IndustryThe Search Engine Update – Number 229 – September 20, 2006

The Search Engine Update - Number 229 - September 20, 2006

Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan's recap of top search engine stories from the first half of September 2006.

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In This Issue
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+ Upcoming Search Engine Strategies Events
+ Top Stories
+ More From The Search Engine Watch Blog
+ Our Search Newsletters & Feeds
+ About The Newsletter

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Upcoming Search Engine Strategies Events
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Don’t miss our search marketing & networking events! There’s one coming near you:

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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.

=== Sep. 19, 2006 ===

Your Search, Your Way – A new generation of search services goes beyond simple personalization, and lets you customize both your search topics and how results are presented.

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Yahoo CEO Says Ad Growth Slowing Down; Ask.com To Increase Market Share – Terry Semel, Yahoo’s CEO, has warned that online advertising growth will be slowing in automotive and financial services industries. See also:

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Belgian Court Orders Google To Remove Content From Google News & Cache – Google has been ordered by a Belgian court to remove all articles, photographs and graphics from French-language newspapers. See also:

=== Sep. 15, 2006 ===

See Ads? Now You Don’t! Google AdWords Rotating Out Top Sponsored Links – Google is now displaying or not displaying the top sponsored links (with the blue background) based on searcher behavior. See also:

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Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Which Web Services Do You Use? – Mining the Tail? – AdSense On Home Page – Does It Cheapen The Look? – What are the Barriers to Using Search Analytics? – Digg Dealing With the Same Problems as Google? and more.

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Business Searching Beats Sex Queries & Who’s Handing Out The Query Data? – There’s a new paper out saying that business topics have ousted sex topics as top searches. Forget the findings, however. In the wake of the AOL search data uproar, I wanted to know where the 20 to 30 million search sessions studied came from.

=== Sep. 14, 2006 ===

Search Marketing in Regulated Industries – Developing and promoting a site for a company in a highly regulated industry can be a challenge to a search marketer on many unforeseen levels. Here’s how to avoid common gotchas or even worse consequences.

=== Sep. 13, 2006 ===

Intuit & Google Announce Major Local Search Marketing Partnership – Intuit has announced a partnership with Google that integrates AdWords campaign management and other Google-related features directly into the workflow of QuickBooks, the company’s bestselling software package for small business. See also:

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Your New Title: The VP of Search – What do the New York Times/About.com, Citicards and Passages drug treatment center have in common? You guessed it, a Vice President of Search, the hottest new title in town.

=== Sep. 12, 2006 ===

Microsoft Upgrades Live Search Offerings – Microsoft has made a number of changes to its Windows Live offerings, including pushing some services out of beta and adding new features to others. See also:

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Shakespeare Searched By Clusty – Clusty has released Shakespeare Searched which is designed to provide quick access to the works of the Bard. It’s not designed as a replacement for, or access to the full text of his work, but as a quick reference resource.

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Big Brands: Do You Know What Wikipedia Saying About You Via Google? – Steve Rubel produced a small study on the top 100 advertisers to see where in the Google rankings does the brand’s Wikipedia entry fall. For example, a search on the well-known automobile brand Chevrolet shows a Wikipedia entry for them at the number four result. See also:

=== Sep. 8, 2006 ===

Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Report: Local Search Advertising Spend Will Double – Content Is King – Do I Need Adwords? – Organic Search Vs. Paid Advertisement – SEO Rates – Moving to Pay-For-Performance, and more.

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More On Google & Blocking Privacy Proxies – Several proxy servers used by those wishing to search and surf anonymously had apparently been blocked by Google, including the popular Tor service. Google’s since explained why these were blocked and how human users can get around the barrier….

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Google Sitelinks: New Name For Those Links Under The Top Listings – Last year, people started to notice that Google began showing “subtopic” or “subcategory” links below their listing, if they were the first in a Google search. Now, Google’s finally confirmed the change as a permanent feature and given it a name: sitelinks. See also:

=== Sep. 7, 2006 ===

Online Video Advertising Builds Momentum – With ubiquitous broadband access and ad-serving technologies becoming more sophisticated, marketers are increasingly interested in online video advertising opportunities. How do top interactive agencies leverage video for their online advertising campaigns?

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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 any of the Search Engine Watch staff who post to the blog.

=== Sep. 20, 2006 ===

The Unchanging Search InterfaceWhy Search Sucks & You Won’t Fix It The Way You Think from me on my personal blog Daggle covers a session I did at Euro Foo Camp this week. It looks at how the search interface of major search engines has largely stayed unchanged over time. We’re still using what I call the “DOS of Search”….[MORE”

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Zillow Adds ‘Owner-Generated’ Content – Real estate search site Zillow.com has added personalization features and the ability for homeowners to publish their own information beside Zillows home-valuation “Zestimates.”

=== Sep. 19, 2006 ===

Video Search Usage for August 2006 – Hitwise just released August 2006 market share data for the most popular online video search sites….[MORE”. See also: Google Wants To Launch Google Video In Japan.

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Yahoo Creating “Brickhouse” Internal Incubator To Keep Talent – Yahoo is creating an internal incubator, code named Brickhouse, to give some of Yahoo’s talent a place to work without the bureaucracy of a large company….[MORE”. See also: Ask.com To Open R&D Center in Germany.

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Local Matters and Mobile People Partner for Mobile Local Search – Directory, directory assistance and local search infrastructure provider Local Matters today announced a deal with European mobile search company Mobile People….[MORE”

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Google’s Political Action Committee: Google NetPAC – Google has created its own Political Action Committee named Google NetPAC to to support candidates backing “an open and free internet”….[MORE”

=== Sep. 18, 2006 ===

Baidu Holds 62% Share In China – Baidu, the Chinese search engine, has 62.1 percent share based on a China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) report. That is up 10 points from 52 percent in 2005….[MORE”

=== Sep. 15, 2006 ===

Google Adds Tabs To Personalized Home Page – Google has added the ability to add and manage tabs on your personalized home page….[MORE”. See also: Google Interesting Items Module: Recommend Searches, Pages & Gadgets.

=== Sep. 14, 2006 ===

Yahoo Adds More Social Features To Local – Yahoo has just made its popular Yahoo Local site more personal and simultaneously more “social.” A number of new features have been integrated into the site that allow people to create customized profiles and lists of local favorites but also to tag and share those favorites for discovery by the larger user community….[MORE”

=== Sep. 13, 2006 ===

Hitwise Data Center Offers Search Terms & Top Search Engines For Various Countries – New from Hitwise is the Hitwise Data Center, sharing details on web surfing behavior. There are different data centers for various countries, and for search marketers, two key reports tell you top terms and top search engines….[MORE”

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Site Search Volume More Than Web Search Volume – Site search volume may well exceed web search, but despite this, site search gets little attention….[MORE”

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Yahoo Displaying Checkout Icons In Search Ads – Yahoo is placing little shopping cart icons in some of the sponsored listings for eBay ads….[MORE”

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Google: Banning Books In The US Is Bad; Censorship In China, Not So Much – Google’s blogging about how it is supporting the 25th anniversary of the American Library Association’s Banned Book Week by posting information about novels that have been challenged or banned from being in libraries within the United States. That’s great, but it also rings hollow given Google’s support of wide-spread censorship in China….[MORE”

=== Sep. 12, 2006 ===

The Ten Linking Commandments By LinkMoses – Eric Ward posted a fun but true list of what he calls LinkMoses Linking Commandments….[MORE”

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Search Bugs At Yahoo & Google – In the past twenty-four hours I have discovered and documented four different bugs or weird occurrences at both Yahoo and Google. I will cover the four bugs, include adult ads displaying in Google and Yahoo’s contextual programs, Yahoo’s contextual ads not displaying ads at all, Google’s site operator not functioning properly and Google’s AdWords statistics not showing the right data….[MORE”

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The Search Diggs – I love the idea of trying to combine something like Digg with search news and have been wanted to do this myself for ages. Maybe I still will, but others have gotten there first. John Battelle is the latest with SearchMob having just launched today. Head over there, and you can submit and vote on stories related to search. Search N Sniff is a similar site that launched last week, and The Search Engine Press is the oldest, launched in February.

=== Sep. 11, 2006 ===

Track Federal Spending With Government Search Engine – The US Senate wants to make it easier for normal users to track what the US Government is spending taxpayers money on through a special search engine….[MORE”

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Google’s Toolbar Anti-Phishing Blacklist – A whitelist of URLs found at sb.google.com appears to be safe URLs to be used for the Google Toolbar….[MORE”

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Looking Back At Search & 9/11 – Remembering how search engines reacted during the events of September 11….[MORE”

=== Sep. 7, 2006 ===

RH Donnelley Buys LocalLaunch – RH Donnelley, the third largest US yellow pages publisher, has acquired local SEO/SEM firm LocalLaunch….[MORE”

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Former Google UK Chief Kate Burns Joins AdLink Media Company – Kate Burns, former Google managing director of UK, who has left Google in June for more family time, is reportedly joining a new firm named AdLink….[MORE”

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Digg To Change System To Stem Gaming; Top Digger Quits – Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com, wrote that the Digg.com algorithm for ranking top stories on the home page and other category pages will be changing. Why? Because of other bloggers beginning to publicize that digg is rigged or at least favors the top 30 or so users (diggers)….[MORE”

=== Sep. 6, 2006 ===

‘Local Shopping’ Competition Intensifying – Yokel announced expanded local store and inventory information in the San Francisco Bay Area….[MORE”

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About The Search Engine Update
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The Search Engine Update is a twice-monthly update of search engine news. It is available only to Search Engine Watch members. Please note that long URLs may break into two lines in some mail readers. Cut and paste, should this occur.

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