Subscribe - Search Engine Watch

November 29, 2007

Google Using Doodles To Viral and Brand Market

Guess Google just wanted to push their brand in the Australian market, but their promotion to hold a competition for the Google Doodle that will adorn the Australian search results next January 26th definitely had that impact.

A twelve-year old from Melbourne, Janelle San Juan won the Doodle4Google competition - one that saw over 10,000 entries from all over Australia.

The picture can be seen here. Congratulations Janelle on a great job.

Posted by aussiewebmaster at 1:34 PM | Permalink

November 24, 2006

Google Sending Out AdSense Holiday Gifts

It is that time of the year again. We have our first report of a Google Adsense holiday gift from WebmasterWorld. The gift appears to be a 3.6 inch TFT digital photo frame. No pictures of the frame yet, but I hope someone emails one to me.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:13 AM | Permalink

November 21, 2006

Tracking All The Official Google Blogs

It can seem like Google adds a new official blog every week, which is a pain if you want to keep up with the official statements. Who wants to manually subscribe to each one? Well, you don't have to. Google tells me there's a feed they generate out of Google Reader that you can try here. An OPML file that shows all the blogs that are part of that combined feed can be found here. Unfortunately, you still can't go to a single page from Google itself and read all the latest posts from the various Google blogs. That may come, the company told me, but for now the feed and OPML files are all that's made available. Don't get me wrong, though -- I love having them!

Postscript: Google tells me there is a single page with all the posts you can read here.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:07 PM | Permalink

October 30, 2006

Judge To Rule By End Of Year On Kinderstart Case

Reuters reports that Judge Jeremy Fogel said he will take until the end of this year to rule on the Kinderstart case. The case was about how Kinderstart's ranking and PageRank fell and Kinderstart sued Google on numerous counts for the ranking drop. The judge recently said, "Assuming Google is saying that KinderStart's Web site isn't worth seeing. Why can't they say that? That's my question." So he will consider this and other questions in his ruling.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:03 AM | Permalink

October 23, 2006

Google's NetPAC Begins Donating Money

Mercury News reports that Google's NetPAC has begun handing out small $1,000 donations to three different Republicans. Google has given to Reps. Heather Wilson of New Mexico, Deborah Pryce of Ohio and Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin. Google also gave two donations to Democrats, Rep. Anna Eshoo of Palo Alto and Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:15 AM | Permalink

October 18, 2006

Another Odd Post To An Official Google Blog Raises Security Concerns

Does another odd post to one of Google official blogs mean Google losing it in terms of security? It spurred Michael Arrington to fire up a list over at TechCrunch of other security issues, a couple I wouldn't agree were breaches. But I can add to the list as well, and there's no doubt these type of things hurt Google when during its expansion, it needs all the goodwill and trust it can get.

Yesterday, Google Blogoscoped wrote about a strange post on Blogger Buzz, the official blog for Google's Blogger. It turned out to be a case of someone who writes for the Blogger Buzz accidentally posting something meant for her personal blog on Blogger to the official one.

I can completely sympathize with this. About two weeks ago, I posted something to the Search Engine Watch Blog that I meant for my personal blog Daggle. Both use Movable Type, on completely different systems. But I had browser windows open to both of them and just picked the wrong one.

Unfortunately, the mistaken post (which is still up on Blogger Buzz for me) comes about a week after the Official Google Blog was hacked with a fake post. Add that to some other things, and people might be getting worried.

That's certainly Michael Arrington view at TechCrunch. He writes:

The fact that unauthorized document access is a simple password guess or government â€œrequestâ€ away already works against them. But the steady stream of minor security incidents weâ€™ve seen (many very recently) can also hurt Google in the long run. Running applications for businesses is serious stuff, and Google needs to be diligent about security.

Another minor incident came up this evening - a Google employee intended to post on her personal blog and wrote on the official Google blog covering Blogger instead....

Google product teams work in cells, which allows them to quickly launch and iterate products. However, there could be a disadvantage to this as well with regard to security, as their does not seem to be one central policy or security group ensuring strict compliance across the entire company. Every security incident damages Googleâ€™s credibility and reputation. Microsoft has been dealing with security issues forever - Google may need to start fighting the same war.

The post includes eight examples of security incidents since 2004. Some I don't agree with, but others I do -- and there are more not on the list. I posted about these at TechCrunch, but my comments aren't showing yet (and possibly didn't go through properly). Here's what I wrote:

Goodness knows I'm not going to defend them on a lot of this stuff. The repeated problems with Blogger security are becoming absurd. Three strikes on their own blog? But Mike, some perspective is probably in order.

Accidentally released Platypus? Sounds like Philipp has a contact at Google that leaked it to him. I suppose that's a security issue, but it's not really a user security issue. Lumping it in there doesn't feel fair. And if you're going to do that, then any time someone from any company leaks you something, you should be reporting that as a security breach from that company.

Some of the other items are iffy on the user security side. They left stuff in a Writely doc, similar to how they left stuff in that analyst presentation a few months before. Sloppy, yes. Security breach, no. Worthy of concern? Yes, because sloppy there could mean sloppy elsewhere.

To add others to your list:

December 2004: Google Now Blocking Santy Worm "Security is something that we have to have even more renewed focus on," Google said about the case
Nov. 2005: Gmail Never Hacked, Google Says You note this above. To be fair, you'd have had to been so incredibly stupid to make this happen. Really, really stupid.
Nov. 2005: Major Security Flaw With Google Sitemaps Stats This was a fun one, allowed me to see stats for the US White House. Many others used it to see stats for other big sites.
Nov. 2005: Google Mini Security Issue Patched Security company praises Google for reacting quickly.
Feb. 2006: Google Account Security Breach with Book Search Another case where there's a security flaw if you're stupid. It's somewhat similar to saying credit cards have a flaw that if you give someone your number, they might be able to buy things with it. At least in this case, it's more possible someone would send a URL rather than a specific authentication code as with the Nov. 2005 case.
March 2006: Gmail Fixes JavaScript Security Hole They fixed it quickly.
June 2006: Google Fixes XSS Security Holes Another exploit.

Overall, I agree with you. These incidents hurt Google's reputation and the trust users may have with them. What I can't tell is how they stack up in trust compared to someone like Microsoft. I suspect they're still well ahead there. But it's not "may need" to fight the war. They're in that war now, and every new app increases their exposure to exploits.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:40 AM | Permalink

October 12, 2006

Google For Educators & Become A "Google Certified Teacher"

Google has launched a special Google For Educators site with designed for teachers and educators.

The site consolidates many of Google's products in one area, where each product is pitched to educators with special guidance about how it might be used by teachers and educators.

If you are an educator, you can become a "Google Certified Teacher" by attending the Google Teacher Academy.

What is the Google Teacher Academy?

The Google Teacher Academy is a pilot program designed to help K-12 educators get the most from innovative technologies. The Academy is a one-day experience at Google's Mountain View Headquarters where participants get hands-on experience with Google products and other technologies, receive instructional resources to share with colleagues, and share innovative instructional strategies with other local educators. Upon completion, Academy participants will become Google Certified Teachers.

The full press release is here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:45 AM | Permalink

October 10, 2006

Google Blog: Please Get Descriptive With Your Headlines!

A public rant, and I'm sorry -- but I've had it with the Official Google Blog having post headlines that give people no idea what the post is about. First some recent examples, then why this is bad in general. (Note: Be sure to see my postscript below)

Here are some recent entries that leave you guessing:

Greetings, Earthlings!: Gives you no idea this is about Googlers taking part in a 24 hour bike race.
Inside Macs at Google: Google's got a new blog about how it supports Macs, but the headline makes you think it's about Macs in use at Google.
Got blog? Will ping: Hehe, but what's it mean? How about, "Google Blog Search, Now With Ping Support."
The new Groups experience: Which groups experience? Yahoo Groups? Get the word Google in there and maybe highlight a feature or two.
Yes, you can have a pony: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! What on earth does that headline mean? It gives no clue that you can now put Google Gadgets on your own pages.
Now anyone can Talk: Or dance. Or sing. Or whatever. Make it clear. "Google Talk Now Open, Gmail Not Required."
Your inbox for the web: No, nothing to do with Gmail. It's about Google Reader getting cool new features. Pity you have no idea from the headline.

Honestly, I love a witty headline. I never ever ever ever want Good Morning Silicon Valley to give me a headline the explicitly tells me what a story is about (nor do they intend to). But GMSV's headlines work because they know their audience is aware of the stories they are commenting on. The headlines make sense in that context. The Official Google Blog isn't GMSV. They do need to explain what on earth is going on clearly in their blog headlines.

I'll give you one big reason. Every day, we round up headlines of stories we haven't posted separately about. Here's yesterday's recap. Today, I want to mention things like the Google bike race or the new Mac blog in the headlines. But the headlines Google provides are so lame that I either need to rewrite them or point at someone else who is writing about what Google posted. Save me the middleman. Save the confusion. Post with clear headlines, please.

Postscript: In retrospect, I regret not having contacted Google directly about this before posting. I generally like to get a first shot to correct problems with private criticism, and I should have sent a message over to Karen Wickre who acts as managing editor of the blog. My apologies, Karen!

On a positive note, Karen did see my plea and told me Google has heard some complaints about non-descriptive post titles. However, other readers like the distinctive and unstiff Google style. And since they are writing about Google products, Google doesn't necessarily feel it needs to spell out every product name, such as saying "Google Groups" rather than Groups, for example. After all, Karen said, Google Blog readers will assume they're talking about Google Groups rather than Yahoo Groups.

Regardless, Karen tells me she's inclined to move towards more descriptive titles to help readers and those seeking information from the blog.

FYI, I sparked off some other posts on blog writing tips. Good Blog Writing Style from Philipp at Google Blogoscoped has lots of advice I think anyone will find helpful. Over at InsideGoogle, Nathan's The Inverted Pyramid For Bloggers has more tips and a plea that people don't have to entirely mirror a newspaper-style structure. I agree and commented:

Honestly, I doubt most blog posts get long enough that you need to do an hourglass. Nor do I think most authors need to think hmm inverted or hourglass?

I think you do need to consider that your opening paragraph and headline give people some idea about clicking through, especially if you do partial feeds.

But that's it. If youâ€™ve given the reader a descriptive headline and summary, go hourglass, inverted pyramid, feature style (anecdote leading to a summary â€œnutâ€ paragraph with a story to follow) or whatever floats your boat â€” and whatever you think your readers will like. But unless you know they love you so much, that opening paragraph and headline is crucial.

For more on that, see Full Feeds Petition? How About A Copyright Infringement Petition? at my personal blog Daggle. It gets more into tips to especially consider about opening paragraphs and headlines.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:49 AM | Permalink

October 9, 2006

Official Google Blog Gets Hacked After Message On Security

The Official Google Blog was hacked over the weekend, happening embarrassingly after Google had just posted about how seriously it takes security. It's also follows a pseudo-hack earlier this year, when someone else took over the Google Blog when the company accidentally deleted it.

The hack was covered in various places. Google Blogoscoped has a good write-up on what was initially posted (and screenshot here), an anonymous message saying that Google's click-to-call project had been cancelled:

After concientiously considering, Google has decided not to continue with Google Click-to-call project. The project has been in the media on last days because of the notice of Google agreement with e-Bay. We finally consider click-to-call agreement with e-Bay a monopolistic aproach that would damage small companies in the CRM area.

It felt like a hack to many, certainly to me as well, and I posted the same to Google Blogoscoped:

Got to be a hack. Especially notice what's currently tops on the Google blog, a post all about how "Google takes security very seriously and designs all of its services and applications to protect your privacy and data security." This almost certainly is someone reading how "we keep the bad guys out of our systems" and thumbing Google's nose to show nope, they don't.

That post from the Google Blog about security says in full:

Most readers of this blog are familiar with our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Maintaining the trust of our users and ensuring a positive experience using our products and services is paramount to our ability to accomplish our mission. As a result, Google takes security very seriously and designs all of its services and applications to protect your privacy and data security. Behind the scenes of these efforts is the Google Security Team. We keep the bad guys out of our systems and have brought you features like the anti-phishing extension in Google Toolbar and warnings about Internet malware. As part of our commitment to security, we're putting up some additional help content to let users and security researchers know how to quickly contact us on these issues. We've learned that when security is done right, it's done as a community, and this includes everybody: the people who use Google services (thank you all!), the software developers who make our applications, and the external security enthusiasts who keep us on our toes. These combined efforts go a long way toward making the Internet safer and more secure. Please visit our new security page and feel free to contact us anytime at security@google.com.

The post is incredibly ironic given what's now posted at the top of the blog:

A bug in Blogger enabled an unauthorized user to make a fake post on the Google Blog last night, claiming that we've discontinued our AdWords click-to-call test. The bug was fixed quickly and the post removed. As for the click-to-call test, it is progressing on schedule, and we're pleased with the results thus far.

A bug, also known as a security problem. So much for that trust Google was hoping to maintain with its users. It also happens ironically after publicity about Google shifting attention to improving existing projects, rather than rolling out new ones.

Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped pointed out what a nice visual contrast the two posts make and posted a screenshot. I couldn't help doing the same:

In March, Google deleted its own blog accidentally, allowing someone else the ability to claim the old Google URL and keep the blog running for a short time outside of Google's control. Official Google Blog Deleted, Blogger Registers googleblog.blogspot.com has more about that.

Finally, the hacked post was published by someone calling themselves Maximal. I found a post from another Maximal on Google Groups asking for help recently with the Google Data API.

Hi, I am making tests with Google Data API to publish my posts. The problem is ... my posts are being published into "the Honourable Dr Mantombazana Tshabalala-Msimang South Africa's Minister of Health" blog (I don't have to say I am not the minister of health of South Africa).

Any help before Honourable Minister of Health of South Africa would speak with Interpol would be apreciated.

Perhaps related?

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:16 AM | Permalink

October 4, 2006

Eric Schmidt Warns Politicians That Elections Will Forever Change

The Financial Times reports that Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, warned politicians at a Tory party conference in Bournemouth that the outcome of general elections will be changed "within five years" by what Eric Schmidt calls "truth predictor" software.

A politician may be making claims live during a debate and a voter will be searching the internet to validate those claims, in real time.

Schmidt said, â€œOne of my messages to them is to think about having every one of your voters online all the time, then inputting â€˜is this true or false?â€™ We [at Google] are not in charge of truth but we might be able to give a probability.â€

The Register.com has a link to the speech here (for Windows Media users).

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:10 AM | Permalink

The Google Literacy Project

Reuters reports that Google, in conjunction with LitCam and UNESCO's Institute for Lifelong Learning, has formed The Literacy Project. The site, hosted at Google.com, brings together Google Book Search, Google Scholar, Google Video, Google Maps, Blogger, and Groups into one landing page. The site was launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair with hopes to combat global illiteracy. Nikesh Arora, vice president of Google's European operations said, "Google's business was born out of a desire to help people find information."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:31 AM | Permalink

October 2, 2006

Google Buys Birthplace Garage

Google has purchased the garage where the company developed after its initial birth at Stanford University. Actually, they've purchased the home of Google vice president of product management Susan Wojcicki. Before she became a Google VP, Wojcicki rented the garage attached to her home to Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google buys garage that launched Internet's top search engine from the Associated Press has details about the sale, which was probably in the $1.2 million range. As of yet, Google doesn't know what exactly it may do with the home the article reports. It's already a tourist attraction, it seems.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:23 AM | Permalink

September 26, 2006

Some Google Belgium Follow-Ups

Just a quick note that Google's posted on its official blog about the Google Belgian news issue that I've been covering, while William Slawski has a nice translation in the works on the ruling itself.

About the Google News case in Belgium from the Official Google Blog doesn't really provide much new information that you haven't already gotten in reports from me and others. What should it provide? How about answers to:

Exactly how did Google fail to react to the legal action before it went to trial? Information was sent to Google's headquarters in Belgium. If it had been acted upon, Google might have won in the first round of the case by actually presenting a defense, rather than being absent.
Why did Google initially refuse to post the ruling on the Google web sites in Belgium after last Friday's decision, then change its mind?

The post does stress that there are ways for publishers to easily stay out of Google. Those ways don't appear to have been presented to the court itself. Writes William Slawski in Belgian Copyright Ruling Against Google News:

Iâ€™m surprised by the lack of mentions of the use of a noarchive meta tag or noindex meta tags or by the use of robots.txt to disallow Google from indexing or archiving the pages of the newpapers in question.

While the Court does note that the onus of keeping copyright from being infringed falls upon the owner of the technology used to take text from the newspapers in question, this seems like an omission worth noting.

Regardless of how the Court may have felt about those options, I think that they should have been addressed in some manner. The failure to do so makes it appear that they either werenâ€™t provided information about those by their expert, or didnâ€™t understand them, or may not have addressed those issues on purpose.

A simple noarchive tag would have kept information on those pages from being cached by Google. A noindex tag or disallow directive should have kept their pages from being indexed at all by Google. Were they using these and Google ignored them? I suspect that they werenâ€™t.

After some more analysis, including an important argument over whether Google is a portal competing with newspapers or a search engine (answer, in my view, probably both depending on whether you keyword search Google News or read by browsing), he provides a long and what seems fairly complete English translation of the French-language ruling.

For more background on the case, see my prior posts:

Google's Belgium Fight: Show Me The Money, Not The Opt-Out, Say Publishers: Explains when the ruling happened, how Google reacted to remove the publications more than they were probably expected and why if the fight were really about copyright, the entire court case could have been avoided through the use of a simple robots.txt file.
Google Loses Appeal On Posting Belgian Ruling: Covers Google losing the judgment on Friday about posting the text on its web site.
Publisher Groups To Test New Search Engine Rights Management System (Updated): Covers a new system that publishers have proposed that some suggest would have avoided the Belgian case -- except that as my previous story explains, existing systems would have stopped that well enough.
Google Changes Mind, Posts Belgian Ruling: Covers Google posting the ruling, plus how dropping cached pages likely would help Google's case going forward.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:03 AM | Permalink

Google Gets Long Distance Phone Call From Space

The world's first private woman space tourist Anousheh Ansari made a long distance call to the Googleplex to talk with Google co-founder Larry Page. Ansari and Page are both trustees of the X Prize Foundation. Google has highlights of some of their call here: including space fun, space food, space broadband and more. Larry Page asks, when can he "come up to join" Ansari? Who knows, maybe Page will cash out on some Google stock and fly to the International Space Station.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:59 AM | Permalink

September 21, 2006

Webmasters Complaining About Google? Get A Job Helping Them Know!

A new job opening from Google, Webmaster Trends Analyst. It's all about helping Google monitor what webmasters are upset or concerned about at forums, conferences and other venues. From the job description:

Responsibilities:

Monitor webmaster issues (in various online forums, conferences, internal questions, etc.).
Analyze data for trends.
Formulate recommendations.
Route issues using appropriate escalation paths.
Investigate specific issues, as needed.

Sounds like a perfect job for Barry Schwartz! Of course, if I lose yet another news editor to a search engine, oh vey!

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:13 PM | Permalink

KinderStart Issues An Amended Complaint Against Google

Eric Goldman wrote that KinderStart has issued a 63 page second amended complaint against Google. KinderStart lost their first case against Google back in July of this year - that case was, in my opinion, ridiculous. This new complaint is even worse. The 43(B)log summarizes the complaints, calling many of them "incomprehensible." Eric Goldman says "I expect Google will file a motion to dismiss, which the judge will grant, at least in part (at minimum, to eliminate the Violation of Free Speech claim). I expect Google to go on the counter-offensive and renew its anti-SLAPP motions."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:51 AM | Permalink

September 19, 2006

Google's Political Action Committee: Google NetPAC

Via Threadwatch, Google will flex political muscles PAC to raise money for causes, candidates; lobbyists on board from the San Francisco Chronicle covers how Google has created its own Political Action Committee named Google NetPAC to to support candidates backing "an open and free internet." Google has some small footprints in Washington already, hiring a lobbying firm in the past to help push public policy in the direction Google wants it to go.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:43 AM | Permalink

September 13, 2006

Google: Banning Books In The US Is Bad; Censorship In China, Not So Much

Google's blogging (and here) about how it is supporting the 25th anniversary of the American Library Association's Banned Book Week by posting information about novels that have been challenged or banned from being in libraries within the United States. That's great, but it also rings hollow given Google's support of wide-spread censorship in China.

Consider some of the quotes the ALA has put out to promote its anti-banning campaign:

"Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment." â€”Library Bill of Rights

"We uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library resources." â€”ALA Code of Ethics

Google's a library resource, make no doubt about it. Pick a librarian, and they'll tell you Google is a key resource they use. Not the only resource, but an important one -- and one that I doubt they feel should be censored to the degree that Google does in China.

Back to Google's support of Banned Book Week, its new Explore Banned Books page has links to information about 42 classic books that have been banned or challenged over time. Here's a recent article on banned books in China.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:36 AM | Permalink

August 23, 2006

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 6:40 AM | Permalink

August 18, 2006

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.

The company's put out a press release about taking part in the show and set up a special site for Star Trek fans. Don't get too excited. The site has little to do with Star Trek and a lot more to do with promoting how developers can now put geo-location files (KML) on mobile phones. Way down at the bottom of the page are links to plot sci-fi related locations on Google Maps (see them here) or Google Earth.

Much cooler is an AFP article, Google builds bridge at Star Trek cult convention, about how Google's booth will feature a mockup of the Enterprise bridge (TOS, probably, rather than TNG or STE. Don't know the acronyms? Then you don't care which bridge it is). The main viewer will access Google Earth, which sounds pretty cool.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:12 AM | Permalink

August 16, 2006

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.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 7:44 PM | Permalink

August 14, 2006

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.

I moderated the panel, and the confession came out when a member of the audience flat out asked Matt if he was GoogleGuy. Matt hesitated just a moment, and I could swear I could almost hear the internal debate of "should I finally confess or not." And then he did, saying as Rand notes that he sort of backed into being the GoogleGuy who posts on forums and blogs. Matt then added that today, GoogleGuy might be one of many different people from Google commenting in public areas.

Matt's been blogging for just over a year now, and it's been great to have him out under his own name. Personally, while I love the Google Guy name, I sort of hope it gets retired. I'd rather have Googlers taking part in conversations under their own names than through anonymous handles. Plus, it would help avoid things where the named person might comment on something they've also posted under an anonymous handle. As I wrote last year:

Matt Cutts, posting over Threadwatch and sounding pretty in sync with GoogleGuy, explains that msn.com is a PR8 site and points to the Future PageRank checker at SEO Tools as a way to see this. (At this point, you're asking "Isn't Matt Cutts GoogleGuy?" For the record, Matt's never publicly laid claim to being GoogleGuy. But since Matt's more active on commenting with things these days, I think it's well time that GoogleGuy step forward with a real name, so that if they are one and the same, there's isn't confusion that two different people are talking. Honestly, at some point we'll have someone citing GoogleGuy, then someone citing Matt against GoogleGuy, which is absurd if they are the same. I and many others do know the real identity of GoogleGuy. I think it's well time everyone knows and hope GoogleGuy will step forward).

By the way, if you missed the panel, Blogging for the search engines from Melanie Colburn at Searchblog is a very nice summary of it. Matt also made many new friends at the last conference and today blogs on how to tell who the real ones are :) That includes these two founding members of his fan club, complete with T-shirts. He also gets search god status on the new Men Of SEO blog.

Postscript: WebmasterWorld's Brett Tabke pinged me to say that Matt's been wearing a "Google Guy" name badge at PubCon for the past two years now, and Thomas Bindl notes this was the case last November at the show, as well. So I guess Matt's been out as GoogleGuy long before this. Then again, despite wearing that name badge in front of plenty of people, he still wasn't fessing up to it when I or others would ask him about going public. And over at Rand's blog in the comments, Matt's suggesting that he was answering a different question.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:54 AM | Permalink

August 3, 2006

Eric Schmidt Asks Photos Of Him & Wife To Be Kept Private

The Boston Herald reports that while Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, was at the Circus Flora in Nantucket, he asked reporters not to take or distribute pictures of him and his wife. Marie-Claire Rochat sent an email to "the island media" stating; "One couple has requested that no photographs of them be published - Wendy and Eric Schmidt. It is, of course, important that we respect their wishes."

The article then mocks Eric Schmidt for this request being that he was so upset with News.com for publishing Schmidt's personal info that was found on Google. Schmidt was so upset, that Google blacklisted News.com for a period of time.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:12 AM | Permalink

August 1, 2006

Google Toolbar Bug Warns Against Use Of Other Search Engines

Philipp Lenssen reports that a bug in the Google Toolbar warns users when they select other search engines to use. If you enable in the toolbar that you want to keep Google as your main search engine, and you install a toolbar from say MSN, it will pop up warnings at you. The warning reads, "Google has blocked an attempt by another program to change your default search settings."

Benjamin Lewis from Google said there is a bug with the program, "The fact that GoogleToolbarNotifier.exe remains in memory after disabling the feature is a bug â€“ thank you for reporting it. We're working on it right now and should have it fixed shortly. As long as the feature is disabled the .exe doesnâ€™t actually do anything, it just remains in memory (not that this makes it less of a problem)." More details at Google System blog.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:15 AM | Permalink

July 31, 2006

Microsoft, Google & Yahoo Make Business Week's Top 100 Best Global Brands

ResourceShelf reports on the Business Week Top 100 Global Brands release from this week. You can see from the interactive table that Microsoft remained in the number two slot, Google moved up to number 24 from the 38th position in 2005, and Yahoo also moved up to 55 from the 58th position in 2005.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:42 AM | Permalink

July 25, 2006

Librarians And Google: Tips Of The Trade

Google attended the ALA Conference in New Orleans and produced a video entitled Tips of the Trade together with some additional text only tips from librarians and other information professionals. It's a shame that Google limited participation to American librarians, but it was explained to me that there would have been technical and legal problems with filming librarians from other countries (though that doesn't explain why they couldn't have added in anecdotes from them; a lovely opportunity to draw together and share global experiences).

However this is perhaps carping; it's good to see a search engine (other than Ask who employs Gary Price) actually showing interest in, and paying attention to librarians. What I found interesting was the choice of examples that Google used, both in the video and the text tips.

In the video we were treated to brief clips on how Google Earth could be used to orientate students around London, how the search engine could be used to find a play for children, and two quick nods towards Book Search and searching for lyrics. The video ended with a quote "I can't imagine research life without Google".

The text only tips covered the use of Google Alerts, Video, Reader, language restrictions, Desktop, Maps, genealogical searching, Scholar and searching for business information.

These were all interesting in and of themselves, but with respect to the information professionals included there was nothing really earth shattering. At one point Google describes them as "terrific anecdotes", and I think that's a rather fairer and more accurate summary than "tips of the trade". If the audience was intended to be the librarians patrons it would have been more understandable, but given that it is other information professionals I was hoping for rather more complex hints and tips.

As it stands, both the video and the text tips were interesting, but lacking that 'wow' factor that I talked about yesterday. Google has made a great start in holding discussions with librarians and the information profession as a whole; I just hope that they build on this and move towards global conversations that we can all contribute to.

Posted by Phil Bradley at 9:28 AM | Permalink

Librarians And Google: Tips Of The Trade

The text only tips covered the use of Google Alerts, Video, Reader, language restrictions, Desktop, Maps, genealogical searching, Scholar and searching for business information.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:28 AM | Permalink

Librarians And Google: Tips Of The Trade

The text only tips covered the use of Google Alerts, Video, Reader, language restrictions, Desktop, Maps, genealogical searching, Scholar and searching for business information.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:28 AM | Permalink

Librarians And Google: Tips Of The Trade

The text only tips covered the use of Google Alerts, Video, Reader, language restrictions, Desktop, Maps, genealogical searching, Scholar and searching for business information.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:28 AM | Permalink

July 14, 2006

KinderStart Becomes KinderStopped In Ranking Lawsuit Against Google

Kinderstart has lost its case over lost rankings on Google, though the company will be allowed to amend defamation claims relating to its PageRank zero score. If it does by September 29, I suspect that reattempt will go down in flames as well. But the entire case exposes vulnerabilities Google has created for itself with mixed messages over how keyword ranking and Pagerank work.

Google Sued Over Site Penalty By KinderStart.com covers the case being filed back in March and provides a link to the actual suit. It was heard in court earlier this month, and you can review the transcript and analysis of that hearing.

Judge dismisses suit over Google ranking from News.com covers yesterday's ruling, where the claims against Google were dismissed. The judge gave leave for KinderStart to revise on some claims, apparently in particular on the idea that KinderStart was defamed by being dropped to a PageRank of zero as reported by the Google Toolbar.

KinderStart now apparently hopes it can enlist other PR0 sites to file a class action lawsuit against Google (info is supposed to be here, but site is currently down). The KinderStart attorney said:

"The decision suggests that, if properly alleged, Google may be defaming a whole class of Web sites sacked with a '0' PageRank," he wrote in a statement. "If plaintiffs show Google manually tampered with even a single Web site's PageRank, Google's entire claim of 'objectivity' of search results and rankings could collapse."

Sure. Fire away with that class action suit. Two class action suits over click fraud, where defendants have real monetary claims arising out of actual contacts with the major search engines, have netted around $60 million for advertisers for over four years worth of advertising activity. Assuming a somewhat nebulous defamation claim won, I can't imagine the settlement would be for much.

Keep in mind that by default, the PageRank meter is still not turned on, to my knowledge. Toolbar users have to specifically enable it. I've never seen any stats or breakdowns on who uses the PR meter, but that seems to be mainly site owners concerned about SEO, rather than typical web surfers.

Still, the case highlights a Google vulnerability. Google has argued in this case that ranking is subjective, an opinion that it offers about web sites. But go to its technology page, and you get this:

PageRank Technology: PageRank performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages by solving an equation of more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Instead of counting direct links, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page's importance by the number of votes it receives. PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. Important pages receive a higher PageRank and appear at the top of the search results. Google's technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance. There is no human involvement or manipulation of results, which is why users have come to trust Google as a source of objective information untainted by paid placement.

So what is it, objective or subjective, or argue what's most convenient, as John Battelle raised earlier. The answer to me gets confused by Google's outdated information online plus confusion between PageRank and ranking.

Ranking, or keyword ranking, is where a site appears in response to a keyword search. It's supposed to be an objective decision made by using a computer algorithm to sort through factors, though not said is how some of those factors might have subjective decisions made over them.

PageRank is a numeric score that counts how important a page is based on analyzing the links pointing to it. It is one of many factors that Google uses to decide where a page should appear when you do a keyword search. In other words, PageRank is part of what determines keyword ranking, but it's not the only factor, nor is it the same as keyword ranking.

But doesn't Google say that pages with a higher PageRank appear at the top of the search results. Yes, and it says this incorrectly. That's right, Google's statement on this is flat out wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong. WRONG.

Am I clear enough? But how can I say Google's official information is wrong? First, I can demonstrate it, as I've done before. Try this tool. Here's a search for cars. Notice how the movie Cars is ranked second. The home page for the site listed is a PR5, putting it above several pages ranking below it with a higher PR score. Got Firefox? Try Aaron Wall's new tool that makes seeing this type of thing even easier. End Of Demonstration.

Google has tons of things they've said publicly that get outdated like this or aren't explained properly by those charged to write up copy. In particular, Google has allowed PageRank to be a synonymous term to mean how a site ranks. You can see how this makes life confusing by the first paragraph in the News.com story about the case:

KinderStart, a directory and search engine for information related to children, sued Google in March after it fell to a "zero" ranking in the Google index.

Actually, I believe that two different things happened. KinderStart:

No longer had good keyword rankings, not in the first page of results, but perhaps still buried further down unless it was banned completely. And if it was banned completely, that's not a "zero" rank but instead just called a ban.
Probably had a penalty put on it manually that produced a zero score in the PageRank meter.

The judge does not seem to be saying Google defamed the site through a lower keyword ranking. But he does seem to suggest that the PageRank score in the Google Toolbar meter might have that issue. From Eric Goldberg's nice write-up on the case (and he has a copy of the ruling there, as well):

Google’s statement as to whether a particular website is “worth your time” necessarily reflects its subjective judgment as to what factors make a website important. Viewed in this way, a PageRank reflects Google’s opinion. However, it is possible a PageRank reasonably could be interpreted as a factual statement insofar as it purports to tell a user “how Google’s algorithms assess the importance of the page you’re viewing.” This interpretation would be bolstered by evidence supporting Google’s alleged representations that PageRank is “objective,” and that a reasonable person thus might understand Google’s display of a ‘0’ PageRank for Kinderstart.com to be a statement that ‘0’ is the (unmodified) output of Google’s algorithm. If it could be shown, as Kinderstart alleges, that Google is changing that output by manual intervention, then such a statement might be provably false.

I'm actually surprised the judge doesn't seem to know that Google does indeed change that output by manual intervention. That's what the entire SearchKing case was about. First some background on that:

Google Sued Over PageRank Decrease: From Feb. 2002, overview of the case that was filed against Google.
SearchKing Google Rank Restored and The SearchKing Google controversy revisited: From Nov. 2002, on SearchKing beginning to rank again for some terms but the PageRank score itself apparently not back to "normal."
Google Asks Court to Dismiss SearchKing Lawsuit and SearchKing update: preliminary injunction denied: From Jan. 2003, on preliminary injunction being denied.
Court dismisses Google search-fixing case: From June 2003, on a court ruling that PageRank is Google's opinion and that what's "normal" is whatever Google wants it to be.
Four Years Later, SearchKing Regains Google PR: In April 2006, SearchKing regained PageRank.

The case involved another US District Court judge ruling that yes, Google had manipulated the PageRank score showing for SearchKing and that it had a constitutionally protected right to do so, to offer its opinion this way.

Of course, the ruling confuses PageRank and keyword ranking as I've explained above often happens:

PageRanks are opinions -- opinions of the significance of particular Web sites as they correspond to a search query.

Still, since the case was indeed focused about the PageRank meter, I suspect we're safe in knowing this was about PageRank scores getting protected status. And what the KinderStart case now tells us is that Google (and other search engines) also have the right to do keyword rankings however they like.

We'll see if the PageRank scores get challenged again. Certainly Google could short-circuit this by dropping the scores and the meter altogether (please do it). As explained, few people to my knowledge use them, and plenty of site owners are tired of newbie search marketers obsessing over them. PageRank was mainly a marketing tactic for Google that's long since been blowing up in its face.

If the meter doesn't go away, certainly Google needs to take a harder look at what it says about both the Google Toolbar and keyword rankings if it doesn't want to be vulnerable in future court cases (plus just be consistent with the public).

For example, what's a site owner told about a PR0 score:

A page may be assigned a rank of zero if Google crawls very few sites that link to it. Additionally, pages recently added to the Google index may also show a PageRank score of zero because they haven't been crawled by Googlebot yet and haven't been ranked. A page's PageRank score may increase naturally with subsequent crawls, so this shouldn't be a cause for concern. To learn more about PageRank, please see http://www.google.com/technology/index.html

There's no mention of the fact that you might have a PR0 score because Google has manually intervened to reduce it. And as for what it tells the general public:

Wondering whether a new website is worth your time? Use the Toolbar's PageRank™ display to tell you how Google's algorithms assess the importance of the page you're viewing.

Again, it's more than just the algorithms being involved. Human are making decisions that impact that score, as well.

In short, Google is continuing to make statements that PageRank is objective to the public, but in two court cases now, it has said the scores are subjective. One case as supported its right to make subjective cases. The other has supported a defendants right to challenge if those subjective opinions are fair or defamatory. We'll see what happens next.

Finally, the entire human intervention thing with PageRank scores brings back the issue of Google long saying there's no human intervention in keyword ranking, such as they used to say about censorship:

Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and content of our results are completely automated; we do not manipulate our search results by hand.

And similar to what they still say here:

Sites' positions in our search results are determined automatically based on a number of factors, which are explained in more detail at http://www.google.com/technology/index.html. We don't manually assign keywords to sites, nor do we manipulate the ranking of any site in our search results.

In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages. For more information about improving your site's visibility in the Google search results, we recommend reviewing our webmaster guidelines. They outline core concepts for maintaining a Google-friendly website.

As I've written before, Google does indeed hand manipulate results, but not in the sense of trying to reorder them. Instead, it manually intervenes in terms of banning some sites or putting overall ranking penalties on them. There's even been updated attempts to help site owners know when they've been banned through the Google Sitemaps program.

Overall, Google's got plenty of mixed messages out there that don't help on the PR front and potentially leave it vulnerable on the legal front, as this case has shown.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:48 AM | Permalink

KinderStart Becomes KinderStopped In Ranking Lawsuit Against Google

KinderStart now apparently hopes it can enlist other PR0 sites to file a class action lawsuit against Google (info is supposed to be here, but site is currently down). The KinderStart attorney said:

KinderStart, a directory and search engine for information related to children, sued Google in March after it fell to a "zero" ranking in the Google index.

Actually, I believe that two different things happened. KinderStart:

No longer had good keyword rankings, not in the first page of results, but perhaps still buried further down unless it was banned completely. And if it was banned completely, that's not a "zero" rank but instead just called a ban.
Probably had a penalty put on it manually that produced a zero score in the PageRank meter.

Google Sued Over PageRank Decrease: From Feb. 2002, overview of the case that was filed against Google.
SearchKing Google Rank Restored and The SearchKing Google controversy revisited: From Nov. 2002, on SearchKing beginning to rank again for some terms but the PageRank score itself apparently not back to "normal."
Google Asks Court to Dismiss SearchKing Lawsuit and SearchKing update: preliminary injunction denied: From Jan. 2003, on preliminary injunction being denied.
Court dismisses Google search-fixing case: From June 2003, on a court ruling that PageRank is Google's opinion and that what's "normal" is whatever Google wants it to be.
Four Years Later, SearchKing Regains Google PR: In April 2006, SearchKing regained PageRank.

Of course, the ruling confuses PageRank and keyword ranking as I've explained above often happens:

PageRanks are opinions -- opinions of the significance of particular Web sites as they correspond to a search query.

For example, what's a site owner told about a PR0 score:

There's no mention of the fact that you might have a PR0 score because Google has manually intervened to reduce it. And as for what it tells the general public:

Wondering whether a new website is worth your time? Use the Toolbar's PageRank™ display to tell you how Google's algorithms assess the importance of the page you're viewing.

Again, it's more than just the algorithms being involved. Human are making decisions that impact that score, as well.

Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and content of our results are completely automated; we do not manipulate our search results by hand.

And similar to what they still say here:

Overall, Google's got plenty of mixed messages out there that don't help on the PR front and potentially leave it vulnerable on the legal front, as this case has shown.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:48 AM | Permalink

KinderStart Becomes KinderStopped In Ranking Lawsuit Against Google

KinderStart now apparently hopes it can enlist other PR0 sites to file a class action lawsuit against Google (info is supposed to be here, but site is currently down). The KinderStart attorney said:

KinderStart, a directory and search engine for information related to children, sued Google in March after it fell to a "zero" ranking in the Google index.

Actually, I believe that two different things happened. KinderStart:

No longer had good keyword rankings, not in the first page of results, but perhaps still buried further down unless it was banned completely. And if it was banned completely, that's not a "zero" rank but instead just called a ban.
Probably had a penalty put on it manually that produced a zero score in the PageRank meter.

Google Sued Over PageRank Decrease: From Feb. 2002, overview of the case that was filed against Google.
SearchKing Google Rank Restored and The SearchKing Google controversy revisited: From Nov. 2002, on SearchKing beginning to rank again for some terms but the PageRank score itself apparently not back to "normal."
Google Asks Court to Dismiss SearchKing Lawsuit and SearchKing update: preliminary injunction denied: From Jan. 2003, on preliminary injunction being denied.
Court dismisses Google search-fixing case: From June 2003, on a court ruling that PageRank is Google's opinion and that what's "normal" is whatever Google wants it to be.
Four Years Later, SearchKing Regains Google PR: In April 2006, SearchKing regained PageRank.

Of course, the ruling confuses PageRank and keyword ranking as I've explained above often happens:

PageRanks are opinions -- opinions of the significance of particular Web sites as they correspond to a search query.

For example, what's a site owner told about a PR0 score:

There's no mention of the fact that you might have a PR0 score because Google has manually intervened to reduce it. And as for what it tells the general public:

Wondering whether a new website is worth your time? Use the Toolbar's PageRank™ display to tell you how Google's algorithms assess the importance of the page you're viewing.

Again, it's more than just the algorithms being involved. Human are making decisions that impact that score, as well.

Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and content of our results are completely automated; we do not manipulate our search results by hand.

And similar to what they still say here:

Overall, Google's got plenty of mixed messages out there that don't help on the PR front and potentially leave it vulnerable on the legal front, as this case has shown.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:48 AM | Permalink

KinderStart Becomes KinderStopped In Ranking Lawsuit Against Google

KinderStart now apparently hopes it can enlist other PR0 sites to file a class action lawsuit against Google (info is supposed to be here, but site is currently down). The KinderStart attorney said:

KinderStart, a directory and search engine for information related to children, sued Google in March after it fell to a