Yahoo! Found Guilty of Mass Copyright Infringement from TorrentFreak reports Yahoo China lost the case over linking to unlicensed music in China. Didn't they already lose the case? Well, in April they were ordered to remove those links and ordered to pay 200,000 yuan. But they then appealed that ruling in November. Now the Beijing Court rejected that appeal and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is victorious. What confuses a lot of people is that Baidu was sued for a similar issue and they won the case against the music labels back in November of 2006. Joh [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Legal: Copyright | Yahoo: Legal | Yahoo: Music | Yahoo: Outside US

Lee Odden is compiling a list of regional search and interactive marketing associations and is asking for your help. He currently has over 25 on the list, but I am sure there are a lot more. If you know of any he is missing, comment at his blog and let's help him compile the ultimate list! [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Organizations

TechCrunch reported last night that travel meta-search site Kayak had closed a whopping $196 million round and then turned around and bought competitor SideStep for almost that same amount. The press release officially describes the transaction as a merger and both brands will apparently be preserved, but Kayak is clearly the dominant party and acquirer. Confirmation of that comes in a curious quote from Kayak CTO Paul English in the release, "As a native Bostonian, I am also personally gratified to finally see an East Coast technology firm purchasing a West Coast counterpart." Interestingly [...]

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

Happy Holidays, Search Engine Land Readers! The logos above are from Google, Yahoo, and Ask.com for the 2007 holiday season. Google will actually be uploading a new holiday logo each day, Yahoo's logo is very animated, and Ask.com has snowflakes falling from the sky! Plus, as always, '07 Holiday Season Logos & Themes From Search Industry shows the logos from other search related sites, including Dogpile at the Search Engine Roundtable. Happy holidays! [...]

Related Topics: Ask: General | Channel: Consumer | Google: Logos | Yahoo: Marketing

Finally, Barry and I can share an application that we've been cooking up -- Search News For Facebook. Install this, and by default you'll get the top headlines from Search Engine Land and Search Engine Roundtable combined, showing on your Facebook profile page. You can also add your own feed or any feeds you like using the applications settings. You'll notice there's also a thermometer that runs alongside the headlines, designed to show you what we predict the day's temperature in terms of search news will be. Barry and I always have a lot of fun with this, trying to figure out at the start of [...]

Related Topics: About Search Engine Land | Channel: Other

I'm now taking nominations for the 2007 top 10 list of the funniest/most irreverent blog entries in search. Why? The search industry is important. I mean, what industry (besides the sex industry) can singlehandedly cause Google to change its vaunted PageRank algo? However, on occasion we tend to take ourselves too seriously. I have always thought that the "10 Best of the Year" idea always had merit as a blog entry, but it was so often used by others that I couldn't see my way clear to figure out how to play in that game... I mean, when you are competing with marketers on how to best market y [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Community

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 oneSearch To Power Wireless Carrier Portals In Latin AmericaEven as attention has been focused on Google's 700 MHz spectrum bid and its Android mobile platform, Yahoo has been aggressively doing business development with mobile operators and handset makers around the world, in Asia, Europe and now Latin America. This morning Yahoo announced that it had inked another major... FCC Accepts Google Airwaves, Inc's 700MHz Application; AT&T's Deemed Inc [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Even as attention has been focused on Google's 700 MHz spectrum bid and its Android mobile platform, Yahoo has been aggressively doing business development with mobile operators and handset makers around the world, in Asia, Europe, and now Latin America. This morning Yahoo announced that it had inked another major wireless distribution deal with America Movil. Under the deal, which spans 16 countries and roughly 143 million mobile subscribers in Latin America and the Caribbean, Yahoo's oneSearch "will be the default mobile search service on America Movil's wireless carriers' portals." These [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Yahoo: Mobile & Go

When the applications were submitted to the FCC to bid in the forthcoming 700MHz wireless spectrum auction, it appeared that there were going to be a handful of major bidders: Verizon, AT&T, Cox Communications, Frontier Wireless, MetroPCS, and Google. In fact, there were 266 would-be bidders that submitted applications, although the FCC accepted only 96 of them. The rest were deemed incomplete. Google Airwaves, Inc. was one of the 96 accepted applications, while many others were put on the incomplete list, including Alltel, AT&T, Cox, Chevron, MetroPCS, Qualcomm, and numerous others. These i [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile

I've meant for ages to put a plug in for Search Marketing Standard, the print magazine that Boris Mordkovich started in 2006. Since then, it has continued on each quarter, and it's pretty cool to see search marketing articles playing out in print. Boris is on a readership campaign with some special offers and has one for Search Engine Land readers that gives you an annual subscription for only $4.95 ($6.60 outside the US). Plus, each subscription purchased through the offer will generate a $1 donation to the Toys For Tots charity. So, need some print reading material? Go here and use 67SEL as [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Blogs & Forums

The US Federal Trade Commission has granted its approval for Google to purchase DoubleClick. Google has a press release up with the news (and see also here), and the FTC announcement is here. The many parties have raised privacy issues with the deal, and the FTC noted this was not germane to its approval: Although interested parties have raised concerns about the proposed acquisition’s impact on consumer privacy, the Commission observed that such issues are "not unique to Google and DoubleClick," and "extend to the entire online advertising marketplace." The Commissioners further wrote th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Acquisitions

Microsoft, Google, Yahoo to Pay $31.5M Over Illegal Gambling Ads from ABC News reports the big three search engine companies settled with the US Justice Department to pay $31.5 million to educate that online gambling is illegal in the United States. Microsoft is paying the most with $21 million, followed by Yahoo shelling out $7.5 million and Google paying $3 million. The money will go into a government backed fund used to air public service announcements. Microsoft is also paying $9 million to International Center for Missing and Exploited Children as part of this settlement. For more cov [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Legal | Legal: General | Microsoft: Business Issues | Yahoo: Legal

Group says Ask's privacy feature is flawed from News.com reports that the Electronic Privacy Information Center has found a few flaws in AskEraser, Ask.com's new privacy searching feature. The three problems are: AskEraser uses an opt-out cookie instead of an opt-in cookie. Ask stores the time that the user enables AskEraser, which can potentially be used to figure out searches done while using AskEraser. Ask's FAQs says that if a court order requires them to turn over search data, even with AskEraser on, they will. My main issue is with the last point is that Ask has this line in the [...]

Related Topics: Ask: General | Ask: Web Search | Channel: Search | Legal: Privacy

Former Blogger Googler Shellen joins LiveJournal from News.com reports Jason Shellen, the former Google Reader product manager, is joining LiveJournal as the vice president of product development. Shellen announced his departure from Google in July of this year. He said he left because he has the "entrepreneurial/start-up bug," where he needs to be with a smaller start up company. Shellen will be working in LiveJournal's new San Francisco location in early 2008. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Google: Employees | Google: Reader

If you are a large online retailer, you're looking at thousands upon thousands of pages that have the opportunity to get crawled and indexed in the SERPs (search engine results pages). You're also looking at near infinite choices for how you interlink all those pages. Out of all those permutations, there is one configuration that is the most optimal from an SEO perspective. That's because it maximizes the flow of link juice (e.g., PageRank if you're speaking purely in Google terms) to your most important pages and minimizes (or cuts off completely) the flow of link juice to your least import [...]

Related Topics: All Things SEO | Channel: SEO | Link Building: General | SEO: General

Recently, there was a thread in the High Rankings Forum asking whether SEO is an extra skill or a prerequisite for any website designer/developer. It was a great question that spurred a lot of conversation. It goes without saying that the average small-business owner in 2007 knows that they need a website. But do they know that they need SEO, or do they just assume that once they have a website it will naturally be found in Google for search queries for which it's relevant? Some website designers mention SEO as part of their services, either built into the design or as an add-on, but the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | SEM Industry: General | SEO: General | Small Is Beautiful

Earlier today, we reported that over 4 million Google AdSense ads were being indexed by Microsoft Live Search. Tonight, the Microsoft Live Search Webmaster Center blog has posted that they've identified and fixed the issue and that search results should return to normal within the next few days. What happened? Google AdWords URLs are blocked by Google's robots.txt file with this command: Disallow: /pagead/ The blog post explains that when Live Search finds links to pages that are blocked by robots.txt, they may index the link (as listed URL) and anchor text (as the listed title). Google a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: AdSense | Google: AdWords | Microsoft: Bing SEO

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: New Google Privacy Videos Offer Advice On Product SettingsIf US Congressman Joe Barton never got an answer to his many questions about Google Privacy (which I thought wasted time asking for stuff an intern could locate), perhaps he'll be happy watching some of Google's latest videos released that cover some very specific privacy issues on a product-by-product basis.... Google & Human Quality Reviews: Old News ReturnsA quote from Google's director of re [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

If US Congressman Joe Barton never got an answer to his many questions about Google Privacy (which I thought wasted time asking for stuff an intern could locate), perhaps he'll be happy watching some of Google's latest videos released that cover some very specific privacy issues on a product-by-product basis. They join some other video content to help grow the Google Privacy Channel on YouTube that was created last month. Here's a rundown: Google Privacy Tips: Unlisting Phone Numbers Google Privacy Tips: Street View Google Privacy Tips: Google Calendar Google Privacy Tips: Chat &qu [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Marketing | Legal: Privacy

A quote from Google's director of research Peter Norvig in an article at Technology Review about how human reviewers assess Google's search quality is starting to pick up play on the web and will no doubt grow. Problem is, it's not news. Still, I suppose it's interesting to those who are new to the space or missed the attention it got back in 2005. Some history follows. Back in June 2005, Henk van Ess put out information about how Google uses temporary employees to review search results and rate the quality of them. He picked up a little hype by calling it the "Google Secret E [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Search Quality Raters | Google: Web Search