May 2008: Search Engine Land’s Most Popular Stories

Below are Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular stories from May 2008: 1) Playing With Live Search Cashback – Microsoft launched Live Search Cashback, and this takes you through the experience of using Cashback as a searcher. It has been a rainy week here in New York, and I figured I would start my search […]

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Below are
Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular
stories from May 2008:

1) Playing With
Live Search Cashback
– Microsoft launched Live Search Cashback, and this
takes you through the experience of using Cashback as a searcher. It has been a
rainy week here in New York, and I figured I would start my search and shopping
experience looking to buy an umbrella using Cashback.

===================

2) Microsoft’s
Worldwide Telescope Application Blasts Onto The Desktop
– Microsoft
has launched (an appropriate metaphor this time) its Worldwide Telescope
desktop application. You must download the software, but then you’re treated
to a beautiful array of images and "guided tours" of the cosmos (see
screenshots below). Intended for science education, "Worldwide Telescope
stitches together terabytes of high-resolution images of celestial bodies, and
displays them in a way that relates to their actual position in the sky."

===================

3) Powerset
Launches "Understanding Engine" For Wikipedia Content
– After nearly
two years in the making — and plenty of hype — Powerset has finally rolled
out a "natural language" search engine. It’s not a Google killer. It’s barely
a business model right now. But at least it’s something the world can finally
play with, and under the hood, there’s lots of potential. By the time you read
this, the Powerset site should have changed into a tool that allows you search
against material within Wikipedia. Why bother using Powerset rather than using
Wikipedia’s own search tool or even Google set to look only within Wikipedia
pages? The Powerset pitch is that you’ll get better results because Powerset’s
technology has read and understood what every word within Wikipedia actually
means.

===================

4) Google Logo:
First Laser Logo
– Google has a special logo up on the home page today,
a laser logo. The logo links to a search results for first laser, which shows
image results at the top, followed by search results from University of Chicago,
Wikipedia and then Propeller.com. Why does Google have a laser logo up today?
Theodore Maiman, 48 years ago – demonstrated the first laser on May 16, 1960.

===================

5) Twitter Beats
(Wow, By 3 Minutes) The USGS With China Earthquake News
– Hey, I like
Twitter, but this entire thing Robert Scoble started about how Twitter had
news of the Chinese earthquake before the US Geological Survey seemed absurd.
Did it really? As it turns out, probably so — by about three minutes. Reading
some of the accounts, you’d get the impression Twitter seemed to alert the
USGS to the news. See also:

===================

6) Hey Microsoft:
Bribing Searchers Is Fine; Frustrating Them Is Not!
– I’ve got no
problem if Microsoft wants to "bribe" searchers to use its search engine. Even
Google has done the same. But the Live Search Cashback program rolled out today
seems a pretty inept way to do it, far more likely to disappoint and frustrate
than woo searchers.

===================

7) The Big List Of
Major B2B Search Engines
– Most search marketers focus on Google,
Yahoo, and Microsoft. But B2B search marketers also have a growing number of
vertical search options. Clicks and leads from these vertical search sites may
not yield the same traffic as general search engines, but the percentage of
qualified traffic and conversions can increase dramatically with leads from
these specialized and vertical business-oriented engines. Here’s a roundup of
the most important search sites and resources B2B search marketers should be
targeting. See also:

===================

8) Eight Keyword
Research Mistakes That Are Costing You Money
– One of the reasons search
marketing is so effective is that it delivers information on products and
services to people who are actively seeking them out. People enter search terms
into a search engine and the engine provides sites and ads that are relevant to
the terms. The process of identifying keywords is wrought with pitfalls which
can reduce the effectiveness of online campaigns. Here are eight common mistakes
companies make in selecting keywords for their campaigns.

===================

9) Yahoo Glue Pages
Launches In India
– Yahoo has launched Glue Pages Beta in Yahoo India.
Glue Pages are specialized pages that contain an enhanced visual search result
page for select search queries. The search results that trigger the special
"Glue Pages" run across searches in health, sports, entertainment, travel,
technology, and finance categories. The Glue Pages combine classic search
results on the left hand column with more visual information related to your
query in the middle and right section of the page. The results contain images,
videos, articles, and more. For example, a search on diabetes returns standard
search results on the left, in the middle we have WebMD results, followed by
HowStuffWorks.com results, then results from Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Answers, Yahoo
News, and even Google Blog Search. See also:

===================

10) Supercharge
Your URLs For Maximum SEO Impact
– When optimizing URLs for high
rankings, little attention is given to optimizing the URL for maximum
clickthrough. Yet the URL undeniably affects searcher clickthrough rates in the
SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). You could conclude from this that the long
URL distracts the searcher from viewing the listing’s title and description. Not
a great outcome.

To see all of our most popular stories over time, visit our
Most
Popular Stories
page.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Danny Sullivan
Contributor
Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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