YouTube and Wikipedia storm to top brand ranking by Reuters reports that Google has secures the top spot in the online branding magazine brandchannel.com survey that asks, "Which brand had the most impact on our lives in 2006?". Followed by Google, Apple is second on the brand list. The surprise is that Google's YouTube is ranked number three and number four is the "free encyclopedia," Wikipedia. The survey polled 3,625 branding professionals and students. Postscript: The full list has been published by brandchannel.com. Thanks Gary for letting me know. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Google: Marketing | Google: YouTube & Video | Search Engines: Answer Search Engines

Ex-Yahoo Exec now Pageflakes CEO by Om Malik reports that Dan Cohen, who was the Head of My Yahoo business unit, left Yahoo to become the CEO of Pageflakes. Gary Price recently reviewed Pageflakes, describing it as an easy and free way to "build a dynamic personalized home/start page." It is a lot like Google Personalized Homepage, Netvibes and Microsoft Live. So Dan Cohen has a lot of work ahead of him to compete with some of these brands. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Search Engines: Personalized Search Engines | Yahoo: Employees

Microsoft 'not happy' with search results at News.com reports that Microsoft has lowered their expectations for growth of their search sales in the first two quarters of this year. Microsoft lowered those expectations from as high as 11 percent to as low as 3 percent growth. Microsoft CFO, Chris Liddell, said that Microsoft is "clearly not happy with" losing market share, but he explains that Microsoft is taking "long-term view of this business." Postscript: Just want to clarify, that Microsoft's CFO basically confirmed ComScore's numbers with his statement. You can learn more about ComSco [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Microsoft: Bing

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. A search today now shows the US White House page carrying Bush's name is no longer top listed. Also gone are pages about Michael Moore and former US president Jimmy Carter that were on the first page of results due to Google bombing actions. What's not missing are articl [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Did You Know? | Google: General | Link Building: Link Bombs | Search & Society: General

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web: From Search Engine Land: 3 Ways To Use Your Competition To Build Links & Targeted TrafficThe 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... Google AdSense Tests New Features: My Publishers, Ad Placement & Message InboxGoogle AdSense has launch [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

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. 1. Aggregating Your Competition Presuming that blogs exist within your nich [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: Links | Link Building: General

Google AdSense has launched three new features overnight, some of the features are available to everyone and some are a limited test. My Publishers: The most interesting feature was spotted by Media Viper where he shows that Google has added a "My Publishers" tab to his AdSense console. The My Publishers section allows you to search for your publishers by email, company name, contact name, client ID, association date and country. This may be a sign that Google is making it easier for AdSense consultants to offer services to publishers. Ad Placement: The second feature is available to eve [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display | Google: AdSense

Google just announced that Google Video Search now includes YouTube video results. For example, a search on michael jordan in Google Video, brings back many results from YouTube already. Here is a screen capture: The remainder of the press release discusses how Google will keep YouTube as an "independent subsidiary" but will continue to build out features within the YouTube community itself as well as with Google products. For example, the recent video ad test being run now with AdSense videos. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Google: YouTube & Video

Philipp Lenssen reports that Google launched a new blog named the Google Test Blog. The Welcome to the Google Testing Blog by Google Engineer, Allen Hutchison, explains that Google will be sharing their debugging and testing experiences with the public. We decided to start this blog to share our experiences with the rest of the developer community, and so that we can learn about some of your smart solutions to the same sorts of problems. From unit testing to performance testing and beyond, the testing umbrella is vast, and hopefully this blog will be the start of a great conversation about [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Employees

Steve Bryant broke the story that Fox subpoenaed both Google owned YouTube and LiveDigital for the name of the individual who uploaded the full four hours of the premier of 24. The premier was reportedly posted prior to the live airing of the show and Fox reportedly found out about it on the 8th of this month. The specific profile of the person who uploaded the video was "ECOTotal" and his account has already been suspended on YouTube. A U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted the subpoena on January 18. Reuters and the Hollywood Reporter have some more details [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Google: Legal | Google: YouTube & Video | Legal: Copyright

Todd Malicoat created a new Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) seeded by Lee Odden's comprehensive list of must read search marketing blogs. You can access Todd's Google CSE over here, I like some of the results so far. Todd, also added the search box to his right side navigation, just in case you forget about it. Yes, yesterday I did post about my search forum Google CSE and some people asked if they can add the CSE to their Google home page, you can by visiting here or by clicking here. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Custom Search Engine | SEM Industry: Community | SEM Tools | SEO: General

Allen Stern designed a mock up of what it would look like, if Google added their Google Video ads to the Google search results page. It is pretty funny and you would hope that Google would never take it this far. The inspiration for Allen Stern's design was based on the recent news that Google is testing more video ads. Thanks Philipp for the nice find. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdSense | Google: AdWords | Google: Critics | Google: User Interface

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web: From Search Engine Land: Search B2B With ZibbNoticed on Search Engine Watch, the B2B arm of mega-publisher Reed Elsevier has launched Zibb.com, a "vertical" search engine for business users. I say that in quotes because it's vertical in the way that Business.com is vertical. It's really a general engine for B2B users. Zibb also offers general Web... Beyond Google: Social Media Engines First, Other Search Engines SecondI've never encouraged a "Google First" or "G [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Noticed on Search Engine Watch, the B2B arm of mega-publisher Reed Elsevier has launched Zibb.com, a "vertical" search engine for business users. I say that in quotes because it's vertical in the way that Business.com is vertical. It's really a general engine for B2B users. Zibb also offers general Web and blog search and is built on the FAST enterprise platform. Former FAST VP Stephen Baker is CEO of Reed Business Search and responsible for Zibb and other search initiatives at Reed. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search Engines: B2B Engines

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." After them come the other major [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Social Media Marketing

U.K. directory publisher and local search provider Yell, parent of U.S. yellow pages publisher YellowBook, announced the expansion of mobile services in the U.K. Yell directory database listings, interactive maps and turn-by-turn directions will be available either through a downloadable application or on a mobile browser. Information may also be saved to contacts and shared via text messaging with others. Just over 25% of the U.K. population uses the mobile Internet, according to figures provided by Yell. That compares with 15% - 17% in the U.S., according to various estimates. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines

Google Operating Systems spotted Google testing large Google Checkout buttons underneath AdWords ads that are from merchants that accept Google Checkout. Here is a comparison image: This begs the question, is Google going to far with giving Google Checkout merchants an unfair advantage or not? More discussion at Google Pushing Google Checkout More and New Google Checkout Promo; New Google Trust Worries. Postscript Barry: Danny wrote an entry that has more on this named Google Checkout Blogs On Recent Promotions. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Google: Checkout

Gary Price pointed me to a Pandia article that reports Google is to undergo an investigation by the Norwegian Data Inspectorate, to understand what data Google is storing about users, why they are doing so, for how long and the security measures they take place. Norwegian Data Inspectorate's Senior Engineer, Atle Årnes, asked "Why do the search engine store the IP addresses [of searchers] for so long and are they using them for? [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Legal | Google: Outside US | Legal: Privacy

I have created a Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) that specifically searches the various search marketing and search engine optimization forums on the web. Currently, the Google CSE searches 14 SEM/SEO forums, and I have honestly been very surprised at how relevant the results have been. You can give the Google CSE a try over here or directly below. If you would like to recommend adding and forums to the Google CSE, feel free to comment here or in the original post. Give it a try: Postscript: Some people asked if they can add the CSE to their Google home page, you can by visi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Custom Search Engine | SEM Industry: Community | SEM Tools | SEO: General

Reuters reports that Baidu, the large Chinese based search engine, has earned a license by China's State Council Information Office (SCIO) to produce news content in China. This enables Baidu to produce their own content, as opposed to just showing snippets of content from 3rd party sources. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search Engines: Baidu