Highlights from the SEW Blog: Nov. 28, 2006
From The SEW Blog...
- Q&A On Google's Belgium News Agreements
This week, news emerged about an agreement between Google and two Belgian author groups that were suing it over copyright issues. Below, a short Q&A on what this means for Google. Highlights: The case goes on with three other groups taking part, but large damages seem unlikely. The new deal gives especially seems to give Google photo rights. Google says it is not doing an about-face on opt-out in Denmark. More about these an other issues covered below, based on a talk with Google spokesperson Jessica Powell. Plus, some bonus stats on how much traffic newspapers get from search engines....
- Matt Cutts On Site Problems & Mistakes To Avoid
Ever wonder what is going through the head of a Matt Cutts (Googler) while he is sitting on a site reviews panel reviewing sites? Matt Cutts posted his detailed notes of the panel he did in Vegas at PubCon. He explains some on site problems and mistakes a webmaster should avoid. It is worth a read, because Matt totally kicked my coverage of that session....
- The Complete Google Master Plan
Google Operating Systems located and posted the Full Google Master Plan 1.0. Remember about a month and a half ago, the Google Master Plan was erased? Well, according to Google OS, said it was erased because it was getting a bit "crufty." The image was taken by Chris diBona, here it is:...
- Google Video France Sued For Copyright Infringement
Reuters reports Google France was sued by Flach Film, a French film producer, for copyright infringement. They claim their video, "The World According to Bush," was published on Google Video France, and viewed more 50,000 times, before Google removed the video. The French film producer estimates $648,700 in prejudice but Google said "our terms and conditions specify that users (Internet surfers) don't have permission to use videos which they don't own the rights to." Google has put away $200M for copyright case legal issues with the YouTube acquisition....
- Google Book Search Catches Victorian Plagiarists
We tend to assume that plagiarism is a reasonably modern day phenomena but a fascinating article from Paul Collins "Dead Plagiarists Society" illustrates that is not always the case. In fact it would appear that Victorian authors stole work from earlier authors who in turn had stolen it from even earlier ones, and the article gives some nice examples of this. More importantly, it provides a fascinating use for Google Book Search, which I'd certainly not considered before, and it's actually a rather interesting experiment - take a partial sentence, plug it into book search and add words onto the...
- SEM Certification & Training Courses
The move toward offering certification and training in search marketing is accelerating. Here's a rundown on some new courses and developments I've heard of recently....
- Mid-November 2006 Search News Recap Posted
If you're a Search Engine Watch member, the latest edition of Search Engine Update newsletter has been posted. It recaps top stories in search from the first part of this month....
- Google Finance's Untrusted Links & Spotting Nofollow
For several months, I've been using the Search Status plug-in for Firefox to highlight links that are flagged with the nofollow attribute, a way for site owners to say they don't vouch for or necessarily trust a link. You see the web in a entirely new light after discovering how often and where people are saying "I don't trust this." And today, I finally noticed it happening over on Google Finance. The image above show how Google Finance looks when links with nofollow are highlighted in red, for the page on Google stock price. All the news stories --...
- Search Popularity Stats, Sliced & Diced
Catch up time on search engine popularity stats. comScore and NetRatings put out October 2006 figures this week, plus Hitwise released those earlier this month. Google's still tops, Yahoo still strong, Microsoft is still dropping and Ask surpasses AOL's search share, according to comScore. Below, the trend from all of them over the past year, plus my long-promised compare-and-contrast charts....
- Google Says AdWords Not Basing Keyword Prices On Conversion Metrics
I reported this morning at SERoundtable that AdWordsAdvisor Denies Google Uses Conversion Tracking & Analytics To Determine Minimum Bids. Yes, Google has come out on the Internet to make it clear to everyone that Google is not using data from their conversion tracking scripts of Google Analytics to determine the minimum price of keywords. This was a recent rumor that began with the new AdWords algorithm coming into play....
- Social Search Manipulation: Case Study
Niall Kennedy has one of the most thorough write-ups on why search spam exists with his article "The Spam Farms of the Social Web." The article explains how he stumbled upon a spam site, researched the site to death, guesstimates on how much money they can make and services that help you make it rank well. This includes a look at blogs, digg, del.icio.us, other social sites, link building tactics, directory inclusion, content writing, and more....
Search Headlines
NOTE: Article links often change. In case of a bad link, use the publication's search facility, which most have, and search for the headline.- *OFFICIAL* SES Chicago 2006 Party and Events Schedule, Search Engine Watch Forums
- SES Chicago 2006 Quad Coverage Schedule, Search Engine Roundtable
- Polonium 210 and Thallium Searches Soar Following Tragic Death of Alexander Litvinenko, Hitwise
- General disarray at The Big 3, Erik Selberg
- Microsoft Live.com MSN Search Turkey Day Update, Search Engine Roundtable
- Google's Inconvenient Truth, Google Watch
- Google.org begins hiring to save the planet, Google Operating System
- New Google General Counsel, Venture Beat
- Google sees up to 40% of transactions online, Bloomberg
- Web Tool Said to Offer Way Past the Government Censor, New York Times
- H. Donald Wilson, the Man Whose Plan Began LexisNexis Has Died, ResourceShelf
- Sergey's embarrassing mother, Valleywag
- Brewster On Google Library/Book Search, John Battelle
- Archive.org Founder Criticizes Google Book Scanning (Video), Google Blogoscoped
- The Internet Archive Gets Its Own Blog, ResourceShelf
- Holiday shopping with Google Checkout, Official Google Blog
- Google Has My Credit Card Number Now, Searchblog
- Two teeshirts good; three evil, Valleywag
- Yahoo Opens Flickr To Guests, MediaPost
- Google Webmaster Sitemaps Tool Back With Old Data?, Search Engine Roundtable
- MSNdude Is Alive & Well!, Search Engine Roundtable
- Podcast: Google Makes Agreement With Some Belgian News Publishers; Digg Encounters Old School Spam Issues; Holiday Catchup & More!, Daily SearchCast
- Banned From Digg, John Chow dot Com
- Akismet, Could They Ban Kevin Rose?, Dave Naylor
- Kevin Rose & Digg on Moderation*, Google Blogoscoped
- Kevin Rose Admitting Digg Has Moderators, The Mu Life
- How Not To Get Your URL Banned From Digg, Pronet Advertising
- Forbes Video Interview With Digg CEO, TechCrunch
- Three reasons why Digg gets its numbers wrong, Valleywag
- The Privacy Implications Of Social Media, The Mu Life
- Spike The Vote, Will Get You Banned from Digg, Now for Sale, Marketing Shift
- Digg Issues Cease and Desist to Diggdot.us, Micro Persuasion
- Shoveling on Digg, BusinessWeek
- Please don't confuse blogging with the echo chamber, Jeremy Zawodny
- Channels 9 and 10 Sponsor TechMeme, Jeff Sandquist
- Google Recommends Using Meta Description Tag, Search Engine Roundtable
- Google: Mobile operators want to block our apps, ZDNet UK
- Google Parking Lot, Google Blogoscoped
- Google's smarties, Valleywag
- Stanford WebBase: Google’s Academic Cousin, SEO By The Sea
- Microsoft gathering millions of photos for Virtual Earth 3D, iTwire
- Media group to release grip on PR Newswire, Times Of London
- Powerful Search Features in Netvibes, Google Operating System
- Italy opens probe into Google over bullying video, Reuters
- Google Earth spurs Bahraini equality drive, Financial Times
- MSN Small Biz Directory closed?, Small Business SEM
- Gaia - Open Source Google Earth, Googling Google
- Google shuts down Gaia efforts with cease and desist, Googling Google
- Add Real-time Link Counts to your blog posts, David Sifry/Technorati
- Googles Plans for Australia, Threadwatch
- Sorting Commercial Pages from Informational Pages, SEO By The Sea
- Getting more backward links than Google, Pronet Advertising
- What's the Best Embedded Video Player?, Google Operating System
- The Best SEO Articles of 2006, SEO BlackHat
- Courses on SEM: Coming Soon to a College Near You, Traffick
- Google 1988, InsideGoogle
- AbbreviationZ : Acronyms & Abbreviations Search Engine, Search Engine Journal
- Search Marketing Association Europe - what happened?, Threadwatch
- Google Wired - Tired - Expired, Google Blogoscoped
- Google vs. Yahoo at sports, Matt Cutts
- Nick Wilson starts Podcasting, Threadwatch
- The Google 15, Valleywag
- Web 2.0 Summit Video and Audio Available, O'Reilly Radar
- See inside Google Kirkland, Robert Scoble
- Quality Scores, Minimum Bids and Google Inactivating Keywords, Search Marketing & ROI Technology
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Biography
Chris Sherman is a frequent contributor to several information industry journals. He's written several books, including The McGraw-Hill CD ROM Handbook and The Invisible Web: Uncovering Information Sources Search Engines Can't See, co-authored with Gary Price. Chris has written about search and search engines since 1994, when he developed online searching tutorials for several clients. From 1998 to 2001, he was About.com's Web Search Guide.
Article Archives by Chris Sherman
Farewell, SearchDay! - Dec 29, 2006
Search Engine Forums Spotlight - Dec 22, 2006
Highlights from the SEW Blog: Dec. 18, 2006 - Dec 18, 2006
Search Engine Forums Spotlight - Dec 15, 2006
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