Search Month: December 2008 Search News, In Review

Search Month is an exclusive monthly newsletter for Search Engine Land premium members that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past month. Below, our 10 most popular stories from December 2008, then a major story for various search topics along with other stories related to those topics covered during December.

Top 10 Most Popular Stories: December 2008

1) Santa Tracker 2008: Google & NORAD Team Up Again – My favorite Christmas activity is tracking Santa’s route around the world. Once again, NORAD and Google are making it easy. The NORAD Tracks Santa 2008 site is now up, and a countdown for your iGoogle home page can now be downloaded. Google just blogged the news today. Below, what to expect.

2) 8 Santa Trackers For Christmas Eve 2008, From NORAD Santa To Twitter – It’s Christmas Eve, and that means Santa Claus is out doing his run. But where is Santa right now? Thanks to the internet, there’s a huge number of ways to get Santa sightings. Below, a summary that covers online video sightings, Santa’s phone number (apparently he can talk while driving), email updates, tracking him via your mobile phone and yes, even getting Twitter updates.

3) Tough Love For Microsoft Search – Back in June, I spoke at Microsoft as part of a regular series for those involved with its webmaster tools group and anyone generally interested in search. My talk was called “Tough Love For Microsoft Search,” and I covered various reasons why I felt the company has generally failed to make headway in the space. The core premise is that Microsoft as a company isn’t succeeding at search because it views search as a task it has to do, rather than one it really wants to do. The article below is an adaptation of that presentation. There’s even a movie.

4) Google Search Suggest Get Ads, Links & Answers – Earlier this year, Google Suggest finally made it to the Google home page. The feature suggests queries as you begin typing in the search box. Now Google is testing providing links to web sites, direct answers and even ads that appear within the Google Suggest list.

5) Google Book Search Puts Magazines Online – First Google digitized books, then newspapers, then historic Time-Life photos and now — magazines. Today through Google Book Search, people can search the full-text of millions of articles from more than 10 magazine with hundreds more to come, the company has announced. Eventually, content from the magazines will be available to those doing Google News Archive searches or show up in “regular” Google searches via Universal Search. For now, however, the content lives only within Google Book Search. How do you access the magazines? Ideally, Google wants you to find them in response to a search for anything at Google Book Search. For example, a search for hank aaron catching babe ruth should bring up a listing tagged as “Magazine” that leads to a 1973 Ebony magazine article about Aaron nearing Ruth’s home run record (note, search functionality doesn’t seem to be live yet but should be enabled shortly).

6) Google Testing Enhanced Listings, “Pagelinks” & Auto-Spelling Correction – Google is testing a number of changes to its search results, including a way for select publishers to enhance their page descriptions, a way for searchers to jump to sub-sections of a web page and automatically correcting misspelled queries, to some degree.

7) Do Search Engines Use Bounce Rate As A Ranking Factor? – Your web site’s bounce rate may be a significant factor in your search engine rankings. If the bounce rate on your site is high, you could end up with lower rankings in the search engines. Correspondingly, lower bounce rates may actually offer meaningful ranking boosts. (Don’t know what a bounce rate is? Hang on—definitions below.) Don’t believe that bounce rate is a serious ranking factor? You should.

8) “You Could Go To Google,” Says Yahoo — But Why Not Stay Here? – Yahoo has changed the way they handle a query for a competing search engine. Now, if you search at Yahoo for google, live or ask.com, Yahoo will tell you, “You could go to [Search Engine Name Goes Here]. Or you could stay here and get straight to your answers.”

9) Ask.com Plays The Google AdWords Arbitrage Game – Ah, Ask.com. Since I wrote their obituary in March, not much has got me thinking they’ll make a comeback. Sure, there was the gimmick of kind of bringing back Jeeves himself. But the spate of “hotels.ask.com” ads I see them running on Google makes me think they’re dropping further from being a search engine and more into a search arbitrage play.

10) Yahoo Layoffs Happening Live Online – The Yahoo layoffs are underway, and are happening live online. Blogs, news sites, and social sites like Twitter are filled today with live reports about what’s going on inside Yahoo’s offices. Here’s a rundown of what we’ve found. Silicon Alley Insider is posting updated comments from the now ex-Yahooers, who are describing the scene at various Yahoo offices around the country.

Search Engine Land News

Search Engine Land’s New Look – Search Engine Land turned two years old this month. In that time, our content has blossomed. We run nearly 20 columns on search marketing issues, routinely post multiple brief items per day about breaking search news along with regular long, in-depth analysis or “How To” stories. Our old design didn’t serve to present this content well. So today, we present a fresh new face to Search Engine Land. See also:

AOL

AOL Debuts Bebo “Social Inbox” – AOL is repositioning or perhaps enhancing Bebo as a kind of dashboard for the internet using the concept of a “social inbox.” The Wall Street Journal has coverage of what’s at stake for AOL and the challenges facing social media ad revenues. The social inbox idea is about aggregation of content and services (e.g., email) from a range of third parties and partners in one place.

B2B

Best of B2B Search Marketing 2009 – Articles and blog postings on B2B search marketing are often hard to find. At Search Engine Land, we’re fortunate to have a stable of experts who regularly contribute great content and make the Strictly Business column a success. But during the year, I’ve found a lot of other great content, too. I chose 30 of my favorite B2B search and internet marketing posts from 2009. To that I added three of my own articles that were especially popular or helpful to people. I know I’ve missed some great content. If you know of others, please add them via comments. Just as the search landscape has changed greatly in 2009, so has the economic landscape. There are a lot of people hurting out there, many who never dreamed they would be in situation they are now. If you’ve been blessed this year, be thankful. See also:

Business & Revenues

Jeff Weiner (Ex-Yahoo) Lands At LinkedIn – TechCrunch is reporting that former Yahoo Network chief Jeff Weiner is taking on the role of interim President at LinkedIn. Weiner left Yahoo this summer and took an executive role at venture capital firms Accel Partners and Greylock Partners. He was one of Yahoo’s top executives, overseeing all of the company’s consumer-facing products. Just last week, LinkedIn added Dipchand “Deep” Nishar from Google. Weiner’s addition at LinkedIn is one of a couple management changes. TechCrunch says founder Reid Hoffman is retaking the CEO job, and current CEO Dan Nye will leave next month. See also:

Google: AdSense

Google Expands AdSense For Domains – Enough Already – The Google AdSense Blog announced they have begun rolling out the AdSense for Domain product to US based publishers and will continue to roll this feature out to all publishers in the future. AdSense for Domains allows publishers to place ads on domains that have not yet been developed yet, also known as parked domains. Google said they would show “ads, links, and search results on the pages, and may add other useful information in the future,” on these pages. You have to understand that AdSense for Domains, formerly known as Domain Park, is a product that has always been extremely controversial in the ad space market. Since 2005 and likely before then, Danny Sullivan has called for major reform of the product, because it delivered poor quality traffic sparked huge controversy. Not only that, we have reported lawsuit after lawsuit over the product and even with the reformed opt out feature, it still has resulted in more lawsuits.

Google: AdWords

Court Rules Google Not Liable For Bad Products Sold Through AdWords – Feel like you got defrauded by someone who lured you to their site through an ad on Google? Don’t expect that you’ll be able to go after Google itself for running the ad. A US federal court ruled that Google wasn’t liable in a case involving ringtones, which would also seem applicable to any type of product or service. Court Clears Google In Ringtone Ad Suit from MediaPost covers the case. New Jersey resident Jenna Goddard claimed that she was billed for a ringtone subscription she didn’t want, after visiting a site she found through Google’s ads and leaving her number with the site. See also:

Google: Blog Search

Google Blog Search: Now With Full-Text Post Indexing – It’s been about two months since Google Blog Search was relaunched with a new front page that summarizes stories. I talked with Google more about some of the inner workings at the end of October and finally am getting around to posting this, spurred by one of the planned changes becoming official. Google Blog Search now uses the full-text of posts (in most cases), rather than using whatever was in a blog’s feed (which could often be only part of a post).

Google: Business Issues

Google Cancelled Yahoo Search Deal To Avoid “Monopoly” Designation – Fearing a protracted legal battle, damage to its reputation/brand and perhaps even to its stock price, Google abruptly pulled out of the proposed Yahoo paid search deal. It was revealed at the time that the US Justice Department was planning to file an action against the deal. Now in an interview in AmLaw Daily, the attorney spearheading the potential case against Google, Sanford Litvack discusses what happened. See also:

Google: Maps & Local

Japanese Lawyers, Professors Try To Block StreetView – Google StreetView has been a controversial offering since its launch, with privacy at the core of both individual and regulatory concerns. It’s also enormously practical and useful in many cases. But governments from Canada to Europe have sought to gain privacy concessions from Google in its international rollout. Google has also been sued a couple of times by private parties over alleged trespassing by StreetView vehicles and imagery. Now a group of academics and attorneys in Japan is trying to fight StreetView on privacy grounds as well. See also:

Google: SEO Issues

Google Webmaster Help Group: Version 2 – Today, Google relaunched several of their help forums, moving them from Google Groups to a new help-specific platform. The English and Polish Google Webmaster Help group have made the move to this new format, with the other languages soon to follow. Below, more details about how this change will benefit site owners and a bit of history about the start and evolution of the Google Webmaster Help group. See also:

Google: Searching

Google Adds Style Options To Image Search, Search History Found In Search Suggestions, & Google Reader Blog Adds “What’s Hot” – It has been an active weekend for Google. Google has added additional search options to Google Image Search. Google has also introduced a “What’s Hot” area to Google Reader Blog. Finally, Google is testing showing search history within Google search suggestions. See also:

Google: YouTube & Google Video

YouTube Continues To Dominate Growing Video Landscape – Google continues to dominate the online video market in much the same way it dominates search. Google properties set a record in October with more than 100 million video viewers — 99.5 million of whom watched videos on YouTube. Those are some of the numbers issued this afternoon by comScore from its Video Metrix service. Google’s video market share represents more than two-thirds of the estimated online video watching audience for the month. As the chart below shows, Fox Interactive and Yahoo ranked second and third, respectively, in audience share. See also:

Google: Other

Chrome Comes Out of Beta with 10 Million Users – As was reported yesterday, Google’s browser Chrome is coming out of beta — a mere 100 days after it was introduced. When I commented to Sundar Pichai, Product VP, that this had to be one of the fastest exits from beta for Google in recent memory he explained that “Google has a very traditional approach to our client software products,” meaning it accelerates the process of getting them to a general release. See also:

Link Building

Link Smart Or Die In 2009 – The recession is more than just news fodder these days, it’s a reality many of us as service providers are feeling. At Alliance-Link we’re watching our clients cut back their on and offline advertising expenditures which makes it difficult for us to build custom linking programs. All of our programs use offline elements to drive links and without the advertising budgets, we’ve had to regroup and seriously rethink our strategies. I’ve never been one to shrink from a challenge but even this has given me cause to pause. Our situation made me think about a quote I read a short while ago which said: “Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.” How true and smart! So smart we’ve taken the quote to heart and decided the key to our linking success in 2009 depends on our ability to look at long-term search trends and incorporate them into our linking mix as a key element now rather than an add-on or after thought later. See also:

Local Search & Maps

Local News Roundup: Google Shuts Down LBRR, G-Maps’ Double Coverage, Yelp Updates iPhone App & Yellow Pages – Think of this post as a SearchBiz for Local, Maps & Mobile today; there was enough news to do a bit of a roundup. First up is Google’s announcement that it has dramatically expanded (”doubled”) the coverage available via StreetView, including many new states such as Maine, West Virginia, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

Local Search Marketing

Importance of Rankings In Local Listings – There are plenty of reasons besides user experience when adding categories to your internet yellow pages (IYP) listings on various sites. This simple step can result in supplying you with great results in Yahoo! Local, Google Local, increased web references, and potential increased rankings in Google web search. See also:

The Impact Of Call Tracking For Smart Marketers & Agencies

Microsoft: Business Issues

Dr. Qi Lu Named To Run Microsoft’s Online Services Group; McAndrews Departs – The rumor becomes reality. Microsoft has named Dr. Qi Lu, formerly of Yahoo, to run its Online Services Group. And Brian McAndrews, as AllThingsD highlights, is leaving Microsoft. More details in the release below. See also:

Indian Action: Microsoft Chooses NAVTEQ For Maps, Yahoo Invests In 411 Provider

Microsoft: Search

Live Search Adds Malware Warnings To Search Results – MSN’s Live Search has announced the addition of malware warnings to their search results pages. In doing so, Live Search joins Google and Yahoo in taking a proactive stance against potentially dangerous sites; Google began adding malware warnings in early 2007. Yahoo added SearchScan alerts in May of this year. The Live Search implementation is different from how the other two search engines show malware warnings. When a potentially harmful page shows up in the Live Search results, users see no warning until they actually try to click on the link. When they do click, a small “pop-up” box appears to the far right of the listing. See also:

Microsoft: SEO

Has Microsoft Live Search Detected Malware On Your Site? – Recently, Microsoft Live Search added malware warnings to their search results. If a searcher clicks a result that Microsoft has detected contains malware, a popup warns then not to proceed to the site. As Matt noted yesterday, Google and Yahoo! also provide malware warnings to searchers. How can you find out if Microsoft has flagged your site for malware and how can you let them know you’ve fixed the problem? As part of this update, Microsoft Live Search also launched an update to their Webmaster Center that added alerts about malware. You can generate a report of all pages on your site that have malware on them, see if you link to any external pages that contain malware, and submit a review request once you’ve fixed any issues. See also:

Live Search Discusses Good & Bad Links

Mobile Search

Local Searches Set to Flip to Mobile Phone – Given the continuing growth in the smartphone market, mobile phones are poised to become the first source people turn to when searching for local business information. Until widespread adoption of smartphones occurs, though, there will be a gap that smart businesses will seek to fill. There were some especially telling findings in comScore’s presentation, “New Takes on Local Audience Targeting,” at the Interactive Local Media 2008 conference hosted last month by the Kelsey Group. See also:

Proximic (”Don’t Call It A Newsreader”) Moves Into Mobile Search

Paid Search & Contextual

Paid Search – Tips On Closing The Loop – Although paid search is far more trackable than many media – even online display advertising – many paid search campaign managers have difficulty tying detailed paid search data to actual sales. This is particularly true with long-sales-cycle campaigns, high touch lead generation campaigns, and campaigns that are designed to drive phone sales. Often, such campaigns track the cost of a lead or another metric that doesn’t necessarily tie them back to actual sales figures to get a sense of true conversions. This poses a problem in that uneven lead quality can lead to poor decisions in bidding, keyword selection, and so on. In this article, I will discuss several ways companies can effectively attribute sales (or close the loop) in lead generation and phone sales campaigns. See also:

Privacy

Yahoo One-Ups Google With 90 Day Data Retention Policy – Yahoo has announced they will be anonymizing their user log data to 90 days, compared to Google’s policy of 9 months. The data policy is not just inclusive of their search data but also their page views, page clicks, ad views and ad clicks. Yahoo does reserve the right to retain data longer than 90 days based on the exceptions for fraud, security and legal obligations. Those exceptions will typically be held for 6-months, but possibly longer based on legal requirements. See also:

Microsoft Will Cut Data Storage Time If Google & Yahoo Do, Too

Searching

Dilbert’s Scott Adams: Will Google Replace Your Doctor? – Can a search engine accurately diagnose health problems? Can it someday replace your doctor? Questions like this aren’t new, but the discussion has gotten a bit louder in recent weeks. Just a couple weeks ago, I reported on a Microsoft investigation of cyberchondria, when inaccurate medical information online makes actual health problems worse. On Friday, Dilbert cartoon creator Scott Adams shared a different point of view, telling blog readers how Google helped him find treatment for a speech defect known as Spasmodic Dysphonia. See also:

Search Marketing Industry

SEMPO Rings NASDAQ’s Bell – As expected, SEMPO, has rung the bell at the NASDAQ yesterday morning. You can see the full release and several pictures at the NASDAQ release. Dana Todd, Chairperson of the Board of Directors for SEMPO, presided over the Opening Bell at NASDAQ yesterday morning. Congrats to SEMPO and congrats to the search marketing industry!

Search Marketing Tactics

Who Owns The Search Page? – We have a recurring argument with clients. See if this sounds familiar: Us: You have no search visibility for “keyword” Client: We don’t want visibility for “keyword” Us: Why? Client: Because that’s not us. We don’t use “keyword” to describe ourselves. That’s not what we’re about. Us: Yes, but that’s what the searcher is looking for. They’re using “keyword” to express their need. Client: But we don’t offer “keyword”. We offer an alternative. Us: But they’re not searching for the alternative. They’re searching for “keyword”. You get the idea. If I combined all the time spent in having this circular argument over the past several years, I’d have enough banked to spend a good portion of the next year in some sunny location, preferably with a beach. I realized that central to this argument is the question of ownership of the search results page. This requires a bit of a shift in thinking, so bear with me. See also:

SEO / Natural / Unpaid Search

SEO & The CMO: Why Analytics & Communication Is Crucial To Success – How many times have you heard the question from a key decision-maker: “So, after we do this optimization, what will our rankings be?” The answer is complex, and requires much more than simply “better than it was before” for your reply to be meaningful to the CMO tasked with moving the needle on a billion dollars in sales. Rankings are certainly one tangible way to measure SEO’s success, but at Agency.com we are working to move clients away from focusing on rankings and towards focusing on positive results that can be more accurately measured. In today’s search environment, placement is completely dynamic and state-dependent. Everyone is looking at different data centers for starters. Add in search history, geotargeted results based on IP and universal search, and then compound that with Google’s SearchWiki, and pretty much everyone is going to get measurably different results when looking for the same terms. See also:

Small Business

A Small Business Year-End Marketing Checklist – 2009 is almost here, and I hope small business owners have already been thinking long and hard about their plan of attack for the new year. Those who have are ahead of the game. If you haven’t given the new year much thought, start now. Successful online marketing is about developing the right combination of strategies (thinking) and tactics (doing). In this column, I’m going to focus on a short list of the latter — quick things you can do now to help set the stage for a successful 2009. Since the holidays are upon us, and you’re probably busier than normal, I’ll do my best to keep it short, simple, and sweet. See also:

Video Search

Online Video Tactics For Small Businesses – Online video has been explored as marketing tool by large companies, and as a buzz-builder for content producers of all sizes. But what about small businesses: can they jump into the fray and get noticed by video audiences? The short answer is yes. Let’s look at some formats and how they can fit into your small business marketing plans. See also:

2008 Video Search Year In Review

Yahoo: BOSS

Yahoo BOSS Now Serving 100 Queries Per Second – The Yahoo Search Blog announced that BOSS, Yahoo’s build your own search service, is now serving 10 million queries per day. That is about 100 queries per second and according to Yahoo, who cites comScore, that is just behind Ask.com’s search volume. Note, these queries do not count as part of Yahoo’s search network, because they are technically served at third party web sites.

Yahoo: Business Issues

Yahoo Enhances Open Strategy: Mail, My Yahoo, Toolbar & More — Yahoo has announced several enhancements to their continued open strategy. Some of the updates revolve around Yahoo products including Yahoo Mail, My Yahoo, the Yahoo Toolbar and Yahoo Updates. See also:

Yahoo: Paid Search

More Yahoo Search Image Ads; Promotional Ads – TechCrunch reported spotting a image ad that is more interactive for a search at Yahoo on eBay. Here is a picture of the ad:

Yahoo: Searching

Yahoo Upgrades Flickr Mobile; Google Upgrades Picasa – Photo search took a couple steps forward today with announcements from both Yahoo and Google. The news from Yahoo is a mobile makeover of its Flickr photo sharing site, while Google announced a variety of improvements to its Picasa photo service. See also:

Yahoo Launches Search Assist For Image Search

Fun, Weird Stuff & Other Things

Search Engines Release Most Popular Search Trends of 2008 – As 2008 comes to a close, the annual tradition of gathering up the most popular search trends continues. Breaking down billions of search queries into concise Top 10 lists isn’t an easy task but among the major search engines. Still, obvious trends emerge nearly every year, and typically revolve around international news stories, major events, celebrity news, gossip and natural disasters. (Quite often, those last few can be grouped together). Natural curiosity about political leaders, well known entertainers and amazing athletes typically fuel the daily buzz on every search engine, but major events like the 2008 Olympics and US Election always add extra fuel to the search frenzy. This year’s lists collect the best of the best, and the best of the worst. What’s Hot, Where & Why Google 2008 Year-End Zeitgeist; Fastest Rising Searches Yahoo’s 2008 Year End Round-Up of Buzzworthy Searches Ask.com: Top Search Trends of 2008 AOL 2008 Year in Review: The Hottest Search Trends Online Holiday Shopping Stats & Most Searched Gifts (includes top shopping searches on Google) Microsoft Live Search has not yet released the data for most popular searches in 2008, but it will be posted here when it become available.

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Search Month: December 2008 Search News, In Review

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Search Month: December 2008 Search News, In Review

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