The Search Engine Update - Number 224 - July 5, 2006
Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan's recap of top search engine stories from the second half of June 2006.
Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan's recap of top search engine stories from the second half of June 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
+ Daily SearchCast: Search News Via Podcast
+ 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.
=== July 5, 2006 ===
Report: Advertisers Lost $800 Million To Click Fraud Last Year – A new click fraud report claims 14.6 percent of all clicks and $800 million worth of fraudulent clicks were charged to advertisers last year. See also: Yahoo Settles Clickfraud Lawsuit.
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Google’s Spam Score Details Shown? – Someone’s come across a cached URL in the Google results that seems to reveal some Google ranking criteria. See also:
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Google To Launch Book Search Service In China – Google will be launching an on-line book search service in China. Google signed agreements with publishing houses, Tsinghua University Press and the Children’s Publishing House. See also:
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Windows Live Local Integrates ‘Call For Free’ Into All Business Listings – “Click To Call” functionality has now been integrated into Windows Live Local, letting searchers call for free to businesses listed.
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KinderStart.com Case May Proceed To Court? – The KinderStart.com case, a suit over a site losing rankings in Google, might proceed to trial.
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New Search Patent Applications: July 5, 2006 – Google Coming to a Shopping Mall Near You – Google files patents for shopping offline with online assistance, a secondary map in Google Maps, and an updated review aggregator and more from other companies, as well. See also:
=== June 29, 2006 ===
Yahoo Second In Market Share In China – TMCnet.com reports that Google is in third place in China, with 13.2% share. Yahoo is in second place with 21.1% market share and Baidu leads with 43.9%. TMCnet sources this information from the Beijing Modern Business Daily on page 1 from the Tuesday, June 27, 2006 edition. See also:
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Google Launches Checkout, not the Rumored GBuy – Google has launched Google Checkout, a payment system for online retailers that’s tightly integrated with Google AdWords. Checkout isn’t the rumored PayPal killer, but it does offer some compelling features for both merchants and online shoppers alike. See also:
=== June 28, 2006 ===
Yahoo Settles Clickfraud Lawsuit – A California judge has approved Yahoo’s proposed settlement of a class action click fraud case brought against the company by Checkmate Strategic Group in June 2005.
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Google Loses French Lawsuit Over Vuitton Trademark – Google lost an appeal in a French lawsuit involving the Louis Vuitton trademark and must pay a $375,000 fine.
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Digging into the News – Social news site Digg has expanded from technology news into broad-based coverage of many popular topics, with stories ranked according to their popularity among Digg users.
=== June 27, 2006 ===
New Players in Travel Search – Travel search engines, which allow you to book directly with suppliers, have the potential to completely disrupt the status-quo. Here’s a look at two new highly disruptive services that offer great advice for travelers.
=== June 26, 2006 ===
MSN Talks Spam Defenses; Takes Weekends Off From Indexing – This morning I uncovered two threads at WebmasterWorld that provide information on MSN from spam defense to when search indexes get updated….[MORE”. See also: MSN Search Requires Unique Robots.txt Files In HTTPS Vs. HTTP Cases.
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Google Blamed For Indexing Student Test Scores & Social Security Numbers – Catawba County Schools in North Carolina gained a temporary injunction to remove personal student data that ended up in the search engine. See also: Follow-Up: School Couldn’t Reach Google Until Injunction Filed.
=== June 23, 2006 ===
Ask.com Too Strict With Child & Sex Keywords? – A search on Ask.com for [laws against pedophilia” brings back a message that reads, “This query does not comply with Ask.com Terms of Service.” Is the service too strict on what you can search for? See also: Ask.com Removes “Legacy Filters” To Enable Pedophilia Keyword Search.
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Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Google AdWords Scheduling/Day Parting Now Live – SEO Training- Is It Worthwhile? – Age of Links – Quality and Authority: Relevance Alone Is Not Enough, and more.
=== June 22, 2006 ===
Searching for Critical Acclaim – Want to know what the critics say before watching that movie, buying that book or downloading that music? Here’s how to find treasure-troves of reviews, quickly and easily.
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Google Partners With Adobe For Toolbar Distribution In Shockwave, Other Product To Be Named – Both Adobe and Google have announced a new deal where Adobe will distribute the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer as part of Adobe Macromedia Shockwave Player downloads. That was supposed to begin yesterday, and bundling with other Adobe products will happen in the future.
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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.
Interactive Review Of SEOBook’s SEO Firefox Extension – Aaron Wall over at SEO Book released a Firefox extension for SEOs. The Firefox extension allows you to see on the Google and Yahoo search result pages the PageRank, the age, the links, the .edu links the .gov links, the del.icio.us numbers and Technorati rank….[MORE”
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Microsoft Running Out Of Room In Redmond – A New York Times article looks into how Microsoft is running out of room in Redmond. The company is adding 12,000 new employees, which requires them to expand the headquarters 3.1 million square feet….[MORE”
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SEOMoz’s Keyword Difficulty Tool – The keyword difficulty tool at SEOmoz has been updated. The tool tells you how competitive a keyword is to rank for….[MORE”
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Yahoo Launches New Home Page Design In UK & Ireland – Yahoo has finally released the new home page redesign that has been in beta since mid-February — at least in the UK….[MORE”
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Google Warns U.S. Legislators On Anti-Trust Complaints Over Net Neutrality – TGoogle has warned the United States, that if telecoms abuse net neutrality principles it backs, through a new law that might go through, it could consider an anti-trust action.
=== July 3, 2006 ===
Ending Click Fraud with Pay-Per-Percentage – An interesting new paper from the folks at Microsoft Research covers a type of advertising approach selling percentages of impressions said to be “immune to both click fraud and impression fraud” and would use something called “pre-fix match” instead of broad match….[MORE”
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New York Times Looks At Google’s Hardware & Infrastructure – A New York Times article has a detailed analysis of Google’s infrastructure and discussion with Urs Hvlzle, senior vice president for operations at Google….[MORE”
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Google Page Creator Now Supporting AdSense – Google Page Creator now supports AdSense….[MORE”
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Google’s Non Search Products A Flop – BusinessWeek reports that when Google launches a new non-search product, the competition “shivers,” but Google has yet to lead in market share for any of those non-search products….[MORE”
=== Jun. 30, 2006 ===
Googleplex Irvine & “AdSense Audio” For Radio Ads – A report on a visit to the Googleplex Irvine and “Google AdSense Audio,” a method of “dynamically generate and change commercial content according to demographic and what is currently going on in the geographic area of radio stations”….[MORE”
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MSN Search To Officially Not Use Yahoo Search Marketing For Sponsored Search July 1 – Yahoo’s and MSN’s relationship is coming to an official end this month in the US….[MORE”
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Yahoo Beta Tests Searchable Yahoo Mobile E-Mail – Gary Price reports that Yahoo is beta testing a new Yahoo Mail interface here. Gary says the most notable difference between the current version and the beta version is that in the beta, you can search your mail on your mobile device.
=== June 29, 2006 ===
Vertical Images From AdSense Include Images in Ad Units – Vertical Images is the latest international beta test being run by Google AdSense. Vertical images displays a related generic image within the ad unit, which then links to a results page similar to the results page seen when clicking on an Ad Links keyword….[MORE”
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Google AdWords Adds Statistics Tabs – Google has updated their AdWords campaigns interface to include “account statistics tabs.” The new tabs are named “Summary,” “Keywords,” and “Ad Variations,” they can be found if you click deeper into a campaign….[MORE”
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Google Video Adds New Features – Google Video is letting now letting users add comments, labels and ratings to any video on the site. Yes, tagging by any other name….[MORE”
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Google Now A Verb In The Oxford English Dictionary – “Google” is now officially a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary….[MORE”
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Google Knocks Off Apple On The Wired 40 – The Wired 40 was just released and Google has secured the top spot, at number one this year. They have bumped off Apple, who last year ranked number one….[MORE”
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Another Microsoft Executive Leaves To Join Google – Another Microsoft executive has left the company this month to join Google….[MORE”. See also: David Beach Leaves Yahoo For Start Up Wink.
=== June 28, 2006 ===
Data Feed Submission To Google Base – Froogle feed submission used to take a couple days (and a couple iterations) to process correctly, so I was pleasantly surprised to see my feed accepted in less than an hour via Google Base….[MORE”
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Google and Yahoo Come to the Aid of Craigslist – Craigslist is being sued under federal housing discrimination law for allowing the posting of allegedly discriminatory ads seeking certain types or classes of roommates and tenants. Google, AOL, Yahoo, Amazon and other online firms recently filed what’s called a “friend of the court” brief in support of Craigslist in the matter….[MORE”
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‘Point and Search’ on Japanese Cellphones – The NY Times covers “Point and Click” mobile local search in Japan on GPS-enabled mobile phones using technology from American firm GeoVector. See also ‘Point and Search’ Redux.
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FeedBurner CEO, Dick Costolo, Interviewed By Business 2.0 Magazine – CNN Money has a Business 2.0 interview with Dick Costolo, FeedBurner’s CEO. The article discusses the challenge FeedBurner had raising capital for such a new technology, RSS….[MORE”
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Google Not The Leader In Enterprise Search – An Investors Business Daily article reviews enterprise search and Google’s role in that niche, where it is not a giant….[MORE”
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Some Funny & Crazy Yahoo Videos On YouTube – Loren Baker posted some of the funniest and craziest videos he found on YouTube related to Yahoo….[MORE”
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Marine Selling “Google Water” For Military Families Charity – Boing Boing links to a US Marine who just got back from Iraq with bottles of “Google Water” that are sold there….[MORE”
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Dell To Use Google Earth To Provide Enhanced Tech Support – The Detroit News reports that Dell is going to use Google Earth as a tool to enhanced their technical support services….[MORE”
=== June 27, 2006 ===
Image Database To Fight Online Child Porn – The AP reports that AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, EarthLink, NetZero and Juno are teaming up to fight child pornography. They are pooling together $1 million to build a database of pornographic images of children and software to match the image database with similar matches on their own networks….[MORE”
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Microsoft Re-Launches adCenter Labs Again – Been hearing about the “new” Microsoft adCenter Labs tools this week? That’s because Microsoft has done another round of publicity on them after initially launching them earlier this month. Our past recap is here and here. See also: Microsoft Demographics Prediction Tool Interactive Review.
=== June 26, 2006 ===
The SEO Event Google Calendar – Aaron Wall posted a very useful SEO Event & Conference Calendar using the Google Calendar platform….[MORE”
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Cost-Per-Keyword Drops In Q1 – MediaPost reports that the cost-per-keyword has dropped from around $30 in the first quarter of 2006 to “the yearly high of $59 last December”….[MORE”
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Google To Also Lobby In Europe – Pandia covers that Google is looking to hire a “senior European government affairs and public policy leader,” to lobby in Europe. Google has hired a lobbying firm in the states a few months back. More details on the story at Pandia.
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Microsoft Promotes adCenter In Full Page New York Times Ad – Microsoft has a full-page color ad in this morning’s New York Times that promotes Microsoft adCenter, Microsoft’s PPC engine….[MORE”
=== June 25, 2006 ===
France’s Gioportail Mapping Site: La Demande C’est Fantastique! – The French answer to Google Earth, the indirectly government funded Geoportail, launched Friday and was immediately overwhelmed with visits from eager French citoyens (citizens) and other curious would-be users….[MORE”
=== June 23, 2006 ===
Yahoo Says Searchers are Better Patients – New research from Yahoo tells us that the majority of people who searched for health information subsequently visited their doctor (61%) and that 71% of these folks went equipped with pointed, action oriented questions….[MORE”
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‘Social Directory,’ ‘Directed Blogging’?: Whatever You Call It Yelp Has Got It Down – Yelp, while not the most heavily trafficked local search/directory site, it arguably has one of the most engaged audiences of any of the companies in its space….[MORE”
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PhotoBucket Has 44% Share of Photo Sharing Sites: Beating Yahoo & Flickr – The Hitwise blog posted what I found to be surprising statistics on what is the most popular photo sharing site. I would have thought Yahoo Photos or Flickr would be a one of the most popular services, but it looks like PhotoBucket has almost 44% of the share….[MORE”.
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Japan’s Softbank Mobile Phones To Use Yahoo As Content Portal – MarketWatch reports that Softbank, who acquired Vodafone, will be using Yahoo to “bring the broad world of the Internet” to their mobile users. The mobile phones will have some sort of direct link to the Yahoo portal, to bring the content of that portal to Softbank’s mobile users.
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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?
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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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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