Search Month: December 2006 Search News, In Review

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Jan. 1, 2007 at 7:24pm Eastern by Danny Sullivan

Search Month: December 2006 Search News, In Review

Welcome to the first edition of Search Month! Search Month is a monthly newsletter that recaps stories we've covered on Search Engine Land over the past month. It's also available by feed here. On to the recap....

=== Dec. 29, 2006 ===

Q&A With Jimmy Wales On Search Wikia - News came out earlier this week that Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales had a new project in mind, to build a community-driven "Google-killer" search engine. I've just finished talking with Jimmy about his plans. Here's a rundown on his vision and what may come as his Search Wikia project grows over the course of the next year or two. See also:

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Fury Over Google's Self Promotion & Wishing For Perspective - It feels like a bad week to be Google. Honestly, if there's a tipping point, the freakout that they've become the evil company they said they didn't want to be seems to have arrived. Goodness knows there's plenty to be concerned about with Google, as with any large powerful company. The entire Google could become the next evil Microsoft? Yeah, been there, covered that 2002. Maybe the fears are coming true. But then again, you kind of feel sorry for Google in that so many of the accusations, as usual, become unbalanced. See also:

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Of Disappearing Sex Blogs & Google Updates - Last week, Barry Schwartz reported there seemed to be a Google update going, based on forum activity he was seeing. Google's Matt Cutts quickly followed up with a short refresher on the difference between algorithm updates, data refreshes and index updates. The purpose was to explain that any changes some people were seeing were likely small and seemingly restricted to individual sites as new data flowed in, rather than a massive algorithm change similar to the great Florida update of November and December 2003. All fine and good and reassuring until the great sex blog disappearance happened this week. Folks want their sex, even if you'd never know it from the top search terms of 2006. See also:

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Google Pushes Forward With Newspaper Ads - Google's newspaper tests were a success according to the company. They want to expand the tests in the coming months. The pilot results were triple in volume of ads sold, compared to what they expected. FYI, the first ad test was deemed unsuccessful. See also:

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Google Jet Spotted At Christchurch Airport, New Zealand - The Google Jet was reportedly spotted at Christchurch airport in New Zealand yesterday afternoon, complete with a nice picture of the plane.

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The People Behind Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, MapQuest & Other Mapping Software - Cartographers hit the road to bring updated online maps by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch tells the story behind the individuals who draw the maps we use in our GPS devices or via our favorite online mapping software. See also:

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Google's Not So Top Terms & Top US Gainers For 2006 - Last week, I wrote The Lies Of Top Search Terms Of The Year covering how the top terms of 2006 from Google turned out not to be the top terms at all in raw popularity. I caught up with Google at the end of that week to talk about this more but didn't have a chance to post a follow-up before Christmas hit. Now Google's done a blog post -- How we came up with year-end Zeitgeist data -- explaining that the top searches list really should have been called the "top gaining searches" list. More on that below, plus some expanded comments from my talk with them last week and a top gainers list for the United States in 2006. See also:

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PhraseRank, Not PageRank, To Fight Search Spam - Can indexing phrases from pages be an effective approach in identifying and filtering keyword stuffed pages, and honeypot pages aimed at attracting visitors solely to have them click upon ads? A new patent application published yesterday and assigned to Google, Detecting spam documents in a phrase based information retrieval system, presents a reasonable argument in favor of the method. See also:

=== Dec. 28, 2006 ===

YellowPages.com Adds 'Send to Mobile' - Joining Yahoo Local, Windows Live Local, Google Maps, and IAC-owned Citysearch and AskCity, YellowPages.com announced a new "send to mobile" feature. The listing and contact details are sent via text to the user's mobile phone. Here's a result for the search "Plumbers, New York." See also:

AT&T Tests Ad-Supported Directory Assistance (Mobile Local Search)

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Google Ranks Second In Merriam-Webster's Word Of 2006 List - Gary Price reports Google, the verb, was the second most popular word in Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year survey that just came out.

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Google Blog Search Passes Technorati In Visits - Hitwise reports that Google Blog Search has passed Technorati in visits this week. Hitwise explains that when Google added a link from Google News to Google Blog Search in October, the traffic for Google Blog Search spiked by 168%. Hitwise reports that currently about 60% of Google Blog Search traffic comes from Google News referrals. See also:

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Yahoo To Open New Research Center In Bangalore - The Business Standard reports that Yahoo is to open a new research center in Bangalore, India.

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New Mobile Flight Status Tracker By FlightStats - FlightStats has added a mobile flight tracking site at http://mobile.flightstats.com/.

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Top 101 Search Stories Of 2006 - Chris Winfield over at 10e20 has compiled a list of the top 101 stories in the search industry for the past year. He orders the stories in descending priority order, and most of the stories link to external sources.

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Search Bloggers On Their Most Popular Posts & Stats For 2006 - Search bloggers around the globe are celebrating the holiday season by giving the gift of competitive intelligence. From sharing their most popular posts to giving up all of their precious web statistics - a community of search bloggers are sharing more than they ever have.

=== Dec. 27, 2006 ===

Using Google Code Search To Find Vulnerable Sites - ShoeMoney wrote a detailed write up on how hackers can easily use Google Code Search to quickly find sites that are vulnerable to being hacked. ShoeMoney shows XSS exploits, SQL injection exploits and more. A look at the post and issues going back for ages about using search engines to find security exploits.

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Google News Mobile Now Customizable - Steve Rubel finds that you can now customize the news on your Google Mobile News page. A new link that reads "» Customize this page" takes you to a page where you can add keyword specific searches to your mobile news page, you can also add or remove news categories on that page, finally, you can order the categories on the page.

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MySupermarket Comparison Site - MySupermarket is one of those sites that you sometimes look at and immediately think 'I'll be coming back here on a regular basis'. The concept is very simple - you choose one of 4 UK supermarkets from Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda and Ocado and you shop for your groceries.

=== Dec. 26, 2006 ===

How Microsoft's Behavioral Targeting Works - Microsoft Ad Push Is All About You at the Wall Street Journal has a nice overview of how Microsoft's behavioral targeting ad software works, nothing ground breaking, but a nice overview. I'll quote a piece of the article for you:

=== Dec. 22, 2006 ===

Google Says They Won't Ask For Help In China To Compete - In Google sticks to solo plans from the Shanghai Daily, Google said it won't work with a local partner in China to gain marketshare. Google's vice president of China operations, Kai-fu Lee said that they "have confidence in our current approach" in China. See also:

=== Dec. 21, 2006 ===

Yahoo China Wins Suit Against Hongyi's Qihoo For Unfair Competition - Reuters reports Yahoo China has won a lawsuit brought against Qihoo search engine for unfair competition. The lawsuit first came to light back in September.

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Germany Leaves Quaero To France, To Start Theseus Search Project - Threadwatch points to a PC Advisor report that the euro search engine project Quaero between France and Germany is now being split up.

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New Delicious Tagometer Badge - Yahoo's Delicious has rolled out a new Tagometer allowing people to better bookmark your pages plus see how they have been tagged. In addition, it shows the number of others who have save a page -- reminiscent of Digg's Digg Count button.

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Yes Virginia, SEO Is Rocket Science - Defending Search Engine Optimization Once Again - Like Greg Boser, I saw the articles and counter-articles emerge from Did-It's swing at search engine optimization back in October, rolled my eyes and moved on. The argument's been done before, done to death. But Greg's got his back up now, and he provides an excellent read in The Half-Truths of Talking Frogs. I'll highlight part of his post defending SEO plus jump in along with him. See also:

Defending SEO, Yet Again!

=== Dec. 20, 2006 ===

Holiday 2006 Grudge Match: Google Checkout Versus Paypal - Google Steps More Boldly Into PayPal’s Territory by the New York Times shows how Google Checkout has really stepped things up this holiday season. See also:

Google Checkout Snubbing Affiliates?

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Google By Far The Leader, If You Look At Site Owner Traffic Stats - When I posted Enquisite's search engine popularity stats yesterday, I almost went into a riff about how site owner traffic stats are often so different from what the major measuring services report. Google almost always comes out much, much higher when you look at site traffic referral sources (as with Enquisite's stats). I did get into this on yesterday's Daily SearchCast. But Rich Skrenta does a great job on the issue for who prefer to read about the issue. More on his post, along with a long look at stats, the pros and cons of Google being a huge traffic driver, and more. See also:

=== Dec. 19, 2006 ===

Ask.com Tests New Search Interface With Ask X - The Read Write Web blog first spotted Ask.com testing a new interface they named Ask X. The new interface sports a steel background for the home page with more goodies inside.

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Survey: General Search Fails Professionals - Convera, an enterprise search company, commissioned an online survey of 1,000 U.S. "professionals" in publishing, advertising, marketing, healthcare, finance and government. The survey sought to determine work-related search behavior and corresponding satisfaction levels. While sponsored research must always be regarded with a critical eye, the results are worth noting.

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Yahoo Pushing Vertical Search Through More Yahoo Shortcuts - Starting last week, I noticed Yahoo prompting me a lot more to search for retailer coupons, flights from city to city and movie showtimes - all which trigger a Yahoo Shortcut. While shortcuts have been around for a while, this is the first time I remember Yahoo prompting me over and over use them before I've completed a search. See also:

Yahoo Adds "More" DHTML Button On Search Results Page

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Quintura For Kids Launched - I discussed Quintura in November - if you recall it's a search engine that provides searchers with a tag cloud, which if they mouse over the tags it will display results. Well, today they launched Quintura for kids as a beta release.

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Australian Court Rules Against Linking; Search Engines Don't Need To Panic - Australian court rules against MP3 link site from News.com covers how an Australian court has decided that linking to some content can be illegal, in the right circumstances. In the right circumstances! That part is important. It's easy to read the headline and come away thinking that search engines (or anyone, potentially) are going to find life much harder in Australia. See also:

AOL Video Search Sued By Evel Knievel For Distributing Kanye West's Music Video

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Polar Rose Promising Face Recognition Image Search - I got a press release today from Polar Rose, a new company promising to bring facial recognition technology to those seeking images from across the web. In other words, want to find all the pictures of Bill Clinton? Polar Rose says it will make it happen through a browser plug-in that works with existing photo services, as well as through partnerships. If this sounds familiar, I'll revisit Riya's recent foray and back away from facial recognition.

=== Dec. 18, 2006 ===

Why Do People Google Google? Understanding User Data to Measure Searcher Intent - What are people looking for when they type "Google" into Google? What do they want to see when they use "eBay" as a query? How does a Google or Yahoo learn from their log files, and other user information? What does it tell them about user intent? A long look at some research and lectures on the subject.

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The New Digg Features Plus, A Submitter's Perspective Today, Kevin Rose announced the release of new Digg features. What most people covered in the release were all the cool additions, but no one really talked about the small changes that have drastically affected submitters. Before I dig into these small changes that affected submitters, here is a quick recap of the new features that everyone is talking about. See also:

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WSJ Bearish On Google? If Only 60% Growth Is Bearish... - I'm seeing tons of references to a Wall Street Journal article saying Google's earnings might slow, which seems related to Google's stock also having dropped by nearly $8 so far today. If so, that's a lot of tumble for ONE analyst firm stating the obvious. See also:

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Google & NASA Partner To Make NASA's Data More Accessible - NASA has posted a press release that covers new details about the Google / NASA partnership announced earlier this year. In short, Google is going to bring in real-time weather information for Earth into Google Earth, plus make Google Moon and Google Mars more detailed with high-resolution 3-D imagery.

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Google In Russia & Europe: The International Challenge - Two articles out today highlight Google's not all powerful in every market. In Russia and some other countries, Google is fighting to gain share.

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Yahoo Says No Directory Tag Coming January 2007 - Tim Mayer from Yahoo posted in a WebmasterWorld thread saying support for a "No Yahoo Directory" tag will be coming this January. A No Yahoo Directory tag will enable webmasters to tell Yahoo not to use their Yahoo Directory title in the search results. See also:

=== Dec. 17, 2006 ===

Google & Orange Talking Google Mobile Phone? - The Observer talks about Google and mobile phone operator Orange apparently discussing the creation of a Google branded phone. I can't feel there might be a bit of hype here leaking from the Orange side. Google has a very tight partnership with Orange competitor T-Mobile in the UK. Google's preloaded on all those phones as a search default, plastered in T-Mobile brochures and so on. One quote especially makes me dubious:

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You (& Sort Of YouTube) Named Time Magazine Person Of The Year - Time Magazine has declared You -- that's you, me, everyone -- to be this year's Person Of The Year. And You in a big way means YouTube, the video sharing site getting a long profile about how it has grown, with some interesting bits on how it now seeks to maintain its "underground image" as part of the "Google empire." I joked in my SES Chicago 2006 keynote last week that "video killed the search engine star," and I'll touch on this more in the future. But the Time magazine profile of YouTube -- associated with Person Of The Year -- underscores this. It's not Larry and Sergey; it's Chad and Steve (even if Larry and Sergey now own them). See also:

=== Dec. 15, 2006 ===

Korea's Top Portal, Naver, Renews With Yahoo - Yahoo has renewed their partnership with Naver, Korea's largest portal. Yahoo will continue to be, in a multi-year contract, the exclusive provider of sponsored search listings for search queries on the Naver portal and through Naver's toolbar application. This news comes days after Daum dropped Yahoo for Google, Daum is Korea's second largest portal. See also:

South Korea's Portal, Daum, To Run Google AdSense

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Google Adds Ad Quality & Ad Performance Documentation To Help Section - Google has been listening, I guess, to advertisers recent complaints over the new AdWords Quality Score and Landing Page update. The Google AdWords blog informed us that Google has added several pages of content to the help section better documenting the changes. See also:

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Yahoo Publisher Network Adds Domain Level Blocking - The Yahoo Publisher Network blog announced a new feature to allow publishers to block ads from showing up on the domain or sub-domain level. The feature is called "Ad Blocking" with a large text box, where you enter in domains or sub-domains of sites you would like to block. You can enter in a total of 200 URLs.

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Google Apps For Your Domain Enables Domain Registration - The Google Blog announced that Google Apps For Your Domain has added the ability to register a domain name, if you do not have one yet.

=== Dec. 14, 2006 ===

Eurekster Swicki Improvements - Eurekster have quietly rolled out some interesting improvements on their swicki system. Swickis are search engines created by individuals and used by groups which learn from their users and deliver more focused and targeted results. The improvements to the service allow much greater input from each swicki user community, to let publishers leverage the knowledge of each community in order to better understand their traffic and drive more searches per swicki. See also:

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Google's Picasa Add Photo Search & Other Features - The Google blog announced that Picasa, Google's photo sharing application, now enables you to search photos. You can search your own or your friends' public albums captions, album titles, and album descriptions.

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Microsoft China To Display Baidu's Search Ads - MarketWatch reports that Microsoft and Baidu struck a deal where Baidu will be powering the paid search ads at Microsoft's MSN, Live.com and other China based services. Again, Baidu is to power Microsoft's ads in China, not the other way around.

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Comptroller Of NYC, Thompson, Pressures Google & Yahoo Over Censorship In China - The NY Sun reports that William Thompson Jr., the current comptroller of New York City, has been pressuring Google and Yahoo over operating ethically and legally overseas.

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Live Local (Virtual Earth) Adds Easier Birds Eye View & Distance Drawing Tool - Windows Live Local now lets you navigate the maps in birds eye view via drag and drop, and you can draw a line from point A to point B on the map and the map will tell you the distance of that line.

=== Dec. 13, 2006 ===

Google Launches Google Patents, Full-Text US Patent Searching - Google has rolled out a new Google Patents search engine, allowing people to search across the full-text of US patents from 1790 through the middle of 2006. The company plans to update the service further with more 2006 filings and move to a weekly or better refresh schedule in the future.

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Search Engine Land Stats: December 2006 Preview - With Search Engine Land being all new, a virtual restart for me, I thought it would be fun to share site stats on the site each month, to talk about how it hopefully grows. I'll do this at the beginning of each month, to cover the previous one. But I wanted to share a little bit now. See also:

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Revisiting Google's 2 Percent Or Less Click Fraud Rate - Earlier this week, we covered how MarketingPilgrim reported news widely cited as Google confirming a clickfraud rate of 2 percent or less. Via Matt Cutts, Google's Shuman Ghosemajumder, business product manager for trust & safety, clarifies things on his own blog in Google, Click Fraud, and Invalid Clicks. Below, a look at that, along with some definitions of clicks I think will help and how the detected click fraud rate for Google might be as low as 0.2 percent of all clicks. See also:

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Microsoft adCenter $50 Promotional Code For New Advertisers - The folks at Microsoft adCenter sent me a promotional code for our readers here. A $50 promo code is available to all new advertisers, valid through 1/15/07. The promo code is SEL1206 and here are the terms and conditions.

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Yahoo Answers Birthday: One Year Old - Yahoo Answers, arguably one of Yahoo's most successful products of the year, has turned one today. Yahoo has listed The Best of Answers 2006 showing off some of the best user generated questions and answers for the year. See also:

Question & Answer Search Engines Ranked

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IBM & Yahoo To Offer Free Enterprise Search - IBM and Yahoo double team Google from Reuters covers how IBM and Yahoo are to offer free enterprise search to businesses. The story talks about this as a challenge to Google and others, but Google remains itself very much a challenger in the enterprise search space

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Google Toolbar For Firefox 3.0 Adds Great Features - Google released a new toolbar for Firefox. My favorite new feature is the ability to drag a file on your browser and it automatically add it to Google Docs & Spreadsheets, the supported file types include; doc, rtf, odf, sxw, cls, ods, and csv. See also:

Judge Dismisses Google AdSense & AutoLink Toolbar Lawsuits

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What Google Can't Do - There's an amusing item over at the Google Operating System weblog on What Google Can't Do, and screenshots are included. The things that Google can't do include translation, mail, blogs, news, ads and a few other things as well. It's a very tongue in cheek piece, and it should give even the most dedicated fan of Google a wry grin.

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Simple Ways To Get Into Local Search - Matt McGee writes 8 Simple Steps to Make a Page More "Local" at Search Engine Guide. The tips to get into local search, in short, place your address and phone number on your pages, ensure your contact us has your address, make a page for directions with written out directions, link to Google and Yahoo maps, include your geographic location in the title tag, list the locations your business services and link to your geo-specific pages with descriptive geo-specific anchor text.

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AOL Has "Safest" Results & Free Results Safer Than Paid - A new survey from McAfee finds that AOL has the "safest" search results in terms of not listing sites that might be somehow be risky or unsafe for searchers. But most interesting to me was the fact paid results across the board were found far riskier than free, organic results. Let's do the numbers, some summary plus tools that will help protect you and how to see if Google thinks you've been naughty.

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State Department Uses Google In Cracking Down On Terrorists - Techdirt comments on a Washington Post article named Seeking Iran Intelligence, U.S. Tries Google. The article shows how when the CIA turned down the State Departments request for information on who to put on their banned list of Iranians, the State Department turned to Google for the information. See also:

Google Search History Used To Send Wireless Hacker To Prison

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Google Updates Google Finance Home Page - The Google Finance home page has a new look this morning. All the details of what is new is currently at What's new on Google Finance page. The new features include: Market Summary Sector summary Top movers Category pages Enhanced portfolios 40 years of historical stock data (launched a week or so ago). See also:

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Yahoo Opens Panama To New Customer Sign Ups - Yahoo has opened up sign ups to the new "Panama" (i.e. Yahoo Search Marketing 2.0) to all new customers. When Panama was released, on October 17, 2006, sign ups were only available to some existing customers. Yahoo then opened it to all existing customers first via invite only and then on a wider scale.

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Google Copies Yahoo's IE7 Page; Originality War Breaks Out! - Google Blatantly Copies Yahoo!? from Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny makes a pretty damning case against Google for blatantly ripping off Yahoo's Internet Explorer 7 promo copy. Yahoo offers a custom version of IE7 via a pitch page you'll see here. Google appears to have launched its own pitch page yesterday, one that was amazingly similar in look and feel to Yahoo's.

=== Dec. 11, 2006 ===

Welcome To Search Engine Land! - It's official. Search Engine Land has now formally launched. I know, I know -- we've been posting for over a week here. But now our new design is (mostly) in place, so it's time to declare ourselves fully operational. For those who are interested, here's some more background about the site, our name, our look, our goals and content. See also:

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NearbyNow Launches Mobile Product Search For Malls - NearbyNow, which is one of several companies trying to build a local product inventory database, has launched SMS-based mobile search for shopping malls.

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Google Earth Adds Geographic Web Layer - Google announced they have added a new geographic web layer over Google Earth with information from Wikipedia, Panoramio and the Google Earth community. This information is accessible via Google Earth and it shows you individual photos, reviews, write ups, and much more about a specific location on Google Earth.

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Google's Software Making It To The Classroom - Michael Liedtke from the AP reports more and more classrooms are beginning to use Google's new Google Docs & Spreadsheets as a "supplement" to Microsoft's Office suite.

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Google "Plus Box" Puts Maps In Search Results - Google's officially gained a new "plus box" feature that lets you see maps for local businesses right within the search results pages. See also:

Google Tests Related Searches At Bottom Of Page

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Berkowitz Describes Steering Microsoft As Cruise Ship & Ask.com As Rowboat - The NY Times has a great write up named Looking for a Gambit to Win at Google’s Game. In the article, Steve Berkowitz, old CEO of Ask.com, now in charge of Microsoft's online services unit, describes the differences between running Ask.com and Microsoft.

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Pay Per Post Reviews Acceptable By Some Search Engines - Search Engines Say OK to Pay-per-Post Services from Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz has him reporting from SES Chicago that search engines seemed largely unconcerned over pay-per-post programs, in terms of them being cover for paid links.

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Ingenio In PPCall Deal With Mobile Search Provider JumpTap - Ingenio today is announcing a relationship with "white label" mobile search vendor JumpTap:

=== Dec. 8, 2006 ===

New England Patriots, Tom Brady, Sues Yahoo For Using His Image In Ad - The Smoking Gun broke a story that New England Patriots quarterback, Tom Brady, has sued Yahoo for using his "likeness, image and identity in its advertisements and promotions."

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Goodbye Chicago SES, Day 4 - The final day of the conference saw blog posts about the conference's last three sets of sessions; some video interviews conducted by Lee Odden with Neil Patel and Cameron Olthius, Joshua Stylman and Peter Hershberg, Stephan Spencer, Gord Hotchkiss; and a retrospective of Day three, from the comforts of home, by Kim Krause Berg. See also:

=== Dec. 6, 2006 === -

Yahoo To End CurrentTV Partnership - Elinor Mills reports that Yahoo and CurrentTV are to end their partnership with the Yahoo Current Network.

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Microsoft Releases Live Search Books Beta - The Live Search Blog announced that Microsoft released a beta named Live Search Books this morning. Plus they enhanced Live Search Academic by adding millions of new articles, plus indexing theses, dissertations, and books within these disciplines. See also:

Battle For Books: Evil Google Versus The Altruistic Open Content Alliance

=== Dec. 5, 2006 ===

Yahoo COO Rosenweig Resigns; Company Reorganization Announced - Yahoo has announced that it is reorganizing the company into three major operating groups, one focused on audience development, another for advertisers & publisher services and the third focusing on technology. Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker will leave her position to head the advertiser and publisher group. Chief Technology Officer Farzad Nazem will head the technology group, while a search is underway for someone to head the audience division. Along with the changes it was announced that Dan Rosensweig, Yahoo's chief operating officer, will leave Yahoo at the end of March. See also:

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Google Wants To Enter Africa Market Via Portugal - The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Google is looking to acquire companies in Portugal with aim to reach the African market.

=== Dec. 4, 2006 ===

Bigmouth Media Merges With Global Media - Brand Republic reports that Bigmouth Media has merged with a German based SEM company named Global Media creating one of the largest, if not the largest, SEM companies in the world.

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Ask City Launches Amid High Expectations - Ask City is a dramatic improvement over the former Ask Local. It's broadly organized into four content areas: business listings (i.e., yellow pages), events, movies and maps & directions. See also:

Diller Touting Ask And Centrality Of Local

=== Dec. 3, 2006 ===

Jerry Bussewitz, Husband Of Anne Kennedy, Passes Away - Anne Kennedy from Beyond Ink is a regular speaker at many search conferences, and she was often accompanied by her husband Jerry Bussewitz, who has passed away. He was an incredibly kind and friendly man that many at conferences also got to know. More about Jerry and how to donate in his name.

=== Dec. 1, 2006 ===

Jon Kleinberg On Communities At Yahoo - Kleinberg is legendary in the search world, and his work with links attracted attention at the same time Google's did. A look at a standing-room only lecture he gave at Yahoo this year, on large social networks and how knowledge moves between communities.

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BBC World Service Report On Google - The BBC World Service did a special report on Google in August, so some of it will be dated now. Still, you may find the podcasts interesting. They can be found here.

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Frontline Special On News To Include Search Engines - In January, PBS's Frontline will have a special on the current state of news reporting. Both Google and Yahoo will be taking part in the extensive series. From the show description:

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Google Gives Stanford Law Internet Center $2 Million - The San Jose Business Journal reports that Google has pledged $2 million to Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society (CIS).

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Windows Live Search Beta For Mobile - The Live Search Blog announced the release of Live Search Mobile client for your mobile device. The mobile client allows you to use Windows Live's "local search, maps, driving directions, and live traffic information." I have not downloaded it to my Treo, but I like Gizmodo's Windows Live Search For Mobile vs. Google Maps Mobile write up.

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8 Googler Alternatives To Superstar Matt Cutts - If the search engine optimization world has a rock star, ironically the king isn't an actual SEO but rather mild mannered Matt Cutts of Google. The man quite simply gets swarmed wherever he goes. But other Googlers make it out to conferences. That's the reason for this post, to introduce people to Googlers they should seek out in addition to or as an alterative to Matt.

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By Danny Sullivan Permalink Jump To Comments See Related Stories In: Search Month

Reader Comments

WOW - what a first month Danny! Looking forward to January and beyond...

Comment by skore

| January 1, 2007 9:25 PM

I have to notice that Google or anything Google related are dominated the first edition of Search Month! It is estimated to be over 80 % of its reviews. Does this percentage reflex the obsession of the search world? I wonder!

Comment by Search The Web 2

| January 2, 2007 12:44 PM

Save the date for:
• SMX Local & Mobile - San Francisco, CA (July 24-25) See the agenda, and register now!
• SMX Sao Paolo - Brazil - (Aug. 7-8)
• SMX China - September 23 & 24
• SMX Stockholm - September 23 & 24
• SMX East - NYC - (Oct. 6-8) Registration is now open.
• SMX London - November 4 & 5