February 2007: Search Engine Land’s Most Popular Stories
Below are Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular stories from February 2007:
Here’s What’s Different About Being Small
Last week’s Small is Beautiful column asked, “What’s So Different About Being Small?” The answer? Time. Money. Knowledge. Those are the three biggest challenges a small business must overcome to achieve search marketing success, and the three things that make small business search marketing unique. Many small businesses have one or two of those, but […]
Keane, Head Of Advertising Sales Strategy At Google Goes To CBS Interactive
CBS Interactive has named Patrick Keane their new Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer. Keane was previous Google’s Head Of Advertising Sales Strategy. He worked at Google for four years, where he was “responsible for developing and managing the strategic plans and relationships critical to growing Google’s advertising customer base.” At CBS Interactive, Keane […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, Feb. 28, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web:
Yahoo Provides NOYDIR Opt-Out Of Yahoo Directory Titles & Descriptions
Yahoo! Search Support for ‘NOYDIR’ Meta Tags and Weather Update from the Yahoo Search Blog covers how at long last, you can now tell Yahoo to not use Yahoo Directory information to make a title and/or description for your web page listings. It also cover how Yahoo’s currently doing a reindexing change that might impact […]
40 Percent Frustrated With Video Search
I’m generally suspicious of surveys that say things you’d expect them to say by the company that commissioned them. In this case, ClipBlast — a video search site — sends word of a survey covering frustration with video search. Still, I’ll pass along some stats and the press release, for what they’re worth. The key […]
Google Maps Tailgates Yahoo, Microsoft With Real-Time Traffic Info
Google Maps has caught up with Yahoo and Microsoft in adding live traffic reporting for the United States to their online mapping service. Google Operating System spotted the change today (and Google now has the official word up here). To see the traffic yourself, just go to Google Maps and click on the new "Traffic" […]
Google Buying TV Scatter Units
Google Lays Groundwork for TV Scatter Sales Sortie at Advertising Age reports that Google is looking to hire a head of national TV sales in New York and dive into their TV ad play with “scatter inventory,” ads that aren’t sold well in advance. Google has been hiring TV engineers and sales representatives for a […]
The SEOs Doing It In-House
The Natural Search Blog has complied a list of prominent SEOs who work within a company, in house work, rather than working for firms that specialize in SEO. Often SEOs who work within a company do not get as much recognition as those who work at SEO firms. In fact, a common SEO stereotype is […]
Are You Putting Web Search Results at Risk with Paid Advertising?
If you bid on keywords for a term or phrase that you rank well for in a search engine, might your organic result be filtered in some instances, when your ad appears on the same page? A newly granted Microsoft patent is the first I recall seeing which discusses such a possible interaction based upon […]
Google Stepping Up Governmental Sales
Google Searches For Government Work by the Washington Post has details on Google’s current and future government sales operations. Yesterday, Google started a two-day sales event aimed at the U.S. government. The event reportedly brought in “200 federal contractors, engineers and uniformed military members.” Rob Painter, director of the Google Earth federal effort, said “We’re […]
Monitoring Buries At Digg
Earlier this month, I wrote a long article looking at how some people at Digg might bury stories just because they disliked the topic rather than the story content itself. Indeed, many doing buries might not have read the article. Worse, they might use the bury reason of "spam" rather than more appropriate options. Unfortunately, […]
Is Voice And Mobile Search Company TellMe For Sale?
TechCrunch speculates that voice services and mobile local search provider TellMe is going to be sold to Microsoft. Right now this is unconfirmed rumor. But it would be a very interesting acquisition for Microsoft, and addition to their mobile local search/voice assets, if true. I’ve written more about this on my blog. And here’s previous […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, Feb. 27, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web:
Microsoft’s Ozzie Talks Of Google “Wake-Up Call,” Vertical Search Hopes
Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft, spoke today about trying to beat Google during a Goldman Sachs investors conference. Various reports cover his comments relating to the Big G, Google, as well as search in general. Among them:
Happy Birthday, Flickr: Web 2.0 Pioneer Turns Three
On March 3rd, Flickr turns three. Flickr is in many ways the company that helped define “Web 2.0” and was its poster child for quite some time. And Yahoo’s acquisition of Flickr, in March, 2005, after only a year in existence and, even then, a longish courtship was one of the best consumer moves Yahoo’s […]
Finding Search Engine Freshness & Crawl Dates
A reader emailed me today noticing that Google was showing a date next to his listing, which made me think this was a good time to revisit how, when and where search engines show crawl dates for pages. These dates are a useful way for site owners to understand how often they are being revisited […]
Social Media Not Converting? Put Down The Shotgun & Use A Rifle!
One of the most frequently asked question I get about social media marketing is "Should we try and market to all social media sites or just focus on certain ones?" There are a couple ways to answer that question, and it really depends on a lot of factors. In my opinion, it makes more sense […]
Keyword Research Steps & Tool Update
Five Steps to Effective Keyword Research by Lisa Barone shares some of the basic steps to take when it comes to keyword research, which is the cornerstone of SEO. Complimentary to Lisa’s article is an updated tool by SEO Book named New Keyword List Cleaner Tool.
Search Engines Do Not Have To Display All Ads Says Court
Eric Goldberg summarizes a court decision in Langdon v. Google (PDF) showing a court deciding how search engines do not have to display all ads. Langdon took Google to court to force Google to display ads that “attacked people.” Reportedly, Langdon is a complainer or griper and he wanted to use search ads to air […]
AdWords Editor 3.0 Available For Windows; Mac Version Coming In Weeks
The Inside AdWords Blog announced that the AdWords Editor program has been updated and has extra features including: Add or edit site-targeted campaigns Add or edit negative sites for keyword- and site-targeted campaigns Edit another account while posting or checking your changes Pause or resume individual ads, keywords, and sites See the number of rows […]
Google Ink Sends Ask.com New Google Pen
First Ask.com had some fun with Google earlier this month, joking about how their Google pen "flatlined" and ran out of ink during a crucial meeting. Now Google gets in on the joke in good spirit, sending Ask a new pen along with a letter discussing the Google Pen’s "redundant" architecture. Ask.com’s Google Pen Service […]
Microsoft To Buy Health Search Engine Medstory Inc.
Microsoft to Buy Health Information Search Engine at the New York Times reports that Microsoft is buying the Medstory health search engine. Microsoft plans on building out a specialized search engine focused on delivering medical information to consumers, the story reports.
SearchCap: The Day In Search, Feb. 26, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web:
Google Steps Up Web Page Malware Notifications
The Google Webmaster Central Blog announced that they are now stepping up malware notifications to webmasters. They are giving more detailed reports on the malware issues with a specific site and they are also sending email notifications to webmasters about these malware warnings. In the past, Google just posted a message in the Webmaster Central […]
Google Ordered To Change AdSense Contract By South Korea’s Watchdog
S. Korean watchdog orders Google to fix unfair contract clauses by Yonhap News (and see longer version here) reports that Google has been ordered to change its AdSense contract to be more publisher friendly. The Fair Trade Commission said the contract is currently enabling Google to “one-sidedly cancel advertisement deals” with publishers. It also raised […]
Video Search Challenge Isn’t Speech Recognition, It’s Content Owner Management
Millions of Videos, and Now a Way to Search Inside Them from the New York Times is a big giant love story to video search firm Blinkx, suggesting that the idea of finding video content will take a leap through new idea of speech recognition. In reality, it’s not a new idea. It’s been in […]
Google Checkout Australia Coming Soon?
Is Google Checkout coming to Australia? It appears that Google registered Google Payment Australia PTY. LTD. in Australia recently, which could be a sign of that. A reader pointed me to the Australian Securities & Investments Commission web site that shows a record for a Google Australia payments company. On January 4th of this year, […]
2007 SEMPO Board of Directors Announced
SEMPO has released the names of the 2007 board of directors. The board for 2007 includes: Chris Boggs, Avenue A/Razorfish (reelected) Massimo Burgio, Global Search Interactive (new) Fionn Downhill, Elixir Systems (new) Dave Fall, DoubleClick Inc. (new) Duane Forrester, Sports Direct Inc. (new) Sara Holoubek, Free Agent Consultant (reelected, currently treasurer) Gordon Hotchkiss, Enquiro (reelected, […]
Google AdWords To Show Advertisers Exactly Where Their Contextual Ads Are Displayed
If you are an advertiser running Google AdWords on the content network, the only way to know where those ads are being run is to dig through raw logs and extract the content site URLs from the massively long AdWords referral strings. But in an article in the New York Times about competitor Quigo, Kim […]
Google Video Plus Box Results
Philipp Lenssen spotted plus box results at Google for Google Video results. He noticed it for a search on nightwish videos, but I do not see it myself. For a screen capture check out Philipp’s Google Blogoscoped. We have covered two other plus box results in the past. Google “Plus Box” Puts Maps In Search […]
NASA & Google Earth Color Earth With Near Real Time Information
Garett Rogers summarizes a post at the Google Earth Blog explaining that Google and NASA now have added more KMLs (a file format used to display geographic data in an Earth browser) to Google Earth. The new files provide almost real-time information including: Sea Surface Temperature [KML File] Chlorophyll Concentration [KML File] Cloud Fraction [KML […]
Pew Research: Wireless Internet Grows
Amid an increasing body of consumer research showing that more Americans are using their mobile devices for more than just voice, The Pew Internet Project surveyed 1,623 U.S. adult Internet users in December, 2006. The survey broadly asked about wireless Internet access, whether on desktops, laptops or mobile phones.
3 Jump-Start Methods For Passionate Linking
For a lot of people, link building is a drag. It’s like going to the dentist or writing that tax check every quarter… you don’t really want to do it but you know you have to. It’s that drag factor that makes a lot of people look for short cuts and easy methods to hurry […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, Feb. 23, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web:
Major Microsoft adCenter Bug Costs Millions
I normally would not report bugs like these but the adCenter blog just posted an official confirmation of the bug I reported early this morning at the Search Engine Roundtable. The bug is that advertisers were being charged astronomical prices per click, even though they have set their bids lower. One example is an advertiser […]
Happy Anniversary, ResearchBuzz!
Tara Calishain’s wonderful ResearchBuzz, tagged as “news about search engines, databases, and other information collections,” marked a major milestone yesterday, with 400 “issues” having appeared in nearly nine years of publication. If you’re not familiar with ResearchBuzz, you should be. Many search marketers aren’t familiar with the “other side” of the search universe, populated by […]
Yahoo Search Improves Movie Shortcut Results
The Yahoo Search Blog announced they have improved their movie shortcuts to add more information. The added information includes, movie trailers, user and critic ratings, a brief summary, and movie showtimes. For example, a search on Dreamgirls, 10025 brings up this Yahoo Shortcut.
Top 25 Web 2.0 Start Ups To Watch
The Next Net 25 by Business 2.0 ranks the top 25 up and coming Web 2.0 for this year. Here is the ordered list:
Search Suggestions The Default At Google China?
Philipp Lenssen reports that when you begin typing a search in at Google China, Google begins offering you suggestions. At Google.com, the default is not to give you suggestions, you have to go directly to Google Suggest to get that feature. It appears that Google China, by default, has Google Suggest turned on. Interesting.