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 […]
New local search engine Grayboxx has spent over a year developing a methodology and collecting information that offers “implicit” recommendations or endorsements of local businesses. These are represented as scores, called “neighbor recommendations,” and offer an alternative to more familiar review sites such as Citysearch, Yahoo Local and Yelp. Grayboxx founder Bob Chandra says this […]
Last week’s column Aggressively Seeking Links – How Much Is Too Much? sparked several comments and questions. In the past, I’ve hesitated to revisit previous columns, preferring to let them stand on their own, but this time I’d like to make an exception to clarify some of the assertions I made.
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Web search IPO stalls on underwriter doubts from CNN Money reports that Accoona’s expected $80.5 million IPO has failed due to their underwriter backing out. Maxim Group, their underwriter, backed out after completing an in-depth review of the company. The New York Times reported Edward L. Rose, the firm’s vice chairman and general counsel for […]
Google May Start New York Transit Guide to Boost Ads from Bloomberg reports that Google Transit will soon support the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area. Currently Google Transit covers about 15 U.S. cities including Burbank, Humboldt County, Orange County, San Diego, Tampa, Honolulu, Duluth, Las Vegas Monorail, Reno, Eugene, Portland, Pittsburgh, Austin, Dallas and Seattle. […]
Ever since Caltech graduate student Virgil Griffith launched Wiki Scanner, it has been nonstop fun freaking out PR people everywhere. While Wired’s list of salacious edits has everyone abuzz, Searcharazzi still enjoys good, old-fashioned wiki sleuthing, as brought to our attention yesterday. Apparently someone representing FAST Search & Transfer has been modifying facts regarding the […]
India’s Rediff.com cites unnamed sources to assert that a Google-branded phone may be “a fortnight away” (two weeks). There have been lots of rumors about a “GPhone” for months. They run the gamut from specialized software development, to a Google MVNO to a Google handset.
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Below is a roundup of all the coverage I was able to find throughout the day of the SES San Jose conference. This coverage is for the fourth day of SES, taking place on August 23, 2007. If I missed any, please add a comment below. Overall, the coverage has been outstanding throughout the SEM […]
Online maps: we use them everyday for purposes as varied as finding out how to meet our friends at a new restaurant to sending out invitations to our child’s birthday party. Maps are valuable graphical presentations of how to get to a certain place. Most companies that depend on local customers are beginning to recognize […]
Microsoft and Nokia team up to offer Windows Live on S60 devices from the LiveSide Blog reports Microsoft and Nokia, in a new agreement, will begin to allow S60 device owners to use Windows Live suite on their devices. The rollout will be across 11 different countries, and you can find in the Windows Live […]
Built on its new Silverlight application, Microsoft last night released a new, experimental search site dubbed “Tafiti,” which means “do research” in Swahili. You’ll need to download Silverlight to use the engine, which offers a richer “visualization” of Microsoft Live search results.
Brazilian prosecutors say Google has not provided Orkut user information regarding crimes from the Associated Press reports that Brazilian authorities say that Google Brazil is still not complying with requests to hand over information on those using Orkut for illegal activities. Some use Orkut to help spread child pornography and hate speech. Prosecutor Sergio Gardenghi […]
Facebook Gets Personal With Ad Targeting Plan from the Wall Street Journal reports Facebook will be launching a new ad service as early as late fall. The ad service will generate very personalized results, based on the wealth of information Facebook has on their users. The ads will not just be generated based on gender, […]
Since I’m speaking this week at Search Engine Strategies on the topic of SEO through Blogs and Feeds, it seems fitting that this issue of “100% Organic” be related to blog optimization. Even the top SEOs make mistakes with their blogs (and yes, I make some of them too). What are they? Here’s my list: […]
The first widely reported Google Mapspam (and see here) clearly highlighted the potential and pitfalls for local search. Mapspam is a relatively new phenomemon, where black hat SEOs are spamming local search and map listings. It also raised a number of questions for Google, and for the search marketing industry:
Yahoo Search will be launching new Search Shortcuts for health, consumer electronics and NFL related queries.
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Ask.com is now displaying a clock showing the local time in relation to local searches. For example, search for san jose, ca, and you’ll see the local time there appearing in the right-hand column, like this: Give it a try for your favorite city.
Below is a roundup of all the coverage I was able to find throughout the day of the SES San Jose conference. This coverage is for the third day of SES, taking place on August 22, 2007. If I missed any, please add a comment below.
Later this year, Microsoft has announced that there will be a public beta of "Live Search Webmaster Portal," a collection of tools and information for site owners akin to the Google Webmaster Central and Yahoo Site Explorer offerings from those respective search engines. A private beta of these tools is about to begin. The new […]
The Inside AdWords blog just announced that the new top promotion algorithm is now live. Advertisers who want to take advantage of this can now begin to do so. Yes, there is a lot of debate and reaction towards this new formula. I suspect now that it is live, we will see some real life […]
The Yahoo Search Blog announced that they have made major changes to their crawling process, plus rolled out a new update to their crawling, indexing and ranking systems. Recently, there have been many complaints that Yahoo’s crawler, Yahoo Slurp, is crawling sites too heavily. Yahoo says it has taken this feedback and has improved their […]
While I don’t recall asking for her opinion, I got it all the same. My wife—of course—thinks that my cholesterol problem is due to my diet. She says that I could eat in a more healthy way (whatever that means). However, I, on the other hand, like to think—as any self-respectable kid does—that this is […]
Have you ever analyzed the click-through-rates associated with B2B search listings? Organic versus paid? Business versus consumer? The data is interesting… and can be interpreted in several ways. It’s hard to tell if business marketers are simply behind their consumer counterparts in terms of expertise and experience—or if they are smart enough to focus on […]
Gary Price reports that Microsoft adCenter Labs has launched a new tool named Ad Text Writer. You basically plug in a URL, Microsoft will read the site and come up with search ads based on the content of the site. So I figured I give it a try.
In Google Earth, a Service for Scanning the Heavens from the New York Times reports that Google Earth has released a new version that allows you to look up at the sky and see the galaxy. The feature is described more here. The new feature will let you virtually look up at the sky, from […]
While the ideal for in-house search marketing is to perform all tasks related to search marketing internally, the reality is that there are times when help is needed from outside sources. There are several reasons for this, but when it does happen, the prime motivator should be that the relationship between the company and the […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Below is a roundup of all the coverage I was able to find throughout the day of the SES San Jose conference. This coverage is for the second day of SES, taking place on August 21, 2007. If I missed any, please add a comment below.
People have been speculating about how YouTube would eventually monetize video streams, as opposed to page views. The answer comes in the form of an innovative approach that involves almost transparent animated flash “overlays” that will appear on selected videos. It’s an attempt to balance the competing demands of an unencumbered user experience with the […]
The Google News blog announced that they are now embedding videos within Google News from several sources. Google News currently syndicates videos from CBS, Reuters, and a number of local Hearst TV stations and uses YouTube’s player to display the videos within the Google News search results. Google says they will continue to add video […]
As expected, Google Lat Long Blog has announced that you can now embed your Google Maps easily into your web pages. Just go to the map you like, click on “link to this page” at the top right corner of the map and select the code within the “Paste HTML to embed in website” box. […]
Here are eight observations about writing and testing pay-per-click ad copy. They’re broad generalizations, so there’ll be situations where these don’t hold, but we’ve found them generally accurate.
The Yahoo Search Blog announced a new Site Explorer feature that enables webmasters to inform Yahoo about dynamic URLs that might be creating duplicate content issues or crawl barriers. The new feature is named “Dynamic URL Rewriting,” and it allows webmasters to view potential duplicate content issues and have Yahoo rewrite those URLs at the […]
Most companies are savvy enough today to put press releases on their web sites. Sadly, few bother to optimize press releases for search engines, and that’s too bad, because a well optimized press release can do more than just rank well in search results—it can can also offer additional website visibility benefits, as well. Today’s […]
Yahoo! buys Actionality from Mobile Entertainment reports Yahoo has purchased Actionality, a company that specializes in creating ad-funded mobile content. Actionality has technology that embeds games with ads at the point of download. Actionality is a Munich-based company with sales offices in Berlin and Hong Kong. There has been no official confirmation of the acquisition […]
The Google Lat Long Blog announced that they have added a new layer in Google Earth to provide real-time traffic data. By activating the traffic layer, little green, yellow and red balls are overlaid on the highways and roads, each symbolizing the level of traffic congestion in that area.
Ballmer discusses Yahoo acquisition rumour from PC Advisor reports on a recent interview with Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer and PBS’s Charlie Rose. In that interview, Rose questions Ballmer of the Yahoo/Microsoft merger rumors from earlier this year. The new revived question is if Microsoft is still interested in a Yahoo acquisition.