Liveblog: SMX West 2010 Keynote – An Insider’s Look At Google Research

Mar 3, 2010 at 11:40am ET by Matt McGee   

It’s day two of SMX West 2010 in a rainy Santa Clara, California, and we’ll be liveblogging today’s keynote session. Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman will be chatting on the big stage with Peter Norvig, Google’s Director of Research. We’re expecting some sneak peeks at future Google products and technology, so come [...]

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SMX West 2010 Day One Coverage

Mar 3, 2010 at 12:33am ET by Matt McGee   

The first day of SMX West 2010 is in the books, highlighted by Steve Ballmer’s appearance during a keynote conversation with Danny Sullivan. But that was hardly the only thing going on today. Here’s a recap of the SMX West coverage we’ve found; feel free to leave a comment if there’s something we missed.

Google’s Personalized [...]

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Liveblog: Steve Ballmer Keynote At SMX West

Mar 2, 2010 at 11:27am ET by Matt McGee   

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer makes his first address to the search marketing community today at SMX West in Santa Clara. Danny Sullivan will sit down with Ballmer for a “fireside chat” that will also include time for Q&A from members of the audience. NOTE: Microsoft has now posted a video and a transcript of the talk. Speaking [...]

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Has Google Just Patented Geo-Targeting?

Mar 2, 2010 at 2:37am ET by Greg Sterling   

Google has been awarded a patent entitled “Determining and/or using location information in an ad system” that has very broad implications for PC and mobile advertising. While we all take geo-targeting today for granted, back when this Google patent application was filed in April, 2004 it wasn’t as common. Dare I say it: Google may [...]

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Happy Birthday, Yahoo: 15 Years Old Today

Mar 1, 2010 at 11:05pm ET by Matt McGee   

Although its web site launched in 1994, Yahoo is celebrating its 15th birthday today — that’s in honor of the company being incorporated on March 1, 1995. The story of Yahoo’s founding is well known: Stanford graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo created a directory of web sites originally called “Jerry and David’s Guide [...]

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Google To Increase Abuse Alerts To Webmasters

Mar 1, 2010 at 8:22pm ET by Matt McGee   

Saying that web site hacking and other forms of abuse is on the rise, Google has announced plans to step up the notifications it sends to webmasters when the company finds these problems. Beginning this month, Google will use the Message Center area in Google Webmaster Tools to notify site owners about

Spammy or abused user-generated content Abused [...]

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Bing Adds Search History To Auto-Suggest

Mar 1, 2010 at 1:43pm ET by Matt McGee   

Bing has announced that it’s using your search history in its auto-suggest feature. In a post on its Search Blog, Bing says that “44% of non-navigational search sessions last longer than 1 week,” meaning the inclusion of previous searches in auto-suggest adds to the convenience factor of searching similar topics/queries over time. Queries from your search [...]

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Pew: Portals Most Commonly Used News Sites

Mar 1, 2010 at 9:23am ET by Greg Sterling   

The Pew Internet project has just released a lengthy report on online news consumption entitled Understanding the Participatory News Consumer. There are no search-specific findings; however it appears from the survey data that “portal websites like Google News, AOL and Topix are the most commonly used online news sources, visited by over half of online news users on a typical day.” Here are some of the high-level findings from [...]

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Admitting Role In Google Anti-Trust Complaints Microsoft Complains Of Google “Lock In”

Feb 27, 2010 at 1:51pm ET by Greg Sterling   

Responding to Google’s aggressive assertion that Microsoft is behind many of the anti-trust complaints that have been leveled against Google in the recent past, Microsoft in a blog post by Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Dave Heiner essentially says “get over it.” Google claimed that Microsoft was directly or indirectly responsible for the anti-trust complaints [...]

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Yes, More Are Seeing A New Google Look-And-Feel

Feb 26, 2010 at 12:49pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

We’re getting more and more reports from readers who are seeing a “new” Google look-and-feel for its search results. This is a three column design that Google’s actually been testing for some time. That testing appears to be accelerating. Google Tackles Its “UI Jazz” Problem, Tests Streamlining Search Options Feature is our story from [...]

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Google Adds “Nearby” Local Search To Options Panel

Feb 26, 2010 at 12:44pm ET by Matt McGee   

Google has expanded the choices in its Search Options panel with today’s announcement of a tool to refine searches by location. After doing a search and opening the “Show Options” panel, you’ll see a new link labeled “nearby.”

Clicking that link leads to a few refinement options: You can use the default location Google has for you, [...]

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Need To Learn Search Marketing? Come To SMX Boot Camp!

Feb 25, 2010 at 5:39pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

One of the most important things to me as part of the SMX search marketing conferences that Search Engine Land runs is educating newcomers to the basics of search marketing. That’s why we run a special SMX Boot Camp track. That’s also why we created a special low-cost ticket for those who just want to [...]

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Losing Google? Chinese Scientists Say It’s Like Going Blind, Life Without Electricity

Feb 25, 2010 at 1:35pm ET by Matt McGee   

Chinese scientists say their research will be dramatically compromised if Google shuts down its search engine in China. One scientist says it would be like going blind: “If I lose Google, it will [be] just like a man without his eyes.” Another says it “would be like life without electricity.” Those quotes and several statistics showing [...]

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Google Caffeine May Be Months Away & You Can’t See It

Feb 25, 2010 at 6:50am ET by Matt McGee   

While some webmasters anxiously wait for Google to roll out its Google Caffeine search infrastructure any day now, Google says it may not happen for “months.” What’s more, the IP address of the one data center where Caffeine was said to be available may have changed, and Google is no longer saying where users can [...]

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Google Advertises Chrome … On Bing!

Feb 25, 2010 at 2:01am ET by Danny Sullivan   

It’s not unusual for other search engines like Yahoo, Bing or Ask to advertise on Google. But I’ve never seen Google run an ad on another search engine until now. I did a search this evening on Bing for Google Chrome. To my surprise, there was an ad right at the top of the page advertising [...]

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Google Real Time Search Now Shows Updates From Facebook Fan Pages

Feb 24, 2010 at 7:10pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Google’s Real Time Search has gained a new data source, updates from Facebook fan pages. Google had announced a deal to list this information back in December, and now it’s finally being implemented. Google has tweeted the news. See our detailed guide, Google Launches Real Time Search Results to understand how Google Real Time Search works, [...]

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Italian Court Finds Google Execs Guilty Of Violating Privacy Code

Feb 24, 2010 at 2:11pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Three Google executives have been found guilty of criminal charges over a bullying video that appeared on the Google Video service. Google has responded with a blog post pledging to appeal the convictions and suggesting that they undermine “the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built.” The video involved a youth with Down’s [...]

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Is Redmond The Puppet Master In Google EU Anti-Trust Complaints?

Feb 23, 2010 at 10:45pm ET by Greg Sterling   

As both the Wall Street Journal and Telegraph UK are reporting, the EU has received complaints into Google’s competitive practices and potential abuse of its dominant market position in Europe. These come from some private companies, which we discussed in part before. One of those companies, the shopping engine Ciao, was acquired by Microsoft in 2008. [...]

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Wired On Google’s Algorithm

Feb 23, 2010 at 8:38am ET by Barry Schwartz   

Exclusive: How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web from Wired has an excellent and detailed look at the evolution Google’s search algorithm over the years. It is a pretty long write up, so I wanted to highlight those key points in bullet format for you all. Key Advances:

Backrub in September 1997 New Algorithm in August 2001 Local Connectivity [...]

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By The Numbers: Twitter Vs. Facebook Vs. Google Buzz

Feb 23, 2010 at 7:45am ET by Matt McGee   

Twitter caused a stir Monday when it lifted its curtain enough to show us how much activity the service is seeing currently, and how it’s grown since 2007. And while many reports talk about visits to Twitter.com flattening, Twitter’s own chart showing the number of tweets its users are publishing is staggering.

Twitter says it’s currently [...]

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