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 CIO: Morgan Stanley's Benjamin Fried News.com reports that Benjamin Fried, a Morgan Stanley managing director, has been pegged to fill the chief information officer spot that opened up when Douglas Merrill left earlier this month. Google's confirmed the move.... MicroHoo: Let The Proxy Fight Begin! The Seattle PI is suggesting that the fight for control of Yahoo's board, which Microsoft had previously threatened, may begin in earnest this weeken [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

News.com reports that Benjamin Fried, a Morgan Stanley managing director, has been pegged to fill the chief information officer spot that opened up when Douglas Merrill left earlier this month. Google's confirmed the move. That's fast work. The company is still seeking a new chief financial officer after George Reyes announced he was leaving last August. Over half a year later, Reyes remains on while the search for a replacement continues. See Megachart & Analysis: Google Management Changes, 2000-2008 for a look at Google top management changes over the years. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Employees

The Seattle PI is suggesting that the fight for control of Yahoo's board, which Microsoft had previously threatened, may begin in earnest this weekend. Conversations with institutional shareholders have already been taking place. The three week deadline set by Steve Ballmer for Yahoo to come to the table will expire this weekend; hence the Seattle PI's speculation. A more sympathetic board would presumably vote to accept the offer on the table, which Microsoft CEO Ballmer has so far refused to increase. The hostile takeover effort, if fully commenced, would be expensive and potentially damag [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Microsoft & Yahoo Search Deal

Today, Yahoo! is providing a "limited preview" of a tool that enables developers to create SearchMonkey applications. Yahoo! CTO Ari Balogh will be unveiling the tool at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco today, and more details are available in the Yahoo! Search Blog. Yahoo! first announced SearchMonkey in February at SMX West, and followed up with more details in March. Yahoo! will hold a developer day on May 15th as a formal kickoff. For now, you can sign up to be included in the preview. Below, more about SearchMonkey and what's available in the new developer tool. SearchMonkey en [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Yahoo: Search Monkey

According to Reuters the US Justice Department is taking a look at the paid search partnership test between Google and Yahoo. According to the article, there are antitrust concerns raised by the test and its implications and the Justice Department has "initiated an investigation" of it. The article goes on to say, "The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said some of the government's concern focused on a telephone call from Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt to Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang to offer help in thwarting Microsoft's bid worth around $44 billion." The idea is that a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: Partnerships | Legal: General | Microsoft & Yahoo Search Deal | Yahoo: Partnerships | Yahoo: Search Ads

Yahoo just announced that it has added a nifty tool to Local (called "search circle") that allows uses to alter the geographic scope of results by expanding or narrowing a circle on the map. The circle can also be dragged to a particular area easily, allowing for more efficient neighborhood search (screenshots below and on the Yahoo Local & Maps Blog). Here's an example search for "Restaurants, San Francisco": The circle can then be easily narrowed or shifted, bringing up a different set of results by location: Ask City has had a similar tool for some time, allowing users to draw [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Yahoo: Maps & Local

Google launched the set geographic target feature in October of last year. Since then, many webmasters began experimenting with it and I have personally not seen too many complaints about it, which is always a good thing. Google's Webmaster Central team said they have been receiving some questions on the tool, so they have decided to produce a video to answer some of those questions. In the video, Webmaster Trends Analyst Susan Moskwa explains how Google determines where you site is located and how that might impact how it ranks in their local search engines. In addition, she explains tha [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Google: Webmaster Central

Is your website sick? In many ways, SEO consultants are like doctors, only instead of analyzing your personal health symptoms, we analyze the overall health of your website. It's true we're not working with life or death situations the same way doctors do, but having a website that is not receiving all the targeted search engine traffic it could be is a sign of a sick website. When working with a new client our first task is to research their website's symptoms of underperformance. Once we diagnose what the problems are, we can provide a "cure" that will make the website perform better. [...]

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

Google hands over data on suspected pedophiles to Brazil via the AFP reports Google has finally handed over profiles of suspected pedophiles to Brazilian authorities. As expected, Google did hand over 3,261 files with information about alleged pedophilia activities in Google's Orkut communities. A member of the senate commission, Demostenes Torres, believes the data will provide enough evidence to incriminate about 200 pedophiles in Brazil. In fact, he said about 90% of pedophilia complaints in Brazil come from Orkut. In any event, this step hopefully concludes a saga that has been going [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Google: Legal | Google: Orkut | Google: Outside US | Legal: Privacy

Yesterday Google announced mobile image ads. The ads are displayed on the mobile sites of publishers that are participating in AdSense for mobile (or that opt-in to the new program). Mobile image ads are created in users' AdWords accounts and require more or less the same type of setup as traditional AdSense ads. The image ads are keyword targeted, priced on a PPC basis, and must be associated with a mobile URL (rather than an HTML page), so a mobile site or landing page is a prerequisite to participating in the program. However, Google hosts mobile landing pages for advertisers that don't h [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: AdSense | Google: Mobile

For those of you in need of a turn-key, hosted solution to gain natural search engine visibility for your video and audio content, the company EveryZing says they’re the ticket. EveryZing’s solution consists of a suite of products: ezSEARCH, ezSEO, and RAMP. The products are designed to provide users with a powerful multimedia search tool, publishers with the metrics and editorial controls, and search engines with crawlable text-based fodder they reward with higher rankings. At the core of EveryZing’s product is a speech-to-text technology developed by BBN Technologies with $50 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Search Engines: Video Search Engines | Video Search

We all know Social Media Marketing can be pretty time consuming. There are numerous social media communities, each requiring you to sign up, make a profile, and participate, in order to have any success with them. So it is only natural that you would like to have some helpful tools to short cut the process wherever possible. Below we will go through each of the major social communities that I use and outline some of the best tools to help you manage and maintain your accounts. Digg A community driven social news site where users submit articles and the community votes them up or down. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search & Social | Social Media Marketing

A few weeks back I did a post on my blog about creating Firefox quick search bookmarks. I was surprised at how well received it was, though I think people were most pleased with the fact that I had created a download of a very small selection of the large list of SEO related Firefox quick searches that I use. If you've ever seen me do a site review, you'd know I appear lost without my laptop, which contains all of my quick searches. Since the small list of general SEO ones I previously published was well received, I figured I would create a download of some of the ones I find to be [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Building: General | Link Week | Search Features: Commands

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 Social: Mahalo To Do Microformats, Search Wikia Adds Alpha 0.2 Features & MoreNews from the first day of our SMX Social Media Marketing conference. Mahalo is now doing microformats as a way to enhance its search results and allow local businesses to be added to your address book. Wikia Search has gone to "Alpha 0.2" with new features. And other conference coverage,... Microsoft Dips In Compete's Revised March 08 Search FiguresWhen I did m [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

One of the biggest challenges B2B clients grapple with is content creation. Developing material that is fresh, relevant, and keeps users coming back—while also being SEO-friendly—can be difficult. This is a problem. Fortunately though, there’s an easy and effective solution. And it’s closer than you might think. The situation For the most part, B2B organizations struggle with content development for one reason, and it’s not because they don’t have anything to say. Rather, the problem can be attributed to staffing, or a lack thereof, as content development typi [...]

Related Topics: B2B Search Marketing | Channel: SEO | SEO: Writing & Body Copy

News from the first day of our SMX Social Media Marketing conference. Mahalo is now doing microformats as a way to enhance its search results and allow local businesses to be added to your address book. Wikia Search has gone to "Alpha 0.2" with new features. And other conference coverage, below. Jason Calacanis of Mahalo, Jimmy Wales of Wikia Search, and Steven Marder of Eurekster all spoke at the end of the day on our Social Search: The Human Challengers panel. Lisa Barone provides live blogging coverage in her Keynote - Social Search: The Human Challengers post at the Bruce Cla [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Search 4.0 | Search Engines: Mahalo | Search Engines: Search Wikia | Search Engines: Social Search Engines | SEM Industry: Conferences

When I did my Ratings Service Faceoff: Search Share Compared, June 2007 To March 2008 post last week, I noted that Microsoft had an odd increase according to Compete for March 2008. The company now says this was due to Live Search Club traffic that it shouldn't have counted. Microsoft's US share for March 2008 drops from 10.2% to 8.5% as a result. From Compete's blog post: As March search stats were published by the other major third party measurement companies over the past few weeks I started to get a little worried about our post from a couple of weeks ago. So we decided to go a little [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Stats: Compete | Stats: Popularity

Everyone has searched on his/her own name and some people even have real-time news alerts tied to their names. Now a new online documentary takes this vanity search phenomenon to a new level with Google Me the Movie. Part time actor Jim Killeen discovered there were six other Jim Killeens and so he went around the world and interviewed them, asking each the same set of questions, and made a film out of it. But this isn't the first film of its kind. In 2004 a film came out about Dave Gorman's Googlewhack experiences, which had been an HBO special and, before it, a live one man show. Google M [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: General

Yahoo announced a new reporting feature in the search marketing portal that enables advertisers to see which clicks Yahoo has deemed to be invalid. The report is named the "Click Filter Report" and is available by clicking the "Reports" tab, then selecting "Click Filter" under the "Traffic Quality Reports" section in the Reports Navigator on the left side of the screen. In this report, you can see exactly which clicks Yahoo is classifying as clicks that were not from a valid source. According to Yahoo, you won't be billed for these clicks. Yahoo said they created the report for three reaso [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Yahoo: Search Ads

Yahoo's generally solid quarter yesterday helps make the case that the company is worth more than the current value of Microsoft's bid. In advance of the earnings call yesterday, however, Steve Ballmer said that the company was not prepared to offer any more than what it already had put on the table. Now today, in the wake of Yahoo's earnings, he says he's "prepared to move forward alone, without Yahoo." Yahoo's position and actions, combined with Ballmer's, make for a high-stakes game of "chicken." Is Microsoft negotiating with a threat to walk away (of course)? But they also may be frustra [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Microsoft & Yahoo Search Deal