For those who follow search it was initially one of those “WTF moments”: Walmart acquiring erstwhile Google challenger Kosmix. However AllThingsD reports that the price was $300 million-plus vs. $55 million raised. So the founders and investors get a seemingly nice exit. Kosmix will now become part of the newly established “@WalmartLabs.” When it launched […]
Do you remember this video from a few weeks ago? It was probably the funniest of Google’s myriad April Fool’s Day jokes. Part of the joke is actually real, as I found out Monday when my friendly mailman visited Casa McGee. Much to my surprise, and probably to the mailman’s curiosity, there was a non-descript […]
Since early 2006 I’ve been writing about the “offline future of online shopping.” And since that time a collection of startups has been working, mostly under the radar, to bring real-time local product inventory data to the internet. In November of 2010 Google joined that effort with local product search. Now when you do a […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Yahoo Reveals Secrets Of “Search Direct” Alogrithm I had about 20 minutes with Yahoo’s Shashi Seth after the press conference to discuss a range of things related to the Search Direct […]
Five years ago, I wrote a story called “25 Things I Hate About Google.” It went viral, to my surprise. I thought it was worth revisiting that story on its five year anniversary, to see how many of those “hates” have been fixed. So let’s dive in!
Many people might not believe that Microsoft, the company that a decade ago was often known as “the evil empire,” is now one of the most “ethical” internet companies, beating out Google, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook and other well-known online brands. That’s according to the New York-based Ethisphere Institute (EI), which produces an annual list of […]
One can guess that Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak probably doesn’t “Like” Facebook anymore, the website that now topples governments. (I apologize but I couldn’t resist.) Back in the US the Facebook enemies or, more precisely, “frenemies list” is also growing says a piece in the the Wall Street Journal. The article discusses Facebook’s broad ambitions and […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Super Bowl Sparks Twitter Record For Sporting Event Fans watching the final few moments of the Super Bowl last weekend set a new record for Tweets-per-second (TPS) for a sporting event: […]
Bing was the big gainer in year-over-year search activity, picking up 29% more searches in 2010 than it did in 2009. But Google, despite already having a huge lead in the market, also picked up 13% more searches last year. Those numbers, and many others, are part of comScore’s “2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review” […]
Along with everything else going on for Bing’s Harry Shum on Tuesday — a panel about search spam, dealing with Google’s accusations that Bing “copies” Google’s results — Shum dealt with perhaps his most important worry. Reassuring his son that Bing wasn’t “cheating” as a search engine.
Just in time for the opening round of the NFL playoffs (coughGOSEAHAWKS!cough), Bing has followed through on its plans to integrate ticket inventory from FanSnap into its search results. This FanSnap integration was first announced as part of Bing’s December search event. FanSnap isn’t a ticket seller; it’s one of several ticket aggregators that displays […]
Looking for the Wikileaks website? Having lost one domain, and having its second site going down temporarily, it’s a challenge, even for the search engines.
Shopping.com parent eBay has reportedly acquired local product inventory site Milo.com for $75 million in cash. Milo was aspiring to become the “Google of local product data.” The acquisition is a bit of a surprise to me but problably came out of discussions about a strategic investment. I believe Milo and Shopping.com were in discussions […]
Ladies and gentlemen open your wallets — and start your smartphones. The holiday shopping season is upon is. This year more than ever there are scores of sites, apps and online tools to direct you to the right product at the best price. It can all be a bit overwhelming in fact. Below I’ve tried […]
Baidu CEO & Chairman Robin Li will be speaking today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. I’m here and will be live blogging his remarks, when the session begins. Li is set to speak at 5:15pm Pacific, and he’ll be interviewed on stage by John Battelle. Live blogging to start shortly. There’s also […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: How The New Facebook Messages & Email System Works At one end of the spectrum, Facebook says it’s “simple” and “fun.” On the other end, some are saying it’s Facebook’s version […]
A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma: according to the Wall Street Journal and Reuters, based on the Journal’s report yesterday, financial advisers have been hired by AOL to “explore various strategic options for the company, one of which includes a possible tie-up” with Yahoo. This is just the latest installment of the […]
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 Dominates Social Networking For Product Discovery, Study Says Search engines are the number one way that consumers find out about new products, according to a new study commissioned by commerce […]
Billing itself as one of the “best kept secrets in Silicon Valley,” Adchemy is a technology provider that promises to help search marketers “dynamically” create more relevant ad copy and landing pages at scale. The company recently released its WordMap application, which is intended for very large campaigns with millions of keywords but where the […]
adAge obtained an “internal Google document” that disclosed the first half of 2010 AdWords advertising spend of Google’s customers. As you can imagine, the numbers of pretty revealing. It showed that $574 million was spent, where 1,356 advertisers spent between $10,000 and $100,000. It also showed that AT&T was Google’s largest AdWords customer in June […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Hot On Sphinn: PPC Bid Management, Link Building Via Twitter, Clueless SEOs, & More Every day, your peers in the search industry are reading and voting on articles that are shared […]
The New York Times is the number one newspaper web site. Analysts reckon it ranks first in reach among US opinion leaders. When the New York Times editorial staff tweaks its supersecret algorithm behind what to cover and exactly how to cover a story — as it does hundreds of times a day — it […]
Google has signed an agreement to acquire travel reservations software company ITA. The purchase price is reportedly about $700 million. We speculated about this and the likely travel industry and potential regulatory fallout earlier this week. Google put up a site to explain and promote the deal. Indeed, Google knows it’s girding for a fight […]
For the second time in the past few months Google has been punished by a court outside the US for content posted by users on one of its owned and operated sites. In February an Italian court imposed a criminal privacy conviction on Google executives for the appearance of a video, showing the bullying of […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: TweetUp Scores Its Own Search Column In TweetDeck TweetUp, the new AdWords-like ad platform for Twitter has added a prime, new publishing partner: the popular Twitter client, TweetDeck. In an email […]
Wall Street is a curious place. A number of companies last week and this week reported very strong revenues suggesting that the recession is in fact over. But investors, disappointed that performance wasn’t even stronger, punished their shares perhaps with more aggressive expectations than were justified under the circumstances. Amazon and eBay are two examples […]
Move over Google, Yahoo, and Bing; blended results or not, personalized search, Twitter results and OneBoxes … you guys are just too predictable for this article. There’s a new breed of search engines out there, and they’re letting users search and find some utterly crazy stuff. And by “crazy,” I mean a lot of things: […]
That intentionally “inflammatory” headline is inspired by an article that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday, “Facebook directs more online users than Google.” The article cites Compete data and says, “Facebook has passed search-engine giant Google to become the top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is among the […]
Not a month goes by without someone launching a new real-time search engine; but after trying out most of them, there are few I use on a regular basis. Factery Labs is about to change that with today’s launch of its real-time fact engine at 1:00 pm ET. Where other real-time search engines focus on […]
VigLink is a new service with venture capital backing from Google that aims to make it easy for publishers to earn through affiliate programs. It promises to turn any outbound link on a web site into an affiliate link after the installation of a small bit of JavaScript code. VigLink is in the news today […]
I may be the only one who noticed, but it seems to me that 2009 saw an unusual amount of new comparison search tools released. Perhaps it was the launch of Bing, or the growth of real-time search? I don’t know, but something inspired programmers to develop new tools and sites to let us compare […]
Wow. Asa Dotzler, community coordinator for Firefox marketing projects, is urging the world to add Bing to Firefox and dump Google, over comments Google CEO Eric Schmidt made about privacy. Does this mean Bing will finally be allowed into Firefox as a default choice for users?
Make no mistake. I think real time search is indeed one of the most exciting developments that’s happened in the search space in years. But I also think search engines are acting a bit like cats getting a sniff of catnip. They’re high on real time search and acting kind of crazy. This week, Google […]
It could be that the general state of the 2009 economy is fueling the increase in early search queries for “Black Friday” related terms, or it it could be that the retail industry as a whole have embraced the annual event as part of a clever marketing strategy to boost overall holiday sales. As you […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Shashi Seth, Another Ex-Googler, Lands At AOL AOL announced today that it’s hired former Google employee Shashi Seth as its Senior VP of Global Advertising Products. While with Google, Seth was […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Launches “Place Pages,” Gets Rid Of Tabbed Info Bubble Google is swapping its “info window” in Maps out in favor a much richer full-page experience that offers more information and […]
eBay has announced they have hired Dr. Eric Brill as their vice president of research and applied science to lead up eBay’s research labs team. Prior, Dr. Brill was General Manager of adCenter Labs at Microsoft and before that, he Director and Principal Researcher and head of the Text Mining, Search and Navigation Group at […]
Yesterday comScore reported search numbers for August. What they show is growth in overall search volume, including at Google sites (except YouTube). Google has 2.5 times the search volume as Yahoo and Microsoft combined. But Microsoft’s Bing also grew its share of the overall US search market from 8.9 percent in July to 9.3 percent […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Schmidt: Someday, AdSense Publishers May Know Google’s Cut Of Ad Revenues How much money does Google keep back for itself from the AdSense ads it places on third party sites across […]
The Rimm-Kaufman Group reports eBay has quietly dropped Yahoo in place of Google to power the paid search ads on eBay. Mark explained that over the past several months, eBay has been testing Google ads on about 1% of the ads shown on eBay. On August 26th, he said, eBay “flipped the switch” and began […]