SearchCap: The Day In Search, Dec. 19, 2006

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web: From Search Engine Land: Up Close With Digg Podcasts (& Vote For The Daily SearchCast!) Neil Patel covered the new podcast feature at Digg in yesterday’s story, The New Digg Features Plus, A Submitter’s Perspective, […]

on December 19, 2006 at 5:02 pm | Reading time: 11 minutes
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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:

  • Up Close With
    Digg Podcasts (& Vote For The Daily SearchCast!)
    Neil Patel covered the new podcast feature at Digg in yesterday’s story,
    The New Digg Features Plus, A Submitter’s Perspective, but I wanted to take a
    deeper look at how it works plus maybe entice a few votes for my own podcast,
    The Daily SearchCast, along the way….
  • Ask.com Tests New
    Search Interface With Ask X
    The Read Write Web blog first spotted Ask.com testing a new interface they
    named Ask X. The new interface sports a steel background for the home page
    with more goodies inside. A search on Ask X for barry schwartz shows a three
    column pane interface. On the left hand side is the search box, where you can
    type and as you type you see search suggestions appear below the search box
    [Note From Danny: Pity this doesn’t happen on the home page as well]. In the
    middle column is a smart answer, followed by two paid listings and then…
  • Survey: General
    Search Fails Professionals
    Convera, an enterprise search company, commissioned an online survey of
    1,000 U.S. "professionals" in publishing, advertising, marketing, healthcare,
    finance and government. The survey sought to determine work-related search
    behavior and corresponding satisfaction levels. While sponsored research must
    always be regarded with a critical eye, the results are worth noting:…
  • Yahoo Pushing
    Vertical Search Through More Yahoo Shortcuts
    Yahoo! Shortcuts must be working for searchers and for Yahoo! Starting
    last week, I noticed Yahoo prompting me a lot more to search for retailer
    coupons, flights from city to city and movie showtimes – all which trigger a
    Yahoo Shortcut. While shortcuts have been around for a while, this is the
    first time I remember Yahoo prompting me over and over use them before I’ve
    completed a search….
  • Google Drops SOAP
    Search API
    Google has dropped support for the Google SOAP Search API as of December
    5, encouraging people to make use of the AJAX Search API in its place….
  • Quintura For Kids
    Launched
    I discussed Quintura in November – if you recall it’s a search engine that
    provides searchers with a tag cloud, which if they mouse over the tags it will
    display results. Well, today they launched Quintura for kids as a beta
    release. It works along the same lines as the adult version, with a search
    box, tag cloud and mouse over to see results, drawn from Yahoo Kids. It’s
    looking very seasonal at the moment with a backdrop of snow, lights, trees and
    so on. There are also five icons for various search subjects such as animals,
    games and music,…
  • Enquisite
    Search Marketing Shares: Google Sends Most Traffic
    Enquisite is a search ranking tool that works in part by gathering in your
    traffic details. That means they take in data from a variety of web sites and
    so can see general traffic patterns. They’ve just posted search referral data
    for November and part of December, putting Google far above anyone else in
    terms of sending search related traffic (about 78 percent). Yahoo follows in
    the 6-7 percent range, then MSN in the 3-4 percent range. Data is based on 10
    million referrals in the period. Number of sites involved isn’t said….
  • Reminder: How
    To Find The Right Search Marketing Partner Webinar Today
    Reminder! Our sister site Search Marketing Now is holding its first free
    webinar today. How to Find the Right Search Marketing Partner is led by Chris
    Sherman and starts at 1pm Eastern time. The webcast is free to attend. You’ll
    find more information and registration info here….
  • Google Maps Adds
    Multiple Destinations To Driving Directions
    Philipp Lenssen reports that Google Maps has added a very useful feature to
    Google Maps. You can now plot multiple destinations for your trip. For
    example, I plotted a trip from my office, to a 100 Broadway, NY, NY and then
    to 14 Avenue R, Brooklyn, NY. Small feature, but very useful feature, that
    almost all mapping products have already. To work this yourself, after you set
    a destination from point A to point B, click on the "add destination" link to
    add more points to the map….
  • Google Tests
    Related Searches At Bottom Of Page
    I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that Google is now showing related
    searches at the bottom of the search results page. An example query that is
    working now, is for michael jordan, scroll down to the bottom of the page and
    you should see the "Searches related to: michael jordan" area. If not, I have
    a screen shot in the link above. I believe this is new, if it is not, then
    Google is now showing them more often since yesterday, then they have in the
    past….
  • Australian
    Court Rules Against Linking; Search Engines Don’t Need To Panic
    Australian court rules against MP3 link site from News.com covers how an
    Australian court has decided that linking to some content can be illegal, in
    the right circumstances. In the right circumstances! That part is important.
    It’s easy to read the headline and come away thinking that search engines (or
    anyone, potentially) are going to find life much harder in Australia if they
    are deemed to be illegally linking to content such as music or articles posted
    online without a content owners permission. However, I think the case looks
    pretty specific to this particular MP3 search site, which the…
  • Polar Rose
    Promising Face Recognition Image Search
    I got a press release today from Polar Rose, a new company promising to bring
    facial recognition technology to those seeking images from across the web. In
    other words, want to find all the pictures of Bill Clinton? Polar Rose says it
    will make it happen through a browser plug-in that works with existing photo
    services, as well as through partnerships. If this sounds familiar, I’ll
    revisit Riya’s recent foray and back away from facial recognition….
  • YouTube’s
    Growth Worries Media Giants
    YouTube brings out media giants’ competitive claws from the International
    Herald Tribune takes a look at how YouTube is threatening the large media
    companies, such as NBC, News Corp., Viacom and CBS. As YouTube continues to
    grow, especially with the $1.65 billion acquisition by Google, these media
    companies are now having second thoughts about distributing the shows they
    produce in web format. The International Herald Tribune says that the media
    companies "are close to announcing a new Web site that will feature some of
    their best-known television programming and other clips in an attempt to build
    a business for distributing…
  • Google Ran Out
    Of Radio Ad Inventory Already
    MarketWatch reports that Google does not have enough airtime inventory to run
    the test audio ad campaigns they want to run in 2007. Reportedly, Google is
    currently in negotiations with CBS, to buy some of their ad time. Jordan Rohan
    of RBC Capital Markets said that without enough ad inventory, Google won’t be
    able to show any "significant impact until mid-2007." There is no official
    response from Google on this matter, as of yet….
  • Google Says No
    To Images Next To AdSense
    Ad and image placement: a policy clarification from the official Google Inside
    AdSense blog covers issues about placing images next to AdSense units,
    something that seems to have grown in popularity as a means of encouraging
    clicks. In short — don’t. Google doesn’t want images to appear related to
    AdSense links: We ask that publishers not line up images and ads in a way that
    suggests a relationship between the images and the ads. If your visitors
    believe that the images and the ads are directly associated, or that the
    advertiser is offering the exact item found in the…
  • Why Do People
    Google Google? Understanding User Data to Measure Searcher Intent
    What are people looking for when they type "Google" into Google? What do they
    want to see when they use "eBay" as a query? How does a Google or Yahoo learn
    from their log files, and other user information? What does it tell them about
    user intent? In an interview posted earlier today with Luke Wroblewski,
    Yahoo’s Principal Designer for Social Media, we’re told that the amount of
    user data that Yahoo has to work with while designing may be almost
    overwhelming. A point we haven’t seen made much by the search engines, it’s
    the second time today I’ve heard…
  • Stop The Freak
    Out Over Linking
    On Friday, Google Webmaster Central had a post about linking that I’m watching
    generate all types of new worries of what’s allowed or not allowed. I’ll do
    the freak out, then a summary of it, then try to push the reset button by
    revisiting my golden rules on linking….
  • Google’s Tips
    On Duplicate Content Worries
    Over the past year, I’ve heard more and more worries about duplicate content
    issues. It’s a serious concern site owners have, though sometimes I fear the
    worry is out-of-proportion to the reality of people actually getting hit by
    duplicate content penalties. Others may disagree. If you are worried, Deftly
    dealing with duplicate content from the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
    provides some excellent tips and advice on how to avoid issues with Google. I
    especially like the last tip: Don’t worry be happy: Don’t fret too much about
    sites that scrape (misappropriate and republish) your content. Though
    annoying, it’s highly…
  • Yahoo’s
    Anti-Spam Guy Tim Converse Leaving
    Yahoo’s lost a number of executives over the past year to small start-ups. Now
    count another one, especially close to home for search marketers. Tim
    Converse, the engineering manager who leads anti-spam efforts at Yahoo, is
    moving on to a start-up himself. Tim writes on his personal blog:…
  • The New Digg
    Features Plus, A Submitter’s Perspective
    Today, Kevin Rose announced the release of new Digg features. What most people
    covered in the release were all the cool additions, but no one really talked
    about the small changes that have drastically affected submitters. Before I
    dig into these small changes that affected submitters, here is a quick recap
    of the new features that everyone is talking about:…
  • Tracking Santa
    Through NORAD & Google Earth
    I love to track Santa courtesy of NORAD, the North American Air Defense
    Command. I did a post on my personal blog last year, Tracking Santa Through
    The NORAD Web Site, talking about how I moved from listening to Santa’s
    location on the radio to monitoring him with my kids on the web. Gary Price
    tipped me to the news that the NORAD Tracks Santa 2006 site is now up. Can’t
    wait for him in flight? Nathan over at InsideGoogle highlighted an official
    Google blog post about how you can find presents he’s left behind in Google
    Earth and then…

Search News Headlines From Elsewhere:

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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About the author

Danny Sullivan
Contributor
Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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