IndustryThe Search Engine Update – Number 212 – Jan. 4, 2006

The Search Engine Update - Number 212 - Jan. 4, 2006

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

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In This Issue
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+ SES NY Coming!
+ 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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SES NY Coming!
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Missed our SES Chicago show? Don’t worry. Search Engine Strategies New York is coming up fast, happening Feb. 27 through March 2. Many of the popular sessions from SES Chicago will be returning, and you can get a rundown on some of these at the SES NY 2006 web site.

As always, there will be plenty of entirely new sessions happening. In particular for New York, expect sessions that look at branding issues, as well as how search and traditional marketing can blend together and help each other.

The complete SES NY agenda will be up after the New Year. You can sign-up on the SES NY 2006 site to be notified of this or just keep an eye on the SES Blog.

Following SES NY, March sees SES coming to Germany and China, then April sees visits to Japan, Canada and Italy. At the end of May, SES London happens and July sees our first ever SES Latino show coming to Miami. For more about these and other shows later in 2006, see the Search Engine Strategies site.

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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.

=== Jan. 4, 2006 ===

Is Pay-Per-View Video Coming Soon to Google Video? – Pay per view video may soon be a part of Google Video. Is this a surprise? No, not at all. It’s long been expected but may finally be arriving. See also:

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Craigslist Not Blocking Major Crawlers – Contrary to reports, Craigslist has not embarked upon a new policy of blocking search engine spiders, but talking with Craigslist along with some further poking at the situation shows that’s not the case. This article for Search Engine Watch goes into more depth of explaining what’s in the current robots.txt file, how it has changed plus how while Craigslist does prohibit crawling by classified ad search engines through its terms of use, it still allows general purpose search engines such as Google and Yahoo to crawl freely.

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SEM Campaign & Project Management, Part 1 – What’s the best approach to managing a search marketing campaign? A panel of experts shared best practices gained through years of experience with a wide range of clients.

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Being A Big Voice In SEO – How do you get to be a big voice in SEO? There’s a series of posts out there now offering such advice, which I’ll recap below, along with some thoughts on generations in SEO.

=== Jan. 3, 2006 ===

Tracking Changes on Web Pages – Often a small change to a web page is a clue that something big has happened or will happen, and automated tracking tools alert you the moment something has changed.

=== Dec. 29, 2005 ===

2005 in Review: The Top Search Industry Stories of the Year – Search caught fire last year, with new tools, services and virtually constant activity. Here’s a look back at some of the most memorable themes and trends of the year.

=== Dec. 28, 2005 ===

Revisiting The “No Banners On Google” Declaration – Google promised that the terms of its deal with AOL wouldn’t see a flood of banner ads flowing onto its pages nor the selling out of Google’s principles. But I still felt there was some “wiggle room” in that “no banners” isn’t the same as “no graphical ads.” Now I’ve had a chance to talk with Google. Yes, banners are pretty much out. However, other graphical units might still happen. See also:

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Google Base Switches To Force All Searchers Through Jump Pages – When Google Base first launched, one of my key questions was whether people could click on a entry and go directly to the submitter’s web site. Yes, you could. Now, you can’t. Instead, you’re forced to go through a “jump” or intermediary page before proceeding, an “experiment” I hope goes away.

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Google Book Search “Hack” Just Normal Operation – Steve Rubel thinks he’s “hacked” Google Book Search, as he covers in his “Read Most of O’Reilly’s Hacks Books for Free Using Google” post. In reality, I think he’s just finding that Google Book Search operates exactly the way it is supposed to operate, to show you a percentage of a book that a publisher itself has allowed you to view online.

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Patents, Google and Acquisitions & What About Search Patents from Other Companies? – Bill Slawski has done an impressive job of listing some of the patents held or applied for by companies Google has acquired over the years like Urchin, Applied Semantics, and Kaltix. But how about what other players are doing in developing in the patent world. A rundown on some non-Google search patents. See also:

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2005 in Review: The Best Search Engine Watch Forum Posts – During the past year, the Search Engine Watch forums have grown into a lively community, with thousands of members discussing just about everything related to search.

=== Dec. 27, 2005 ===

2005 in Review: The Year’s Top Search Terms – More proof that search engines are not all alike: The most popular search terms of the year varied quite a bit from engine to engine.

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Sharing The Search Wealth At A9, MSN & The Drawbacks – In my post-Christmas mailbox was a message from A9 reminding me of its A9 Instant Rewards program that effectively pays me a bit to search with them. That was a perfect hook to revisit the entire “pay to search” idea that Microsoft chairman Bill Gates kicked off earlier this month.

=== Dec. 23, 2005 ===

Google’s AOL Stake Rolling Into Holding Company It Can Take Public In 2008 – Google has now filed an 8-K form on the AOL deal that sheds light on some new details, include rolling its AOL stake into a new company that it can take public in 2008.

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Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Wish List for Yahoo Pay Per Click Marketing – Google Groans Under the Massive Data Load – Matt Cutts Explains How Google Crawls and Ranks Pages – Content is NOT king! and more.

=== Dec. 22, 2005 ===

Your Own Personal Google Zeitgeist Setting trends on the Official Google Blog covers a great holiday gift, a way to see your own top searches on Google. Very, very cool. You need Google Personalized Search active. Got it? Good, now go to your trends page. There you’ll see the top 10 searches you’ve done, the top 10 sites you’ve visited and the top 10 things you’ve most clicked on….[MORE”

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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.

=== Jan. 4, 2006 ===

Google Wants Your Feedback About Their New “Bigdaddy” Data CenterGoogle’s Matt Cutts offers a FAQ of sorts with information about the new “Bigdaddy” data center that Matt mentioned about a month ago in a response to a post on his blog. In this new blog post Matt says that Google is now ready to collect feedback about the new center….[MORE”

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Rashtchy: Global Search Market to Grow 41% in 2006 and 31% in 2007 – ClickZ writer Kevin Newcomb has a fact-filled article summarizing numbers and estimates from two new Piper Jaffray notes about the Internet and paid search in 2006. Both notes were written by Safa Rashtchy at PJ….[MORE”

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YACFA: Yet Another Click Fraud Article & A New Click Fraud Test UnderwayHow Click Fraud Could Swallow the Internet from Wired delivers unto us Yet Another Click Fraud Article (forthwith known as YACFA) with relatively little that most of you haven’t read before. Far, far more interesting is The Truth About Click Fraud over at WebGuerrilla, which will hopefully take us beyond all the stuff we’ve heard before with some actual testing….[MORE”. See also:

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Google Experimenting With Drop-Down Boxes – Google’s taking a page from Lycos circa 1998 and putting various search options into a drop-down box. See also: New Google UI Test: Vertical Search Links In New Left Column.

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Purchase Items and/or Compare Prices With Your Mobile Phone or Device – Bob Tedeschi’s article in the New York Times: Those Born to Shop Can Now Use Cellphones, takes a look at how eBay, Amazon, and others are allowing shoppers to purchase items via their mobile phone or device….[MORE”

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PC World Talks Web Mail Betas and Desktop Search – An article in the the January 2006 issue of PC World offers a brief look at web mail betas from Yahoo (I use it all of the time, kudos), MSN Live Mail, and Zimbra. Plus, Desktop Search: Just What You Need looks at desktop search tools….[MORE”. See also Time For Dinner: Email/Gmail Team Leaders from Google, MS, and Yahoo Break Bread With WSJ Writer.

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New: Google Garb for Your Dog – If Fido or Rover love Google (or their owners do (-:), your pets can now show their support with new Google dog collars and leashes now available from the Google Store. Collars are available for large or medium sized dogs. Leashes are also available large or medium size dogs. Bow wow!!!

=== Jan. 3, 2006 ===

Search By Drawing: Meet Retrievr & Search By Sketch Demos From Purdue & Princeton – An experimental search tool called retrievr allows the user to find related Flickr images by drawing a sketch, along with some related tools….[MORE”

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New OSX Dashboard Widget for MSN Virtual Earth; Yahoo Maps Gets a Widget – A new version of an MSN Virtual Earth widget was released over the weekend for Mac OSX Dashboard and Yahoo Maps now has a widget (Mac and PC) that’s available here.

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Happy 10th Birthday To Dogpile – Today, metasearch tool Dogpile begins celebrating its 10th birthday. Congrats! Here’s the Dogpile home page from December of 1996 and a USENET announcement from its original developer, Aaron Flin….[MORE”

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Google Still Searching For Executive ChefsInterviews for jobs at Google are known to be very difficult and demanding on potential job candidates. I wonder if the same “tough” interview approach also applies to those who want to cook for Googlers at the Mountain View Googleplex? Many months after Google started to look for a couple of new excutive chefs, they’re still looking….[MORE”

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Sources for Product Reviews Online – On Christmas Day, the New York Times offered a look at several services that allow end users to supply and share reviews of different projects. Well-known services like Consumer Reports and Consumer Guide are mentioned. Other sources like CNET, Yahoo, Amazon.com, and epinions are also included. Additionally, a couple of other new and potentially useful services got some ink….[MORE”

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Piper Jaffray Says that Google Heading to $600 a Share – Brokerage house Piper Jaffray says that 2006 will be another great year for shares of Google. In a new report out today, PJ says that Google are on their way to $600 a share….[MORE”

=== Dec. 29, 2005 ===

Google Will Be Default Search Engine on Opera’s Mobile BrowsersDirson reports that Opera (the browser company) Google will be the default search tool on all of Opera’s mobile browsers including the new Opera Mini set for release next month. The TechWeb article: Google To Supply Search For Opera’s Mobile Browsers, has more….[MORE”

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Google Guys Invest in a Motion Picture Being Made by Friend – Via Philipp at Google Blogoscoped, an article in the San Francisco Chronicle that informs us that the Google Guys (Sergey and Larry) are investing in a film titled, ” Broken Arrows – the Movie” written and directed by a pal they met while at Stanford, Reid Gershbein….[MORE”

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Google and Yahoo Both Make Top 10 of 2005 ImagePower. Newsmaker Brands Survey – A new survey out today ranking America’s leading brands has both Google and Yahoo in the Top 10. Other Internet players in the Top 10 “winning brands” for 2005 include Amazon.com and eBay….[MORE”

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YouTube Pops Above Google Video Thanks To SNL Clip – So here’s a mashup for you. I wrote earlier about YouTube and how I didn’t really trust Alexa data to prove the popularity of anything. Gary wrote of a popular Saturday Night Live skit being shared through places like YouTube and Google Video. LeeAnn Prescott over at Hitwise puts the two together with some nice charts to show YouTube’s rising popularity plus a big boost it got thanks to that SNL clip. See also:

=== Dec. 28, 2005 ===

New Entry: Medio Joins Mobile Search Space in U.S. – Earlier this month, the Red Herring story: Medio to Debut Mobile Search, looked at Seattle based Medio, joining other companies in the U.S. mobile search space. The company already offers its service in Europe in a deal with Nokia….[MORE”

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The Googleshank Redemption Reloaded – Remember me writing about the Googleshank Redemption? If not, it was the story of site owner Allan Dick feeling powerless to get help from Google. Proving the power of the blog, Allan found that chronicling his experience finally got action. Google’s Matt Cutts got in touch, and Allan says things are looking up.

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Google Knocked For Allowing Off Topic Ford Explorer AdsFord Explorer Teaches Me to Ignore Google AdWords Ads from Aaron over at SEO Book looks at Ford Explorer ads delivered via Google AdSense that appeared recently to be all over the web to him and others. His main issue is why Google allowed off-topic delivery. The ads were apparently showing up on pages that seemed to have nothing to do with cars, trucks, SUV what motorized transport….[MORE”

=== Dec. 27, 2005 ===

Consumer Reports Looks at Travel Search Meta Engines in New Study – Consumer Reports/Consumer Web Watch has published a new study that looks at how 11 travel search meta engines and aggregators like Kayak, Mobissimo, and Yahoo FareChase perform. The full text of the 29 page report (PDF) is available here at no charge. A brief news release is also available….[MORE”

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Google Recruits Creator of Python; Blog from Google Spain Manager Debuts; New Compilation of Blogs by Googlers – It appears that Guido van Rossum, the creator of the Python programming language, is now a Google employee. Plus, a compliation of blogs by Googlers….[MORE”

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Technorati Adds Trend Charts, Other Features, Rubel Offers “Hacking” Tips – Via Micro Persuasion, this post from the Technorati blog pointing out several new features that are now available including a blog finder widget, trend charts (enter a term, see how many posts in the past 30 days mention it) and improved extracts (what others call snippets.) For more Technorati fun, take a look at this post from Steve Rubel from early last month: Ten Technorati Hacks.

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Winners Of The 2005 Search Blog Awards Announced – The results of Search Engine Journal’s 2005 Search Blog Awards are in. We’re thrilled to be winners in one category (and thank you all for making it happen with your votes!) along with a number of other great sites in other categories. A rundown is below. And as I said before, be sure to check out all the nominated blogs, because they’re all excellent to put on your reading list….[MORE”

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Transcripts and Video: Authors of Books About Google Interviewed on TV – In the past few days, the authors of both recent books about Google and web search have been interviewed on TV or featured in TV news reports….[MORE”

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Google To Limit Photo Resolution Of Israeli Military Sites – We reported earlier about a great New York Times article looking at how various governments around the world have been made nervous by aerial images posted in Google Maps. Now via Google Blogoscoped, there’s a report out of Israel that Google has agreed to limit the resolution of military installations in Israel, something the NYT article says is mandated by US law. See also: Governments Ask Google to Turn a Blind Eye.

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Google Feed API Coming – Run or building a feed reader? Google’s planning a feed reader API, confirms Technorati’s Niall Kennedy. He’s got more details in Exclusive: Google to offer feed API. It’s not clear to me whether this means tapping into data used for Google Blog Search or data that Google Reader develops for its own use or some combination of them both. But I’m sure more details will emerge.

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Ask Jeeves Drops “Jeeves” Part In France – We know that Ask Jeeves has promised a rebranding to come, with the smart money being on shortening the name to Ask and showing Jeeves the butler the door. Now Barry over at Search Engine Roundtable spots a Cre8asite forum discussion remarking how in France, it’s simply Ask France — not Ask Jeeves France….[MORE”

=== Dec. 26, 2005 ===

MSN Updates Live.com Site With Changes/Improvements to “Search Experience” – Word from Redmond on the Live.com blog that Microsoft has made several “search related” changes (they call them improvements) to their Live.com customizable home page….[MORE”. See also MSN Getting Cleaner Look In The Microsoft Three Portal Strategy.

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BlogPulse Releases List of Top Blogs, Blog Posts, and More of 2005 – The last two weeks have been busy with the release of “Top Search” lists and rankings from all of the major search players. We’ve blogged them all. What about the blogosphere itself? Well, the BlogPulse team has release their year-end review….[MORE”
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4info.net Adds New Services for Mobile Web Users4info.net is a mobile search service (SMS, Web, Mobile Web) that we’ve blogged about a lot in 2005 and I continue to be impressed with. I also use it on a very regular basis. The San Francisco company is ending the year with even more search tools for the mobile web user….[MORE”

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Google.org Site Updated With Info About Google’s Latest Grant – Those of you who track Google’s philanthropic activities might be interested to know that the Google.org page has been updated with information about PlanetRead.org, an organization in India that Google just announced awarded a grant to. The award was officially announced about two weeks ago.

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CiteSeer Offers New Feature; Mirrors of Database Also Added – Years before Google Scholar was launched, Professor Lee Giles, from Penn State University was online with a specialty database named CiteSeer (some also might also know it as ResearchIndex). CiteSeer search technology continues to be developed. This database offers access to “scholarly literature” found on the open web in several disciplines including information technology, computer science, telecom, and more….[MORE”

=== Dec. 24, 2005 ===

Tracking Santa – Over on my personal blog, I mentioned how I loved to hear Santa tracked over the radio when I was a kid and how I do it online today with my own kids. Then I thought it was kind of a searchy things — after all, many of you (or your kids) may be wanting to track Santa tonight….[MORE”

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German SEO Forums Launched – Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Heute hab Ich gelernen ThomasB hat ihre neue SEO “forums” hier: Online Marketing Talk. And now you know why native German speakers grimace — including my brother-in-law — when I try out my two years of college German on them. You want to talk suchmaschinenoptimierung? That’s a new place to check out.

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Kung Fu Over Kai-Fu Between Google & Microsoft EndsMicrosoft, Google Settle Suit from Red Herring covering the fact that Google and Microsoft are no longer going to fight over Google China head Dr. Kai-Fu Lee. Terms of the agreement aren’t disclosed.

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Jews For Jesus Sues Google Over Blogger Blog Jews for Jesus Group Sues Google from Reuters covers Google being sued by the group in New York to force it to give up the jewsforjesus.blogspot.com blog hosted on Google’s Blogger service. Haven’t seen the suit documents, so it’s unclear whether the “right” to the group’s own name it demands only means it wants jewsforjesus not to be used as part of the address or whether it simply thinks the site shouldn’t be allowed at all. See also: Full Text of Complaint Filed in Jews for Jesus v. Google Case.

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Meta Search Tagged Content With Wink – Want to meta search across content that has been specifically tagged in various ways? New search engine Wink is now live allowing that. It pulls back material categorized over at Digg, Yahoo My Web, del.iou.us, plus you can now tag things you find within Wink itself….[MORE”

=== Dec. 22, 2005 ===

Ending The Year With A Google Sandbox Reexamination – Since everyone else is blogging about our Google Sandbox discussion at the Search Engine Watch Forums, guess I’d better get on it as well. Getting Out Of Google Sandbox Using Subdomain & Redirection was the thread that started things, where moderator Dave Naylor shared with members the tip he gave out at SES Chicago on breaking out of a sandbox-like effect….[MORE”

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Google Not Buying Riya – Just to tidy up loose ends, photo search service Riya quashed recent rumors that it would be bought by Google.

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WebmasterWorld Back Among The Spiderable – WebmasterWorld, which banned Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves and other search spiders last month, is now allowing them back in and thus returned to the land of the living, in terms of being listed with search engines….[MORE”

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What’s A Scraper Site – It’s easy to assume that everyone knows what a scraper site is. Everyone doesn’t — or at least, they know what a scraper site is, they just don’t know what they are commonly called. Scraper Sites and SE Ambiguity: What is Your Sites Reading Level? from Stuntdubl gives you a nice rundown on how scrapers grab search results to make “content” that’s typically host to Google AdSense ads — and asks the same question on the minds of many, why does Google fund this junk?

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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 by using little play buttons right within your browser.
  • Listen online or subscribe for MP3 player downloads via our Yahoo Podcasts channel.
  • 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 two 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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