SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 19, 2009

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: 2009: Is The Glass Half Full Or Half Empty For the Yellow Pages Industry?Challenges are certain, but we’ll prosper by focusing on strengths and available opportunities The one thing that’s certain […]

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Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • 2009: Is The Glass Half Full Or Half Empty For the Yellow Pages Industry?
    Challenges are certain, but we’ll prosper by focusing on strengths and available opportunities The one thing that’s certain about 2009 is that it’s loaded with uncertainty. For local search providers, radical changes in the global marketplace present a whole new wave of issues, compounding the challenges already impacting a sector in transition. But, as the old saying goes: from change comes opportunity. The Yellow Pages sector, perhaps more than any other local search player, is keenly aware of the enormous hurdles presented by changing global economic and social dynamics. Search is fragmenting, consumer habits are changing, and the platforms through which Yellow Pages publishers interact with advertisers and consumers are rapidly evolving. And everyone is touting themselves as a local search expert.
  • GDrive: It’s Alive! — Or So It Appears
    There’s new buzz and speculation about the status of Google’s unconfirmed online file storage service, informally dubbed “GDrive.” Garrett Rogers points to a CNET interview with Gmail Product Manager Todd Jackson, who’s quoted saying: “We know people’s file sizes are getting bigger. They want to share their files, keep them in the cloud, and not worry about which computer they’re on. Google wants to be solving these problems,” Jackson said. This is hardly definitive evidence, but it’s suggestive of the validity of the long-running rumor. Meanwhile over at Google Blogoscoped, there’s a screenshot of a menu featuring “Google …
  • The SEM RFP: Questions You Must Ask
    Picking the right Search Engine Marketing (SEM) firm is hard. The quality of service and performance varies wildly, but the marketing materials often make it difficult to separate the experts from the pretenders. These questions should help cut through the marketing spin.
  • Google Quietly Drops iPhone Optimized iGoogle Page
    I reported this morning at the Search Engine Roundtable that Google seemed to have quietly dropped the iPhone version of the iGoogle page. The iPhone iGoogle page use to be at google.com/ig/i, but when iPhone users navigate to google.com/ig/i they are redirected to the standard mobile iGoogle page at google.com/m/ig. Google said the reason they dropped the iPhone version was because they “want to ensure you’ll all see the same version” of the iGoogle mobile page. But Google made no official announcement on this change, I found this by viewing a thread where it seems like hundreds of iPhone users are upset with this change.
  • Some Parallels Between Obama And Yahoo’s Carol Bartz
    Both Barack Obama and incoming Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz are taking charge of their respective administrations at times of crisis: the US is in financial turmoil, must establish clear and coherent priorities, restore its credibility and build new momentum diplomatically around the world. Yahoo, on a much smaller scale, is in a conceptually similar situation: It must get its financial house in order, establish clear goals and priorities, restore credibility with advertisers and partners and so on. It’s a stretch I know; Yahoo’s problems are quite small by comparison to the world economic and diplomatic challenges the country faces. Yet just as …
  • No Surprise: IAA Survey Shows Concern Over Google Market Dominance
    AdAge reports on an International Advertising Association (IAA) member survey that shows — there’s little surprise here — concern over Google’s market dominance in search and potentially other areas of online advertising. The survey isn’t yet out but here’s what AdAge had to say about the IAA findings: The results indicate that advertisers are still concerned about Google’s size and market share, whether that was a naturally incubated fear or one inspired by Microsoft’s lobbying: 65% said there is one dominant player in the online ad market and that there are “limited choices and price options for online advertisers”; 85% …
  • Report: Search Spending Off 8 Percent In Q4
    While search engine marketing has been somewhat more durable during the recession (to date), than other media, that may not save SEM from negative growth. The Wall Street Journal is reporting on the latest Efficient Frontier search marketing report, set to be released tomorrow. According to the Journal, the report will state that SEM declined 8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008. The Journal also cites the report as follows: Advertisers who spend less than $50,000 on search ads cut their spending by 23% year-over-year, while advertisers that spend more than $200,000 on search per month cut spending by 9% …
  • Google Testing “Preferred Sites” Option In Search Preferences
    Google Operating System discovered a new experiment Google is running, named Preferred Sites. In short, users who are in this experiment will be able to add a list of sites in their search preferences page, as their “preferred sites.” Google will then use that information to show those sites in a higher ranking order in the Google results for that user, when it makes sense. Let me share some examples of how this works.
  • Live Search News Adds Email Alerts
    The Live Search Blog announced the addition of email alerts for Live Search News. Live Search had RSS results for a while, but did not have a way to subscribe to news alerts via email. Live Search now gives you the ability to get these alerts via email either once a day, twice a day or weekly and you can subscribe by section or by search phrase.To start getting news in your inbox from Live Search, go to Live Search News. Then, click on where it says “News alerts” and a menu will open up. You will need a Windows Live login and then you specify the email alerts you want. Here is a picture:
  • Google & Others Martin Luther King Jr.’s Logos
    Like last year, today, the search engines are commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I attached a collage of logos and themes from the various search engines, including Google, Yahoo, AOL, Live.com, Ask.com and Dogpile.To see them all in greater detail, you can visit their respective home pages today or go to the Search Engine Roundtable, where I posted each logo individually. Like I said in my other post, I suspect these search engines will all have special logos tomorrow, for Inauguration Day, …
  • Yahoo & Microsoft Execs Meet Again
    Valleywag is reporting that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer met with Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock Thursday in New York City. As you can imagine, news of the meeting has restarted speculation about the on-again, off-again merger/deal talks. The New York Times says that spokespersons for both companies refused to comment about the Ballmer-Bostock meeting.Earlier this week, new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz mentioned that she’s already had an informal conversation with Ballmer.

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About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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