SearchCap: The Day In Search, Jan. 15, 2007

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web: From Search Engine Land: Greg Linden Mothballs Findory I never got into Greg Linden’s Findory service much. Now after three years, he’s announced the personalized information service is effectively being mothballed. What’s there should keep […]

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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:

  • Greg Linden
    Mothballs Findory

    I never got into Greg Linden’s Findory service much. Now after three years,
    he’s announced the personalized information service is effectively being
    mothballed. What’s there should keep working, but he has no plans to expand or
    improve the service further. I may not have used Findory much, but I’ve
    continued to be impressed on Greg’s thoughts on search and personalization
    that he shares via his personal blog. Best of luck, Greg, on whatever you do
    next….
  • SEO Blogs Under
    Hack Attack

    First Graywolf’s blog was hacked, then I just found Stuntdubl has gone down
    when I was about to send some link love his way. I’ll hold that for tomorrow.
    They’re not the only ones. The culprit is over here and writes (NOTE: Links no
    longer work as this WordPress hosted account was promptly suspended for
    violating the terms of service):…
  • More Spotting
    Google’s Related Searches At Bottom Of Page

    Last month, we reported how Google was testing related searches at the bottom
    of search results pages, which Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed in comments on
    our post. In the past few days, I’ve seen a flood of further posts about
    related searches as more and more people spot these. Yes, they do seem to be
    more noticeable and frequently appearing. I’ve been getting them myself over
    the past two days. You get a series of eight suggested searches as links,
    under the heading of "Searches related to:" followed by the original word you
    searched for….
  • Googlers Give
    Overwhelmingly To Democrats; Google’s PAC Gave More To Republicans

    Google contributes thousands to conservatives from USA Today looks at how
    while 98 percent of Google employee money went to Democrats in the last
    election, the company-controlled Google NetPAC gave 61 percent of its
    contributions to conservative candidates. Then again, donations of $31,000
    were tiny and the "company" PAC has donations that come almost entirely from
    only seven employees, hardly feeling that much like a real company effort….
  • Looking At
    Microsoft’s Continued Long Game In Search

    Hooked on Google from the San Jose Mercury News revisits a theme from
    Microsoft that I’ve reported to readers over the years. That’s how Microsoft’s
    failure to beat Google in search — despite millions in spending — gets the
    "it’s early days, give us time" defense from Microsoft. The defense is
    partially true, but it gets weaker and weaker as the actual years of saying
    that mount….
  • Hacking Google
    To Help It Improve Security

    Last Friday, Philipp Lenssen wrote a fascinating post describing how his
    associate Tony Ruscoe was able to access Philipp’s Google account: "It’s your
    worst nightmare – someone reads parts of your Google emails, views your docs,
    modifies your spreadsheets, checks out your reading habits on the Google
    personalized homepage or Google Reader, and goes through your search history."
    Tony’s a white-hat hacker, so he reported his exploit to Google’s security
    team, and they’ve now closed the hole that allowed this to happen. Today, Tony
    explains what he did and how he thinks Google fixed the problem in Details of
    Google’s…
  • Microsoft Live
    & Yahoo Push For Firefox Users, Plus Revisiting The IE7 Search Battle

    Today I noticed Live.com trying to get me to search with it in Firefox. Then
    Yahoo did the same thing. So I guess a new round of "let’s change search
    defaults" is going on within Firefox. That seemed a good excuse for a revisit
    how the various search engines are trying to pull us as their default choices
    in both Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox….
  • Study Says Get
    In Top 5 Not Top 10 & Search Engines May Need To Highlight Official Sites

    On Friday, we reported briefly on a new eye tracking study from Microsoft on
    how users interact with search results. I spent some time doing a deep dive
    into the survey, which is full of interesting information. Among the findings
    is that search marketers may need to be more concerned about getting into the
    top five rather than the top ten, if they want to be seen. In addition, search
    engines might want to seriously experiment more with adding "official site"
    links at the top of their pages and possibly enlarge the size of listing
    descriptions or "snippets" to help…
  • New Year’s
    Resolution: Know Your Inbound Link Potential!

    So what’s your linking strategy for 2007? I mean besides get as many as
    possible? Maybe you’re adding link bait? Or buying links? Or ramping up your
    link-loaded "press releases" to six per month?  Buying old sites and 301’ing
    them? Or maybe you want to get to the Digg homepage? Reciprocals? Three ways?
    Ask your college kid for a link from his .edu page? Outsource it all? Or how
    about this? Works for me. Whatever your linking strategy — and there are many
    — one thing has not changed a bit in the 14 years I’ve been in the link…
  • Link Week: New
    Column From Search Engine Land

    I’d like to welcome Eric Ward who kicks off Link Week today, a regular weekly
    column from Search Engine Land. Eric’s has been both building links as a
    professional over the past 14 years and educating people about the space over
    that time. We’re thrilled to have him writing for us. Link Week is the first
    of several other columns that will be launching on Search Engine Land over the
    coming weeks. I’ll provide an introduction for each one of them, as they
    launch….

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.


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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