Archive for October, 2007
October 2007: Search Engine Land’s Most Popular Stories
Oct 31, 2007 at 11:59pm ET by Danny Sullivan
Below are
Search Engine Land's 10 most popular
stories from October 2007:
1) Mapping The
Southern California Fires - I'm back home (my original home) in Southern
California for vacation, and to welcome me back, the Southland is on fire. Ah,
just like old times. As I was keeping up with the news, I came across some maps
online from Google Earth, Google Maps, Virtual Earth, and elsewhere that I
thought I'd share with others.
===================
2) Billboard
Showdown: Google 411 Takes On Ask's Algorithm - I'm in the Bay Area this
week, and driving down Lombard Street, I brought the car to a h [...]
Filed in: Most Popular Stories
SEOs Should Understand Network Infrastructure
Oct 31, 2007 at 11:39pm ET by Jessica Bowman
As an in-house SEO, you need to interact with senior engineers, project managers, and analysts who know your infrastructure and its limitations inside and out. Adding an understanding of your network infrastructure to your SEO knowledge base gives you the right lingo and frame of reference for conversations with techies to help you gain coveted respect from the IT department. Knowledge of your network can open doors to complex decision making conversations that SEOs need to be part of.
Who to talk to: Ask for a network overview from one of your senior architects who can answer specific que [...]
Filed in: In House, SEO: General
Social Networking Through Search: Hakia Helps You Meet Others
Oct 31, 2007 at 8:00pm ET by Vanessa Fox
Hakia, a natural language search engine, has just added a new spin to search: social networking. Their new Meet Others feature lets you connect with others who are searching for the same things you are.
Since Hakia processes queries differently than old school search engines such as Google, you aren't just matched up with people who typed in the exact query you did -- you're matched with a larger set of searchers that Hakia thinks are looking for the same things you are based on natural language processing. For instance, if you're searching for "what drug treats a headache," Hakia processes t [...]
Filed in: Search Engines: Hakia, Search Engines: Other Search Engines, Search Features: Natural Language
SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 31, 2007
Oct 31, 2007 at 5:05pm ET by Barry Schwartz
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on
Search Engine Land and from other
places across the web.
From Search Engine Land:
Yahoo Search Updates Algorithm, Index & CrawlThe Yahoo Search Blog has posted that they are currently undergoing an index, crawl and algorithm update. Priyank Garg of Yahoo said: Over the last few days, we've been rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. While we expect the update will be completed soon, as...
GOOG Cracks The $700 Threshold, Partly On Mobile SpeculationPropelled by strong quarterly earnings and rampant [...]
Filed in: SearchCap
Yahoo Search Updates Algorithm, Index, & Crawl
Oct 31, 2007 at 12:53pm ET by Barry Schwartz
The Yahoo Search Blog has posted that they are currently undergoing an index, crawl, and algorithm update. Priyank Garg of Yahoo said:
Over the last few days, we've been rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. While we expect the update will be completed soon, as you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index.
I posted signs of this update this morning at the Search Engine Roundtable, and linked to several forums discussion, which highlight what appears to be a pretty significant update.
[...]
Filed in: Yahoo: SEO, Yahoo: Search
GOOG Cracks The $700 Threshold, Partly On Mobile Speculation
Oct 31, 2007 at 12:50pm ET by Greg Sterling
Propelled by strong quarterly earnings and rampant speculation (and coverage) about its mobile plans, Google stock earlier today crossed the $700 price target many Wall Street analysts had set for the company. It's down slightly right now. Once Google provides more visibility about its mobile plans, investors could become more bullish or potentially be disappointed. However, it's unlikely that any practical market impact would be felt immediately because there would likely be a lag between any mobile announcement and the actual product rollout.
As Silicon Alley Insider points out, in terms o [...]
Filed in: Google: Business Issues
Ask Introduces New Maps & Directions For UK
Oct 31, 2007 at 10:35am ET by Greg Sterling
The mapping upgrades and improvements are coming so fast now from Google, Microsoft, MapQuest, and Yahoo that it's difficult to keep track of all the changes. Luckily, the Ask Blog walks us through all the features of the new and improved Ask Maps UK, which includes multi-point routing, walking directions (which are claimed to be unique to Ask), aerial views, and incorporates landmarks, transit, and points of interest.
However, this isn't a map-centric local search site, like Ask City in the US. A search for local information on the Ask UK Maps site (e.g., London Hotels) will send users to As [...]
Ask.com Helps IAC Earn 40% Increase In Q3 2007 Media Revenue
Oct 31, 2007 at 9:50am ET by Barry Schwartz
IAC Reports Q3 Results from CNNMoney reports that IAC saw a 4.2% decline in net income year over year. Here is IAC's press release for the third-quarter numbers this year.
But if you pull out Ask.com, IAC's search engine, which is part of IAC's Media & Advertising group, you will see that sector saw an increase of 40% in revenue and a positive net this past quarter. In Q3 2007, the Media & Advertising group saw revenues of $189.8 million up from $135.5 million in Q3 2006, plus operating income this past quarter was $15.4 million, up from a loss of $2.1 million last year.
The Media & Adver [...]
Filed in: Ask: Business Issues
Google AdWords Lets Advertisers Choose Date & Number Preferences
Oct 31, 2007 at 8:52am ET by Barry Schwartz
Kevin Gibbons spotted a couple new features in Google AdWords for advertisers, including a convenient way for advertisers who are not based in the United States to now change the format of numbers, times, and dates within their accounts.
For example, if you prefer your dollars and cents to have a comma instead of a period, you can specify that. If you prefer your dates to start with the day and not the month, you can specify that. How do you do that? Here are the instructions on how to configure that setting.
Another feature AdWords released recently is to see on the Account Snapshot pag [...]
Filed in: Google: AdWords
Want To Opt Out Of Behavioral Ads? AOL Says It Is Your Choice
Oct 31, 2007 at 8:44am ET by Barry Schwartz
AOL Will Let Consumers Opt Out of Targeted Ads from the Wall Street Journal reports that AOL will announce today a new tool that will enable AOL users to opt out of targeted or personalized ads. (NOTE: The AOL announcement is now live).
AOL has behavioral ad technology that stores consumer's preferences and then tailors ads based on the sites' users' visits. AOL is expected to announce a system that will give these users the ability to opt out of those ads.
The Wall Street Journal says AOL most likely timed this announcement to pre-empt the Federal Trade Commission meeting tomorrow on "con [...]
Filed in: AOL: Search Marketplace, Legal: Privacy, Search Ads: Behavioral Targeting
Lead Management: When Conversion Is Not Enough
Oct 31, 2007 at 8:01am ET by Jon Miller
Let's listen in on a call between a sales rep and a new lead generated by a paid search campaign:
Hello Sarah, my name is Brian, and I’m your sales rep from Widgets Inc. I noticed you recently clicked one of our ads and registered to download our paper "10 Ways to Better Profits through Widgets." I'm calling to see if you have any questions... You haven’t read it yet? Oh, OK. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions anyway? Do you have a Budget approved to buy widgets? Are you the Decision Maker? When do you expect to purchase a Widget solution?.... Oh, I see, you’re just researchi [...]
Filed in: Search Marketing: General, Strictly Business
Google, Yahoo, Ask.com Do Halloween Logos & Themes
Oct 31, 2007 at 7:01am ET by Danny Sullivan
Google doesn't always do
special logos for every holiday, but in the case of Halloween, it's pretty
consistent. Up today on the Google home page is the ninth consecutive Halloween
logo it has run since 1999. Below, a look back at the past years, as well as
this year's animated logo from Yahoo and a Halloween-themed home page from
Ask.com.
Google Halloween Logos
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
And 2007 in context of the entire page:
Yahoo Halloween Logo 2008
Yahoo went for a fun animated logo, where two skeletons walking a skeleton
dog are scare [...]
Filed in: Ask: Other, Google: Logos, Yahoo: Other
Truveo Launches Big International Expansion
Oct 31, 2007 at 5:24am ET by Greg Sterling
After relaunching this August as a video search engine and consumer destination, AOL's Truveo is aggressively expanding on a global basis. By the end of the year, Truveo intends to be in 15 countries, including Russia and Turkey. Starting today it will be available outside the U.S. in France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Spain, Taiwan, and the UK. The URLs all follow the pattern: http://uk.truveo.com. More URLs for the international sites can be found in the release.
YouTube has numerous international sites as well. However, Truveo indexes YouTube video in addition to video from major brand [...]
Filed in: AOL: Video
OpenSocial: Led By Google, Social Networks Band To Take On Facebook
Oct 31, 2007 at 12:33am ET by Danny Sullivan
As expected, the
much-discussed Google social play turns out to be an alliance with other
companies to "open up" social networks and their data to developers.
TechCrunch and the
New York
Times both have early news of an expected announcement tomorrow on how
Google, along with partners like Ning, Linked In, Friendster, and others, will
introduce a set of common APIs -- called OpenSocial -- to be used for getting data from and writing applications for social networks.
The idea, as the New York Times explains, is to help combat the number of
people who are developing for Facebook [...]
Filed in: Google: OpenSocial, Google: Orkut
Let Google Know The Geographic Location of Your Site
Oct 30, 2007 at 11:25pm ET by Vanessa Fox
For years, webmasters have wished for a way to tell search engines the country that should be associated with their sites. Starting today, Google Webmaster Central is offering a solution for those geographic woes.
Country association is used both in overall ranking (for instance, searchers in Canada will see a greater number of Canadian sites than searchers in the United States will) and in country-restricted searches (for instance, searchers on google.co.uk can choose to see only "pages from the UK").
Historically, search engines use the top level domain of a site to determine location. [...]
Filed in: Google: SEO, Google: Webmaster Central, SEO: Domain Names & URLs
SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 30, 2007
Oct 30, 2007 at 3:57pm ET by Barry Schwartz
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on
Search Engine Land and from other
places across the web.
From Search Engine Land:
SMX West Is Coming! Ready To Speak?February 26-28, 2008 is an important date for Search Engine Land. That's when we'll be holding Search Marketing Expo West, the first "big" show in our SMX conference series. This will be a multi-day, multi-track event designed search marketers of all levels. I'll be posting the agenda in mid-November and...
Microsoft's Web Analytics Product Project Gatineau Now In Private BetaThe Microsoft adCenter blog has [...]
Filed in: SearchCap
SMX West Is Coming! Ready To Speak?
Oct 30, 2007 at 1:04pm ET by Danny Sullivan
February 26-28, 2008 is an important date for
Search Engine Land. That's when we'll
be holding Search Marketing Expo
West, the first "big" show in our
SMX conference series. This will be a multi-day, multi-track event designed for
search marketers of all levels. I'll be posting the agenda in mid-November and
telling readers more about the show in coming posts. But for now, I'm looking
for session ideas!
I've been programming search conferences for nearly a decade now, and my
advice on how to become a speaker remains the same: suggest a great, compelling
session on a topic that will [...]
Filed in: SEM Industry: Conferences
Microsoft’s Web Analytics Product Project Gatineau Now In Private Beta
Oct 30, 2007 at 10:38am ET by Vanessa Fox
The Microsoft adCenter blog has announced a private beta of their web analytics program: Project Gatineau. The blog entry notes that features include:
Click and visitor tracking reports
Marketing campaign reporting and conversion tracking
Unique demographic and geographic information from your site visitors
If you want to try it out, you can request an invitation. No word on how quickly the invites are being handed out. Gatineau is free, although it requires an adCenter account (which entails a $5 setup charge).
Rumors about Gatineau began early this year after Microsoft acquired DeepMetr [...]
Filed in: Microsoft: adCenter
Zillow Direct Ads Turn Site Into Dynamic Ad Platform
Oct 30, 2007 at 9:44am ET by Greg Sterling
Zillow has always seen itself as a media company. The real estate site, which launched in early 2006, has continued to add features and listings that are very real-estate centric. But with the introduction of its "DirectAds" program it has become something else -- a site that uses its considerable data and data-mining capabilities to allow for precision ad targeting based on location, income, and other variables. In fact, this is probably the most precise geotargeting ad capability online: down to the house.
The new ad program is designed for regional and national advertisers. The company of [...]
Filed in: Search Ads: General, Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines
Google Phone (Or OS) Ready To Launch: Mobile ‘Maka-Maka’
Oct 30, 2007 at 8:59am ET by Greg Sterling
In what now has become an almost weekly industry exercise in anticipation and speculation, the Wall Street Journal writes about the forthcoming unveiling of Google's plans for its (Phone/OS) mobile launch ("within the next two weeks"). The interesting new aspect of the piece is the idea of the OS/software as an open development platform for third parties (a la the iPhone).
Here's the relevant discussion from the article:
The Google-powered phones are expected to wrap together several Google applications -- among them, its search engine, Google Maps, YouTube, and Gmail email -- that have alr [...]
Filed in: Google: Mobile, Google: Orkut
Become a Premium Member and see all articles in our archives!
Premium Members get unrestricted access to all archives - and more! Premium membership details below...
Become A Search Engine Land Premium Member
Gain insider access to the industry's leading online publication, covering the latest search engine news, in-depth features and analysis of products, technologies and search trends.
Subscribe as a premium member today and you'll get:
- Unlimited access to news & How To articles.
- Exclusive videos & webinars with search experts.
- Expanded community profile & posting privileges.
- Discounts to SMX Conferences & Events.
- 30 Day money back guarantee.
FREE DAILY SEARCH NEWS RECAP!
Stay on top of all the search news with our daily summary, the SearchCap newsletter. View a sample ›
STAY CURRENT THROUGHOUT THE DAY
Search Engine Land produces SMX, the Search Marketing Expo conference series. SMX events deliver the most comprehensive educational and networking experiences - whether you're just starting in search marketing or you're a seasoned expert.
SMX Web Site » | SMX Difference » | SMX News »
Join us at an upcoming SMX event:
- SMX West - March 2-4, 2010
- SMX Munich - March 23-24, 2010
- SMX Toronto - April 8-9, 2010
- SMX Sydney - April 22-23, 2010
- SMX Advanced London - May 17-18, 2010
- SMX Advanced Seattle - June 8-9, 2010
- SMX East - October 4-6, 2010
- SMX Stockholm - October, 2010
Learn more about search marketing with our free online webcasts and webinars from our sister site, Search Marketing Now. Upcoming online events include:
- PPC Advertising & Geo-Targeting - November 12, 2009
- Making Online Marketing Relevant and Responsive: Tactics and A Tool for Success - November 17, 2009
- Ask the Search Engines: War Stories from the World Tour - December 1, 2009
TRACK US SOCIALLY
- Wall Street Journal Recommended Reading
- Ad Age Power 150 Blog
- Technorati Top 100 Blog
- Techmeme Leaderboard Source
- Best Search Engine Community/Forum
© 2009 Third Door Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Google, Yahoo & Microsoft logos trademark respective companies and used with permission.
