SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 18, 2008

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Search Biz: MSFT Spends On Lobbyists To Save On Yahoo; Google Book Deal Gets Tentative OK; WSJ Says ‘Extinction’ Threatens Yellow Pages & MoreBy almost doubling its spending on lobbying, Microsoft […]

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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:

  • Search Biz: MSFT Spends On Lobbyists To Save On Yahoo; Google Book Deal Gets Tentative OK; WSJ Says ‘Extinction’ Threatens Yellow Pages & More
    By almost doubling its spending on lobbying, Microsoft managed to kill the Google-Yahoo ad deal and may also have saved itself millions of dollars on a Yahoo buyout. That’s the case made by Declan McCullough today on CNET. McCullough explains that Microsoft spent about $12-$14 million per year on lobbyists between 2005 and 2007, but so far in 2008 that figure has soared to almost $25 million. And if the new Yahoo CEO goes back to the negotiation table with Microsoft, that could save MSFT a lot of money:
  • Forums Are So Much More Than Signature Links
    Yesterday, while I was in Hancock Fabrics, a woman standing in front of me told the cashier she loved the store’s discussion forum. She said it helped her more than once and turned to it whenever she had a problem or was looking for ideas. What made the conversation interesting was the fact the woman in front of me was 72 years young. So much for the idea older people aren’t online and forums are a dying breed. When you talk about forums and link building, most people focus on signature links or attracting links through repeated brand and reputation exposure. Signature links tend to be weak algorithmically, they’ve been abused almost to the point of no return and add little to your link reputation. Building links through brand and reputation management takes time so it’s not considered a proactive link building tactic. If signature links are basically worthless and brand attraction takes a while, how else can you use a forum to attract links?  There are a couple of things you can do. Let’s talk about two: running membership based link promotions and developing networks.
  • Yahoo! BOSS Adds Key Terms Feature
    In July Yahoo! launched their BOSS API, which enables you to “build your own search service”. Today, they’ve expanded the functionality of that API by adding a Key Terms feature. The technology used in Key Terms is the same used for Search Assist, which provides search suggestions and enables searchers to explore concepts related to the query. Yahoo! says they’re adding this feature in response to developers’ requests for greater access to “deep infrastructure assets”. The Key Terms feature uses term frequency and positional and contextual heuristics to return ordered lists that describe a web page. Each result returned for a query includes associated metadata of up to 20 terms that describe that result. In the blog post announcing the feature, Yahoo! uses a sample query of [obama] to illustrate that the first result, change.gov, includes key terms metadata such as Vice President-elect, President-elect, American, and lobbyists.
  • Google Hosting Time-Life Photo Archive, 10 Million Unpublished Images Now Live
    TimeWarner and Google have announced that starting today Google will make available millions of images from the Life Magazine photo archive. The vast majority (97 percent) of these images have never been seen by the public (they were sitting around in physical envelopes). These are hard-copy photographs that have been or are being scanned by Google and will be hosted by Google. They will show up in Google.com and Google Image search results. All these photos are available in high-resolution (5 and 6 megapixels). The images will be free to use for “personal and research purposes” but will be digitally watermarked to prevent unauthorized or unlicensed commercial uses. There are links to appropriate contacts for those who want to use the images commercially.
  • The New Yahoo CEO: Let The Speculation Games Begin
    Wait, they already have. PaidContent posted a fairly comprehensive roundup yesterday of possible successors to outgoing Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang. (Yahoo is up in early trading on the news of Yang’s resignation, which was received favorably by most financial analysts.) PaidContent also poses the question: will the board go with a tech executive or a media executive? The answer is that Yahoo needs someone comfortable in both worlds.
  • Video: Google Mobile iPhone App With Voice Recognition Now Available
    The Google Mobile Blog announced that the Google Mobile iPhone App, now with voice search, is finally live as an update in the iTunes App store. So I downloaded this morning and decided to offer you a video demonstration of how it works. Before showing you that, let me link you to some of the coverage we have seen so far. Matt Cutts of Google has not only one, but two useful posts demonstrating the features. Waxy shows the behind the scenes on how it works. Plus you can see more coverage at Techmeme.
  • Jerry Yang Stepping Down As CEO; Resuming Chief Yahoo Role
    Yahoo has announced that Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s founder and current CEO, will be stepping down from the CEO role after Yahoo finds a successor. Jerry will resume his former role of Chief Yahoo when the new CEO comes in. All Things Digital has posted the email Jerry sent out to the company; I will include the email below.
  • Drill, Baby, Drill: Google Finance Gets Ads; Google News Testing Them
    In my Ad Age column last month, I joked about Google taking a “drill, baby, drill” approach in rolling out more ads everywhere on its properties. Now the latest ad reservoir to be tapped: Google Finance, as announced today on the Google Blog. You’ll find a new box as shown above sporting ads on the Google Finance home page, as well as ads that are running along the sides of internal pages:

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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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