SearchCap: The Day In Search, Jan. 11, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web:
More from Search Engine Land: Page 5
SEMPO Board Of Directors Nominations Open
SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, sends word that the organization has opened nominations for the 2007-2008 Board Of Directors election. Any SEMPO member can nominate another member or themselves through next Thursday, January 18, by 5pm Eastern. Nominations are accepted via email, through the member login section of the SEMPO web site. Actual […]
More Rounds In The “Is SEO Overrated” Debate
The "Is SEO Overrated Or Rocket Science" debate continues. Sigh. OK, I give up. I guess we have to have this every two or three years. All the arguments I’m reading, I’ve read (or made before). But maybe that’s healthy in an industry where you always have new people coming in. I’ll give you the […]
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. I’ve been saving these to follow up on when I’m out at Google later this month. I’m […]
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. It works in a similar fashion to engines such […]
A 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. The new service, which is really a select directory of 5,000 sites most popular among users 45 and older, simplifies search results by only presenting you four links and […]
The Social Side Of Trustrank
A newly published patent application from Yahoo, Using community annotations as anchortext, provides a hint at some of the research and work that Yahoo is doing to incorporate user created tags, annotations, bookmarks, and social profiles into the way that they index and organize information, and rank that information. Danny asked me if I would […]
Stay Master Of Your Feed Domain
Having your own domain name for your feeds is incredibly easy and cheap to do via FeedBurner. Moreover, failure to maintain control of your feeds by not using your own domain is one of the biggest mistakes I feel many marketers make. I love FeedBurner. I’ll say it again — I love them. They make […]
Should Google Pay Off Brand Owners With Cut Of Keyword Sales?
I saw Should Google Give Brand Owners A Cut? from InsideGoogle earlier, about the idea of Google paying brand owners a share of revenues of those advertising on their names. Then a reader just emailed me asking what I think about the idea. OK, I’ll bite. In short — probably not. More on that below, […]
Authorama: Testing If Google Can Restrict Public Domain Books It Offers For Download
Freeing Google Books from Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped covers him trying an interesting experiment. Can Google dictate that public domain books that it has scanned and distributed on the web really be subject to restrictions on non-commercial work? First a look at how Google provides these books. Google says that PDF downloads are available […]
Google Blog Search’s People Search Spam Problem
Last month, I wrote Public Spam/Splog Report over on my personal blog, begging Google to stop the "people search" spam that’s been clogging my Google Blog Search feeds with junk off Google’s own Blogger service. Today, I noticed Steve Rubel writing recently on the same issue. Steve gives you the screenshots of how the junk […]
Search Engine Land: Top Stories & Stats, Jan. 9, 2007
Earlier I did a review of traffic stats for Search Engine Land in December 2006. Today, I’m looking at what happened on the site yesterday, in terms of most popular stories. I can’t promise to do this every day. But doing a daily stats review is part of my regular routine, and it helps me […]
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 […]
Free Webinar This Thursday: Measuring Search Success 2007
I’d like to extend a personal invitation to all search marketers to attend the second webinar from our sister site Search Marketing Now. The topic is Measuring Search Success 2007. I’ll be presenting the webinar this coming Thursday, January 11, at 1pm Eastern time. The webinar is free to attend. You’ll find more information and […]
Fraudwall, New Anti-ClickFraud Company Funded
Fraudwall, a new company formed by Ron Conway, a well-known Internet investor, and Jim Pitkow, formerly Moreover’s CEO, has raised millions in venture capital according to this article in Venture Beat. The company is saying little about its approach, although a LinkedIn profile of Fraudwall’s CTO Marc Brown says: “Fraudwall provides online advertisers with a […]
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 […]
Yahoo China Morphing Into A Business Portal
Yahoo China is transforming itself into a business-oriented search engine, in part to deal with crushing competition from Baidu.com and portal Sina.com. “If Yahoo is going to win, it has to do so in a new way,” said Jack Ma, CEO of e-commerce company Alibaba Group, which runs Yahoo’s China operations in an interview with […]
Google Moon, Google Mars, Now Google Universe? Google Partnership With Space Telescope Project May Make UniTube Possible
Google to help build telescope from the Associated Press covers Google looking again to space as a new frontier. This time, the company is getting involved with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. To be built in Chile, the LSST is planned to scan the sky on a continuous basis, which should allow "movie-like" looks at […]
Google A “Frenemy” of Traditional Media?
Spotted via Paid Content, Google an ally, not a threat, media exec says is an interview with David Eun, vice president of content partnerships, the former NBC and Time Warner Inc. executive and Google’s ambassador to the television, movie, publishing and local-media industries. with the LA Times Chris Gaither. Google has no intention of competing […]
Google Named Fortune’s Best Place To Work, But Rich Early Employees Checking Out
Google — officially the best place to work. So says the latest survey from Fortune. But then again, Google’s got to keep the standards high as pre-IPO employees leave. A San Francisco Chronicle article also out covers how one-third of Google’s first 300 employees have gone, along with some comments on the culture getting more […]
Yahoo Acquires MyBlogLog
After several weeks of rumors, Yahoo has officially announced it has agreed to purchase the MyBlogLog service. You’ll find some discussion of the sale via Techmeme here and here.
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. This is a narrow ruling and doesn’t give search marketers carte-blanche to use trademarked terms. Rather, it means it’s OK to bid on a […]
Open Letter To Wikipedia Editors: Yes, Matt Cutts Is Notable
Dear Wikipedia Editors: I came back from vacation today to discover that in (some of) your infinite crowd wisdom, apparently the page at Wikipedia about Google’s Matt Cutts might get deleted. Wow. It’s inept things like this that can instantly reduce any respect I have for Wikipedia that builds up over time.
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 […]
LinkedIn Answers Launched
Now joining the questions answering game is LinkedIn, with its new LinkedIn Answers service, just two days old. Jason Calacanis pinged me about it just via instant message, saying he loves it. Sequoia Capital is an investor in LinkedIn — and Jason now works for Sequoia — so you can easily assume some interest in […]
An Open Letter to Paid Search Networks
Search marketer and “recovering attorney” Jeff Rohrs has published The Sausage Manifesto, an open letter to paid search providers asking critical questions about billing practices, transparency, click fraud and other issues. He asks a number of pointed questions, then lists eleven requests that he says failure to respond to could damage the industry. His requests: […]
Jimmy Wales Interviewed Live On BBC Radio Five Live
Jimmy Wales was interviewed live on the BBC Simon Mayo programme this afternoon. It was an interesting conversation, mainly centred on the Wikipedia obviously, and geared towards an audience who wouldn’t be expected to know much about the subject. The interview started about 30 minutes into the programme and you should be able to catch […]
Search Engine ChaCha Announces $6 Million Round
Led by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions, social search engine ChaCha announced that it had secured a $6 million funding round. ChaCha launched in Q3 last year and employs a network of live guides (college students, stay at home parents, retirees) to help answer user queries in real time in addition to providing traditional algorithmic […]
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 […]
Search Engine Journal’s 2006 Blog Awards Announces Winners
Search Engine Journal has announced all the winners of the 2006 blog awards that we voted for a couple weeks ago. Here are the winners broken down:
Yahoo Local Adds Quick Add / Edit Business Listing Feature
The Yahoo Local Blog announced that they have added the ability to quickly add and edit a business listing. For example, if you wanted a business added within about 24 hours, you can go to this form and fill out the details, about 24 hours later, the listing should be live in Yahoo Local. To […]
New Features Added To Google’s Enterprise Search Appliance
A Google press release from yesterday announced that Google has added a few features to the Google Search Appliance. The new features clearly labeled include: Clustering of the results Source Biasing Options – define which sources are more authoritative than others Add languages such as French, Italian, German and Spanish and Portuguese for query stemming […]
Marketers Answer, “Would You Hire Matt Cutts” Away From Google?
Shoemoney has an excellent post where he asks different marketers, Would You Hire Matt Cutts? based Matt’s recent post suggesting it might not be long before he moves on from Google. So what did the marketers say? Not surprisingly, they would all love to hire Matt.
Google Hires NBC Video Executive, Michael Steib
MediaPost reports Google has hired Michael Steib, the general manager of strategic ventures at NBC Universal. A Google spokesperson said: “We are pleased to have Michael Steib join the Google team to help us work with advertisers to create effective, measurable video advertising.” Googl added, “As we continue to grow our video ads business, Michael’s […]
Google Removes “Tips” Feature After Recent Blog Controversy
A search on calendar and blog no longer brings up the Google Tips at the top. Danny explained the recent controversy over Google adding tips at the top of the results with his Fury Over Google’s Self Promotion & Wishing For Perspective. It now appears that Google has removed the tips, at least temporarily. Some […]
Improved Information Retrieval – Looking at Context with Susan Dumais
Desktop and file search can be very different than web search, and the user’s context plays an important role in what is valuable when creating a search algorithm. But understanding context may be helpful to web search, too. Microsoft’s Susan Dumais has done an extensive amount of research on how users interact with search applications […]
SideStep To Add Cruise Search, The Vertical Search Opportunity
Rounding out its travel search offerings, SideStep will soon launch cruise search, powered by CruisesOnly, the premier cruise brand of Boston-based NLG. While I was surprised by this announcement as I think SideStep has a lot of other fish in the frying pan it needs to focus on, Jon Robison explained that “CruisesOnly is a […]
YouTube Forced To Shut Down In Brazil
Reuters reports that a Brazilian court has ordered YouTube to be shut down due to not preventing a celebrity sex video from being posted time and time again. Daniela Cicarelli and company sued YouTube after being notified that a video of her and her boyfriend having sex on a beach was posted and reposted on […]
Amazon Promotes Askville & LinkedIn Launches Answers Services
Gary Price spotted Amazon promoting Askville more aggressively the other day. For example, a search on travel new york city brings up an Askville promotion all the way at the bottom left of the page, it looks like this: Also, Kev at SEOptimise notes that LinkedIn launched an Answers service early this morning. You can […]
Google Calendar Set To Pass Yahoo Calendar
Hitwise reports that Google Calendar has increased its market share by 333% between June 2006 and December 2006. Google Calendar recently passed by MSN Calendar’s share and is quickly encroaching on Yahoo Calendar’s share. LeeAnn from Hitwise shows that “Yahoo Calendar received 48% of its upstream from Yahoo Mail or Yahoo Address Book” but Google […]