Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Search Biz: Where's Eurekster?, Grab Google's Gazillions?, WiFi "On Steriods," & Yahoo Readies For Proxy Battle Google’s recent decision to make its UK keyword bidding policy conform with the US practice of allowing competitors to bid on each other’s brands has drawn ire and threats of legal action. Today brings more such news of potential legal action against Google from a range of travel companies... Search Share Compared: Ratings Service Faceoff [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Google’s recent decision to make its UK keyword bidding policy conform with the US practice of allowing competitors to bid on each other’s brands has drawn ire and threats of legal action. Today brings more such news of potential legal action against Google from a range of travel companies and retailers in the UK. Also angry at Google is BusinessWeek writer Roben Farzad, who penned a sarcastic and even, at times, bitter commentary called Let’s Grab Google’s Gazillions, which laments the fact that Google is so successful and has so much cash in a economy that looks pretty bad for lots [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Legal: Trademarks | Microsoft & Yahoo Search Deal | Search Biz

With the latest search popularity stats now in from Hitwise, Nielsen, comScore, and Compete, it's time to pit them against each other and see what they agree -- and don't agree -- about in terms of search engine popularity. Why not show a full year's worth of data? Ratings methodology changes mean I can only go back to June 2007 for comScore and October 2007 for Nielsen. Normally I would also show raw number of searches in addition to search share. See the caveats section below which explains why this is important. However, I don't have Compete figures this month. Without them, I didn't wa [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Stats: Compete | Stats: comScore | Stats: Hitwise | Stats: NetRatings | Stats: Popularity

Compete makes it a quadfecta! No real surprise, the latest search engine share stats out from Compete show Google has hit a new high -- just as did previous stats out this month from Hitwise, Nielsen and comScore. Plus, an interesting look at how much search traffic Microsoft's Live Search Club generates. NOTE: ON THE PIE CHART ABOVE, AOL'S LABEL IS SHOWN OVER THE "ASK" SLICE AND THE ASK FIGURE SHOULD BE 3.5%. THE PIE SLICE PROPORTIONS THEMSELVES ARE CORRECT. SORRY I DON'T HAVE TIME TO FIX THE LABELS NOW! Here's the rundown for April 2008: Google: 68.9% Yahoo: 14.8% Microsof [...]

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

In this week's Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. A real live Yahoo Search Monkey: Google has special parking spots for expecting mothers: Here is an intense Yahoo Korea Foosball Match: Google has branded disposable coffee cups and paper towels? Okay, but a pool table also! Someone's personal Googleplex: Yahoo chefs in training? Google goes on a cruise? [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Search In Pictures

Wow. Earlier this month, I heard Microsoft execs highlight Live Search Books as a key advance they were doing in search. Today, news that the site along with Live Search Academic are being closed next week, since they lack the "high consumer intent" that Microsoft is now focusing on. So much for trying to seem like the much-needed "good" alternative to Google. From Microsoft's blog post: Today we informed our partners that we are ending the Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects and that both sites will be taken down next week. Books and scholarly publications wi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Microsoft: Live Search Academic | Microsoft: Live Search Books

Remember when AOL released private search information back in August of 2006? Well, that story is now back in the news, after a two-year hiatus. Ars Technica reports that a play has been created around one of those searches, specifically searcher number 927. The play is named "USER 927: U are what U Seek" and is coming to a theater in Philadelphia on June 6th. Here is the play's abstract: Leah Letts has moved to Indiana with her 14-year-old daughter Deena to escape the rat race of New York City. Osterville is a safe haven, a place where people put down roots, where everyone knows everyone [...]

Related Topics: AOL: General | Channel: Consumer | Legal: Privacy | Search & Society: General

A week ago Google announced the release of a safe browsing diagnostic tool. To use the tool, just append a URL to the end of http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=. For example, to test this site, you would enter http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://searchengineland.com/. Google will then return four sets of security information about that page. (1) The current listing status of a site and also information on how often a site or parts of it were listed in the past. (2) The last time Google analyzed the page, when it was last malicious, what kind of [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Security | Google: SEO

In The Trenches is a weekly spotlight of tips, tricks, and news about the tools search engine marketing professionals use to give them a leg up on the competition. Today: News from the search engines, today's in-depth look, "Google Tools, Part 3" and this week's free tips/resources. News from the search engines Google AdWords: Opening our content network to third parties. I saw that headline on Monday morning in Google's blog and my jaw dropped. Here's what they said: "Today, we're announcing that Google is accepting third-party advertising tags on the Google content network in North Am [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Search Marketing Toolbox

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: comScore: Google Gets High Again In US Search Share As with recent search stats from Hitwise and Nielsen, comScore's latest stats for April 2008 search engine share in the United States shows Google hitting a new high, breaking through the 60% mark for the first time with comScore's measurements.... Google News Now On EarthEarlier this week, Google added Google News to Earth. This follows the earlier addition of the NY Times to Earth. Other companies p [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

As with recent search stats from Hitwise and Nielsen, comScore's latest stats for April 2008 search engine share in the United States shows Google hitting a new high, breaking through the 60% mark for the first time with comScore's measurements. Searches that happened on the five "core" search engines that comScore tracks stack up as follows: Google: 61.6% Yahoo: 20.4% Microsoft: 9.1% AOL: 4.6% Ask: 4.3% The trend over time? Here's data going back to June 2007 (I don't have previous months because comScore changed its methodology, and I don't have adjusted figures prior to tha [...]

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

Earlier this week, Google added Google News to Earth. This follows the earlier addition of the NY Times to Earth. Other companies plotting news on a map include MetaCarta, Everyblock, Outside.in, YourStreet and a couple of others. Here are some screenshots of News in Earth (London): [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Earth | Google: News

The Web is getting more social, and the internet allows conversations between consumers and those who sell goods and services online on a scale that can be global in reach. The nature of that conversation has changed from the days of mass media to now, and success in business on the Web may rely more than ever on having a voice that people can rely upon, can relate to, and can trust. People want to connect with other people when they conduct business online, whether the business is a large one, or a small one. One of the advantages that a small business may have is that it can be easier f [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Small Is Beautiful

The NY Times covers the issue of whether Google's potential paid search deal with Yahoo can survive anti-trust scrutiny. The bottom line involves analysis of how the deal might impact the marketplace and whether it would reduce competition and lead to higher prices for search marketers. Google steadfastly says no, argues that in an auction it cannot control pricing and makes analogies to other industries and companies that both cooperate and compete. Anti-trust experts quoted in the piece, however, speculate about whether the deal might potentially weaken Yahoo over the long term and minimiz [...]

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

Microsoft this week has done a number of things in the mobile space, in addition to its introduction of the Live Search Cashback program on the desktop (which presumably will extend to mobile search/shopping). Windows Live launched a new homepage for mobile and the company introduced graphical ads and paid search for mobile. The new mobile home page for Windows Live emphasizes social networking features, with links to mobile Messenger and Spaces. There's also a friend feed ("What's New"): Mobile social networking will ultimately be an important phenomenon in mobile. There are a range of e [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Microsoft: Bing Mobile

Link baiting entered a new area last week when Lyndon Antcliff had success with a fake story being picked up by some mainstream media sites as well as social news sites. Controversy erupted over the tactic, and now it likely will go into a second cycle after Google's Matt Cutts has suggested that Google might penalize pages that don't disclose stories are fake. The story was named 13 Year Old Steals Dad's Credit Card to Buy Hookers, but it wasn't true. Nevertheless, several news agencies picked up the story, plus it made it to the front page of Digg and many other social media sites and garn [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Link Building: Linkbait | SEO: Spamming

In a May 1st post to this column, my colleague Tom Wilde questioned whether direct response or brand marketing would lead the inflow of dollars to the online video advertising market. While both forms of advertising are potentially applicable to what is expected to be a $4B (eMarketer) to $7B (Jupiter) market by 2011, a key question for content producers and media companies is how to capture a meaningful share of these ad dollars. To answer this question, it is useful to understand the key growth drivers and their relative contribution to the anticipated market growth. For video advertis [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Video Search

And the winner of the "Doodle 4 Google" competition is... Grace (Suryung) Moon, a 6th grader from Canyon Middle School in Castro Valley, California. She designed the Google logo, "Up in the Clouds," which she said, "expresses a world in the sky." The logo is now featured on Google's home page. The national finalists include: Spencer Norton from Ashbrook Elementary School, Lumberton, NJ with his "If the Whole World Rocked" doodle in the K-3 group: Rebecca Olene from Pioneer Ridge Freshmen Center, Carver, Minnesota with "What if Rainforest were saved?" in the 7-9 grade group: Gabriel K [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Logos

Lawmaker questions Google over privacy practices from Reuters reports Texas Rep. Joe Barton from the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee quizzed Google on how they will integrate DoubleClick's data with their own. Some questions posed include how user data from DoubleClick would be merged into Google's data, how that data would be used, and if Google planned to continue allowing users to opt out of ad-serving cookies. Google was asked to reply to the committee by June 6. Google responded: We have had a constructive ongoing dialogue with Rep. Barton's staff about ou [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display | Google: DoubleClick | Google: Legal | Legal: Privacy

Google has a set of advanced search operators that can be accessed either through the advanced search page, or by using specialized commands in conjunction with your query from any Google web search box. One of the most useful for search engine optimization is the "site:" operator. Google's "site:" is an advanced search operator that allows you to see the URLs they have indexed for your website. To access it, you simply type into Google's search box the following: site:www.example.com Substituting your own domain for example.com, of course. This is one of the first things we do when res [...]

Related Topics: All Things SEO | Channel: SEO | Search Features: Commands