Search Month: January 2007 Search News, In Review

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Feb. 2, 2007 at 12:43pm Eastern by Danny Sullivan

Search Month: January 2007 Search News, In Review

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

I've now shifted Search Month to listing stories by topic, rather than by date. I've long done this to some degree when producing a monthly search newsletter. Because there's so much news, I'd often pick one key story per topic, list that story with title and description, then say "See also" to point to other stories by headline only. You can see examples of this in last month's edition of Search Month.

Over at my alma mater, Search Engine Watch, they just reported that a recent survey found newsletter readers there wanted newsletter items organized by topic. I often heard that informally when I was running things there as well. I'm guessing readers here would like the same, so I'm merrily grabbing the suggestion and going with it.

It's more work, but not that much more work than how I was already producing the newsletter. So, dates are gone; topics are in!

Below you'll find news about Search Engine Land, then our 10 most popular stories, then a major story for each topic group along with other stories related to those topics.

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Search Engine Land News
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Over the past month, we've added a comment feed, several columns and more. I've also been blogging about our traffic stats, and there's lots of marketing advice in those posts that you might find useful. Here's a rundown on posts about all our developments:

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Our Top 10 Most Popular Stories
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Google Kills Bush's Miserable Failure Search & Other Google Bombs - After just over two years, Google has finally defused the "Google Bomb" that has returned US President George W. Bush at the top of its results in a search on miserable failure. The move wasn't a post-State Of The Union Address gift for Bush. Instead, it's part of an overall algorithm change designed to stop such mass link pranks from working.

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14 "Is Google Evil?" Tipping Points Since 2001 - Earlier I wrote how Google seems to have had a bad week, with some recent negative publicity making it seem like the tipping point of Google becoming the big bad company they don't want to be happening -- at least perhaps in the eyes of many opinion makers on the web. Clearly I wasn't alone thinking this. But then again, I can't help but note that I've seen people question whether Google has lost popular goodwill so many times over the years. I thought it would be useful to actually list a number of these "tipping points" that Google's nonetheless survived.

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25 Tips To Optimize Your Blog For Readers & Search Engines - Everyone and their dog have started up a blog these days, but many people just aren’t taking the steps needed to optimize their blogs for both readers and search engines. Here are 25 tips to help you do better.

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10 Google Feeds You Should Subscribe To - Over the past years, Google has added feed support to a number of services. I thought it would be fun to highlight some of my favorites and others that allow you to get Google material delivered straight to your newsreader. Below, a rundown of feeds offered ranging from Google Blog Search through to Google Groups. Plus, a look at how the offerings could do with some more standardization within Google.

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2007 Guide To Linkbaiting: The Year Of Widgetbait? - Way back in 2005 we started talking about linkbait. The linkbait landscape of 2007 is different than two years ago, requiring some rethink and reassessment of strategies. Linkbait is the smart move everyone needs to be doing. However, the linkbait of 2005 may not cut it with today's more desensitized audiences. The smart linkbaiters will pursue the holy grail of widgetbait.

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Beyond Google: Social Media Engines First, Other Search Engines Second - I've never encouraged a "Google First" or "Google Only" mentality for search marketers to follow. This is where you focus only on Google, figuring the other major search engines don't matter. Instead, I've said that all the search engines are important traffic channels to pursue. Don't forget the search engines beyond Google! But over the past few weeks, I've found myself more and more thinking that if you want to go beyond Google as a search marketer, the other search engines that matter first are the "social media search engines" such as Digg or StumbleUpon or Reddit.

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3 Ways To Use Your Competition To Build Links & Targeted Traffic - The idea of using your competition to build links, trust and reputation and benefit from the knock on effect of better search engine rankings as a result may seem alien to many. Savvy web marketers have been doing this for years, however. Bloggers often do it without even realizing it due to the inherent social functionality of the medium. Today, I'm going to show you three simple ways to become the center of focus within your niche, gain highly targeted link traffic and boost your search engine rankings.

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Q&A With Marissa Mayer, Google VP, Search Products & User Experience - Marissa Mayer has been the driving force behind Google's Spartan look and feel from the very earliest days. In this wide-ranging interview, I talked with Marissa about everything from interface design to user behavior to the biggest challenge still to be solved with search as we currently know it.

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Google No Longer Linking To Yahoo, MapQuest Maps - Search Engine Land got an email this morning alerting us to the apparent fact that Google had removed links to Yahoo and MapQuest maps

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New Google Checkout Promo; New Google Trust Worries - Gary Price pointed out something new to me on Google, the ability to filter product search results from merchants using Google Checkout. But more important, Google's promoting this new feature right within its main search results. That move, along with just having dropped map links to competitors and in the wake of last month's tips fiasco, rings alarm bells that Google's not thinking clearly about the best way to balance promoting its own products and the trust of users.

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Censorship
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Google's Brin Calls China Censorship A "Net Negative" - China censorship damaged us, Google founders admit, and The Guardian has a quote from Google cpfounders Sergey Brin, when asked about Google censoring content in China: "On a business level, that decision to censor... was a net negative." See also:

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Click Fraud
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Google Pushes Back On Click Fraud Estimates, Says Don't Forget The Back Button - Last week when visiting Google, I had a long background discussion with Shuman Ghosemajumder about click fraud issues. Shuman is Google's business product manager for trust and safety. I'll follow up on some of our discussion as I'm able to get some material cleared. But one of the most fascinating things was his explanation on how some third party auditing firms don't appear to be matching up estimated fraud figures with refunds or even actual clicks registered by advertisers. See also:

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Business Issues
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Industry Moves: Peter Horan Goes To IAC - Peter Horan, who was the About.com CEO until its acquisition by the New York Times and then moved west to head up small business portal AllBusiness.com, has now been appointed CEO of IAC Media & Advertising. See also:

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Google: AdSense
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Google AdSense Makes Changes to Publisher Referral Program - Google AdSense has made some new changes to their referral program, with one of the changes resulting in publishers earning significantly more money than under the previous program. Now publishers can earn up to $255 for referring a new publisher to AdSense, up from the previous $100.

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Google: Book Search
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Google Book Search & Google Maps Team Up - The Google Book Search Blog announced a new feature they worked on together with Google Maps that shows you "places mentioned in this book" on the Google Book Search page. See also:

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Google: Bugs
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Google To Share Bugs & Bombs At Google Testing Blog - Google launched a new blog named the Google Test Blog where Google will be sharing their debugging and testing experiences with the public. See also:

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Google: Business Issues
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Google Reports Revenues Up 19 Percent From Previous Quarter - Live blogging from the conference call, a formal transcript, a round-up of news articles and more. See also:

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Google: Design
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More Spotting Google's Related Searches At Bottom Of Page - Last month, we reported how Google was testing related searches at the bottom of search results pages, which Google's Matt Cutts confirmed in comments on our post. In the past few days, I've seen a flood of further posts about related searches as more and more people spot these. Yes, they do seem to be more noticeable and frequently appearing. See also:

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Google: Hiring
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Google Changes Hiring Process To Meet Job Opening Needs - The NY Times covers how Google is changing their hiring process to accept a more diverse set of candidates. They have designed a detailed online survey that is now being sent out to Google's job application database. The survey is automatically scored using "a series of formulas created by Google’s mathematicians," an applicant can earn anywhere between a 0 and a 100. In short, Google is looking to hire more people, quicker, and have less standards in terms of SAT score and GPA, but with more focus on how the applicant may fit within the company culture and work ethic. See also:

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Google: Privacy Issues
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Google's Blacklist Of Phishing Sites Contained Bank Information & More Confidential Details - Google's phishing blacklist, which is publicly available for anyone to see, had confidential information enclosed. Such information included "usernames and passwords of individuals, including credentials for accounts at banks and other financial institutions." See also:

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Google: Promos & Trust
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Google Checkout Blogs On Recent Promotions - I gave Google Checkout some hassle earlier about promotion they were doing of the service. Earlier this week, I met with them during a visit to Google. The team explained that some of the promotion they've been doing is designed to react to consumer demand, to serve Google users that are asking to make it easier to filter shopping results by Google Checkout merchants. Now the Official Google Checkout blog is up with a post discussing this in more detail. See also:

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Google: SEO Issues
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January 2007 Update On Google Indexing & Ranking Issues - Google's Matt Cutts has issued a weather report on Google indexing and ranking issues, which I'll get into below. In addition, I'll recap a number of Google concerns that I've noted over the past two or three weeks. See also:

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Google: Social Networking
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Google To Build Second Life Metaverse On Google Earth In China? - Over the past week, there were many rumors that Google is pondering building out a Second Life like application. See also:

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Google: Video, YouTube & Related
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Viacom Tells Google's YouTube To Remove Videos - News is just coming out that Viacom, the parent company of MTV and Comedy Central, is demanding Google owned YouTube to remove all of Viacom's videos.

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Google: Other Product News
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Google Reader Adds Personalized Trends - The Official Google Reader Blog informed us that Google Reader has added a trends feature to Google Reader users. You can access your Reader trends here or via the link on the main page that reads "New! See personalized trends for your subscriptions and read items." This feature absolutely rocks for heavy RSS users. It shows you how you have been interacting with your feeds in Google Reader. See also:

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Legal Issues
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Court OKs Narrow Use of Competitor Trademarks in Search Ads & Meta Tags - A U.S. District Court has ruled that the use of keyword-triggered ads and keyword metatags using trademarked terms cannot confuse consumers if the resulting ads/search results don't display a competitor's trademarks. See also:

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Link Building
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New Year's Resolution: Know Your Inbound Link Potential! - So what's your linking strategy for 2007? I mean besides get as many as possible? Whatever your linking strategy -- and there are many -- one thing has not changed a bit in the 14 years I've been in the link building and content publicity game. Every web site has logical, natural and unique inbound link potential. See also:

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Local Search
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Google Adds Local Reviews In Search Results - The Google Blog announced that when you conduct searches at Google.com for local specific information, you may get local reviews and business comparisons. For example a search on pizza 10010 returns three results, all with five stars, from pizza restaurants in NYC. See also:

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Maps
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Virtual Earth Enhances Aerial, Satellite Imagery - Still somewhat ahead of consumer demand, Microsoft continues to build on its commitment to rich satellite and aerial imagery (in addition to 3-D) through its Virtual Earth platform (and Live Local destination). Earlier today Microsoft announced that it will integrate more than 400,000 square miles of U.S. aerial imagery into Virtual Earth, under an agreement with satellite image provider GlobeXplorer. See also:

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Mobile Search
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Yahoo Introduces Yahoo Go 2.0, Mobile Search & Other Apps - Last year at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Yahoo Chairman Terry Semel introduced Yahoo Go, an initiative seeking to push and integrate Yahoo content beyond the desktop on mobile devices and TV. According to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) the company is going to introduce an upgraded version of Go for mobile today at this year's CES (Postscript: Yahoo Go 2.0 is now up):

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Paid Search
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Advertisers Cutting Google AdWords Spending With Surge of Keyword Prices - Most Google AdWords advertisers have been facing the problem of rising pay per click prices. But while in the past many advertisers have gone with the increased prices as the cost of doing business on AdWords, recently more advertisers have decided to significantly cut their AdWords spending because many of the keyword prices have resulted in advertisers being priced out of profitability. Marketwatch recently spoke with six advertisers who all spent between $4 million and $10 million in 2006 who plan to spend less in 2007. See also: SMBs, Paid Search And Self-Service.

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Patents & Research
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Google's OneBox Patent Application - Earlier this month, Google published a patent application that may provide a little insight into how and why different OneBox results are shown. See also:

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SEO & SEM Tips
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Study Says Get In Top 5 Not Top 10 & Search Engines May Need To Highlight Official Sites - On Friday, we reported briefly on a new eye tracking study from Microsoft on how users interact with search results. I spent some time doing a deep dive into the survey, which is full of interesting information. Among the findings is that search marketers may need to be more concerned about getting into the top five rather than the top ten, if they want to be seen. In addition, search engines might want to seriously experiment more with adding "official site" links at the top of their pages and possibly enlarge the size of listing descriptions or "snippets" to help searches find what they are looking for. See also:

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Search Engine Wars
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comScore: Google Wins Again & IE7 Doesn't Stop Microsoft's Slide - It's that time again -- search popular stats for last month are coming out. Actually, Hitwise sent me their figures earlier this month but I'm diving in with the comScore figures that just came out. The main real news is despite the Internet Explorer 7 launch, Microsoft's Live continues to show a drop in usage. See also:

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Search Marketing Industry
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SEO Gains Ground, Search Ads Top In Top Performing Online Ad Tactics - eMarketer.com released a study that shows how SEO has grown 33% in 2005 to 45% in 2006 in the category of best performing online advertising tactic, whereas search ads have declined a from 52% in 2005 to 49% in 2006.

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Search Marketing News
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A Big List of Search Marketing Blogs - Can't get enough about search marketing each day? Lee Odden has a cure for information underload: A huge list of more than 250 search marketing blogs, updated every Friday (here's the list of new blogs added last Friday). Have a blog and want to get added to the list? Simply link to the list and Lee will see the link in his stats, which will prompt him to look at your blog (this is also a brilliant link baiting strategy—Kudos, Lee!). Lee is also providing an OPML file so you can easily import all 250+ blogs into your own feed reader. See also:

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Social Media Engines
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Forget ABCs - The Social Media Alphabet Is DNRS - Many search marketers know their search engine alphabet, A for Ask.com; G for Google; M for Microsoft Live.com and Y for Yahoo. But how many know the important letters of the social media alphabet, D for Digg; N for Netscape; R for Reddit and S for StumbleUpon? Comfortable with AGMY but DNRS seems like another language? Relax. Here are the ABCs of DNRS. See also:

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Travel Search
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Farecast Offers Insurance Policy on Airfares - Travel search engine Farecast officially launched its Fare Guard service, protecting flyers from volatile airfare prices. The service allows travelers to basically purchase an insurance policy on a flight for $10 ($3 until February 1), thus locking in the published rate. See also:

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Wikipedia
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Wikiseek: Leveraging Wikipedia For Web Search, Poorly - The Wikipedia search engine has arrived -- Wikiseek -- but it's not the Wikipedia search engine you're thinking of. Wikiseek is completely different than the Search Wikia project backed by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales that I wrote about last month. Below, a look at the disappointing new service along with a revisit to how it is different from Search Wikia. The idea behind Wikiseek is simple. Crawl only content referred to within Wikipedia itself, which the site boasts will make it better. See also:

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Yahoo: Business Issues
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Yahoo Announces 4th Quarter Financial Results: Stock Up In Pre Market - Yahoo has posted their year-end financial results, showing a drop in profits by but increase in overall revenues.

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Yahoo: MyBlogLog
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Yahoo Acquires MyBlogLog & More On How It Works - After several weeks of rumors, Yahoo has officially announced it has agreed to purchase the MyBlogLog service. I've used the service for several weeks.Below, I'll cover more on the basics of how it works from blog surfer and blog owner perspective. See also: Interview With MyBlogLog CEO Scott Rafer & 10 Feature Requests.

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Yahoo: Panama Launch
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Yahoo Search Marketing To Launch New Ranking Model February 5th - Huge news last night was that Yahoo announced that they will be launching their new ranking algorithm for their sponsored search ads on February 5th. The new ranking model is a huge change from the old model, which was based on a pure auction bidding environment. Now advertisers are going to have to worry about price plus factors such as their ads click through rate. See also: Yahoo's Panama Migration: Mixed Reviews.

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Yahoo: Product Launches
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Yahoo Debuts U.S. Schools Search Tool - Yahoo Real Estate has introduced a new Schools Search service that lets you search for U.S. schools by city and state or zip code. Results are plotted on a map, and you can sort by school district, distance from a specific location, grade level, or school type (public, private, charter). See also:

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Yahoo: SEO Issues
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Up Close With Yahoo's New Delete URL Feature - Since Yahoo rolled out a new Delete URL feature this week, a number of questions have come up on how exactly it works. I had time yesterday with some of the Yahoo Site Explorer team to gather answers. Thanks to Priyank Garg and Amit Kumar, who along with Tim Mayer, went through the inner workings. It's probably most important to understand the difference between how pages have traditionally been kept out of Yahoo versus what Delete URL does. Traditionally, Yahoo is told not to spider pages at all using either a robots.txt file or a meta robots tag that uses the "noindex" setting. Here's some more about how those options work, versus the new Delete URL feature. See also:

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Search Engine Reviews & Mentions
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Boxxet Offers "Best Of" Collections On Popular Topics - Boxxet is a new service which combines aspects of computer automation with community and social commentary and ranking systems to create "box sets" of web based content for specific topics.

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Cranky.com: Search Engine For Geriatrics - Attention all you over-50 types: The folks behind new search engine Cranky.com think they've got just what you need to avoid search rage and information overload.

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CrossEngine: Fast & Easy Way To Search Several Search Engines - CrossEngine is the new (and in my opinion better) name for the Mr Sapo meta search engine. It is similar in functionality to TurboScout and Trovando in that it has a search box at the top of the screen with a list of search engines that you can use below that. See also:

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LinkedIn Answers Launched - Now joining the questions answering game is LinkedIn, with its new LinkedIn Answers service, just two days old. See also Amazon Promotes Askville & LinkedIn Launches Answers Services.

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Mapshark: A Search Engine For Mashups - Since the advent of the Google and Yahoo (and more recently Virtual Earth) mapping APIs there are hundreds of developers and entrepreneurs who have built interesting and useful mashups. But how does one find them?

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MetaGlossary - Two Million Terms, Phrases And Acronyms - MetaGlossary provides users with access to over 2 million words, terms and so on. It works in a similar manner to the Google define: function, though I've found that it tends to be rather more comprehensive.

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Wikio: News Search + Personalization + Social Media - Wikio is a relatively new startup that blends articles from major news web sites and blogs with commentary and tags from Wikio users. It also offers powerful search and customization options that go beyond what you find at most other "media harvesting" sites on the web.

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Vizu Seeking To 'Democratize' Market Research - Vizu says it wants to "democratize" market research, creating financial incentives for publishers to show Vizu polls on their sites and a relatively inexpensive way for marketers to get quick user data. In other words it's a kind of alternative (or supplement) to advertising for publishers, and a way for marketers to get access to audiences that might be difficult to reach unless you're willing to pay more for professionally conducted surveys.

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Zibb: Q&A With Stephen Baker, CEO Of Reed Business Search - Reed Elsevier is one of the largest, most influential publishers in the world, a powerhouse in the science and medical, legal, education and business markets. But the company also has a major online presence, with more than 1,000 web sites in just its business group. Last year, Reed Business decided to leverage this significant online presence by creating Zibb, a business-to-business search engine that allows users to search across all of Reed Business' web sites.

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Zuula Meta Search Engine - Zuula is a multi/meta search engine that I noticed the other day. It provides access to search engines in the areas of Web, News, Images, Blogs and Jobs. It takes results from various different engines in each category, but mainly uses Google, Yahoo, Ask, and MSN. Zuula does the job that it sets out to do, but it's not yet very ambitious and will need to add more functionality and personalization options before I can get excited about it.

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Fun, Strange, Odd & Etc.
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Google To Kick Off X Prize's Next Fundraising Campaign - Google will kick off the second fundraising campaign for the X Prize Foundation with a gala event at the Googleplex in Mountain View, complete with prizes and celebrity appearances.

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If Google *Really* Copied Yahoo... - Over at Google Watch, Steve Bryant has created a mock-up of a Google home page that looks like Yahoo's. It's hilarious—but also illustrates in a starkly graphic fashion how truly different the home pages of the two services really are.

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Google TV Rumors Not Legit - Sure, the videos of how you can watch TV on demand with Google were hoaxes. But they were great hoaxes. Be sure to check them out!

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Send A Greeting With Google Maps - Spotted via Good Morning Silicon Valley, a site called Geo Greeting lets you create greeting messages that are displayed using buildings or other objects that resemble the alphabet from images found on Google Maps. It's a fun and cool service that lets "geeks show they care." See an example here.

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National Pork Board Goes After Breastfeeding Search Marketer - Last year, well-known search marketer Jennifer Laycock set up the Lactivist project, where she explained step-by-step how to market a new web site on a budget. Part of the project were the funny shirts she sold to promote breastfeeding, including one called "The Other White Milk." Turns out the National Pork Board thinks that violates their trademark on the phrase "The Other White Meat."

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More Of You Should Have Read...
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Q&A With Gabe Rivera, Creator Of Techmeme - Over the past decade, I've seen a lot of search tools that were supposed to transform my life. Few of them have. But Techmeme was one of those. I caught up with Gabe last week, to talk about the service, how it has grown, operates and future plans.

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

Reader Comments

"Over at my alma mater, Search Engine Watch, they just reported that a recent survey found newsletter readers there wanted newsletter items organized by topic. I often heard that informally when I was running things there as well. I'm guessing readers here would like the same, so I'm merrily grabbing the suggestion and going with it."

Well, I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!!! Thanks, Danny;)

Hmm.. i really like the way you sorted some stuff out too - maybe i'll take that suggestion:)

-elis.

Comment by Elisabeth Osmeloski

| February 2, 2007 2:27 PM

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