The Search Engine Update - Number 231 - October 18, 2006

by Danny Sullivan, October 17, 2006 Comments

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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.

=== Oct. 18, 2006 ===

Why Don't External Site Popularity Estimates Add Up? - A twofer today on whether you can trust the web metrics that are reported out there, one an article from BusinessWeek while the other is a big study from SEOmoz based on data gathered from a variety of search blogs. More details in this article, with lots of comments from me along the way. See also:

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Another Odd Post To An Official Google Blog Raises Security Concerns - Does another odd post to one of Google official blogs mean Google losing it in terms of security? It spurred Michael Arrington to fire up a list over at TechCrunch of other security issues, a couple I wouldn't agree were breaches. But I can add to the list as well, and there's no doubt these type of things hurt Google when during its expansion, it needs all the goodwill and trust it can get.

=== Oct. 17, 2006 ===

Google Webmaster Tools Gain Crawl Charts, Enhanced Crawl Rate & Image Labeler Support - Google Webmaster Tools has gained visual charts to show Googlebot's crawling activity, expanded crawl rate support, inclusion in the image search labeling program and number of URLs submitted. I talked with the Google Webmaster Central team earlier this week, and here are a few more details on some of the features. See also:

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Yahoo Releases New "Panama" Search Advertising System Early - Yahoo's long-anticipated next-generation search advertising platform, Panama, has now gone live. See also:

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Google To Own 25% Of 2006 Online Ad Revenue - An eMarketer.com report estimates that Google will account for twenty-five percent of all online ad revenue. See also:

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Windows Live Search Adds linkfromdomain Command - Windows Live Search has added a new linkfromdomain command designed to show you all the sites that a particular domain links to. See also: How To Make Custom Search Engine With Live Search

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MSN Belgium Drops Some Newspapers, Negotiating On Inclusion After Cease & Desist - Copiepresse is threatening to go after MSN for carrying Belgian newspapers in the way it went after Google. See also:

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Teaching People to Search Like Pros - In a new book, veteran instructor Greg Notess showcases the strategies and methods he uses to teach people not just to search, but to maximize their information sleuthing skills.

=== Oct. 13, 2006 ===

Search Engine Forums Spotlight - Links to the week's topics from search engine forums across the web: Google To Acquire YouTube for $1.65 Billion - Yahoo PPC Management Crash - SEO: What Skills Are Crucial? - Hired An SEO Company & Now Feel Ripped Off - When Are SEO Firms Going To Offer Link Baiting Services? and more.

=== Oct. 12, 2006 ===

Ask Mobile Search Launches - Ask.com has launched a mobile search product at m.ask.com or mobile.ask.com. Ask Mobile is optimized for mobile devices and uses Skweezer throughout to improve readability and download speed on your mobile device. See also:

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The Ongoing Struggle of Free vs. Fee - How can traditional information industry companies survive in the world of free web content? How can they appeal to

=== Oct. 10, 2006 ===

A Closer Look at Ask's Smart Answers - Ask.com has truly differentiated itself with the "Smart Answers" it returns for thousands of queries, offering facts, images and targeted links that respond directly to a searcher's information need.

=== Oct. 9, 2006 ===

Google To Acquire YouTube In Stock Transaction - Google to acquire YouTube in an all-stock deal valued at $1.65 billion and in a way that's said to enable YouTube to operate independently.

=== Oct. 6, 2006 ===

Google Calls Operational Pause On Products & Yes, New Rollouts Were Hurting Search - Sergey Brin is leading an attitude change of "features, not products" to get Googlers to improve what they already have rather than push out new stuff. See also:

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Search Engine Forums Spotlight - Links to the week's topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Gadgets Now For Your Website - Is SEO a Game of Outsmarting Search Engines? - Relevant Domain Names - Business Week Article On Click Fraud, and more.

=== Oct. 5, 2006 ===

Google Won Keyword Trademark Lawsuit: Rescuecom v. Google - Google won a major sponsored keyword trademark case against Rescuecom. See also: Google Wins Case Against Maughan Over Search Results Snippets

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Hello Natural Language Search, My Old Over-Hyped Search Friend - This is a rant. It's a rant from over 10 years of watching people trot out natural language search as the "killer" solution to the current state of search, something that's happening once again with Powerset. That's a search engine you can't even use at the moment, but the hype will no doubt continue. To counteract that, my thoughts on and some history about natural language search. See also:

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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.

=== Oct. 18, 2006 ===

Ask.com Using Paid Search On Google As Promotion - A search on Raccoon brings up an AdWords ad that is marketing Ask.com's search results.

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Yahoo Buzz Publishes Top 20 Misspelled Searches - Yahoo Buzz released the top twenty misspelled keywords on Yahoo Search.

=== Oct. 17, 2006 ===

Google To Install Solar Panels To Help Power The Googleplex - Google's next ambitious project is to install solar panels on the rooftops of the Googleplex to help power the company on sunny days.

=== Oct. 11, 2006 ===

Url.com - Results Ranked By Users - The ability to rank or rate results delivered by search engines is slowly becoming more commonplace, and I'm noticing that one or two multi/meta search engines are either incorporating this functionality into search or indeed making a specific feature of it, such as the new URL.com. See also: ResultR - One Search Many Useful Results.

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Cool New Real Estate Tools - The real estate vertical is one of the most interesting online segments for several reasons. Among them are the tools that have been developed amid intensifying competition.

=== Oct. 10, 2006 ===

Maharashtra Farmers Fight Government With Google Earth - Maharashtra farmers are using Google Earth to fight back against a government ruling that they would take 25,000 acres away from them to build a Maha Mumbai Special Economic Zone.

=== Oct. 9, 2006 ===

Coke Counters Bad PR With Search Ads - Coca-Cola Counters Critics With Search Ads from MediaPost covers how Coke is using search marketing to get the word out about a court victory where it was accused by a Colombian trade union of intimidating and assassinating union leaders. See also: Honda's New 'Crave' Campaign Missing Search?

=== Oct. 6, 2006 ===

Hitwise: 'Social Local Search' Growing Fast - Hitwise's LeeAnn Prescott, who presented at SES Local, has posted some of the data she showed at the conference. In this particular example, what she compared was traffic to traditional yellow pages sites vs. directory sites that incorporated user-generated content. See also: Free Local Search White Paper From TeleMapics.

=== Oct. 5, 2006 ===

LiveDeal Partnership Moves: Vast, SimplyHired - Within the past two days LiveDeal has announced two significant relationships: one with jobs metasearch engine SimplyHired and another, today, with general classifieds aggregator/search engine Vast.

=== Oct. 4, 2006 ===

Your Name Here On Google's Home Page - Custom Google is a way to get the Google home page showing whatever words you want in place of the Google logo -- but using the Google logo's style.

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Yahoo Travel Upgrades Maps, Adds More Features - Earlier this week Yahoo upgraded its Travel Guides with more dynamic mapping (including satellite and hybrid maps), more community features and the addition of a "My Travel Module," not unlike the recent introduction of "My Local" on Yahoo Local.

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Clusty Labs & Clusty Cloud Creator - Given that Clusty has just had a birthday they're celebrating by introducing the Clusty Labs. If you're familiar with Google Labs you'll know exactly where they're going with this. There's not a great deal there are the moment however; a one stop site about Benjamin Franklin (Clusty Ben) Shakespeare Searched and something new - the Clusty Cloud Creator (I wonder if they could have managed any more alliteration?)

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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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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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