More from Search Engine Land: Page 4

Local

Yahoo Local Gets A Sophisticated Makeover

Yahoo is arguably the leader in local search, but others including Google, Microsoft and Yelp have been rapidly gaining. The search engine’s venerable Local site was in need of a refresh, which it has now received. With a redesign partly inspired by the Yahoo OurCity sites in India, the new Yahoo Local features a bolder […]

Search features

AOL Launches Improved Mobile Search

AOL has improved its mobile search capability, especially for Windows Mobile devices. Earlier I had incorrectly reported that there had been a full relaunch of its mobile portal. Only the search functionality has been improved and relaunched. There are now two types of search experiences: an enhanced Windows Mobile experience and a non-Windows Mobile version, […]

SEO

Report: More Time Spent With Content, Mild Increase In Search

According to the Nielsen-measured, Online Publishers Association-sponsored Internet Activity Index, Internet users are spending more time with content sites, less time with “communications” and marginally more time with search. According to OPA president Pam Horan’s prepared statement, “The index indicates that, over the last four years, the primary role of the Internet has shifted from […]

Bing

Live Search Is On A “Positive Trajectory” Says Microsoft

Microsoft says its Web search on “positive trajectory” from Reuters reports Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft’s platforms and services group, saying Live Search is on a “positive trajectory.” He said in an interview: Over the next 12 months, we’ve got a very aggressive engineering plan with multiple releases of search coming forward. So, I think […]

SEO

Ask.com’s New Simple U.S. Commercial

Gary Price discusses a brand new Ask.com commercial being broadcasted in the U.S. This commercial is very simplistic, with virtually no words to the whole commercial. It just shows feature after feature. Here it is:

Content

Search Illustrated: Black Hat Cloaking Explained

Have you ever clicked on a promising search result, only to find that the web page you land on has nothing to do with what you expected, or even worse, is a page of porn or other spam? If so, you may have been the unwitting victim of black-hat cloaking. Today’s Search Illustrated shows how […]

Apple

Embed Google Maps Feature Coming Soon

Google’s embeddable map feature out next week from The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Google Maps will be adding a YouTube like embed maps feature, as early as next week. Carl Sjogreen, Google Australia’s senior product manager, announced this feature in Sydney today. The feature will be rolled out worldwide in about a week’s time, […]

Google

Google, Microsoft Moving Forward With Health Ventures

The International Herald Tribune reports (story also in the NY Times) on new developments at both Google and Microsoft concerning their health product strategies. The long-rumored Google Health is apparently almost here. (See screenshots at Google Blogoscoped.) Health care-related advertising and marketing is a multi-billion dollar industry in the U.S. and Google and Microsoft are […]

Google

Google Webmaster Tools Adds Malware Review Form

The Google Webmaster Central Blog announced a new feature to submit a request to Google to review pages that were labeled as being malware. Google Search Results Now May Display Malware Warnings from us provides background on how the warnings work. In addition, Google has been sending malware notifications via email to webmasters. The main […]

Apple

Ask Jumps, Google Slips and Yahoo Leads American Customer Satisfaction Index for Search

For the first time, Yahoo has beaten Google in the annual University of Michigan American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The survey measures U.S. consumer satisfaction across a broad range of business and product categories including “e-business,” which covers search. The survey asks a statistically representative sample of consumers to rate their experiences with portals and […]

Advertising

Microsoft Completes aQuantive Acquisition, Creates ‘Advertiser and Publisher Solutions’ Group

Microsoft has officially completed the acquisition of aQuantive Inc., which includes agency Avenue A | Razorfish and the Atlas ad-serving platform. The acquisition was the largest in Microsoft’s history, valued at roughly $6 billion. The company has also simultaneously created a new group that it’s calling the “Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group.”

Content

New Debate On Search Engine Regulation

Eric Goldman’s Technology & Marketing Law Blog features an interesting debate and discussion about whether algorithmic search results should be subject to regulation. On one side is Goldman, who says “no.” On the other are law professors Frank Pasquale and Oren Bracha who argue “yes” in a recent paper entitled “Federal Search Commission: Access, Fairness […]

Ecommerce

News.com Rates Search Engines On Privacy

How search engines rate on privacy has a report from News.com on how the various search engines rate on privacy. On August 6th, News.com sent eight questions to AOL, Ask.com, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, based on their responses, News.com rated Ask.com the best in terms of being the most protective of privacy.

SEO

Ask.com Goes Weird & Creepy With New UK Commercials

The Ask.com Blog announced that they have new commercials rolling out in the UK. They call these commercials the “third stage of the campaign” which is out to promote the Ask.com brand and features. The commercials show hints of the Information Revolution message and some of their past promotions. I find the new commercials, featuring […]

Bing

Microsoft And ‘White Space’ Coalition To Try Again On Internet Access Plan

A coalition of companies that includes Microsoft, Google, Intel and Dell were recently rebuffed by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in their combined effort to offer wireless Internet access on unused portions of the nation’s television airwaves, so-called “white space.” The FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) found that the coalition’s hardware failed […]

Google

Sun’s StarOffice Added To Google Pack

Google Pack Adds StarOffice from Google Operating System reports Google has added StarOffice, Sun’s office suite, to the Google Pack. StarOffice has a word processor, a spreadsheet tool, presentations tool, databases, math formulas and drawing tools. Typically, Sun charges $69.95 but it is free with the Google Pack. It is worth noting that Google and […]

Content

Google To Shut Down Video Store On August 15th

Google Is Closing Its Video Retailing Operation from the New York Times reports that Google will be closing down their video marketplace that they opened in January 2006. BoingBoing has an email that was sent to those who have made purchases at Google Video. Part of the email reads:

Link building

Link Building’s Cult Of Reciprocity

A big part of my professional life is spent teaching and training corporate clients how to become self sufficient at in-house link building and content publicity. Those readers here who have heard me speak at conferences may remember how strongly I have stated my position that to be effective over the long term, you must […]

Content

Search In The Year 2010

If I ever had to build a search engine, or more precisely, the interface of a search engine, this would be the team I would want to bring together. When I came up with the idea of looking forward three years and speculating on what the search results page may look like in 2010, these […]

SEO

Searcharazzi: So Over Google Storage Increase

alt=”Searcharazzi – A Column From Search Engine Land” align=”left” hspace=”5″ vspace=”3″ width=”100″ height=”100″> If there was a silver lining to the rainy morning it was that little note above Searcharazzi’s Gmail inbox, stating “You are almost out of space for your Gmail account. You can view our tips on reducing your email storage or purchase […]

Google

The Google Homepage And Global Warming

A number of people, including those that run the sites Blackle and Darkoogle, have argued in the recent past that Google should turn its homepage (and results background) from white to black to save energy. (Both of the above sites use the Google custom search engine). Here’s some background on the controversy from US News. […]

Paid social

AOL Having Second Thoughts On Netscape As Digg Clone?

Netscape is now pitching a “classic” version of its former portal site, which appears to be a way to woo back some of those who dislike the Digg-style social news site that Netscape was transformed into back in June 2006. But Netscape also says that despite the “alternative” experience, the social news version will continue.

SEO

Marchex Acquires Call Vendor VoiceStar

Marchex announced this afternoon that it has acquired VoiceStar, which provides pay-per-phone-call (PPCall) and call tracking services to a range of companies online and their advertisers. The reported acquisition/investment price is $28 million. VoiceStar is expected to generate $1.5 million for the full year 2007 and double that in 2008. However Marchex sees a much […]

Google

Google 10-Q Reveals Rewards, Risks of Being Google

Google just released its SEC form 10-Q filing. For the six months ended June 30, 2007, Google had revenues of $7.535 billion vs. $4.7 billion during the same period a year ago. During the past six months Google has completed 10 acquisitions for $183.6 million or $18 million on average. Revenues for 2007 (so far) […]

Ecommerce

Yahoo Search Adds Baseball Shortcut

The Yahoo Search Blog announced a new baseball search shortcut. For example, a search on Prince Fielder, of the Milwaukee Brewers, shows up a shortcut with a picture, his number, team, real statistics for the year and fantasy league statistics, plus links to news, game log, scores, schedules and more photos and stats. Here is […]

Bing

After Striking Out With Google, Perfect 10 Bats Against Microsoft Over Image Search

Perfect 10 has issued a press release announcing it is now going after Microsoft for copyright infringement over including Perfect 10’s images in Live Image Search. Norm Zada, Perfect 10’s president said: Microsoft is showing tens of thousands of extremely valuable celebrity images, along with Perfect 10 images, without authorization, which it obtains from hundreds […]

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