IndustryThe Search Engine Update – Number 205 – Sept. 20, 2005

The Search Engine Update - Number 205 - Sept. 20, 2005

Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan's recap of top search engine stories from the first half of September 2005.

In This Issue

+ New Newsletter Format!
+ SES Heading To Stockholm, France, Chicago
+ SEW Forums Live Hits Disneyland!
+ Top Stories
+ More From The Search Engine Watch Blog
+ Daily SearchCast: Search News Via Podcast
+ Our Search Newsletters & Feeds
+ About The Newsletter

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New Newsletter Format!
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For nearly ten years, the Search Engine Update has been a text-only newsletter. That changes with this issue. As you can see, it’s now in HTML format.

Why the change? Because text simply isn’t working. The newsletter has always carried a lot of links, and now it carries even more. To transmit in text means each of those links has to be broken out, making a messy newsletter no matter what I try. There’s only so much you can do with text.

I debated strongly having both a text-only and HTML newsletter, but it’s not easily done with this particular newsletter. That’s because this newsletter only goes out to paid Search Engine Watch members. It’s simply too complicated at the moment to establish a way to have you sign up for one or the other newsletter.

In the end, virtually everyone has the ability to read HTML email. That pushed me toward making the move. Moreover, as you can see, this is as true to the spirit of the text-only newsletter as I can make it.

I may further clean things up, but I have no plans to add in the SEW logo or banner-like ads similar to what our advertising-supported SearchDay newsletter carries. What you see is pretty much what you’re going to get, going forward.

I honestly think the move will benefit everyone, and I hope you like the change.

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SES Heading To Stockholm, France & Chicago
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What’s next for Search Engine Strategies, our show focused on search marketing issues? Here’s the rundown for the remainder of the year:

For the 2006 line-up, including our New York show from Feb. 27-March 2, see the Search Engine Strategies site. For news as each event approaches, check out the SES Blog.

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SEW Forums Live Hits Disneyland!
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It’s time for our next Search Engine Watch Forums Live event, and where are we going? Disneyland! Well, the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, California, to be precise. SEW Forums Live Anaheim 2005 happens on Thursday, October 27 from 2:30pm to 6:00pm.

For those not familiar, SEWF Live isn’t a huge four day extravaganza like our SES shows. Instead, it’s meant as an easy, low-coast informal networking event designed especially for those who can come by from the local area. I’m on vacation in the area at the time, so I’m heading over to take part.

A general session kicks off at 2:30pm where Search Engine Watch Forums editor Elisabeth Osmelowski will have a panel taking questions and offering advice and thoughts on anything. After a break, there will also be another short open panel session involving some of our SEWF moderators from the area — we’ve got quite a contingent out there! — and some from afar (Disneyland is tempting some to come on out). More networking runs from 5pm to 6pm. After that, Disneyland’s just a monorail ride away.

More information on the event and to register is here.

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Top Stories
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Below is a recap of major articles from our daily SearchDay newsletter and important Search Engine Watch Blog postings since the last newsletter. Want to receive these stories daily or via RSS/feed? See the Search Engine Watch Newsletters & Web Feeds page for sign-up instructions.

=== Sept. 20, 2005 ===

Secure Wireless Access From Google & More On GoogleNet Broadband Plans – Google’s released new “Google Secure Access” wireless software while also taking bids for a US nationwide optical fiber network. Why these move and how do they fit into Google’s plans?

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An Experts’ Guide to Keyword ResearchHow would you handle the unappetizing task of creating a search marketing campaign for vegetarian dog food? The creators of Wordtracker asked some of the most respected SEM experts in the world to tackle this challenge.

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Confirmation From Google That The Sandbox Does Exist – “Bloggers: Google ‘sandboxing’ sites” at News.com from last month covers how Google engineers at the recent Search Engine Strategies conference finally confess that there is indeed a sandbox where new sites sit until they can rank well.

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Baidu Ordered To Stop Music Downloads Baidu ordered to halt music downloading service from Reuters covers Chinese search engine Baidu being ordered by a Chinese court to stop providing music downloads. Baidu plans to appeal, saying it doesn’t provide downloading services but rather search services. Music search is a chief driver of Baidu’s popularity, as I’ve written recently. If it’s not even allowed to offer music searching, that’s likely to put a major crimp in its growth. Five Music Companies Sue Baidu covers other companies that have suits filed against Baidu.

=== Sept. 19, 2005 ===

Google’s Philosophical Ten True Things Not So True Anymore? – Google’s Our Philosophy page was apparently quietly changed recently to remove the “Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat” line. Google, of course, now does chat via Google Talk. A look at how else that page probably needs to change, now that Google is growing up.

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Can We Agree Automated Comment & Link Posting Is A Bad Thing? – This week, search engines and blog software vendors are meeting again for a second “summit” on fighting blog spam. That’s tipped me over the edge for tossing out a related proposal to search marketers and marketers in general. In short, unlike some other debates over what’s spam or what should be acceptable in search marketing, inserting content and links into other pages through automation just doesn’t seem a defendable practice by anyone. Indeed, even “black hats” get annoyed by it. So as an industry, or a community, could search marketers unite to say “No!” on this practice? Lots more explanation and thoughts are covered, plus the ability to vote and chime in with opinions. Please stop by.

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Googlebombing Now A “Prank” And Not Web’s Opinion, Says Google – What’s old is new again — and apparently controversial still. Specifically, the entire [miserable failure” search that brings up the official George W. Bush biography — a story from late 2003 — has been resurrected and escalated to warrant a comment on the official Google Blog itself. What caused this and how did we go from that Googlebomb being the “web’s opinion” to a prank? Sit right back and you’ll hear a tale! See also Looking At Google Bombs, But Not Very Well.

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Penalized in Google? Here’s What to Do – If you’ve pushed the line with optimization techniques and have been dinged by Google, Google’s Matt Cutts offers advice on how to get back into the search engine’s good graces. Follow Matt’s guidelines and with luck your site will be reinstated in Google search results in anywhere from 2-8 weeks. See also

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Google Zeitgeist 05: Featuring Press & Bloggers But No Blogging Or Coverage Allowed – “Zeitgeist ’05: The Google Partner Forum” is happening on Oct. 25-27, the first “customer innovation conference” Google says it has ever held. Major speakers along with bloggers and the press are invited — but despite this very large gathering, presentations aren’t allowed to be covered.

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Surfwax Offers Look-Ahead Technology for Web Sites – Today SurfWax is introducing a dynamic query suggestion tool that can be easily installed and customized on any web site.

=== Sept. 16, 2005 ===

Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Offers Advice to Sites on Penalty – Yahoo Instant Search – Google Blog Search Launched – MSN AdCenter Review – New legal threat to Google over GMail, and more.

=== Sept. 15, 2005 ===

Search as the New Great Game – In years past, major powers struggled to win the hearts and minds of people by maneuvering in what Kipling called ‘the great game.’ The new great game is playing out not as geopolitical intrigue, but in a egalitarian dance that transcends borders and is reshaping social reality, says John Battelle in his new book The Search. See also Danny’s Thoughts On “The Search” and Watch “The Google Boys” Video

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Updated List Of Answer Search Engines & Travel Search Engines – Our Answer Searching & Answer Search Engines page is now minty-fresh with resources that help you get answers, such as from reference works or fact databases. Going on a trip? Travel Search Engines is also now updated with all those new travel search engines that tap into more than just partner databases, along with some old favorites. More updates to come, as I can squeeze them in. See also More Travel Search Resources.

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Microsoft Talks To Time Warner About Acquiring a Piece of AOL – “AOL’s Time May Be Up” covers Microsoft talking with Time Warner about perhaps acquiring a piece of AOL….[MORE”

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MSN’s Katrina Flyover Offers Many Before-And-After Views Of New OrleansKatrina Flyover is a new MSN Virtual Earth-powered service that lets you click on camera icons scatted throughout New Orleans to get a birds-eye, before-and-after view of the city in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. See also:

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New Yahoo Instant Search Gives Answers Directly — No Results Page Required – A weird one for you, but sounds pretty cool. Yahoo’s given the heads-up that a new Instant Search feature is to be offered by the time this story goes live. Type in a word, and Instant Search will show you an answer for popular queries in a “speech bubble” directly below the search box.

=== Sept. 14, 2005 ===

Google Launches Industrial Strength Blog Search – Google has introduced its long awaited blog search service, becoming the first major search engine to offer full-blown blog and feed search capabilities. See also:

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Google Personalized Home Page Graduates To, Well, A Home Page Link – If you go to Google.com, you’ll see a new “Personalized Home” link on the home page to encourage you to sign up. See also Google’s Now Promoting Gmail on Google Home Page.

=== Sept. 13, 2005 ===

Google’s Dr. Lee Can Recruit In China But Can’t Work on Search or Speech Technologies – A ruling from a King County, Washington judge was handed down today that says Google employee (formerly of Microsoft) Dr. Kai-Fu Lee can immediately begin recruiting for Google’s new research center in China but can not work on speech, search and other technologies. See also:

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New Memeorandum Great Blend Of Top Blog & News Material – New site Memeorandum provides a Google News-like clustering of news stories and blog commentary on various topics. So far, it looks pretty clean and nice to me, well worth anyone checking out. See also More On Memeorandum.

=== Sept. 12, 2005 ===

Ask Jeeves CEO: “We Are Focused on Core Search” – Now that Ask Jeeves is part of aggressive online powerhouse InterActive Corp., what’s next for the search engine and its various services? Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan probed for answers in a recent conversation with Ask Jeeves’ CEO Steve Berkowitz.

=== Sept. 9, 2005 ===

New Technique To Count All Pages In Google Index, Sort Of – Further to my previous post on the Google index update/size increase, there appears to be a new way to count all the pages within Google. Find a term that doesn’t exist, then search for minus that term, and you get a full count. See also:

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Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: What’s Your Favorite Search Engine Marketing Book? – Top 20 SEO Contradications – Microsoft’s Ballmer Vowed To ‘Kill Google’ – AdSense Additions Create Opportunities – Do Redirected Links Count? – Keyword Density Suggestions? and more.

=== Sept. 8, 2005 ===

Chasing Search Engine Algorithms: Wisdom or Folly? – Properly optimized web sites can achieve top rankings in web search results. But when search engines change, should you follow suit? Even the experts disagree.

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Google & GEICO Settle Dispute – Google and Geico have settled their dispute over ads linked to terms that are also GEICO’s trademarks. Unfortunately, no terms of the deal are noted. See also Geico To Competitors & Affiliates: Don’t Buy Our Name!

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Google Hires Vint Cerf As Chief Internet Evangelist – Google has hired internet “founding father” and pioneer Vint Cerf to be the company’s first “chief internet evangelist.” See also Vint Cerf: Helping People Understand the Potential of Google and Mac Mozilla Chief Mike Pinkerton Joins Google Firefox Team.

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More From The SEW Blog
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Below are posts from the Search Engine Watch Blog since the last newsletter and not mentioned above. Want to keep up on daily news from the blog? Visit the home page or subscribe to the blog feed. Note that references to “I” may becoming from Danny Sullivan, Gary Price or Chris Sherman, all of whom post to the blog.

=== Sept. 20, 2005 ===

Search Drives One In Five Visits To Car Sites Yahoo: One In Five Land On Car Sites Via Search from MediaPost looks at a new study from Yahoo finding that one in five visitors to a car web site came from search engines. That 20.6 percent of visitors, up from 17.5 percent last year. Not in that story but from the press release, the study also found that nearly 70 percent of those buying cars said the first turned to search for advice. Search was also considered the most credible research source. Need more? I’ve posted an executive summary of the report > here, completely with pretty charts.

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BusinessWeek Looks At Yahoo Trust Issues For Yahoo, Mistrust Is Popping Up is a brand new article spotted via Slashdot from BusinessWeek covering recent hits Yahoo’s taking on the installation issues front, the China censorship/privacy front and the spyware front. Yahoo says its reputation is safe. “Users can put their trust in us because that is what we’re built on,” Yahoo COO Daniel Rosensweig is quoted as saying. But the idea that Yahoo might perhaps pale “as rival Google Inc. holds itself up as a paragon of consumer friendliness.” Many, many are no longer seeing Google as so friendly, either. See also Issues With Yahoo Messenger Installs.

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Upcoming Search Conferences & Stuff – Over at our Search Engine Watch Forums, we’ve added a new calendar at the bottom of the home page listing various search and search marketing-related conferences coming up. You can also jump to the calendar here….[MORE”

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Feedster CTO Comments on Splogs (Spam Blogs) – Scott Johnson, CTO at Feedster, has written a commentary for Media Post about splogs (spam blogs) and what the industry must do to combat them. The commentary is titled, The Newest Front in the Online Wars: Splogs.

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Comments On Web Analytics PackagesWhich Stats Package is right for you? is a very nice thread from late last month at WebmasterWorld well worth a look, where various members contribute comments about web analytic packages they like.

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CPA, Cost-Per-Action, As Click Fraud Solution? – Last month, Putting an End to Click Fraud at iMedia Connection had Ron Belanger pushing the idea that CPA — cost per action — pricing for ads might help solve click fraud issues. Why? You’d only pay for traffic that converts. This month, Why CPA is Not a Cure for Click Fraud has Isaac Scarborough at iMedia delivering the counterpoint. Actually, he sees a lot of positives but not a complete end to click fraud, plus difficulties in moving people used to CPC to CPA.

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Ask Jeeves Radio Ads Don’t Win Over Tara Why I Think the Internet Bubble is Back, Part I from Tara over at ResearchBuzz covers her hearing Ask Jeeves radio commercials — and coming away unimpressed.

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Former Google Chef Charlie Ayers Starting His Own Restaurant – While Google is still seeking a replacement for its former celebrity chef, Charlie Ayers, Charlie’s plans post-Grateful Dead, post-Google are now public. “From Google to Noodles: A Chef Strikes Out on His Own” from the New York Times covers how he’s going to open his own restaurant in Silicon Valley. Aside from investing some of his own money, former Googlers and private groups are backing him. Name of the restaurant? Calafia!….[MORE”

=== Sept. 19, 2005 ===

Can’t Beat The Local Search Aggregators? Join ‘Em! – “Join the Local Search Authorities” from Justin Sanger at ClickZ looks at something familiar to many who do local searches at major search engines — how results from other local search engines like SuperPages, Citysearch and Switchboard always seem to be popping up….[MORE”

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Google’s Hosting What? Fun With Reverse IP Lookup – Interesting spot via Threadwatch, Reverse IP Tool and Google Servers lists a variety of weird and wacky domain names that come up when checking on IP addresses that are also used by Google servers. Google apparently doesn’t own or operate all these domains. If I understand things right, some of the domain owners may simply be pointing their domains at Google. I’m sure someone will poke harder at this, and I’ll postscript accordingly.

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Traffic Power Suit Against SEO Book Moves To US Federal CourtTraffic Power Lawsuit Update from Aaron Wall notes that the suit filed against him by Traffic Power over allegedly revealing trade secrets has been moved from Nevada state court to US federal state court, through his efforts. The federal case number is CV-S-05-1109-RLH-LRL. For more background on the case, see Traffic Power Suit Could Be Quashed Through Anti-Slapp Motion and SEO Book’s Aaron Wall Sued By Traffic-Power Over Revealing “Trade Secrets”.

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New Reprise Feedcast Tool To Get News Publishers Quickly Into Paid Search – Reprise has a new Feedcast tool out designed to scan articles and other newsworthy content and create paid search campaigns for related topics automatically. In short, imagine you are a news publisher wanted to get ads out quickly, to attract interest in a recent news stories….[MORE”

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Google Earth Gains National Geographic Content Links – Running the Google Earth software? The Google Blog notes that there are new “National Geographic” layers you can enable. Switch these on, and if you see the National Geographic logo, you can zoom in to get more information from the magazine including high-resolution “Megaflyover” images. Meanwhile, the Jensense blog notes with amusement that while National Geographic may be providing the content, the ads on the National Geographic pages shown in Google Earth continue to carry ads from Yahoo.

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FatLens Will Expand Shopping Search Offerings – More shopping search news to report. FatLens, the meta search service that currently allows the searcher to simultaneously query several databases that offer tickets (concerts, plays, games, etc.) for sale will soon expand into several new product categories….[MORE”

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Online Debate Over Google Scanning Project Underway – The Friday Project’s Google Debate program has begun, which will have various solicited parties offering up opinions on the Google Print program’s library scanning project. Worth checking out, if you’re interested in exploring the legalities and opinions in the process. I’ll likely be contributing an opinion in the near future.

=== Sept. 18, 2005 ===

Yahoo Cache Now Offers Direct Links to Wayback Machine – It appears that Yahoo has joined Gigablast and Clusty and is now providing direct links to “archived” versions of pages via The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine….[MORE”

=== Sept. 17, 2005 ===

Results from Google Groups Now Appearing at the Bottom of Google Web Results Pages – Results from Google Groups are now visible (query dependent, of course) in a OneBox on Google web results pages….[MORE”

=== Sept. 16, 2005 ===

Shopping.com’s Merchant Account Center Offline for Six Days – Brian Smith from ComparisonEngines.com is not very happy with Shopping.com. Smith writes that beginning today Shopping.com’s merchant account center will be unavailable for six days. Yes, Brian did get one email notifying him of the extended down time but thinks (correcly, I might add) that not allowing customers to have a method to make changes to their account for almost a week is “absurd” and “poor customer service.”

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Google Execs Lunch With Investors and Analysts – The Bloomberg article: Google may expand in China, buy faster computers, offers a bit about what Google’s Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin “hinted” about yesterday with stock analysts and investors at an invitation only lunch at the St. Regis Hotel in New York.

=== Sept. 15, 2005 ===

A Terrorism Research Database – Shirl Kennedy, wrote an thorough overview of the Terrorism Knowledge Base from the the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. This resource contains info about terrorist groups, incidents, leaders, image archive and much more. Resources can be browsed or searched via a simple search box or this powerful advanced search interface.

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Breaking Down The Google Print 5 Libraries – If you’re interested in learning about the print book collections of the five libraries Google plans to scan/digitize (assuming all goes as planned), a new article in Digital Libraries: “Anatomy of Aggregate Collections,” uses data from OCLC’s WorldCat (the largest bibliographic database in the world) to provide breakdowns and comparisons.

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Ask Jeeves Unveils Gift Finder – The Ask Jeeves Blog has news about AJ’s new gift finder. It’s powered by another IAC/InterActive property, Gifts.com….[MORE”

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SMA-NA To Hold Elections – Todd at Stuntdubl notes that the Search Marketing Association of North America — SMA-NA — may soon have elections. Chief organizer Ian McAnerin says over here on the High Rankings Forums that only one more member is needed to call a quorum and lists potential offices. Then on the SMA-NA forum, he says the quorum has been met. So election information should be going out to members soon.

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Getting Ready For The HolidaysSearch & the Holiday Season from Kevin Ryan at iMedia Connection has him looking at tips to help you get ready for the holiday shopping period, in terms of a paid search campaign. As for SEO/free search, start gearing up now!

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Google Pitches College Life, As Powered By Google – Barry at Search Engine Roundtable spots a WebmasterWorld thread discussing a new College Life, powered by Google page. What’s there? Google aiming its services from Gmail to Picasa at college students. Of course, these services could easily be aimed at anyone. Expect Senior Life, Boomer Life, GenX Life, Alternative Lifestyles Life pages to come soon 🙂

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Class Action Suit On Click Fraud STILL To Stay In Arkansas Google Suit Sent Back to State Court from the Associated Press notes that a class-action lawsuit against Google, Yahoo and other search engines over click fraud accusations will STILL not move to US federal court. If I understand right, a request for this move was denied back in July. Now it looks like an appeal of that decision was also denied. More about the case here.

=== Sept. 14, 2005 ===

Convera’s Web Index Expands Convera, a well-known name in enterprise search technology, posted a bit of news today that their web index continues to grow. So? It’s been reported that Convera will enter the public web search space with a release of a web search tool by the end of this year. The company also announced that they’ve added 100 million images to their web index. Convera recently announced that they’ve just licensed use of their web database by an undisclosed U.S. Government organization.

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Codase For Seeking Open Source CodeCodase is a new search engine designed to let you seek open source code. It apparently understand code as code, rather than text. If you deal with code, that probably sounds great to you. Check it out, and a few more details below from what they sent…[MORE”

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Snap.com Offers Shopping Search Powered by Smarter.com – Word in this news release that Idealab’s Snap.com has launched a shopping search engine that’s powered with results from Smarter.com, an engine that I’ve mentioned several times on the blog. Smarter.com is led by by former Overture employees Talmadge O’Neill and Harry Tsao while GoTo.com/Overture founder, Bill Gross, is at the Snap.com helm.

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The Search Stock Index – What’s the Search Stock Index? Actually, Nacho Hernandez one of our SEW Forums moderators calls it the SEM 50 Stock Index. It’s his brainchild to come up with 50 search firms that are publicly listed that can be tracked. The list is up to 28 so far, as you’ll find here. Think there should be others? Come contribute to the list! And why to do I say “Search Stock Index?” Because not all of these firms are involved with search engine marketing. Search Stock Index is more broad. If not SSI Top 50, then maybe the Search Top 50.

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Google’s Italian Webmaster Guidelines Need Better Translation – Enrico Altavilla writes to note that Google guidelines for Italian webmasters have taken a turn for the worse. After helping them eliminate some translation errors two years ago, he was shocked to find the material reverted in July….[MORE”

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Awesome UC Berkeley Class On Search & Webcasts Available – Marti Hearst, a professor over at UC Berkeley, has put together an fantastic line-up of speakers for her Search Engines: Technology, Society, and Business class…and is webcasting!….[MORE”

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Truveo: A New Video Search Tool – According to News.com, a new video search engine, Truveo, is launching today….[MORE”

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AOL Adding Podcast Search Tools – AOL is adding new features to help those seeking podcasts….[MORE”

=== Sept. 13, 2005 ===

Gates Talks Google – Bill Gates sat down with CNET for an interview today about a variety of topics including web search and Google….[MORE”. See also Maybe MSN’s API Isn’t “Way Better”.

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Yahoo Files For Two Trademarks – Yahoo recently filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office for two new trademarks or to be more precise, service marks, including Y.com….[MORE”

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Details About MSN’s AdCenter Begins Emerging – Via Gary Stein, we learn that info about MSN’s AdCenter have started to leak out on WebmasterWorld. Barry (aka RustyBrick) offers a review of what’s been posted so far.

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Yahoo Shopping Goes Mobile – Yahoo has just released a mobile version of Yahoo Shopping….[MORE”

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MSN’s Developer Center is Now Live – The web developer community will be interested to learn that the MSN Developer Center (Danny provided an overview of last week), is now live. The center contains information, developer toolkits, and links to forums for the MSN services such MSN Search and MSN Virtual Earth. See also More on Microsoft’s “Gadgets”.

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Mobile Search Done By Few, But Still Popular Mobile Internet Activity Overall – How’s search as a mobile internet activity? “The Utilitarian Life of the Mobile Internet” at ClickZ cites stats saying it’s the third ranked category in the US for June 2005 according to Telephia, behind email (done by 4.8 percent of mobile users) and weather (3.9 percent)….[MORE”

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Sun Research Developing Audio Search Tools – Several months ago I blogged about an audio search research project at Sun Labs called, Search Inside the Music. Recently, Search Firms: “Google, Yahoo … And Sun?” from Investors Business Daily offers a bit more info….[MORE”

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Ask Wants Anti-Spyware Companies To Lift Warnings – Spotted via Threadwatch, Ask Jeeves Disputes Anti-Spyware Flaggings from eWeek looks at Ask Jeeves asking at least two anti-spyware companies to stop flagging Ask’s software with warnings. The companies have apparently refused to do so. Once calls Ask products “potentially unwanted” rather than flagging them as “spyware” or “adware.” Bundling issues were raised as a main concern for pushback by the companies. IE, the software itself may be fine, but the companies see problems with how it gets out to users. The story notes that other spyware detection tools such as those from Microsoft and Lavasoft don’t flag Ask’s products.

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Community-Built Wikipedia’s Strengths & Weaknesses Everybody helps write Wikipedia from the Richmond Times Dispatch is a nice overview on how Wikipedia is assembled by a community, a strength in that good information can get out quickly but a weakness in that allowing anyone to change it leads to accuracy and legitimacy issues. I was just over there today

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Yahoo Hires Journalist As Media Company Begins Producing Its Own Media – “Chat From the War Zone” from the Los Angeles Times looks at Yahoo’s recent hiring of journalist Kevin Sites and how it marks a move by the media company into actually producing more of its own media, rather than partnering with other players. Smart move or not? To me, at a time when Google is showing weakness as being off target from search, Yahoo expending resources and time for an even more non-search effort like this might be a weakness, rather than a strength….[MORE”

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Fathom Launches Online Marketing Analytics ToolFathom Breaks Into Analytics from ClickZ covers Fathom Online offering a new tool to give advertisers and agencies a “dashboard” to analyze marketing campaigns running on Google, Yahoo and other search engines and venues across the web. Cost is $3,500 per month, and the system opens to anyone later this month.

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Challenges Microsoft Faces – “Microsoft’s Midlife Crisis” from Forbes looks at challenges ahead for Microsoft as sales for the first time show less than double-digit growth and threats in the search arena from Google and Yahoo grow….[MORE”

=== Sept. 12, 2005 ===

Will GMail Be Taken to Court? – According to a Times Online article: “New legal threat to Google over GMail,” a UK company is considering taking Google to court over the name Gmail after finding no joy from 15 months of negotiations and contacts….[MORE”

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On Designing a New Yahoo Home Page – An interesting BusinessWeek interview titled “Building Yahoo’s New Front Door” with Larry Tesler, the UI design guru who joined Yahoo in May after working at both Apple and Amazon.com….[MORE”

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Scott Rafer Says Goodbye To Feedster – In a blog post titled, Becoming a Feedster Alum, Scott Rafer announces that he has has left his position as the person in charge at Feedster. Rafer says he will be helping Feedster’s board find a new chairman while also working on several new projects in the coming months. Scott also points out that he is now the chairman at Wireless Ink, the parent of WINKsite, a mobile blog service and community service. WINKsite makes it easy to create a mobile-ready version of your blog (or any blog) with just a few clicks. We wish Scott all the best.

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Let’s Talk Froogle: Q&A With Marketing Manager – Brian Smith, editor of ComparisonEngines.com, has just posted a brief Q&A interview with Debbie Jaffe, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Google, about Froogle. You’ll learn about the history of the service, what Jaffee believes are the services strengths, and the user experience. Jaffe also tells Brian that Google hires, “hire athletes, not shortstops.”

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Try WSFinder To Find Web Services & APIs – Trying to track down which company is offering an API these days? The new WSFinder service is a search service / wiki that allows this. One of the founders Chris Law tells me they’ve got about 90 APIs and web services that developers can find and tap into….[MORE”

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WebPosition 4 Released – Long-time rank checking and page analysis tool WebPosition is out now as WebPosition 4. Haven’t seen any reviews yet, from the company press release, here’s what looks to be new….[MORE”

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Tara Gives Thumbs Up To Yahoo Images; Yotophoto For Copyright Free Images Contemplating Yahoo Images and Google Images is a short item from Tara over at ResearchBuzz finding that in a search for [rss buttons”, less is more. Yahoo had fewer results than Google but was more on target with what she wanted. Meanwhile, her Search Engine of Free, GNU FDL, Creative Commons Images looks at the new Yotophoto image search engine designed to give you images you can use without copyright worries.

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Google Force One For The Google Guys? – We’ve known from earlier reports that Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have thought owning a corporate jet would be pretty cool. Now SiliconBeat reports that the duo have settled on a Boeing 767, with interior work being finished off in Dallas. Will it sport the Google logo? Will it be called Google Force One? Enquiring minds want to know. Want to discuss, comment or suggest a name for the plane? Visit our forum thread, Name The Google Jet.

=== Sept. 9, 2005 ===

How To Get “Unsafe” Results At Google & Yahoo – Two ways to find content NOT safe for family-friendly viewing, good for seeing if your site has a problem or if things that shouldn’t get filtered are.

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Yahoo Says It Must Follow Chinese Laws On Giving Info – Yahoo explains it had to comply with Chinese laws in the case of handing over information that helped convict a Chinese journalist.

=== Sept. 8, 2005 ===

Squeezing The Search Engine Loaf For Freshness – Phil Bradley points to this research paper, The Freshness Of Web Search Engines’ Databases (PDF), out of Heinrich-Heine-University in Dusseldorf that analyzed the freshness of Google, Yahoo and MSN over six weeks in February and March 2005. Google came out best with the most pages updated almost daily, but MSN had the best “worst case” scenario with no page more than 20 days old. Yahoo was said to be “chaotic.” There’s much much more in the paper which, sadly and ironically, is already out of date in terms of knowing what’s happening right now. But having benchmark for various points in time is great.

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Need A Laugh? Try This Search News “Quiz” – I wrote earlier of a new SEO quiz, but the over 40 questions are too much work for you, try The Gray Hat News Quiz. It’s not so much a quiz by a satirical look at some recent search news stories, sure to give many of you a chuckle. Larry and Sergey arm wrestling to see who really is most powerful!

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Dig A Hole Through Earth Via Google Maps – Awesome! The next time one of my kids asks what would happen if they dug down through the earth — at least where would they come up at — I’ve got the answer. Spotted via Google Blogoscoped, If I dig a very deep hole, where I go to stop? lets you click anywhere on a world map via Google. A little note will pop-up saying “Dig Here.” Click on the link, and you’ll see where you come up.

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Miva Partners To Give Mirror Group Contextual AdsMiva has signed a deal to provide contextual ads to the Mirror Group Newspapers, which includes the Daily Mirror, The Sunday Mirror, The People, The Sunday Mail and The Daily Record. The release isn’t up on the Miva site yet, so I’ll paste what I received below….[MORE”

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Daily SearchCast: Search News Via Podcast
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Want to keep up with the latest in search news while you’re on the go? Try our podcast, The Daily SearchCast. It’s a 10-15 minute recap of the previous day’s news. How to tune-in?

  • Subscribe to our main SEW Blog feed, and you’ll receive the podcasts automatically when we alert readers to them each day.
  • Subscribe to our special podcast feed, and you’ll receive an alert only about new podcasts that we’ve posted.
  • Tune into WebmasterRadio.FM, where we go out live at 11:30am Eastern and then repeat at 2pm Eastern. The show archive at WebmasterRadio is here.
  • Listen via our Odeo channel, where it’s easy to see our past shows and hear them buy using little play buttons right within your browser.
  • Listen via iTunes 4.9 or higher. Click here and you should find the show will load automatically in iTunes, if you have it installed. If not, then see further instructions here.

Here are the last three days’ worth of shows:

You can find all shows from previous days listed on the Daily Searchcast home page. Just select any file to download it and listed on your computer or digital audio device.

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Our Search Newsletters & Feeds
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News each day, throughout the day, alerts of new discussion threads from our Search Engine Watch Forums and more — we have a newsletter or feed that covers all of these. See our Search Engine Newsletters & Web Feeds for a full rundown on everything we offer, as well as special buttons to let you subscribe via news readers such as Rojo, My MSN, Bloglines, Feedster, Newsgator, Pluck and My Yahoo. Thanks to FeedBurner for providing our feed tracking and management services!

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About The Search Engine Update
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