MSN and Live Search probably don’t get enough attention in the local search field, but the reality is that there’s a solid core of usage thanks to the default experience offered on many PCs — Windows OS and Internet Explorer. (On a purely anecdotal level, an old blog post I wrote about adding a business […]
Tomorrow from 10am – 11:30am PDT, Google will live stream their latest Searchology event. We will be live blogging at the event, so if you can’t watch the Google webcast, check here for all the news as it unfolds. In 2007, Google held their first Searchology event, where they announced universal search. Universal search, of […]
While Twitter is looking at ways to be more search-ey, Google is apparently thinking about ways to be more microbloggy. Buried in a Reuters article about Google’s shareholders meeting yesterday is this paragraph about the company’s interest in the social web: “Company executives who appeared alongside Schmidt at the media briefing said Google was looking […]
After briefly going live yesterday, Wolfram Alpha — the much anticipated fact engine — was quickly shutdown. Now the company tells us that May 18 is the official launch data. For more about the service, see my write-up, Impressive: The Wolfram Alpha “Fact Engine”. Postscript by Barry Schwartz: They have moved up the date to […]
Our own Barry Schwartz spotted this today on Google Maps: A search for rustybrick includes a link to see Flickr photos displayed on Google Maps: Clicking on that link leads to a fairly lengthy list of photos imported into Google Maps via the Flickr API. The photos are all from a Flickr feed that includes […]
We were alerted that Google appears to be testing favicons in Germany and Poland for AdWords advertisers. Here are a few screens: A number of advertisers in the US have informally reported higher CTRs using the Google Checkout icon. (One discussion I had with an advertiser in the UK last week said he saw an […]
Maybe that headline overreaches a little but not entirely. For those that have been wondering whether Google’s GrandCentral acquisition, which the company made in mid 2007 and thereafter seemed to neglect, would suffer the same fate as Dodgeball or Jaiku . . . wonder no more. Using the GrandCentral infrastructure, and currently only available to […]
The latest SEO talk this week has been all about Google’s algorithm changes that presumably favor big brands, but Microsoft Live Search has been experimenting with changes of its own that seemingly would help big brands the most (although ironically, big brands may not like it all that much). Today, I came across some interesting […]
After testing this for close to a year, Yahoo is set to formally announce Rich Ads In Search — a service that places images and videos into paid ads in Yahoo’s search results. The New York Times says the service will be announced formally on Thursday. A search for Pedigree dog food brings up a […]
Ask.com — saying it plans to compete against the likes of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft — has announced a new “Super Verticals” strategy to take on its much larger rivals. These are specialized search engines that provide direct answers to factual questions. First off the mark? A NASCAR search engine. And yes, Ask also becomes […]
Search Engine Roundtable reports today that Google’s SMS Search service isn’t working: When you send a search term to 466453, Google quickly replies that your query “did not return any results.” Barry Schwartz used “Lakers” and “RustyBrick” as examples to show what’s happening: The SER report says Google is looking into the problem, but the […]
Search Engine Land turned two years old this month. In that time, our content has blossomed. We run nearly 20 columns on search marketing issues, routinely post multiple brief items per day about breaking search news along with regular long, in-depth analysis or “How To” stories. Our old design didn’t serve to present this content […]
It’s been about two months since Google Blog Search was relaunched with a new front page that summarizes stories. I talked with Google more about some of the inner workings at the end of October and finally am getting around to posting this, spurred by one of the planned changes becoming official. Google Blog Search […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
The Yahoo-Microsoft-AOL soap opera continues. (You expected otherwise?) At AllThingsD, Kara Swisher was pretty adamant Monday that Yahoo and Microsoft are not in secret talks right now about a new search partnership, and she called the weekend report from The Times (UK) “inaccurate.” Part of that UK story had Ross Levinson and Jon Miller taking […]
Google Blog Search just had a big change announced today — top blog posts are now clustered on the home page around particular story topics, similar to how Google News (or Techmeme) operates. You can also drill into various categories of posts, such as technology or politics. It looks interesting and promising, and we’re going […]
A Search Engine Land reader points us toward the Science/Tech category of Google News, where, for the better part of the morning, a CNET news article about private rocketry was displaying with the headline, “Delicious.” Here’s a screenshot:
So much for a quiet Labor Day off. Google Blogoscoped has news of Google Chrome, a new browser that Google plans to release. More coverage can also be found on Techmeme. No — it’s not just a rumor. Google tells me that it is indeed a real browser it plans to release. Expect more news […]
Philipp Lenssen’s The World According to Cuil blog post inspired me to take snapshots of how Cuil, the new search engine, matches up the names of our industry to pictures. Here’s Danny Sullivan’s Wikipedia article, but showing a picture of Danny Sullivan the race car driver:
Since writing my WTF! US Court Declares You Have No Privacy On YouTube article, more information has come out suggesting that Google will be able to turn over information to Viacom about what’s watched on YouTube without having to say who exactly who was watching it. Nor, does it seem, that Viacom itself wants that […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Microsoft Live Search’s xRank feature got some attention when it launched as a way to track celebrities. But you might not realize the service also now tracks buzz about musicians, politicians, and — yes — bloggers.
I’ve got no problem if Microsoft wants to “bribe” searchers to use its search engine. Even Google has done the same. But the Live Search Cashback program rolled out today seems a pretty inept way to do it, far more likely to disappoint and frustrate than woo searchers.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is perhaps showing signs of a mildly unhealthy obsession with rival Google. At Microsoft’s MIX08 online technology conference in Las Vegas yesterday, he told interviewer Guy Kawasaki in a question and answer session that he was going to continue to chase Google in search even if it costs him his “last […]
On Friday, Search Engine Land published a piece about the Wired How To wiki, and how easy it was to gain a link from it. Our piece — which I gave the go ahead to — generated some serious spam issues for Wired, generated discord within the search marketing community, and injured the search marketing […]
Last night in Las Vegas, SEOmoz held a game featuring well-known names in the SEM industry. The game is based on a game called Werewolf, and special cards were created picturing folks in the search marketing industry. Ian Kennedy posted coverage with pictures of the event and Rebecca Kelley from SEOmoz posted her coverage of […]
Happy Birthday to us! Today, Search Engine Land officially turns one year old. Below, I wanted to share some thanks to all those who’ve helped make it such a successful year, and I’m going to save the in-depth "what have we achieved" statistics for sharing for January, when the entire 2007 calendar year has passed. […]
Trying to figure out the impact of last week’s oil spill in San Francisco Bay, which happened after the container ship Cosco Busan hit the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge? There are maps to the rescue! Links to them below, along with some observations on the difficulty in finding community-built maps like these in Google Maps. […]
Today’s Wall Street Journal featured an article entitled Start-Ups Make Inroads With Google’s Work Force, which focused on emerging potential retention problems at Google (in particular vs. Facebook). Yahoo has recently shed – both voluntarily and involuntarily – a number of high profile employees and suffered negative publicity from some of those departures. Now it […]
Privacy is back – or at least the issue is back. A range of events, announcements and investigations over the past several months have put privacy back in the headlines. And today, the links are coming in showing funny, revealing or potentially embarrassing photos of people on Google’s new Street View photography. (To a large […]
There was no official post or announcement that I was able to find, but I stumbled upon the launch of Google’s new “Street View” imagery (screen shots below). Clicking the “Street View” button (upper right) outlines blue streets for which Google has photography. You can then drag a “person” icon to the street you want […]
Search Engine Journal compares Google’s recently introduced “Hot Trends” database with the Yahoo Buzz Index. (Barry Schwartz wrote extensively about Hot Trends previously.) These tools, while fun and interesting, are also potentially important as business intelligence and data mining tools and increasingly useful to track the efficacy of offline marketing. Whatever their problems and challenges […]
Elisabeth Osmeloski, editor of Search Engine Watch, is leaving to become director of online media for the Zonder.com Vacation Rentals site. Her last day will be this Friday, and she has a departure announcement here. Elisabeth and I worked together to get the Search Engine Watch Forums launched nearly three years ago, then she became […]
Google is constantly testing new user interface layouts that are presented to a randomly selected group of searchers. Each experiment sparks off a round of screenshots and sometimes hacks on how others can try out what’s new. Now Google is making it easy for those who want to live their search lives on the edge. […]
It’s Searchology Day today at Google, where the company is devoting time to look at the past, present and future of search at Google. There will be a number of significant announcements coming out of the event. Want to keep up? Stay tuned to this page. We’ll keep it updated with a summary of major […]
“Who knows about Wikipedia?” asked Neil Patel. “Everyone,” he answered. And this is exactly why the session “Wikipedia and SEO” was completely packed at the 2007 SES New York show. Moderated by Danny Sullivan, the panel featured Neil Patel, Co-Founder of ACS, Stephan Spencer, Founder and President of Netconcepts, Don Steele, Director of Digital and […]
Last week, Barry Schwartz tried a new idea of showing what was happening in the world of search based on pictures he found on the web. You liked it enough that we’ve decided to make it a formal column called Search In Pictures, which will run on Fridays here at Search Engine Land. The latest […]
Garett Rogers at Googling Google has reported that a search on Google Maps for microsoft has returned an anti-Microsoft image within the Microsoft listing, as shown to the left. The image was originally on a Yelp.com page and automatically inserted into the Google Maps result. It appears to now have been removed, but Garett has […]
Dear Wikipedia Editors: I came back from vacation today to discover that in (some of) your infinite crowd wisdom, apparently the page at Wikipedia about Google’s Matt Cutts might get deleted. Wow. It’s inept things like this that can instantly reduce any respect I have for Wikipedia that builds up over time.
When I posted Enquisite’s search engine popularity stats yesterday, I almost went into a riff about how site owner traffic stats are often so different from what the major measuring services report. Google almost always comes out much, much higher when you look at site traffic referral sources (as with Enquisite’s stats). I did get […]