Search Month: October 2008 Search News, In Review

Nov 3, 2008 at 7:17pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Search Month is a monthly newsletter that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past month. It’s also available by feed here. Below, news about Search Engine Land itself, then our 10 most popular stories from October 2008, then a major story for various search topics along with other stories related to those topics covered during October.

Search Engine Land News

NEW BOOKSHELF COLUMN! Last month saw the launch of our newest column, Bookshelf, which features reviews of books, white papers and other publications that help search marketers do their jobs or gain a better understanding of general digital marketing issues. Check out the first two columns: What’s Ahead For Search Marketing In 2009 and The “Bible” Of Search Engine Marketing.

SPHINN JAPAN LAUNCHED! When we launched our Sphinn social news site for search and internet marketers last year, we quickly were hit by a huge number of Japanese-language submissions. Unfortunately, we had to go to an English-only rule, as we had no easy way to moderate those submissions, such as checking for spam. Now, problem solved — Sphinn Japan has launched. Congrats and big credit to Kenichi Suzuki and his developer Sera Hiroyuki, who’ve worked hard over the past few months to bring the site to life!

REGISTER FOR SMX WEST! Search Engine Land’s next three day Search Marketing Expo conference arrives in Silicon Valley this coming February. Running Feb. 10-12, 2009, SMX West will cover all aspects of search marketing. Register now to save with special pre-agenda pricing. Learn more in our 5 Reasons To Register For SMX West Today post or at the SMX West web site.

MORE SMX SHOWS! Aside from SMX West, here are other SMX events on the calendar, for those doing forward planning:

UPCOMING SEARCH WEBCASTS! Don’t miss the free online webinars offered by our sister-site Search Marketing Now. Upcoming sessions:

SMX & SEARCH ENGINE LAND SOCIAL OPTIONS! Remember, a good way to keep up on all of our events is by reading the SMX Blog. You can also socialize in a variety of ways:

Top 10 Most Popular Stories: October 2008

1) Los Angeles & Southern California Fire Maps: October 2008 Edition – Southern California is ablaze with wildfires once again, including one I can see out my window in the Newport Beach foothills. Trying to keep track of where they are. Here’s a guide to maps of current fires and place you can expect future ones to be posted.

2) Google’s iPhone Ad Units, G1 Pre-Sells 1.5 Million? – On Friday, AdWeek reported that Google was creating and testing specialized ad units for full HTML mobile browsers, such as Safari on the iPhone. The idea is that the iPhone’s Safari browser (or Android, Skyfire, Opera) would be detected and alternative ads, and landing pages or iPhone optimized sites, would be substituted for conventional mobile (or transcoded) sites.

3) Fall Fun: Viewing Cornfield Mazes Via Online Maps - One of the unique seasonal activities to do this time of year is to make a trip out to a nearby farm and wander through mazes carved out of corn fields. Designers of these mazes often make them to form interesting pictures or written messages when seen from a bird’s-eye view. I’ve selected a handful to look at here from Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, and Live Search Maps, so enjoy!

4) Google Confirms RSS For Web Search Results – Google has confirmed for Search Engine Land that they’ll soon start offering RSS feeds for web search results. When it happens, the RSS feeds will be an extension of Google Alerts, which currently only allow notification by email.

5) SearchPerks – Microsoft’s New Prizes For Searches Program – Microsoft’s Live Search Cashback program has failed to grow the company’s search traffic significantly (as I expected), so now it’s try again time. Out officially today is SearchPerks, a program designed to be easier to use and more broadly targeted than Cashback.

6) 7 Search Tools You May Not Know … But Should – Google UK recently shared a list of 52 Things to Do on a variety of Google properties (found via Phil Bradley). It’s a collection of tools and tips about using Google products and services for some everyday functions. If you’re a search power user, you probably know most of them already. But Google’s message seems to be, “Did you know you could do all this stuff on Google?” It got us thinking about non-Google search tools that might have slipped notice altogether, or just fallen off your radar. With that in mind, here’s a list of seven search tools you may not know about … but should. Read on to discover about how to see search suggestions from all major search engines on one page; a “cover flow” interface to see face images from Google Images; a new way to get recommendations about music, movies and more; new tools to search multiple search engines from one place; a tool for finding hot event tickets and as assist for hunting through Flickr’s many photos.

7) Sneak Peek: Stunning New Google Satellite Imagery – New satellite images that will eventually show up in Google Earth and Google Maps are now arriving from the Google-sponsored GeoEye-1 satellite that launched a month ago. GeoEye has just released the stunning image below as a preview of what’s to come:

8) Is Yahoo’s Buzz A Buzz-Kill? - When Yahoo Buzz launched back in February of 2008, it was thought by many to be the next big player in the social news community space. This was largely due to the fact that if your content got the most “buzz” it had a chance to be featured on Yahoo.com, which can send millions of visitors to your site over a short period of time. Of course it didn’t take long for people to find themselves at Yahoo’s first major Buzz-kill.

9) StumbleUpon Without The Toolbar – The past few weeks have been busy for the people over at StumbleUpon and its users alike. Just a few weeks ago, StumbleUpon lifted the 200 friend max from its user base and added a subscribe feature. On Wednesday my favorite social community announced that there were yet more changes to their discovery/recommendation engine. This new user experience is being called “beyond the toolbar”. Not only do you not need to download a toolbar, but you actually don’t even need to be registered with StumbleUpon to stumble anymore. This is really a “new user” experience. Let’s check it out.

10) Crucial Firefox Plugins For SEM Professionals; Put Google To Work To Meet CPA Goals – Today’s news briefs: Google AdWords Editor update, Yahoo Search Marketing content upgrades, and upcoming features for Microsoft’s adCenter. An in-depth guide to some great Firefox plug-ins for search engine marketing professionals, followed up by the free tool of the week: Google’s Conversion Optimizer.

Ask.com

Ask.com Goes Back To 1996 With New Release – Ask.com has released version 11 of their new search engine today. The new version somewhat goes back to the Ask Jeeves approach, focusing on providing structured search results, mostly in the form of answers. Techmeme has coverage of the news item, with the main articles currently from the NY Times and News.com.

B2B

B2B Search Marketing: The Cost of NOT Showing Up – Much has been written about B2B search marketing programs designed for lead generation and customer acquisition purposes. For lead gen efforts, success metrics typically focus on volume of leads, cost per lead, and quality of lead. Many B2B marketers are starting to question this simplistic approach and are no longer willing to ignore the opportunity costs associated with not showing up in relevant search results, even if a listing doesn’t immediately produce an inquiry, lead or customer. See also:

Business & Revenues

Google, Yahoo Prepare To Abandon Paid Search Deal? Despite public pronouncements of confidence by Google and Yahoo about the future of their paid search deal, which was partly set up to fend off Microsoft and hostile Yahoo shareholders who wanted a Microsoft takeover, the emerging consensus is that it’s not going to happen. The Wall Street Journal this morning reports that the parties are not coming to terms and the US Justice Department wants concessions that the search engines don’t like. See also:

Google: AdSense

Google Puts New AdSense Ads Under Maps – The continued success of Google Maps gives Google another growing revenue stream to tap into, and that’s what they’re doing with the placement of new AdSense ads immediately under maps on Google Maps. The ads don’t show up on all searches, but they do appear on enough searches to suggest this is more than a limited test. Amit Agarwal is seeing these ads in India, for example. Dave Shaw, who first alerted us via email, is seeing it in the UK. The screenshot above shows how the new ad placement looks on a search in Google Maps for [seattle real estate]. See also:

Google: AdWords

Google AdWords: Now With Images – Some AdWords ads on Google are now showing associated images — and getting much larger in the space they take up — through a “Show products from” Plus Box implementation that some are seeing now when searching at Google. See also:

Google: Blog Search

Google Blogs & Other “Front Pages” For The Blogosphere – When Techmeme opened in 2005, I’d found a new online newspaper to begin my day with. It quickly and neatly organized top stories as reported by various blogs and news sources for the area I cover. But if you weren’t into technology, you seemed kind of out of luck. Now Google Blog Search has stepped in to bring Techmeme-like organization for all subjects buzzing in the blogosphere. Below, a look at how it compares along with other resources such as Technorati and Blogrunner. See also:

Google: Book Search

Google Settles Book Search Copyright Lawsuit For $125 Million, Paves Way For Novel Services – Google has settled the class action litigation entitled The Authors Guild, Inc., et al. v. Google Inc., which alleged that Google Book Search, including the company’s practice of scanning books to distribute them online, violated the copyrights of publishers and authors. Subject to final court approval, the settlement calls for Google to pay $125 million to litigants and clears the way for Google to continue scanning books. It also establishes some novel services and distribution mechanisms for the future. See also:

Google: Business Issues

Google Earnings Beat Expectations, Shares Climb – Many Wall Street analysts and Google watchers were anticipating that Google might “come down to Earth” with its Q3 earnings today, given the turmoil in the US economy. But in fact the company soundly beat expectations and posted very healthy revenues, driven by Google’s dominance of the only strong segment of online advertising — search. Google reported $5.54 billion in revenue for Q3, which represented a 31 percent increase over the same period last year. Net income was more than $1.5 billion. Below are some highlights from the earnings conference call slide show. See also:

Google: Maps & Local

Google Local Business Hijacking: Microsoft Acquires Yahoo, Becomes Escort Service Mike Blumenthal has been diligently covering how local listings can be hijacked by other businesses in Google Maps. He’s also been frustrated that Google doesn’t seem to be fixing the local hijacking problem. So to illustrate the problem, he’s posted how he took over Microsoft’s business listing — turning it into Microsoft Escort Service — and how those from Apple, IBM, Coca-Cola, GM among others were also vulnerable. See also:

Google: Mobile

G1 Arrives, So Does Android Market – This morning the Android Market formally launched, coinciding with the arrival of the T-Mobile G1, the first Android phone. There’s a showcase that features a sampling of the more than 50 existing apps, with many more to come. All the apps are currently free, with paid apps to come in the first quarter of 2009. See also:

Google: SEO Issues

Google’s First Click Free Program For Web Content, Not Just News – Google’s long had a “First Click Free” program that allows news publishers to make their content accessible to search spiders but requires human visitors to login if they’ve already viewed one page on the site for free — hence the “first click free” name. Earlier this year, Google said this program was OK for web publishers to use — not just news publishers. Today, they’ve done a post more formally making that point. See also:

Google: Searching

Anonymizing Google’s Server Log Data — How’s It Going? – Back in March 2007, Google promised to begin anonymizing log data to better protect user privacy. That kicked off a wave of privacy pledges from competing search engines. In addition, by agreeing to limit itself, it inadvertently got the European Union to demand even faster data destruction. Below, a look at Google’s progress toward its initial 18 month anonymization plan, the 9 months it recently agreed to and that question about cookies — are they really deleted or not? See also:

Google: YouTube & Google Video

YouTube Adds “Jump To Time Segment” Deep Links & Customizable Home Page – YouTube had added a couple new things over the weekend. The more exciting feature is that you can now link to a starting point within a YouTube video. The other feature is that you can now customize the YouTube home page, based on your preferences.

Google: Other

Google Analytics Upgrade: AdSense Reporting, Visualization Tools, & More – A day after announcing a slight touch up, Google Analytics is rolling out what it calls a “significant upgrade” to its feature set. The new tools include AdSense integration, “Motion Charts,” advanced segmentation, an API, custom reports and an updated user interface to highlight these new tools better. Google is calling this an “enterprise class” upgrade, but the new reporting tools will be free and available to all Google Analytics users. “We’re taking things that were expensive and difficult, and making them free and easy to use,” says Brett Crosby, Group Manager for Google Analytics. See also:

In House SEM

In-House Search Analysis: Who & When – Numbers don’t lie. For in-house search marketers analysis is critical for reporting performance, identifying trouble spots, and finding your next great opportunity. If you hire an agency or consultant to help with your search marketing, the numbers reflect success of that agency’s work, and can tell you ultimately if the agency is worth what they charge. Here you’ll learn some approaches on how much time to spend, which team should do your analysis work, and how often you should analyze search data. See also:

Link Building

Personalize Your Link Building – The ethnographic method is an approach of studying a person or group of people by participating in the culture of interest while still remaining a bit of an outsider. In essence, you have to lose your own identity at first, in order to get a better idea of how to best connect to someone new. When you approach a potential link partner, you know very little about that person except for a few clues picked up in the analysis of the site that he or she controls. Your best bet is to pick up that information as quickly as possible, because you have a very limited amount of time to make or break that connection. See also:

Local Search & Maps

Location in the Browser: What Does It Mean? – Not long ago, Google rolled out its “Geolocation API” (via Google Gears). Initially it was intended to enable third party publishers and developers to get location for their apps on mobile devices using a combination of the phone’s inherent location-awareness technologies (i.e., GPS) and Google’s cell-tower database (which has been expanded now to include WiFi locations). However it also works for destkop browsers, provided that Gears is installed on the computer. See also:

Local Search Marketing

Relying On Print Yellow Pages? Most Local Customers Turn To The Web! – Online marketers have been predicting the death of print yellow pages for years. While that will never happen, print yellow pages are no longer the primary way that people seek local information. In fact, the internet collectively — through search engines, local search sites, online yellow pages and other venues — is the top way consumers look for local information. A new study underscores this change and documents with hard numbers why local advertisers have to take the internet into account when trying to reach customers. See also:

Microsoft: adCenter

Microsoft adCenter Fall Upgrade – The Microsoft adCenter blog has an army of posts containing details of their large fall upgrade. The main features most advertisers may notice are: Campaign Management: ability to pause and resume ads and keywords, geo-targeting enhancements, and improved performance reporting on the Ads page Editorial Improvements: faster reviews, dynamic feedback about why ads and keywords were disapproved, and inline notification when dynamic text causes your ads to exceed character limits User Management: if previously you were only able to have one user, now you can create multiple account users Content Ads (U.S. only): get keyword bid suggestions and performance estimates for your content ads

Microsoft: Business Issues

Facebook Adds Microsoft Live Search – Extending a partnership that dates back to 2006, Facebook today added Microsoft’s Live Search to its offerings, giving users in the U.S. a way to search the web without leaving Facebook.com. An announcement on the Live Search Blog also says Microsoft adCenter will display paid search ads next to those web search results. Microsoft has been providing ads on Facebook since August, 2006. The initial implementation of Live Search is understated, to say the least. The Facebook search box gives no immediate indication of its new capabilities. See also:

Microsoft: Search

U Rank – Microsoft’s Social Search Experimental Site – Out now from Microsoft Research is U Rank, an experiment that allows people to move results around, as well as share them with friends and add comments to listings. See also:

Microsoft: SEO Issues

Google & Microsoft Share Advice For Webmasters, SEOs – The ever-helpful teams writing for Google’s Webmaster Central blog and Microsoft Live Search’s Webmaster Center blog have published a variety of videos and presentations this week in the name of helping webmasters and search engine optimizers.

Mobile Search

New iPhone Report From comScore: Everything You Wanted To Know And Then Some: Based on behavioral data from a sample of roughly 100,000 iPhone users in the US and Western Europe, the report goes into a great deal more than that. Below I do a quick “dive” into a couple of the search-related findings.

Paid Search & Contextual

The PPC Buying Cycle: Buyer Beware! – How often have you heard that keyword level performance data can be misleading? That PPC managers need to consider the phases of the buying cycle when evaluating terms? That specific keywords tend to steal conversions from the more general keywords that started the customer’s consideration, and that you should keep spending money on the general terms even though the efficiency looks awful? It’s pretty obvious why the engines might want to trumpet this story: it makes them money. By convincing advertisers that they should spend money on general search terms regardless of the observed efficiency advertisers are encouraged to spend without the moorings associated with ROI goals. See also:

Searching

New Video: Easy Tips For Better Searching – Last year, Common Craft produced a great, short video explaining RSS “in plain English.” The company is back now with another wonderful one, Web Search Strategies in Plain English. It’s less than three minutes long and does a great job explaining how to use some of the most simple “power” commands at searchers’ disposal — the minus sign and quotation marks. Be sure to check it out! See also:

Search Marketing Industry

Online Ad Revenues Up Vs. 2007, Down Vs. Q2; Search A Relative Bright Spot – Overall online ad spending in the US was up almost 13 percent compared with Q2 2007, but down slightly (0.3 percent) from Q1 2008. Online ad revenues for the second quarter were $5.7 billion, compared with $5.8 billion in Q1. Revenues were $11.5 billion for the first six months of 2008 vs. approximately $10 billion during the same period in 2007, according to the IAB. Search took a bigger share (44 percent) of the pie than it did in the first half of 2007 (41 percent). Otherwise the first six months of 2008 look quite similar in most respects to the first half of 2007. The question now is: how will a souring economy impact Q3 and Q4? See also:

Search Marketing Tactics

What’s Ahead For Search Marketing In 2009: It’s an understatement to say that we live in uncertain times, and that any data that can help us strategize, plan or even to some extent predict what’s ahead is worth its weight in… well, let’s just say this kind of information is invaluable. That makes the Marketing Sherpa 2009 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide very timely for just about everyone involved in our industry. The Guide is packed with data, analysis, charts, graphs and all manner of other useful info. See also:

SEO / Natural / Unpaid Search

What Is Search Engine Spam? The Video Edition – Search engines tell marketers not to spam them. Many search marketers also advise newcomers not to spam. Spamming issues get debated online. But what is search engine spam? What’s it look like? How’s it smell? And why do search engines (not to mention users) hate it? At our recent SMX East search marketing conference, representatives from Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo tackled the topic. Below you can learn more about search spam, as well as reinclusion tips for each search engine. I’ve divided the formal presentations into three parts posted via YouTube, so that you can watch what each particular search engine had to say. Below these is an “all-in-one” video where the presentations, as well as the long Q&A, all are part of the same video. See also:

Small Business

Searching For Small Businesses, Coming Up Frustrated – Having written about search for years, it’s often easy for me to mistakenly assume that everyone gets it. Search is where the customers are. Surely every business owner, large or small, understands by now the importance of appearing before these customers in search. Surely. But as I’ve looked for local businesses to help with my needs after a recent move, I’ve had a personal reminder of just how far behind some companies remain. See also:

Social Media

How Social Media Is Invading Traditional Media – Over the last few years we have seen a real explosion of social media sites and services, influencing the way we network, read, and search the web. With sites like Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, and Delicious, social media is here and it is here to stay. The success of social media really shouldn’t a mystery as in general, we all tend to want to have our voice or vote in how things are presented and done. So it is natural that as sites began to allow people more interaction, they would in turn spend more time online and on the various social media sites. What is really amazing is not that people, who are social in nature, found a passion for interacting online, but rather that the success of that interaction would actually invade into traditional media. See also:

Video Search

VideoSurf Is Now Live – VideoSurf, the new video search engine that I uncharacteristically raved about a little over a month ago, is now live for everyone to use. See also:

Yahoo: Business Issues

Yahoo Q3 Revs Flat, 10 Percent Layoffs Confirmed – Yahoo announced (pdf) Q3 revenues this afternoon. Search revenues and performance-based display ads were up. However, “premium display” (CPM) was down. Revenues were $1.786 billion, a (tiny) one percent increase, vs. $1.768 billion in the same period last year. The company stressed that consumer page views and engagement were up. Yet Yahoo confirmed that it would cut 10 percent of its headcount to gain more control over costs. The company also said that future hiring would emphasize developing countries where salaries are lower. See also:

Yahoo: Paid Search

Yahoo Adds ZIP Code Ad Targeting – Yahoo Sponsored Search advertisers can now target ads down to individual ZIP codes, according to an announcement today on the Yahoo Search Marketing blog. Yahoo joins Ask.com as the only major search engine to offer specific ZIP code-based targeting to advertisers. While Google AdWords doesn’t offer exact ZIP code targeting, it does allow advertisers to use ZIP codes as the basis for ad targeting (i.e., “ads will show 20 miles around 99352″) and lets advertisers draw custom target areas to show their ads (which could be drawn to match ZIP codes). See also:

Yahoo: Searching

Find Cheap Gas Prices With New Yahoo Shortcut – Looking for cheap gas? Sure, the price has been falling, but drivers are still looking to save. Enter Yahoo, which has rolled out a new shortcut that maps gas stations and gas prices directly within in the search results page. Just use the words “gas prices” or “cheap gas” followed by a ZIP code or city name, and you’ll get back a map with prices mapped. I found that using only the word “gas” with a ZIP or city name also worked. The screenshot above shows how it looked for a search on gas prices 92663. See also:

Yahoo: SEO

Yahoo Issues Search “Weather Report” – Yahoo has announced another search index update this morning: “We’ll be rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the next few days and expect the update will be completed soon. As you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index.” Yahoo seems to be issuing these notices about once a month of late. A look at their Weather Report blog category shows announcements just about once a month. “Yahoo Dance,” anyone?

Yahoo: Other

Yahoo Launches Web Analytics – Yahoo has announced that they’ll begin to roll out Yahoo Web Analytics (beta) on a limited basis beginning this week. According to Jitendra Kavathekar, Yahoo’s Web Analytics VP, the service has already been made available to select Yahoo advertisers and third-party application developers. The next “big deployment,” Kavathekar says, will be for Yahoo’s 13,000 e-commerce customers hosting under the Yahoo Small Business service. Beyond that, Yahoo Web Analytics will continue to roll out for the rest of this year and into 2009. See also:

US Presidential Election

Where Do I Vote? Google Maps Shows The Way – I live in a purely Vote-by-Mail county; in fact, most of Washington state is Vote-by-Mail. But in this year of heightened political interest, you can imagine a lot of U.S. citizens wanting to go to the polls … but not knowing exactly where to go. Enter Google to help answer the question, “Where do I vote?” The screenshot above shows a new Google shortcut to help people find their polling station on Google Maps. (It also shows up on similar queries like “How do I vote?” and “voting locations.”). See also:

Fun, Weird Stuff & Other Things

Google Adds Fighter Jet To Air Fleet – Google has added a new jet to their fleet of Boeings. The new Jet is actually a fighter jet, commonly known as an Alpha Jet. This jet has rights to land at Moffett Field, like the others. NASA told the NY Times that this jet will be outfitted with “scientific instruments for NASA missions, including instruments that the other planes could not carry.” Matt Furman, a Google spokesman, told the NY Times, “because of the type of aircraft we are talking about, NASA now has the ability to do even more than they could before.” See also:


Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series, maintains a personal blog called Daggle and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan.

See more articles by Danny Sullivan >

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