May 4, 2012 at 8:42am ET by Barry Schwartz

Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Inktomi was the search engine that many SEOs focused on when optimizing their sites - they powered Yahoo, HotBot and many other portals and search engines. But soon later, Google began to dominate and Inktomi was bought out by Yahoo for just $250 million. Diego Basch, a former Senior Software Engineer at Inktomi, who is now Director of Engineering at LinkedIn explained why on his personal blog. He outlines the major signs of the fall of Inktomi when he noticed most of the engineers at Inktomi using Google to find content, instead of Inktomi. Bu [...]

Trada Secures Additional $9M In Funding From Google Ventures & Foundry Group

Jan 5, 2012 at 9:33am ET by Barry Schwartz

Trada, the crowdsourced PPC marketplace, has secured an additional $9 million in funding from their existing investors, Google Ventures and Foundry Group. This additional seed of Series D financing brings the total money raised for Trada to $17 million. Trada basically lets you offload your PPC management onto a community of SEM experts, who spend the budgets you set up as they see best. The money is spent on Google, Bing, Facebook and other PPC platforms and Trada handles the payment exchange between the SEMs and the company advertising, while taking a small percentage of that spend. [...]

Acquisio Acquires ClickEquations & Partners With Channel Intelligence

Dec 21, 2011 at 1:48pm ET by Chris Sherman

Acquisio, provider of automated tools for search, display and social advertising, has acquired the ClickEquations search marketing platform from Channel Intelligence, and announced a partnership with that firm. Acquisio plans to integrate some of the search-focused functionality currently available on the ClickEquations platform. Acquisio’s existing clients will gain access to the Channel Intelligence Shopping Engines and Channel Intelligence Product Search solutions. ClickEquations clients will now be managed and supported by Acquisio and will have access to all Acquisio services. Mo [...]

Adobe To Acquire Digital Marketing Agency Efficient Frontier

Nov 30, 2011 at 11:20am ET by Pamela Parker

Adobe has agreed to acquire digital marketing agency Efficient Frontier, which has a strong search marketing practice and technology to manage Facebook advertising. The companies didn't disclose the terms of the deal. The companies said Efficient Frontier would become a part of Adobe's Digital Marketing suite, which includes technologies and services it acquired with web analytics and optimization firm Omniture in 2009. Adobe has long been building up its capabilities in the digital marketing space, largely through acquisition. Earlier this month, it bought Auditude, a video ad manag [...]

How The Food Network Suddenly Spiked In Popularity & Why comScore Isn’t Buying It

Jun 25, 2011 at 2:08pm ET by Vanessa Fox

In May 2011, the mantle of the most-trafficked food site according to comScore passed to Food Network from AllRecipes, who had held the position for over two years. What was its secret recipe? Buying an audience through the AdOn network – a recipe that apparently didn’t ultimately taste right to comScore. They determined the surge was due to "invalid" traffic and revised the numbers, putting AllRecipes back on top. Why comScore Numbers Matter So Much In today’s world of digital content powered by online advertising, advertisers and publishers alike keep a close eye on the numbers. Web [...]

Live Blogging Baidu CEO Robin Li At Web 2.0 Summit

Nov 15, 2010 at 8:03pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Baidu CEO & Chairman Robin Li will be speaking today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. I’m here and will be live blogging his remarks, when the session begins. Li is set to speak at 5:15pm Pacific, and he’ll be interviewed on stage by John Battelle. Live blogging to start shortly. There’s also a live stream here. Don't know much about Baidu? China's largest search engine. BusinessWeek just did a big profile about it, which you can read here or get the highlights from our How Google Could Have Bought Baidu And Other Fascinating Details About China’s Largest Search En [...]

How Google Could Have Bought Baidu And Other Fascinating Details About China’s Largest Search Engine

Nov 12, 2010 at 9:35am ET by Greg Sterling

BusinessWeek has published a terrific and lengthy article on Chinese search engine Baidu, how it "won" China and its global aspirations. The following is the CliffsNotes version. Baidu holds a 73 percent market share in China, the world's largest internet market. The company is worth $38 billion and is 57 percent larger than Yahoo. Its shares have doubled in value since Google "withdrew" from China to Hong Kong earlier this year. Baidu CEO Robin Li (41) got a masters at SUNY Buffalo. He once worked at Infoseek and is now the second richest man in China. The piece contains a number of [...]

Google Out To Hurt Companies That Issue Press Releases, At Least According to Reuters

Apr 19, 2010 at 1:30am ET by Vanessa Fox

Last week, Google made a bold move that some worry may block audiences from information and harm individuals. This move sent controversial shockwaves through the investment community and mainstream media! It was unorthodox and raised many questions! Or maybe not. The bold move? It issued its first quarter 2010 financial results on investor.google.com and said that future financial performance numbers would be announced on the web site. Shocking for a web company in this day and age of the web, no? Right. No. And the mainstream media and investor community that was so outraged? That woul [...]

Micro-Hoo: The Details Emerge With SEC Filing

Aug 5, 2009 at 12:01pm ET by Greg Sterling

First to pounce on the SEC 8-K filing by Yahoo was PaidContent, which provides an extensive bulleted list of many of the deal terms not revealed last week during the frenzy of conference calls and articles that followed the official announcement of the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal. CNET also writes about selected aspects of the deal contained in the filing, specifically an "escape clause" (termination) for Yahoo (see below). And the AP has a short piece on how the deal terms require Microsoft to hire at least 400 Yahoo employees. Here are some verbatim excerpts from the SEC filing: Negotiat [...]

Bing + Yahoo: What Does It Mean For Users?

Jul 31, 2009 at 12:07pm ET by Gord Hotchkiss

The deal is done. Microsoft has swallowed Yahoo search whole and we can all be put out of our long, lingering misery. Yahoo has given up on search and thrown in the towel. But, outside this industry and our incestuous little gossip circle, what does it really mean for average folks? Does it make a difference... really? When all is said and done, will the news amount to a hill of beans? Well, in the long run, it's probably a good thing for most of the players involved, including users. My original concern when rumors of Microhoo started to fly was the distraction that the integration of two [...]

Search Marketing Firm, Conductor, Raises $10 Million

Apr 29, 2009 at 8:59am ET by Barry Schwartz

Conductor, a search marketing firm, has announced they have raised $10 million in funding from Matrix Partners and FirstMark Capital. This is more good news from the search industry showing that venture capital companies are still investing in search marketing firms. Yesterday, we reported that Marin software raised $13 million and today, Conductor raised $10 million. Here are statements from the release: "We see persistent demand from large organizations to invest in SEO. However, lacking the tools to manage and measure that investment, many large organizations are effectively ina [...]

Search Marketing Firm, Marin Software, Raises Additional $13 Million

Apr 28, 2009 at 10:14am ET by Barry Schwartz

paidContent.org reports Marin Software, a search marketing company, has raised an additional $13 million venture capital. The primary source of the money came from DAG Ventures, adding up to Marin raising a total of about $25 million in funding from sources such as Benchmark Capital, Amicus Capital and Focus Ventures. Marin reportedly manages $300 million of online ad spend annually for clients such as ZipRealty and Microsoft's Razorfish. It is nice to see companies in the search field still able to raise money in these slow economic times. [...]

Firefox Drops Google For Yandex In Russia, But Big Loser May Be Rambler

Jan 12, 2009 at 8:41am ET by Barry Schwartz

Mozilla's General Counsel, Harvey Anderson, announced the Russian builds of Firefox 3.1 will drop Google for Yandex. He explained that after months of research and surveys, Mozilla learned that their "Russian users really wanted direct access to the Yandex search." So, in the next build of Firefox, the default search provider will be Yandex for Russian users. The big loser in all of this might not be Google. PaidContent.org reports that Rambler, one of the big Russian portals, will be letting their CEO go after seeing their market share drop from 14.9 percent last year to just 6.4 percent [...]

Interbrand Ranks Brand Value: Coke Number 1, MSFT Number 3, Google Number 10

Sep 19, 2008 at 10:21am ET by Greg Sterling

BusinessWeek and Interbrand have come out with their latest ranking of the value of global brands. The big winners, in terms of positive change in the value of the brand, were Google, Apple and Amazon in that order. The greatest losers included Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Citi, Ford and Gap. The methodology for ranking the brands is described below. Here are the top 10, showing their rankings compared with 2007: Source: Interbrand (2008) Here's how Interbrand evaluates brands: All brands [are] subject to the following criteria: --There must be substantial publicly available financia [...]

Microsoft & Yahoo Shuffle Business Internally

Aug 21, 2008 at 8:26am ET by Barry Schwartz

While Microsoft and Yahoo move further apart from creating Microhoo, they both continue to make changes internally with the intention of building out a better search company. paidContent.org reports Microsoft is restructuring their Search Business Group. Microsoft is adding a new group focused on commercial search. Leading the commercial search unit is Jeff Kelisky, the CEO of Multimap, who will be the general manager of this unit. That unit will be responsible for Live Search cashback, MSN Shopping, local, consumer mapping, Virtual Earth, and mobile. Jeff's boss is Brad Goldberg, the GM [...]

Google Loses Richard Kimber To Friendster & Yahoo Loses Adam Hyder To Jobvite

Aug 5, 2008 at 9:57am ET by Barry Schwartz

TechCrunch is reporting that Google and Yahoo both lost two important employees. Google lost Richard Kimber, Google's Managing Director of Sales and Operations for South East Asia, to Friendster. Yahoo lost Adam Hyder, Yahoo's Senior Director of Engineering for its Advertising Management Platform, to Jobvite. Richard Kimber will be the new CEO of Friendster, and the old CEO, Kent Lindstrom, will become Senior Vice President of Corporate Development. Adam Hyder is joining Jobvite as the company's new CTO. Previously, Jobvite hired Yahoo HotJobs leader, Dan Finnigan, as its CEO. [...]

Twitter & Summize Tie The Knot

Jul 15, 2008 at 3:16pm ET by Barry Schwartz

The rumors that Twitter will be buying Summize have now been confirmed. Twitter, the popular micro-blogging platform, has acquired Summize, a search engine that searches Twitter. You can read all the news at Techmeme and also make sure to check out Danny's write up on Summize named Summize Gains "Local" Twitter Search Option. [...]

All Things D: The Search Edition

May 29, 2008 at 9:32am ET by Greg Sterling

There's a ton of search-related news and intrigue coming out of the Dow Jones "All Things D" conference in Southern California. Let's start with the ridiculous remark from IAC's chief Barry Diller that "Google is irrelevant to us." That's only true if Diller doesn't care about search revenue. Google is essentially the source of that revenue for IAC. He also reportedly said, "I believe our product is in most respects better than Google," and that he thinks Google's dominance cannot last indefinitely in search: "At some point Google will not live ever after with 60 or 90 percent of market." A [...]

Indiana Jones Search: Indy Meets Microsoft Live Search

May 2, 2008 at 10:14am ET by Danny Sullivan

For over a year, Microsoft has been experimenting with games to help build its search marketshare. Yesterday, I learned of one that certainly caught my eye: Indiana Jones Search. Designed for those in the UK, you perform a search: Then at the top of the search results page, two stones turn, with you hoping they'll turn green: Then you get your results. I lost: You also get shown how many people have won prizes that range from a trip to the New Mexico film location, to an Indiana Jones hat, whip, DVDs, and more. If you don't live in the UK or Ireland, y [...]

The Art Of Opportunistic Linking

Apr 29, 2008 at 9:27am ET by Eric Ward

A couple weeks back I wrote a LinkWeek column here titled "Your Site's Manifest Linking Destiny". At the end of that column I closed with the following thoughts... What if I told you that one of the sites was created, owned, and operated by a single mother who is an African American with locations in six cities across three southern states? None of these facts change the content of the sites. They remain nearly identical. But these facts can alter the manifest linking destiny of one of the sites dramatically, in a way that can impact everything from search rank to direct click traffic, for [...]

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