Search Year 2007: Search News, In Review

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Jan. 1, 2008 at 2:29pm Eastern by Danny Sullivan

Search Year 2007: Search News, In Review

Each month, I compile Search Month -- a recap of all the stories that have happened relating to search, categorized by topic. I thought it would be fun to take all the Search Months over the past year and produce this edition of Search Year 2007. It was far more work than I imagined, but I hope you'll find this at-a-glance guide to what happened in search during 2007 to be helpful.

At-a-glance might be a stretch. This is a massive post, and I'm sure some people might feel a bit of overload. So, here's some guidance as to how things are organized.

In many categories, I tried to pick the biggest news story for that topic. This isn't always the case. With some categories such as SEO, there where many good, compelling stories. In some of those cases, I went with a catchy headline or a recent, broadly applicable article. I wish I'd had the time to more closely go through and pick out the very best in each section, but it was too much effort.

Below each main story are other stories on the topic. These are generally listed in descending chronological order, newest coming first. I find it a handy way to see how things unfolded in a particular category. However, in some cases I have grouped stories by company or subtopic.

Also keep in mind that Search Engine Land has extensive categorized archives -- our various "Lands" where you can find stories categorized over time and more deeply than these. I've called these out for each category. You can also find a full list here. Our extensive online archives are nice, because the same story can be cross-categorized as appropriate. Unfortunately, there's minimal cross-categorization in this end-of-the-year recap.

Also remember that if you like Search Year, Search Month does the same thing on a monthly basis, so check it out. It's available by feed or email, as is our daily search news recap, SearchCap.

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Top 25 Most Popular Stories In 2007
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Below are the most read stories published on Search Engine Land in 2007. To see these stories with full descriptions, visit the Search Engine Land's Most Popular Stories Of 2007 page.

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AOL: Ads
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AOL Creates "Platform-A Marketing Solutions" Unit - Trying to realize the promise of its "Platform A" integrated display advertising initiative, AOL has created "Platform-A Marketing Solutions." The new unit combines the formerly separate sales teams of AOL and Tacoda. AOL acquired behavioral targeting firm Tacoda in July of this year. The effort is focused chiefly on traditional brand advertisers and the top online advertisers. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's AOL: Search Marketplace category for past articles.

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AOL: Business Issues
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Also see Search Engine Land's AOL: General category for past articles.

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AOL: Maps & Mobile
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MapQuest Rebuilds 'From The Ground Up' - MapQuest has launched a new beta site, which represents a new and rearchitected site with a host of new features and capabilities. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's AOL: Mobile, AOL: Local and AOL: MapQuest categories for past articles.

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AOL: Netscape/Propeller
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Propeller.com: New Home For The Netscape Social News Site - Last week, it was announced that the social news site Netscape had been transformed into a year ago was going way, with Netscape becoming a more classic news portal and "social Netscape" to be moved elsewhere. Now we know where elsewhere is: Propeller.com. See also:

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AOL: Searching
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AOL Launches New Money & Finance Site, Powered By Relegence Search Engine - Roughly a year ago, AOL acquired Relegence, a search technology company that offers real-time information and data feeds on a subscription basis to Wall Street professionals. Now AOL is bringing the fruits of that acquisition to a newly redesigned Money & Finance site intended to go head to head with Yahoo Finance, which is the current market leader. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's AOL: General category for past articles.

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AOL: Video
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AOL's Truveo Introduces New Video Search Site And Consumer Destination - AOL acquired video search engine Truveo in January 2006 and has used it primarily as a technology platform to power AOL video since that time. Simultaneously, the company has been supporting video search on third party sites. You could do video searches on Truveo.com but it wasn't really presented as a consumer destination – until now. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's AOL: Video category for past articles.

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AOL: Other
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Google Talk Meets AOL Instant Messager: Time Warner & Google Complete AIM Integration Deal

Also see Search Engine Land's AOL: General category for past articles.

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Ask.com: Ads
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Microsoft Office Live To Let Customers Purchase Ads On Ask.com - Ask Sponsored Listings are going to be added to Microsoft Office Live's adManager Beta search advertising service. This is reportedly the first time in five years that two of the top five search engines have joined together to offer search engine ads to advertisers. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Ask: Sponsored Listings category for past articles.

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Ask.com: AskCity
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Ask City's Shape Search Tool For Local Search Results - The Ask.com Blog announced a neat new feature that enables you to literally shape your own local search results. You can go to Ask City, locate a location, draw a circle or square in a certain location and then search specifically within that location. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Ask: City category for past articles.

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Ask.com: Bloglines
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Bloglines Beta To Challenge Google Reader - Bloglines released a new public beta of their popular web-based RSS reader. The new beta is optimized to run well in Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox. The new beta has several new features including a customizable start page with drag and drop AJAX functionality, three feed viewing options including a "Quick View," "3-Pane View," and a "Full View." New enhanced AJAX drag-and-drop makes feed management easy, plus a new “Unread System” that makes marking feed items clearer, quicker and easier. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Ask: Bloglines category for past articles.

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Ask.com: Business Issues
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IAC To Split Up, Extends Google Ad Deal Worth $3.5+ Billion - Today is a big day for IAC, Ask.com's parent company. First they announce they are breaking the company into five publicly traded entities, and then they announce they have extended their search ad deal with Google. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Ask: Business Issues category for past articles.

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Ask.com: Marketing
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Now Starring: The Algorithm - Ask.com To Focus On Ranking System In New TV Ads - Ask.com is launching a new TV and web ad campaign today, to try to generate buzz about the Ask.com search engine. The article says this ad campaign is "gearing up to a relaunch of the site and the debut of its new search technology later this year," which I assume is the Edison project. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Ask: Promotions category for past articles.

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Ask: Mobile
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Forty-Eight Hours With Ask Mobile - On Friday I received a briefing on Ask Mobile (with GPS) and a demo phone with the application pre-installed. I now have three mobile devices that I'm carrying: a traditional cellphone, a Windows Mobile device and the Ask Mobile demo phone. It's quite a challenge to physically manage all these devices as I walk and drive around. I've been testing Ask Mobile casually beside Google Maps for Windows Mobile, Microsoft's Live Search/Local Mobile application and WAP-based Yahoo oneSearch, which just rolled out yesterday to a broad range of Asian countries. This post offers some preliminary reactions to Ask Mobile based on an initial weekend of testing. One big caveat: I haven't been able to test the sharing and social features, which are potentially most compelling aspect of the service, because Ask Mobile is not integrated with my contacts. (Almost anything in the application can be shared with your contacts.)

Also see Search Engine Land's Ask: Mobile category for past articles.

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Ask.com: SEO
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Also see Search Engine Land's Ask: SEO category for past articles.

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Ask.com: Searching
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Ask Relaunches: Now "Ask 3D" - Ask.com is touting the release of "Ask3D" as a "major leap forward" for search. A bold three-panel interface (taken from the experimental Ask X) integrates more multimedia content, including images, videos, music files, as well as more structured text-based content. It also offers a battery of impressive features – new and existing – to bring more context and help to search results.

Also see Search Engine Land's Ask: Web Search category for past articles.

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B2B
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B2B Search Tips: More On Writing Killer Ads - It seems so obvious, yet many B2B marketers don't focus on the most fundamental element of any successful search ad campaign—the copy. I've found that writing great ads comes down to five simple principles. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Strictly Business column for past articles.

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Back To Basics
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If Paid Search Isn't Working Then You're Doing Something Wrong - The Nielsen Company recently completed a survey asking consumers their opinions on advertising, including offline and online. When asked “To What Extent Do You Trust the Following Forms of Advertising?”, paid search ads were ranked near the bottom compared to other forms of advertising. This should not come to a surprise to any paid search marketer, but it’s also not bad news, either. Paid search marketing, when done correctly, fills consumer needs. And if your ads aren't attracting clicks and conversions, you're simply not recognizing or filling those needs. Here are a few things to consider if your paid search campaign isn't delivering the kinds of results you'd like. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Back To Basics column for past articles.

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Beyond USA
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German-Backed Search Project, Theseus, Given $165 Million Grant - Theseus, a German search research project, has received a $165 million grant from the European Union. Theseus aims to develop an advanced multimedia search engine. The EU will allow German subsidy of the project through 2011. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Search Engines: Outside USA category for past articles.

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Business & Revenues
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WPP Grabs 24/7 Real Media For $649 Million - UK based global advertising firm WPP has acquired the publicly traded 24/7 Real Media for a whopping $649 million. The company was previously being looked at by Microsoft (for $1 billion) according to rumor. It follows on the heels of several high-profile acquisitions, including Yahoo's intended purchase of Right Media and Google's planned acquisition of DoubleClick. On a smaller scale ad firm Interpublic bought SEM Reprise Media last month. WPP already has investments in VideoEgg, mobile search firm JumpTap and Spot Runner. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Business Issues category for past articles.

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Censorship
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Did Dalai Lama Award Cause China To Redirect Google, Yahoo & Microsoft Search Traffic To Baidu? - Reports have been coming in that people trying to reach Google, Yahoo and Microsoft from within China or via Chinese ISPs are being redirected to Baidu. Some have accused Baidu of hijacking the traffic, but we think it's likely that China is upset with the US over the award it granted to the Dalai Lama and is retaliating by hurting US-based search engines. Back in 2002, when China was upset with Google, it similarly redirected traffic. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Legal: Censorship category for past articles.

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Copyright
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Google, Microsoft & Others Want Copyright Warnings To Be Clearer - The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), which includes Google and Microsoft, are filing a complaint with the FCC about how some content companies are taking their copyright warnings a bit too far. The CCIA would like the FCC to require these content companies, including sports leagues, movie publishers, book publishers and more, to stop using wording the copyright warnings in an obscure and unclear manner.

CCIA, Google & Microsoft Launch "Defend Fair Use" Web Site

Also see Search Engine Land's Legal: Copyright category for past articles.

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Click Fraud
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Industry Group Proposes Eight Principles To Ensure Click Quality - The Click Quality Council, a group of online advertisers, advertising agencies and click quality monitoring firms formed to propose and help establish standards for search advertising quality, has proposed eight principles for ensuring industry-wide click quality. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Legal: Clickfraud category for past articles.

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Conferences: Pubcon
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December's Battle Of The Search Conferences - It's mid-November, when WebmasterWorld's PubCon is traditionally held. But all's quiet on the Las Vegas front. What's up? This year, PubCon has moved to December, running head-to-head against Incisive Media's SES event in Chicago. What's a search marketer to do? See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's SEM Industry: Conferences category for past articles.

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Conferences: SES
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Goodbye Search Engine Strategies! - It's Search Engine Strategies San Jose next week. For Chris Sherman and I, it's our swan song. This is the last SES event that either of us will program, with our search marketing conference efforts going forward focused on our own Search Marketing Expo (SMX) events. Some history about how the SES show developed.

Also see Search Engine Land's SEM Industry: Conferences category for past articles.

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Conferences: SMX
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SMX West 2008 Agenda Up: 3 Days, More Than 50 Sessions! - Search Engine Land's first three day search marketing conference especially designed for beginning and intermediate search marketers comes to California at the end of February 2008, though there's plenty for experts to learn from, as well. Keynotes feature Search Engine Land editor Danny Sullivan; Cuill's vice president of products Louis Monier (also founder of AltaVista) and "Generation Next: Search In The Coming Decade," a panel discussion with luminaries from the major search engines predicting where they see search headed. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's SEM Industry: Conferences category for past articles.

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Digg
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Digg Gives In To User Revolt; Are Those DMCA Takedown Notices Even Valid? - After a grassroots revolt by Digg users, Digg has decided to stop censoring posts about an HD-DVD decryption number used by the industry-backed Advanced Access Content System to protect HD-DVDs. How the story unfolded, plus more on how the DMCA takedown notices being issued by the AACS to Google don't seem to be valid and certainly aren't like the usual ones fired off for actual copyright theft. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Digg category for past articles.

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Digg: Listing Tactics
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It’s The (Other) Algorithm, Stupid! Understanding DiggRank - Have you ever wondered what it really takes for a story submitted to Digg to get to the home page? Or why a certain story—even a really good, social media friendly story—never got to the home page? I'm frequently asked the question, "Hey, my story has [number] of Diggs but it still hasn't been promoted to the home page. Any idea what's wrong?" And, relatively less frequently, I hear someone saying in amazement, "Wow, all it took was 29 Diggs and that story rocketed to the home page!" I'm always tempted to reply "It's the algorithm, stupid!" Digg has an algorithm? Yes, just as PageRank and other algorithms are used to rank web pages by search engines, some social sites use algorithms to determine which stories become popular. Call it DiggRank, if you will. Let’s take a deeper look at what the Digg algorithm is and venture a few guesses about how it works. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Digg category for past articles.

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Directories
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The Great Google Directory Ban Of Sept. 2007 - Earlier this month, a discussion on our Sphinn site looked at how it seemed Google was going after directories with penalties. But was this really happening, or was it just forum noise coming out in particular from Digital Point? Today, Rand Fishkin takes a long look in the issue in What Makes a Good Web Directory, and Why Google Penalized Dozens of Bad Ones and decides yes, Google went after some directories. He also offers some tips on what he thinks makes a "good" directory that won't be banned. Not enough for you? Matt Cutts of Google recently offered some advice, following the concerns that have been raised. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Open Directory Project category for past articles.

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Domaining
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Direct Navigation And Domain Empires - Business 2.0 has a fairly comprehensive (cover) story about domain portfolios and "direct navigation." It starts off with a profile of Vancouver entrepreneur Kevin Ham ("The Man Who Owns the Internet"), who operates a $300 million domain "empire" but goes on to discuss others who have become wealthy from domain speculation, parking and domain portfolio ownership. (The author of the article Paul Sloan has a related post here.). The ads on Ham's domains are served by Yahoo.

Also see Search Engine Land's Search Ads: Domaining category for past articles.

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Facebook: Ads
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My Love/Hate Relationship With Facebook Ads - Last month I began running a campaign on Facebook's new ad network. After hearing the hype, I couldn't resist playing around with it as soon as I had a reason to. At first I was somewhat frustrated because I wasn't getting any page views or clicks. It took some time experimenting with my bid before I found the magic number. So far I am happy with the results I've seen over the past month, but there are many areas where the program could improve. Below are 10 ways Facebook could improve their social ads platform, as well as some pretty cool features the system already has. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Facebook category for past articles.

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Facebook: Business Issues
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Facebook To IPO In 2008 (It'll Have To) - Facebook is "years away" from going public, said founder Mark Zuckerberg last week. I also see Facebook will have more than 700 employees next year, in 2008. So, like Google and Microsoft, it'll be forced to IPO against its will sometime next year, if those employees all have options (as they likely will).

Also see Search Engine Land's Facebook category for past articles.

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Facebook: Privacy
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The Facebook Privacy Fallout Continues - For those just joining us, Facebook was overly aggressive with its Beacon tracking program, one of several new ad programs launched in early November. Beacon required users to opt-out or have their activity and transactions on Facebook partner sites broadcast to their networks back on Facebook. Discovering this, many people were frustrated and upset by what they felt was a lack of disclosure regarding the implications of the tracking. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Facebook category for past articles.

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Facebook: Other
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Facebook Opens Profiles To Tap Into Google Traffic, While Google Grabs Facebook's News Feed Idea - Google is getting a bit more like Facebook by enabling a Facebook-style news feed within its Orkut social networking site, while the king of the walled gardens Facebook acknowledges in actions (rather than words) that it really can't go it alone without search engines like Google, as it prepares to let crawlers into its public user profiles. Actually, Facebook is telling its users that existing profiles already accessible to search engines will be exposed even more. More on the moves, with lots of screenshots and explanations.

Also see Search Engine Land's Facebook category for past articles.

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Google: AdSense
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Google AdSense To Give Publishers Access To Review Placement Targeted Ads Prior To Ad Placement - The Google AdSense blog announced they will be rolling out the "Ad Review Center" to publishers over the course of the next few months. The Ad Review Center will give publishers the ability to review placement targeted ads before they are displayed on publisher sites. Plus, it will give publishers the ability to review current placement targeted ads and have them blocked from their sites. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Google: AdSense category for past articles.

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Google: AdSense Audio Ads
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Google Releases Audio Ads To Public While eBay Begins Radio Ad Auction Push - Google announced they have completed their audio ad test and is now in the process of rolling out audio ads to all US advertisers. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Google: Audio Ads and Google: Other Ads categories for past articles.

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Google: AdSense Video & TV Ads
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Google TV Ads: Google Brings Auction Model To TV Advertising - Google is launching a beta trial of TV ads with cable company Astound and satellite TV provider Echostar, which owns Dish Network. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Google: YouTube & Video and Google: Other Ads categories for past articles.

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Google: AdSense Print Ads & Other Ads
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NY Times Tracks Google's Traditional Media Efforts - Miguel Helft at the New York Times has a relatively long and interesting article, with some interesting details, that rounds up the status and mixed results (so far) of Google's moves into radio, TV and print newspapers. From my understanding, the print newspaper ads have been the most successful to date. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Google: Print Ads & AdSense For Newspapers category for past articles.

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Google: AdWords
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Secrets Of Google Quality Score Revealed!!! (Not.) - The nice folks from Google were in for a visit a week or so ago. One of the topics on the day's agenda was Ad Quality. If you read extremely closely, much of what they presented in their briefing is also described at the AdWords help center (see What is a 'Quality Score' and how is it calculated?). They also presented some new angles and dispelled a few myths. Here are some of the key takeaways on Quality Score (herein abbreviated "QS"). See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Google: AdWords category for past articles.

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Google: AdWords, Features
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Personalized AdWords: Google Ads You See Influenced By Previous Searches -Google is personalizing ads for people based on their previous search query. For example, you can do a search for weather forecast, then conduct a new search on holiday in spain, and then do another search on weather forecast and you should then see ads for weather reports in Spain. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Google: AdWords category for past articles.

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Google: AdWords, Legal
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Google: Click Fraud Is 0.02% Of Clicks - Finally, we have a click fraud rate from Google itself: less than 0.02 percent of all clicks slip past its filters and are caught after advertisers request reviews. That low figure is sure to bring out the critics who will disagree. Below, more about how Google comes up with the figure plus some click fraud fighting initiatives it plans to implement later this year. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Google: AdWords and Google: Legal categories for past articles.

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Google: Analytics
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Google Analytics Leaves Beta & Adds Requested Features - The Google Analytics blog announced that they are taking Google Analytics out of beta and adding several features based on customer feedback. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Google: Analytics category for past articles.

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Google: Apps
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Google Gears Brings Offline Web Applications To Life - Today at Google Developer Day 2007, Google released Google Gears. Google Gears is a browser extension that will help developers create offline web applications in the open source framework. Gears is powered by JavaScript APIs enabling data storage, application caching, and multi-threading technologies for offline browsing and application use. Google Reader is the first online application to offer "Gears-enabled offline capabilities," Google told me. So you would load up Google Reader while you are online, it will download your feeds. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Google category and subcategories for past articles.

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Google: Apps, Office Suite
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If You Know About Google Docs, You're In The Minority - According to a new survey of 600 "PC users" (and see here) by the NPD Group, 73 percent of Americans have "never heard of, never tried" web-based productivity software replacements for Microsoft Office. Roughly 21 percent have heard of but still never tried these alternatives, which include Google Docs and Zoho. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Google: Apps For Your Domain and Google: Docs & Spreadsheets categories for past articles.

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Google: Book Search
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Google Book Search Expands - Although Google currently has a wealth of books in their Google Book Search database, this isn't enough either for them or us, so they've taken steps to improve the situation. If you now do a search, you'll find references to millions of books that they haven't yet digitized. You can then click on an "About the Book" page where you can find basic book information such as author, title, publication date, and where possible, reviews and web references. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Google: Book Search category for past articles.

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Google: Business Issues
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Google Gets A Tag Line: "Search, Ads & Apps" - To my knowledge, Google never had a tag line. Yesterday, it announced it had gained one: "Search, Ads & Apps." But wasn't the tag line "Don't Be Evil?" Or wasn't it something about organizing the world's information? Come along, and I'll try to sort it out. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Google: Business Issues category for past articles.

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Google: Checkout
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eBay Pulls Google AdWords Ads To Protest Google Checkout Moves - This week, eBay Live is happening in Boston, but the event is likely to be overshadowed by a fascinating and fast-developing controversy between the auction giant and Google. Rumors from ComparisonEngines.com and other sources last night and earlier today reported that eBay had pulled its ads off Google to protest a planned party (now cancelled) to promote Google Checkout, called "Let Freedom Ring," that was to coincide with eBay Live. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Google: Checkout category for past articles.

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Google: Cloud Infrastructure
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Google & IBM Team Up on 'Cloud Computing' Research - Google announced they have teamed up with IBM to "provide hardware, software, and services to augment university curricula and expand research horizons." Google and I.B.M. Join in ‘Cloud Computing’ Research from the New York Times explains the two companies are building out a 'cloud computing' environment to help students obtain the technical training required to work at companies like Google and IBM. Universities to pilot this program include Carnegie-Mellon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Maryland. See also:

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Google: Critics
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Google: As Open As It Wants To Be (IE, When It's Convenient) - In two weeks, we've had two "open" initiatives from Google: OpenSocial, to free social networking data from behind the Facebook walled garden and the Open Handset Alliance, to free cell phones from a myriad of complicated mobile OS platforms and carriers who want to restrict features. I've seen some people writing about open as the new black, with Google showing its fashion sense by dressing in the latest color. But lest anyone think that Google's wardrobe is being replaced with an all-open line-up, it's worth remembering that recently, open mainly fits Google when it's behind competitively in a space. Let's consider the places where staying closed is what suits Google best. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Google: Critics category for past articles.

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Google: Custom Search
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Google Customized Search Engines to Harness The Wisdom of Experts? - Back in October, 2006, Google announced on the Official Google Blog that they were enabling people to create their own custom search engines. If you asked yourself why they were doing this, and how it might provide benefits to individual site owners, searchers as a whole, and Google itself, there are some answers that came out yesterday at the US Patent Office. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Google: Custom Search Engine category for past articles.

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Google: DoubleClick
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FTC's Xmas Gift To Google: Approval Of DoubleClick Acquisition - The US Federal Trade Commission has granted its approval for Google to purchase DoubleClick. Google has a press release up with the news (and see also here), and the FTC announcement is here. The many parties have raised privacy issues with the deal, and the FTC noted this was not germane to its approval. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land's Google: Acquisitions category for past articles.

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Google: Employees
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Is Google Losing Its Magic For Employees? - Today's Wall Street Journal featured an article entitled "Start-Ups Make Inroads With Google's Work Force," which focused on emerging potential retention problems at Google. See also: