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 […]
Barry Schwartz on November 18, 2008 at 5:27 pm | Reading time: 8 minutes
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:
Search News From Around The Web:
Applications & Portal Features
Business Issues
- DivX Files Lawsuit Against Yahoo On Advertising Payment Breach, paidContent.org
- Yellow Pages Publisher Hit with $1.5M Fraud Judgment for Publishing False Ad–Knepper v. Brown, Eric Goldman
- Yahoo’s Peter (Chernin) Principle And Other CEO Choices, AllThingsD
- Online Spending Growth Slows Sharply Amid Economic Gloom, Wall Street Journal
- Video Discovery Engine Taboola Gets $4.5 Million Second Round, paidContent.org
- Stepping down, Yodel Anecdotal
- Baidu, to Restore Trust, Removes Certain Listings, Wall Street Journal
- Eric Schmidt on what’s ahead in 2009, Google Public Policy Blog
Local, Maps & Mobile
- Google Maps for Mobile Working On Preloading Maps, Search Engine Roundtable
- Is Yelp.com Paying for Positive Comments?, Search Engine Roundtable
- China Mobile first to get mobile IE 6, News.com
- VideoEgg Extends Its Ad Network To the iPhone, Disses AdMob, TechCrunch
Paid Search & Contextual
- Chitika Sees 200% Growth in Premium Ads for 2008, Search Engine Watch Blog
- Finders, Keepers – How To Find Your Ad!, adCenter Blog for Advertisers
- Google AdWords Tip on Negative Keywords, Search Engine Roundtable
- Google Promises They Don’t Cap AdSense Earnings, Search Engine Roundtable
- Maximize Your Paid Search Budget with Better Ads, Search Engine Guide
- Optimisation Essentials (Part III), Inside AdSense
Searching
- Splunk – The IT Search Engine, AltSearchEngines
- The Future of Google’s Search Personalization, Search Engine Watch
SEM Industry
- Nerdfight: Facebook goes head to head with Google PR — and blinks, Valleywag
- Free Search Marketing RFP Proposal Template, SEO Book
- Super Conference Recap Special: FOSM, SMX London and Pubcon Las Vegas, SEOmoz
- Vegas PubCon 2008 and UFC 91, Sugarrae
- Jeremy Rivera: Search Blogger of the Day, The SEO Scoop
- PubCon 2008 in Pictures, Marketing Pilgrim
- Pubcon Recap: Booths, Beginners, and Bashes, SEOmoz
- Video: Matt Cutts on Changes at Google, WebProNews
SEO & SEM
- How Can You Expand Your PCC Reach? Target Blog RSS Feeds With Google AdWords!, PPC Hero
- How To Super Charge Your Online Marketing for The Holiday Season, Search Engine Journal
- Learn About Your Customers And Drive Creative Marketing With Keyword Creativity, WordTracker
- 10 Questions that Guarantee SEO Success, Part I, Search Engine Guide
- Yes, Google Will Index & Rank Your XML Sitemap File, Search Engine Roundtable
- SEO Dreams are Made of This, Search Engine Watch
Social Media
- P&G Digital Guru Not Sure Marketers Belong on Facebook, Ad Age
- Twitter is Down! (I forgot how much I miss typing that), TechCrunch
- A Social Media Fall From Grace, We Build Pages
Video, Music & Image Search
Web Analytics
- The Feedback Loop Gap, adCenter Analytics Blog
- Why Click Tracking Sucks For Tracking RSS Subscribers, seoroi.com
Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:
- How To Super Charge Your Online Marketing for The Holiday Season
- Using Video Annotations to Raise Awareness and Website Traffic
- Economic Downturn Cleaning House In the World of SEO
- The Art Of The SEO Proposal
- Copywriting That Brings Quality Clickthroughs
- PubCon SEO Toolkit: It Ain't Poetry But It's Live Blogging I'm Proud Of
- 30+ Very Useful Twitter Tools You Must Be Aware Of
- Jerry Yang’s Entire Memo to His Employees on Stepping Down as CEO
Related stories
New on Search Engine Land