature earlier this month. I thought it would be useful to write a "how-to" save addresses at Google Maps and Yahoo Maps....
  • How Much Is Link Baiting Services Or Projects Worth? Honestly, the purpose of this post is selfish, I want someone to come up with the value of a link baiting effort. I am looking for someone to tell me how much time, money and effort should be put towards a link baiting project. What is the minimum you need as an outcome of that link baiting effort to make the link baiting tactic a success? These are questions running through my head over the past couple days....
  • How XSS HTML Injection Might Let Others Put Links On Your Sites SEOMoz has some excellent examples of government sites that are susceptible to cross site (XSS) html injection, something that can also happen to any site. Let me first do my best to explain what this means in layman terms (hope I get it right)....
  • LibreDigital Warehouse Competes With Google Book Search Steve Bryant reports that "publishers fight back against Google," with their own book search service. The new service is named LibreDigital Warehouse and was announced by HarperCollins and LibreDigital the other day. This new service will give "publishers and booksellers the ability to deliver searchable book content on their own Web sites." The technology empowers publishers to define rules on a partner and book title level, defining which pages are viewable, which pages are not, and what percentage of the pages are available. They will begin offer about 200 HarperCollins titles and increase that to 10,000 titles or so. More...
  • ClickTracks Acquired By J.L. Halsey The ClickTracks web analytics service has big news today, that it has been acquired by marketing technology firm J.L. Halsey. J.L. Halsey also owns marketing tools such as Lyris, EmailLabs and Hot Banana. Congrats to John and all the crew over at ClickTracks! More information from the press release here....
  • Subdomains Trademark Violations? ClickZ has a write up named Can Subdomains Violate a Trademark? In there report, they show how the Jews for Jesus sued the people running jewsforjesus.blogspot.com. The case was ultimately settled out of court and no ruling has been made. But this raises interesting questions. What if we here at Search Engine Watch decided to categorize all Google related topics under the subdomain google.blog.searchenginewatch.com. Is that a trademark violation? I can see how a public hosted domain, like blogspot.com subdomains, might be viewed as more of an infringement of trademark then would be a subdomain hosted on searchenginewatch.com - but...
  • Farecast Adds Cities To Flight Fare Prediction Tool GigaOM writes that Farecast, a travel search engine that uses statistical modeling to predict if the prices of tickets will increase or decrease over time, has added cities, to include 55 U.S. cities. Wired News takes the "matter of fact" approach to their coverage of Farecast, describing "turns out 13D paid only $300 for her flight, while 14E shelled out nearly $1,000 for his."...
  • What is Google These Days? Google is a search engine, but it's also one of the world's largest advertising companies. And many analysts are now calling it a media company, as well. So is Google still focused on its mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible? Danny Sullivan put that and other questions to Google CEO Eric Schmidt in his keynote conversation at the recent SES San Jose conference. And, as has become a tradition, Andrew Goodman was on hand to not only report on the dialogue but to add his own laser-like insights. Read on in today's SearchDay article, Google...
  • My Q&A With Eric Schmidt In Video & Transcribed Via Google Blogoscoped, news that Google's now posted a video of my Q&A two weeks ago with Google CEO Eric Schmidt that covered a wide range of topics. I've embedded it below, if you don't want to click through to Google Video. No time to watch? Don't worry, they've also posted a written transcript. There was also a Q&A with press after the conversation, and you'll find a transcript of that here. Can't watch but wish you could listen? You'll find a podcast of the conversation here. That page also has a round-up of press and blogger coverage of the...
  • Stephen Colbert's Tips for Protecting Your Online Identity, YouTube
  • TrackMeNot Extension, Google Blogoscoped

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:44 PM | Permalink

August 18, 2006

Daily SearchCast, August 18, 2006: Google Execs Selling Stock; Washington Post Selling Text Links; Honestly, It's Go Ogle Checkout Not Google Checkout & More!

Today's search podcast covers Googler execs selling stock but not buying; is the Washington Post's new text links ad program for bloggers heading for problems with search engines?; goodbye to some old-school blog search engines; another click fraud lawsuit filed against Google; Google gains googlecheckout.com from someone who was planning the so-called "Go Ogle Checkout" dating site 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.

  • Aug. 18, 2006 Search News Forecast: Sunny! After reviewing Techmeme, scanning over 100 feeds and consulting with Barry Schwartz on search forums activity, the official Search Engine Watch Blog forecast for search news today is sunny.
  • Googlers Only Have Sold GOOG Stock - Cause Of Drop In Stock Price? Bloomberg has a very interesting report on why they believe Google's stock has been falling this year, down about 7 percent this year. They say that Google's executives have sold off a boatload of stock since the IPO....
  • Google Data Refresh: More Supplemental Results? Wednesday night, Thursday morning, forum threads starting popping up about a Google "data refresh" taking place. A data refresh is like a small Google update, and many webmasters have noticed a change in the search results at Google. Google has not yet confirmed that there has been an update, nor has there been a ton of discussion on the topic, as of yet. That is why I believe this is a "data refresh" and not a full fledge algorithmic change. Part of the data refresh seems to have put many pages into the supplemental index, an index that no webmaster...
  • Washington Post Selling Text Links? Steve Rubel reported that the Washington Post launched a sponsored blogroll product that allows people to pay to be listed in the blogroll. You can see it live on the right hand bottom portion of the WashingtonPost.com web site. I dug into the source code to discover the blogroll is not using the search engine suggested nofollow attribute, which Google in particular pushes to be used for paid links. However, it is using some sort of JavaScript tracking code, that may or may not limit the PageRank and link popularity to flow to those sites advertised....
  • Seevast: It's Kanoodle & More Catching up on some industry news earlier this month, Kanoodle has done some restructuring. Previously, Kanoodle offered both search and contextual ads. Now, Kanoodle only offers search ads. Contextual ads are being sold through a sister business unit, Pulse 360. Meanwhile, the Moniker domain traffic service has been acquired and will run as a third sister business. Above all of these is a new operating company, Seevast. For more, see this ClickZ story: Kanoodle Makes Acquisition, Becomes Seevast....
  • So Long Daypop & Blogdex Back in 2003, I wrote about a number of blog search engines emerging at that time. Feedster was brand new and Technorati still pretty young. Both were babies compared to Daypop and Blogdex. Sadly, Gary Price over at ResourceShelf notes in A Brief Tribute to Dan Chan, Daypop, and MIT’s Blogdex that neither of these pioneering services has made it to 2006....
  • Third Click Fraud Lawsuit Filed Against Google, But Does It Even Have A Chance? Third Time's a Charm? Google Sued for Click Fraud (Again) from eWeek covers Google being sued for click fraud again. This follows on the recent settlement in the Lane's Gifts class action click fraud case, a settlement that makes it questionable whether this new case will even succeed....
  • Levi.com Quietly Drops Google Checkout Due To A "Particular Issue" MarketWatch reports that Levi Strauss & Co.'s has dropped the Google Checkout option from Levi.com, their main web site. Steve Davis, from the firm that Levi used to integrated Checkout, said they dropped it from Levi.com due to a "particular issue," which was not disclosed (as far as I can tell). What is important to note is that Levi Strauss left Google Checkout on the dockers.com web site, so that issue couldn't of been a huge one or even a global issue (I suspect). I personally have yet to implement Google Checkout on any site, so I cannot speak from...
  • Fighting For GoogleCheckout.com & More Google Complaints Against Others Who Registered Google-Like Domain Names ResourceShelf has compiled sources of historical complaints Google has issued to those who have registered Google-like domain names...
  • More On Google's Warp Speed Run Into The Star Trek Convention I wrote earlier about how Google was going to be hunting for engineers at the 5th Annual Official Star Trek Convention this week in Las Vegas. Now more news about that and more....

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:07 PM | Permalink

August 17, 2006

Daily SearchCast, August 17, 2006: Hot Search Blogs; GoogleTalk Gets New Features; Filing Time For Yahoo Click Fraud Settlement; Beaming Up Google Engineers & More!

Today's search podcast covers finding search news via top search blogs; Google launches free WiFi; GoogleTalk gets new features; Google Analytics opens to all; time to file in Yahoo's class action settlement on click fraud; Star Trekkin' for Google Engineers 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.

  • Renewing Our US Passports At The US Embassy In London
  • Remembering Nice Things About London, Such As The London Eye
  • Aug. 17, 2006 Search News Forecast: Mostly Sunny Today, a new feature, our daily search news forecast. I can't say we'll do this everyday, but we thought it might be fun. After reviewing Techmeme, scanning my over 100 feeds and consulting with Barry Schwartz on search forums activity, the official Search Engine Watch Blog forecast for search news today is mostly sunny. Mostly sunny means that you can expect some news, but probably nothing major and a downpour of items is unlikely. In other words, it's a good day to go outside or get actual work done, rather than reading about search. Remember, predicting search news is...
  • Rand & I Rank The Best Search Blogs Rand at SEOMoz posted his Ranking 50 Top Blogs in the Search Space, which encouraged me to finally post my list of the Search Blogs Am I Most Likely To Read In More Detail at my personal blog. Rand ranks this blog as number one on his list and then ranks my blog, the Search Engine Roundtable as number two on his list. I also ranked this blog as number one of my most 'click-through blog' on my list, followed by Google Blogoscoped, which I often cite here. These two lists, I believe make up a great portion of the...
  • The Inside Scoop from Search Bloggers The major search engines all have unofficial bloggers talking about what's going on in their respective companies. At a recent SES session, search-blog stars Jeremy Zawodny, Gary Price, Matt Cutts and Niall Kennedy all revealed their modus operandi, and guest writer Sara Holoubek was there to capture their insights for today's SearchDay article, Expose: Search Engine Bloggers Tell All....
  • SES San Jose 2006 Recap Couldn't make it to last week's monster Search Engine Strategies show in San Jose? Well, maybe next time! In the meantime, I've compiled a list of coverage from across the web, even somewhat organized into topic areas. Our San Jose show is always tough for me, as I arrive a week earlier to visit with the various major search engines out there. That means two weeks of news and email to dig out from, since you can never get it all done on the road. All that digging out means I know I don't have everything listed below. But you'll...
  • 101 Ways To Build Links & Popularity Andy Hagans and Aaron Wall have compiled a list of 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006. I will not attempt to summarize all 101 tactics here, check out the list at SEO Book....
  • What's the Big Deal With Social Search?, SearchDay
  • A Guide to Social Search Players In yesterday's SearchDay article, What's the Big Deal With Social Search?, I looked at some of the pros and cons of adding human influences to algorithmic search results. In today's SearchDay article, Who's Who in Social Search, I map out the various approaches to social search and offer links to some of the key players in human-mediated search....
  • Google WiFi Hits Mountain View For Free Google is providing a free WiFi network under "GoogleWifi" (802.11b/g) in Mountain View, CA. Anyone can use it, including business, visitors and the 72,000+ residents. You must sign into the network with your Google Account, it is not fully public in that sense, but anyone can register for access. Ready to get started using GoogleWifi? There are more details on the "how to" at http://wifi.google.com/support and at the Google Blog. I believe this is the first of many cities that Google will be providing free Wifi access to....
  • Google Talk Gains Voicemail, Music Status, Photo & File Sharing Features Google has announced that its Google Talk instant messaging platform now allows you to share files with other Google Talk users by dropping files or entire folders into the client. Photo files get special treatment, showing up in your client so you can talk about them with someone else, as covered more here. Listening to music? Another new feature, music status, allows other Google Talkers to see what hip (or embarrassing) song you're listening to, if you use one of these supported players. Along with music status comes a new Google Music Trends feature we mentioned earlier, which allows you...
  • Google Released Trends For Google Music Garett Rogers spotted the release of Google Music Trends. The Google Labs has it listed and described as "See what music is popular among Google Talk users," it is basically, "Google Trends" for music. You can currently filter by music genre, and there is a country filter, but I only see the United States as an option. I am a classic rock fan, so it is cool to see the trends for that genre. As Garett notes, the participate link at the top right, currently does not go anywhere....
  • Shawn Hogan, Hero, Wired
  • Google Analytics Opens to Everyone - No Invitation Required Google announced today that the popular Google Analytics is now instantly available to the public. No more waiting for invitation codes. Anyone with a website can now install the website tracking tool by directly signing up at the Google Analytics homepage, or by clicking through the "Analytics" tab in any Google AdWords account.
  • More than Organizing Photos? Google Acquires Neven Vision Adrian Graham, Picasa's Product Manager, made a post Tuesday morning on the Official Google Blog titled A better way to organize photos? in which he announced that the team at Neven Vision has now joined Google. His post tells us that Neven Vision's software will make it easier for people to find and organize their photos. But, is there more to the purchase? Looking around some blogs that discussed the acquisition holds hints to possibily more....
  • Google AdSense Prompts Ad Viewers to Download Third Party Applications When you visit a site with Google AdSense ads, you would hardly expect the ads to trigger an auto-install prompt window to download various third party applications such as Flash, Quicktime and Adobe Acrobat. But that is just what the AdSense javascript was trying to make Internet Explorer users do when they viewed a page with AdSense ads on it....
  • Orkut Causing Trouble In Brazil Again Komfie Manalo reports that Brazil has threatened to bring Google to court over their social networking application, Orkut, again. Yesterday, the Federal Prosecution Service of Brazil, said Google refused "to cooperate with authorities about user information" on Orkut. Google said in the past that they would work with Brazilian officials to shut down Orkut communities that were participating and helping criminals traffic drugs and distribute pedophilia. Google says they have cooperated with Brazilian authorities, stating, they have "provided information to eight investigations, and kept secret information regarding 60 other cases since June."...
  • Human Rights Group & UK House of Commons Demand Google, Yahoo, & Microsoft To Stop Censorship Earlier this week, GameShout.com published an article reporting that Human Rights Watch group in New York told Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to be upfront with their users about the censorship and stand up to the political pressure China places on them. The quote says it all pretty strongly, "It was ironic that companies whose existence depends on freedom of information and expression have taken on the role of censor, even in cases where the Chinese government makes no specific demands for them to do so." The Inquirer soon after reported that the committee in the UK House of Commons has...
  • Former Yahoo China Head Sues Yahoo For Defamation Reuters reports that Zhou Hongyi, the former head of Yahoo China, has sued Yahoo for defamation. Yahoo said they were about to sue Zhou Hongyi for "unethical business practices." Hongyi has a 40 percent stake in Alibaba.com, which was bought by Yahoo for $1 billion last year. To me, it seems like from the article, that Yahoo finds Hongyi to be a shady character, and Hongyi doesn't like Yahoo telling the public how they feel about him....
  • Yahoo Class Action Settlement Information Released Details of the Yahoo class action settlement have been posted at checkmatesettlement.com. What you need to know right now is: (1) You have until October 14, 2006 to submit a written statement requesting exclusion from the Class (specific guidelines are enclosed in the notice), if you want to be excluded from the class. (2) You have until November 20, 2006 to download the "Assertion of Right to Participate in Additional Claims Review Process Form" from this site and submit it by registered or certified mail, if you want to participate in the class and participate in the claims review process....
  • Yahoo Releases Yahoo Answers API The Yahoo Search Blog announced the release of the Yahoo Answers API. The API will allow developers to pull questions from the Yahoo Answers database by search, category, and user. You can even get the answers for those questions. More details at http://developer.yahoo.com/answers/....
  • Yahoo Partners With Go2 For Mobile Search Ads Forbes reports that Yahoo has signed an agreement with Go2, a mobile Yellow Page directory service, to offer Yahoo sponsored search listings on the search results displayed on the mobile Go2 results. The Wall Street Journal has a bigger write up on cell phones and ads, stating, "some of the largest wireless companies in the U.S. are starting to allow advertising on their cell phone networks." But don't worry, "no major carrier is talking about displaying ads on home pages or while customers are making calls." You will most likely see ad integration in the form of the Yahoo &...
  • Ask.com Adds DVD & TV Data To Movie Smart Answers The Ask.com Blog announced an upgrade to their movie Smart Answer feature that adds DVD purchase information and TV data. Here is a brief summary of the blog entry....
  • Beam Them Engineers Up, Google Google's boldly going where no one has gone before....in search of engineers at the 5th Annual Official Star Trek Convention next week in Las Vegas. Google's going to have a booth and presence at the event, I'm told by a friend who knows. Apparently, many of Google's engineers already attend Trek conventions, so it's fertile recruiting ground. So far, I see nothing about Google on the convention site. But Google Operating System noted yesterday how Google SketchUp is already doing a cross-promotion. Have fun at the con, anyone who's going. Wish it were me! Of course, going to WorldCon in...

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:10 PM | Permalink

August 15, 2006

Daily SearchCast, August 16, 2006: Cut Coupons Via Google Maps; Google Trademark Usage Letters Show Old News Is New News; MattGuy Is GoogleCutts; Why's A Farmer Dating Site Mad At Google & More!

Through the miracle of modern technology (or perhaps Danny's close-guarded and heavily disputed secret of time traveling), you are getting tomorrow's Daily SearchCast today. Actually, Danny's off on Wednesday, August 16 -- so we did an extra long show on Tuesday, August 15 and cut it into two parts. If you get our podcast feed, you already got part one.

In part two, "today's" search podcast, we cover Google Maps getting coupons for local merchants; Google's trademark protection letters spark new controversy despite being three years old; customer satisfaction with search engines; Matt Cutts AKA GoogleGuy; a farmer dating site takes on Google 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.

  • Google Maps Gets Coupons Hmm? How do you prove to local merchants who lack tracking software or even web sites that search converts? Coupons! That's right, the conversion tracking tool that requires no internet connection, cookies or software has come to Google Maps....
  • Three Years On, Google's Trademark Usage Letters Become News Again How long does it take the wheel to spin full circle on the internet? Apparently three years, judging from the outcry over Google's "new" move to send out trademark protection letters asking people to be careful about how they use the word Google....
  • Yahoo, MSN, & Google Fall In Customer Satisfaction Survey The American Customer Satisfaction Index has been released and Yahoo, MSN and Google all fell in points from last year's results. If you look at the 2nd quarter scores and scroll down to the portals and search engines section you will see the ratings. Yahoo was hit the hardest, with a drop of five-percentage points from last year. Ask.com followed with a fall of 1.4%, then MSN falling 1.3%, and then Google falling 1.2% year over year. The only gainer is AOL with a 4.2 percentage point increase year-over-year. There is more coverage on this at DMNews, Bloomberg, News.com and...
  • Matt Cutts Confesses To Being GoogleGuy In Monday Morning Roundup, Rand Fishkin writes: Did anyone blog about Matt outing himself as GoogleGuy during SES? I believe his exact words were "I backed into that position." Nope, Rand -- I was surprised about the lack of reaction and blogging to that myself. I'm still doing post-show catch-up, but it hardly seemed to catch any buzz. Perhaps one of the industry's oldest secrets -- Matt Cutts being GoogleGuy -- was no longer a secret to most any longer....
  • Naylor & Amanda Finally Meet: Universe Fails To Be Destroyed
  • More SEO Video 'Cutts' By Matt Matt Cutts at Google has posted a few more videos with Google SEO tips for us. Here they are: + Session 11: Reinclusion requests + Session 12: Tips for Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose 2006 + Session 13: Google Webmaster Tools...
  • Google Supplemental Results Get Fresher I reported this morning at the Search Engine Roundtable that GoogleGuy announced Google has updated those pesky supplemental results. Supplemental results are those pages in a secondary index at Google. The pages in the supplemental results tend to be staler and rank worse then the normal documents in the main Google index. In any event, the supplemental results have been updated and should be somewhat more fresh....
  • Yahoo Launches Search Builder During the Social Search Overview session, Tim Mayer of Yahoo announced the launch of Yahoo Search Builder. I haven't had much time to play with it yet, and probably won't until next week. But the Yahoo Search blog has a nice overview of the new product. Keep in mind, this seems very similar to Eurekster, based on my quick quick quick read of it. More on this later....
  • Rollyo Adds More Functionality The roll your own search resource Rollyo adds more functionality to its services. If Rollyo has slipped under your radar it's a resource that allows you to create your own personalized search engine (hence 'roll your own') that will search up to 25 sites that you specify. They've improved layout, added blog search, added the ability to take an existing Searchroll and edit it to your own taste and added a 'Rollbar'. The latter allows searchers to incorporate Rollyo into the browser to search any site, add sites to existing Searchrolls on the fly and create new ones based on...
  • University of California Joins Google's Book Scan Project As expected the University of California is partnering with Google on the Google library scanning project. Reuters reports that Google will be funding "the scanning of "several million" of the 34 million titles in the University of California's libraries." Postscript From Danny: The partnership means that UC becomes the first organization to my knowledge to partner with both major scanning programs from search engines. UC partnered with Microsoft on its project in June. UC is also part of the broader Open Content Alliance backed by both Microsoft and Yahoo...
  • Google To Allow Pornographic Movies In Google Video? TechCrunch wrote that Google has recently removed the term "pornographic" from the restrictions on uploading videos. It is now just a restriction on “obscene” material, with an added categorization for "mature and adult" content. TechCrunch also believes Google removed a checkbox confirmation that said, "video is not pornographic or obscene material." Philipp Lenssen also notes this, and added commentary by Donna Bogatin at News.com....
  • Google Video Replaces Froogle & Expandable More Link Added To Google Home Page Philipp Lenssen spotted that on Google.com, they have removed Froogle, added Video and added a "more" link that opens up some more options, including "books," "froogle," "groups," and "even more." We have seen the expandable more link tested in the past, looks like it has made it to the front page....
  • Beware: Is Your Hosting Provider Cloaking Paid Links On Your Site For Their Benefit? I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable on thread in our forums that shows how some hosts are inserting links on sites they host, without notifying the web site owner, and doing it via cloaking. Matt Cutts from Google looked deeper into the reported issue in the thread and said that "it looks like this webhost is cloaking." The web hosting company is placing paid links within the content using cloaking techniques. If you are worried about this for your site, then check the Google index for you site. You can use a Google site command "with a porn phrase...
  • Yahoo's CEO, Terry Semel, Answers Tough Questions Search Engine Journal pulled out some serious quotes from a Fortune Magazine interview with Yahoo's CEO, Terry Semel. I'll pull out quotes, like Loren did;...
  • Yahoo Hires Away comScore Executive ClickZ reports that Yahoo has hired Peter Daboll, the president and CEO of comScore Media Metrix, to be the chief of insights and head of global market research at Yahoo. Daboll explains that his position was created at Yahoo to "bring together the external world of market research and the wealth of internal data that Yahoo collects." Peter Daboll will be reporting to Cammie Dunaway, Yahoo’s chief marketing officer, in Sunnyvale, California....
  • Google Hires Linux Coder, Andrew Morton Andrew Morton, well known in the Linux world for coding under Linus Torvalds, has been hired to work at Google, reports News.com. Linus commented about the job in a message board posting on Aug 6th. Andrew will continue working on Linux, but Google will be paying him to do so....
  • Microsoft adCenter Now Live In The UK The adCenter blog announced that Microsoft adCenter is now live, Tuesday, August 15th, in the UK. 100% of the ads served on Microsoft's properties will run adCenter ads, including MSN Search and Windows Live. Be prepared to see search volume and budget change requirements in your ad campaigns. Want to discuss with others? Join our forum thread named Microsoft adCenter Launches in the UK....
  • Farmer Dating Web Site Sues Google Over Porn Ads INQ7 Network reports that the owners of Farm Data, "a respectable meeting website for farmers," is suing Google for the ads that show up for the query [farm date]. Basically, pornographic sites and sex sites come up for the term and Farm Date says that those ads are "very damaging for Farmdate's reputation." We should know the court ruling on August 24, I will keep you posted on it....
  • Danny & Daron Sumo Wrestle (what, no video? Yeah, YouTube is STILL down. But I also put one of them on Google Video here).

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:43 PM | Permalink

Daily SearchCast, August 15, 2006: AOL Sets Off Search Privacy Crisis; Google Webmaster Central Offers Cool Tools & Support; Yahoo Expands Site Explorer; 1,000 Pizzas For Google & More!

Today's search podcast covers AOL's release of search records and the ensuing privacy crisis that followed; Google's support for site owners enlarging into Google Webmaster Central; Yahoo's expanded Site Explorer tools; Google pushes back against click fraud estimates from third parties; 1,000 pizzas descend on Google 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:

  • Normality At SFO Despite Usual Conflicting Security Bull
  • Arriving At Heathrow Madness
  • AOL Releases Search Data & Raises Privacy Concerns Techmeme is reporting a huge amount of concern over AOL releasing, then pulling, search logs done by 500,000 users over three months. The purpose of the release was to help search researchers better understand user behavior in conjunction with an industry event for search researchers happening in Seattle, SIGIR. The data was posted on the AOL research site, but has since been pulled....
  • Search Privacy Concerns Humanized As The New York Times Tracks Down Anonymous AOL Searcher A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749 is an excellent read from the New York Times, where you can meet the person who is about to become the most famous searcher ever: Thelma Arnold, a 62-year-old from Georgia. Using the released AOL search records, the New York Times figured out who she was and interviewed her and her searching habits for the story. No more discussing whether anonymous search records might contain enough information to identify people. In some cases, they do (or at least enough to make an extremely good guess and get confirmation from the...
  • More On AOL's Search Release & Ways To Search The Records I've got some follow-up items about yesterday's story where AOL released user query records, including how anyone can now easily look at the data. First, after Barry did a recap of the news, I added a postscript to the story with more of my thoughts. In case you missed it, here are the key parts below:...
  • New Keyword Suggestion Tool Uses AOL Data SEO Scoop spotted a new keyword suggestion tool that estimates the volume of traffic you can expect for a given query based on the AOL data slip up. Basically, the tool has data from March to May of this year, it then takes the market share figures of Google, Yahoo and MSN and multiples that by the AOL search volumes for those queries. Of course, you have the issue of people searching differently at different engines. AOL users are typically less tech savvy, when compared to Google users. So I wonder how accurate the estimates are? The tool is at...
  • Another Tool Uses AOL Data For Search Term Research SEO Blackhat released a tool that uses AOL data, Hitwise figures and Overture's suggestion tool to figure out the search volume and click-through rate you can expect from a search phrase at the various search engines. Last week we reported on a more basic tool that did something similar but this new tool gives you an "estimate with some certainty how many clicks to expect for ranking anywhere in any search engine for any term." Basically, you go to this tool and enter in the number of searches you expect to be performed for a keyword phrase. Then after you...
  • Targeting Ads Based On Search Behavior & Privacy Issues Post-AOL Back in 2005, I wrote about AlmondNet moving forward with showing ads to surfers across the web based on their search profiles at major search engines. The move raised big search privacy issues. Since then, AlmondNet's kept going -- along with others such as Yahoo, in mining search behavior to deliver ads beyond search results pages. Advertisers Trace Paths Users Leave on Internet from the New York Times today takes a look how Yahoo, MSN and AOL are all trying to push into the post-search ad delivery space....
  • EFF Asks FTC To Limit How Long AOL Can Store Search Records The Electronic Frontier Foundation has asked the US Federal Trade Commission to investigate AOL's release of search records last week and prevent the company from storing search data for longer than two weeks....
  • Daily SearchCast, August 9, 2006: Special Edition, A Conversation With Google CEO Eric Schmidt Today's search podcast covers Search Engine Watch editor-in-chief Danny Sullivan talking with Google CEO Eric Schmidt live before an audience at Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2006 on topics ranging from search privacy to Google's expansion into all aspects of daily life. Tune-in by listening to this MP3 file, via our Odeo channel or through iTunes via this link (or use alternative iTunes instructions explained here) or though our Yahoo Podcasts channel....
  • Google Sitemaps Becomes Google Webmaster Central; Preferred Domain Tool Launched Google Sitemaps has gained a new name along with new features. Google Webmaster Central is the new name of the former Google Sitemaps service, which now has evolved into a central place for Google to provide help information, statistics, reports and tools to help webmasters....
  • Which Queries On Yahoo Search Get Redirected To Site Explorer? The Yahoo Search Blog defines which queries will be redirected from Yahoo Search to Yahoo Site Explorer. Remember on July 11th when we reported that Yahoo Tests Redirecting Some Searches To Site Explorer? So which queries exactly do this? Queries in the format of site:ysearchblog.com or link:http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000341.html or linkdomain:ysearchblog.com but not ysearchblog.com or ysearchblog or site:ysearchblog.com webmasters (looking for ysearchblog posts mentioning webmasters) or link:http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000341.html Danny Sullivan (looking for links to the article mentioning Danny Sullivan) or or linkdomain:ysearchblog.com site:yahoo.com (looking for links to ysearchblog from within yahoo.com). More details at the Yahoo Search Blog....
  • The Bot Obedience Course - New Yahoo! Site Explorer Tool Announced
  • Google Fights Claims Of Some Third Party Click Fraud Studies The Google Blog just posted a report on how they feel some of the independent third party click fraud reports published are exaggerating the clickfraud numbers. Google says they have seen some reports that show "1.5 times the number of clicks in our logs," the reason? Well, Google summarized the "two main points" of the larger paper they published on the issue as being; (1) "mischaracterizing events," i.e. clicking the back button and it being characterized as a click and (2) "conflation across advertisers and ad networks," where cookie issues confuse Yahoo clicks with Google clicks. For the full, 17-page...
  • Yahoo & Google Commit To An Other Independent Click Fraud Audit At SES Donna Bogatin snagged both John Slade, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google Trust & Safety into agreeing to an other clickfraud audit. This commitment is for an IAB "independent auditing against the complete guidelines." Donna grilled Yahoo & Google during the Q&A session of the Auditing Paid Listings and Click Fraud Issues, which I hear was pretty heated....
  • Auditing Paid Listings and Click Fraud Issues
  • Google & MySpace In $900 Million Deal On Search & Contextual Ads Just in, an announcement that Google and MySpace have reached a deal for Google to provide search and contextual ads to MySpace, in return for giving MySpace (well, the entire Fox  Interactive Media network) $900 million in guaranteed payments through 2010. From the press release:...
  • Google & Viacom Partner In Video Ad Test Via the NY Times, Google and Viacom have partnered to place Viacom video clips (MTV and other clips) on web site owner pages. The video clips will contain ads from Viacom, which Google and site owns will share the revenues from. These tests are to begin towards the end of the month. This is the first step, I bet, to AdWords on TV. Last week we reported that Google Radio is coming to XM Satellite Radio, so TV isn't so far fetched. FYI - sorry for short posts, SES San Jose is today and coverage will be slow. Towards the...
  • Google Jet Lawsuit Has Been Settled Google Founders Silence Designer Of ‘Party Plane' fromthe New York Sun covers a dispute over the Google founders' private jet being settled. Danny has been poking fun about this Oklahoma designer who spoke out about some of the requests made by Sergey Brin and Larry Page about the the interior design of the jet they bought. I mean, Google went far to try to silence this man from talking. But after enough persistence and encouragement, the designer, Leslie Jennings, has notified the NY Sun, "The case was settled to the satisfaction of both parties."...
  • Googlers Go For Pizza Stunt Via InsideGoogle, Feeding Google - Better than Pirates of the Caribbean is a video over at YouTube where start-up CambrianHouse decides to attract attention by delivering 1,000 pizzas to the Googleplex in Mountain View. Will the Googlers go for it? Yes, they do....

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:46 PM | Permalink

August 10, 2006

Daily SearchCast, August 9, 2006: Special Edition, A Conversation With Google CEO Eric Schmidt

Today's search podcast covers Search Engine Watch editor-in-chief Danny Sullivan talking with Google CEO Eric Schmidt live before an audience at Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2006 on topics ranging from search privacy to Google's expansion into all aspects of daily life. Tune-in by listening to this MP3 file, via our Odeo channel or through iTunes via this link (or use alternative iTunes instructions explained here) or though our Yahoo Podcasts channel. Prefer not to listen? Ah, darn. But that's OK, here's a rundown of what was covered:

General Write-Ups

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:32 PM | Permalink

August 9, 2006

Tune In Now To Eric Schmidt's Talk At SES Today Live

Want to listen to my conversation with Google CEO Eric Schmidt at Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2006? It's happening in 15 minutes. Instructions on how to tune in are covered in full on this page, as well as a rundown on how to download a podcast of the keynote after the fact and other special podcasts coming out of the show.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:45 PM | Permalink

How To Listen To Eric Schmidt's Talk At SES Today Live

Can't make Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2006 today but want to listen to my conversation with Google CEO Eric Schmidt? Here's how to listen live through the internet or how to pick up the podcast of the talk after it ends, plus news on other special podcasts we'll be doing from the show this week.

The talk is being broadcast live by WebmasterRadio.FM at 10am Pacific time, when it begins. To listen, you need to load WebmasterRadio's live broadcast stream into your media player. Instructions for the three major players are below. Just click on the right link, and the stream will begin.

Windows Media Player (any recent Windows PC has this).

  • If you're on a modem connection, click on this link.
  • Got broadband? Listen in better quality by clicking on this link.
  • Got really fast broadband? Get the best quality by clicking on this link.

Winamp

  • If you're on a modem connection, click on this link.
  • Got broadband? Listen in better quality by clicking on this link.
  • Got really fast broadband? Get the best quality by clicking on this link.

RealPlayer

  • If you're on a modem connection, click on this link.
  • Got broadband? Listen in better quality by clicking on this link.
  • Got really fast broadband? Get the best quality by clicking on this link.

Don't want to or can't listen live? Don't worry. Visit our Daily SearchCast podcast home page. There are full instructions on how to subscribe to our podcast feed or listen in alternative ways. If you don't subscribe or use the alternatives, then try this option. The conversation will appear at the top of the archives listed on the Daily SearchCast page. Click through to conversation page, then click on the MP3 file link. That should load the audio into your media player.

After the talk, we're going to do highlights from selected sessions from the conference this week, in place of the usual Daily SearchCast. These won't go out live, but podcasts will be posted and available to those who take the feed.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:40 AM | Permalink

Daily SearchCast, August 4, 2006: Google Hires Former Time President To Head Ad Sales; Del.icou.us Gets Badges; Google Warns Of Hazardous Sites & More!

Today's search podcast covers a former Time Magazine editor joining Google to head ad sales; del.icou.us offering site owner info badges; Google warning users of sites that might have malware before they click to them from search results. and more! SearchReturn editor Detlev Johnson sat in for Danny Sullivan, who is away this week.

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 10:31 AM | Permalink

August 3, 2006

Daily SearchCast, August 3, 2006: Google-AP Deal Not Pay-Per-Click; Google Gains 60% US Search Share; Get Your Click Fraud Settlement Requests In Now & More!

Today's search podcast covers more details on the deal between Google and the Associated Press for news content; Google hits 60 percent of the US search market share, says Hitwise; tomorrow's the deadline to file for a click fraud settlement from Google and more! SearchReturn editor Detlev Johnson sat in for Danny Sullivan, who is away this week.

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 4:36 PM | Permalink

Daily SearchCast, August 2, 2006: Google To Put Advertisers On XM Radio; Bloglines Develops Feed Exclusion Tag; More Matt Cutts SEO Tips Videos & More!

Today's search podcast covers Google to put radio ads from advertisers on XM Radio; Bloglines develops a way to block RSS feeds from being indexed; Google's Matt Cutts does more video blogging to answer webmaster ranking and indexing questions and more! SearchReturn editor Detlev Johnson sat in for Danny Sullivan, who is away this week.

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 10:08 AM | Permalink

August 2, 2006

Daily SearchCast, August 1, 2006: Search & Top Global Brands, NASDQ Error Drops Google Price By Over $300 Temporarily; Google's Matt Cutts Does Video Answers & More!

Today's search podcast covers top search brands and how they do in the BusinessWeek top 100 global brands; a NASDAQ area sends Google's stock price tumbling by over $300 in after hours trading, due to a glitch; Google's Matt Cutts tries video blogging to answer webmaster ranking and indexing questions and more! SearchReturn editor Detlev Johnson sat in for Danny Sullivan, who is away this week.

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 9:11 AM | Permalink

July 28, 2006

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 th