The Search Engine Update - Number 209 - Nov. 23, 2005
Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan's recap of top search engine stories from the first half of November 2005.
Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan's recap of top search engine stories from the first half of November 2005.
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In This Issue
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+ SES Chicago Early Bird Discount Deadline Today!
+ SEW Members Articles
+ 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 Chicago Agenda Is Live!
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Been thinking about coming to the SES Chicago 2005 search marketing conference we’re having next month from Dec. 5 through 8? Today’s the deadline to register and save!
If you’re looking to better understand all the conference offers, see my What’s Going On At The Show? post on the Search Engine Watch Blog.
The post explains how we have a number of new sessions such as Podcast Search and SEM Via Communities, Wikipedia & Tagging, plus we have tracks designed to teach the fundamentals of search marketing to those who are new, special sessions just for search marketing agencies, a track designed for “in house” SEMers, a retailers track, many different sessions on link building, plus sessions that cover a range of search advertising and organic listing issues.
Search marketers from the trenches and representatives from the major search engines take part in panels. On hand will be speakers from AOL, Ask Jeeves, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo, to name only some of the search companies involved.
In some special sessions, I’ll be doing a keynote on how search marketing has done some growing and gained some reputation over the past year. Google Print & The Copyright Debate has Google squaring off against critics in the debate over its library scanning program. The Future Of SEM features an eclectic panel of search marketers will discuss roundtable-style where the industry is heading from their perspectives.
The show also has two days of expo hall action, and our special “Birds Of A Feather” seating for lunch returns on the first three days of the show, allowing people to easily find and network with those having similar interests. Plus, I hear on good authority that the usual range of parties thrown by various companies will be returning.
By the way, our last non-US show this year is in France, happening next week from Nov. 29-30. It’s the first time ever for the show to be held in France, and you’ll find more info here.
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. That’s also the place to look for speaking opportunities for any of the shows.
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SEW Members Articles
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Below are articles published since the last newsletter exclusively for Search Engine Watch members. In between newsletters, you can now also find any new articles listed on the Search Engine Watch Members Area home page. Past articles can be found in the Members-Only Articles Archive area. Need to come up to speed on a particular topic? Browse articles from Search Engine Watch and across the web in the Search Topics area.
=== Nov. 23, 2005 ===
Understanding Search Engine Patents – Search related patents provide insight into what’s going on in search engine algorithms, and search marketers who understand these ‘rules of ranking’ are better positioned to win top position in search results.
=== Nov. 21, 2005 ===
Getting Add To & Subscribe Buttons For Feeds – A look at how to get and add buttons to help people subscribe to your web feeds.
=== Nov. 17, 2005 ===
Search Engine Ad Reps: Friend or Foe? – Search engines employ advertising representatives to help search marketers, but sometimes relations between ad reps and search marketers can be difficult or even downright adversarial.
=== Nov. 10, 2005 ===
Matt Cutts Banned On Google? And Oct. 2005 Jagger Update Winds Down – A look at how the recent Google update is causing domain name consolidation problems that hit even the blog of popular Google engineer Matt Cutts. See also Yahoo Nov. 2005 Update Part 2 Underway.
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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.
=== Nov. 23, 2005 ===
Google Begins Test of “Click-to-Call” Advertising Program – Google has started to test click-to-call functionality with its search ads. See also Google Thinking Flash Ads?
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WebmasterWorld Out Of Google & MSN – Well, that didn’t take long. I wrote on Monday about how WebmasterWorld head Brett Tabke decided to ban all search spiders including those from the major search engines in an effort to combat bandwidth loss and server sluggishness due to rogue spiders. Brett figured he had about 60 days until he’d see pages get dropped. It took two.
=== Nov. 22, 2005 ===
World Digital Library Project Announced, Backed By Library Of Congress & Google – The United States Library of Congress has announced the creation of the World Digital Library today, a project that’s also just received its first $3 million in funding from Google. See also:
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Froogle Offers Local Shopping Feature – Google’s Froogle shopping search engine added a new feature to let people find products and services for sale in bricks-and-mortar stores near locations they designate.
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Ask Jeeves Adds Multimedia Search – Ask Jeeves has announced a content licensing agreement with GoFish to provide multimedia content in search results. The first phase allows you to search for music, video, podcasts and other multimedia content. If found, multimedia results will be presented in “Smart Answers” at the top of search results, allowing you to view, listen to or purchase multimedia files. Try it with this query for afro celt sound system. Jeeves says that additional integration of GoFish content will be “ongoing.”
=== Nov. 21, 2005 ===
Google Separates Bids For Search & Contextual Ads – Separate bidding on content network introduced by AdWords from Jen over at JenSense looks at how Google is now allowing advertisers to finally bid on contextual ads independently of their search campaigns. Long overdue, and it’s sad that it took advertisers having to beg, plead and drag Google kicking into this. See also Google Adds Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up to AdSense.
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Add To Google & Save To Yahoo My Web Buttons Out – There’s a new Add To Google button for site owners, along with a new Save To My Web button that Yahoo kindly rolled out last month. Let’s jump in on using them. See also Getting Add To & Subscribe Buttons For Feeds for Search Engine Watch members, a just posted article that takes you to the forms for popular services, so that you can merrily make your own badges.
=== Nov. 18, 2005 ===
Major Security Flaw With Google Sitemaps Stats – A pretty surprising security oversight with Google’s new Sitemaps stats system allow anyone access to stats of other web sites, if those web sites didn’t report 404/File Not Found errors correctly. Among the vulnerable were eBay and AOL and Google’s own Orkut! See also
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Failure Most Popular Term Sending Traffic From Google To US White House Site – Turns out the Google Sitemaps stats security problem means anyone can access the top terms driving traffic to the US White House web site. The top term isn’t going to make President George W. Bush very happy. That’s because it’s “failure.”
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Andrei Broder Joins Yahoo – Andrei Broder, former vice president of research at AltaVista and until recently Distinguished Engineer & CTO, IBM Research, is joining Yahoo as research fellow and vice president of emerging search technology at Yahoo Research.
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Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Is SEO Getting More Gray? – Google Sitemaps Updated – A Positive Step Forward In Link Strategies – Google Base Opens To Submissions, and more.
=== Nov. 16, 2005 ===
Google Base Live, Accepting Content – Google Base, which some people got an early glimpse at last month, is now live for anyone to play with. A look at this new way for people to submit content to Google. See also:
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Matt Cutts Has a Cup of Coffee at PubCon Conference – Coffee Talk with Senior Google Engineer: Matt Cutts from Search Engine Roundtable offers a great Q&A style review of Google webmaster relations guru Matt Cutts answering questions at the recent PubCon in Las Vegas. See also:
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Google Sitemaps Expands To Give Query & Indexing Stats! – Google’s just added some new and long desired tools as part of its Sitemaps system. You can now get query stats and see top keywords driving traffic to your web site and crawl stats. See also: Major Security Flaw With Google Sitemaps Stats.
=== Nov. 15, 2005 ===
Yahoo Personalizes Shopping, Adds Community Features – Continuing its efforts to tap into personal and collective knowledge in search, Yahoo has enhanced its shopping service with a number of useful features, debuting what it calls the ‘shoposphere.’
=== Nov. 14, 2005 ===
HotNacho On The WordPress Spam Saga – “WordPress Spam Scam Explained” is an undated article giving the Hot Nacho side of the WordPress spam saga from owner Chad Jones. It highlights how while WordPress was back in Google within a day, HotNacho and other sites owned by Jones remain banned.
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Google Renames Urchin Google Analytics, Makes It Free – Google has renamed its Urchin web analytics unit to be — yep — Google Analytics in a move that follows with similar rebranding such as Keyhole being renamed Google Earth. And just like with Keyhole and Google’s Picasa photo software, Google is turning Google Analytics into a free product. See also: Google Temporarily Halts New Users from Registering for Analytics Service.
=== Nov. 11, 2005 ===
Moving To Trusted Links & The Link Election Model – Thank you, Aaron. That’s for taking the research paper (PDF file) about detecting link spam that Gary wrote about earlier and breaking it down in non technical language (and Jim Boykin summarizes Aaron further here). Aaron finds things like the paper says having .edu and .gov links are a good thing, don’t worry about having a few spammy links and the more trusted links you have, the better.
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Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Realistic SEO Expectations – Yahoo Maps Beta, Ties In With Search More – Dashes In URLs – Soon To be Spam? – How To Cross Link Without Getting Penalized? – Gates Dismissive Of Google, and more.
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Google Publication Ads Site & More On Print Ads – I wrote earlier that Google was going to test putting print ads in Chicago newspapers. In case you missed it, I postscripted that with an official confirmation of the test from Google. Now there’s an area on Google describing the ads in print program.
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Ask Jeeves To Rebrand Tech As ExpertRank Inside? – Gary Price — awesome sleuth that is he — was doing some searching of the US Patent Office & Trademark Office database yesterday and noticed that Ask Jeeves filed a service mark to be accurate for the term “ExpertRank” about a week ago. Perhaps the sign of a new branding campaign to come?
=== Nov. 10, 2005 ===
Google Personalized Search Leaves Google Labs – Google’s personalized search has graduated from Google Labs and is now available to users on 39 worldwide Google domains in addition to Google.com.
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A Bad Reciprocal Link — And Reciprocal Link Request – We’ve been having quite a discussion about reciprocal links over at the Search Engine Watch Forums in our Reciprocal Linking Dead or Alive? thread. I chimed in to stress that whether a reciprocal link is bad or good can also depend on what exactly you mean by “reciprocal link.” From one page to another and back? From one site to another but between different pages? And what about the underlying reason for the link? For search ranking purposes or for your visitors? Today, a gift (ahem) from the email deity arrived in my inbox. An example of a bad reciprocal link plus a bad link request. Yum, double badness to blog. Let’s look. See also: Boser On Reciprocal Links & Whether Inbound Links Can Harm.
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Yahoo China Relaunched With Pure Search Focus & New Majority Owner – Yahoo China has been acquired by Alibaba.com and relaunched as a pure search service. Here’s the rundown on the changes and some reasons behind the handout, which still leaves Yahoo itself earning off the site. See also Alibaba’s Chief Vows to Beat Google in China.
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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.
=== Nov. 23, 2005 ===
Getting Search Engine Love From Affiliate Links – SEO Friendly Affiliate Systems from Greg Boser is a great tutorial on how affiliate links work in various flavors and how to get the ones that will help you with search engines (short answer, use 301 redirection)….[MORE”
=== Nov. 22, 2005 ===
Google and Yahoo talking to CBS About a “Slew of Video Opportunities – Although this Reuters article is headlined: CBS says in talks with Google for video search, it also points out that CBS has also been talking with Yahoo about video search and on-demand video….[MORE”
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Search Marketing Working for Comparison Shopping Sites – The holiday shopping season is in full swing, and aggressive search marketing on the part of comparison shopping sites is paying off. Google and Yahoo Search sent 25 percent more visits to the ten leading shopping comparison sites versus last year (week ending November 19, 2005 versus the week ending November 20, 2004), according to Hitwise….[MORE”
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Google Testing Collapsible OneBox Display – Google Expand/ Collapse News Result at Google Blogoscoped has screenshots of a new Memeorandum-like ability to expand news results that show up in a OneBox display on Google web search. An experiment in progress, it seems, because I can’t reproduce the same….[MORE”
=== Nov. 21, 2005 ===
Updates and Improvements Made to U.S. Government’s Science.gov Search Site; IRS Web Site Redesigns for Better Site Search – Government Computing News has two stories today about two U.S. Governmet organizations making improvements to their search offerings….[MORE”. See also U.S. Congress Info Site and Search Tool “THOMAS” Receives Upgrade.
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Google/Riya Acquisition Update – On Thursday, we posted about a rumor that Riya, an image search company that utilizes face/image recognition technology was about to be acquired by Google. Well, it’s Monday afternoon and still no official word either way. However, more third-parties are saying it will happen…[MORE”. See also The Google-Riya Rumor and Image/Face Recognition Searching.
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MSN Powers UK’s Times Online; Ask UK Scales Back Ads – Revolution Magazine reports that MSN Search (MSN.co.uk) will power web search on the Times of London web site. The Netipmerative article: Ask scales back UK paid search ads, reports that Ask UK has done what we saw Jeeves.com do a few months ago and cut back on the number of ads on web results pages….[MORE”
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U.S. SEM Firm Innovation Interactive Acquired by Japan’s Livedoor – It’s SEM acquisition time! Clickz reports that Japan’s Livedoor has acquired Innovation Interactive, parent to 360i and SearchIgnite. Financial terms were not disclosed. More info in this news release.
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Google Rolls Back Commissions In Europe, Forward With Them In China – I wrote earlier about how Google was phasing out commissions in Europe — well, reducing them and giving them another name at least. Google clearly wishes it had never gone the commission route in Europe, but that was seen as something it had to do to get started. Apparently, doing the commission game is another thing it sees as a must to do in order to boostrap things in China, says Shak in Google adds 5th reseller in China at China White. It’ll be interesting to see if five years from now, it tries to dig out of that strategy in the way it’s trying with Europe.
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Google’s Portable Data Centers & Alternative Internet Speculation – Google-Mart from PBS’s Robert X. Cringely covers Google apparently having developed incredibly compact data centers that can fit into a shipping container, suitable for perhaps dropping at internet nexus points. Purpose? Cringely speculates that high speed data centers plus its own bandwidth means Google will effectively have its own internet, giving it a competitive advantage that others can’t meet.
=== Nov. 20, 2005 ===
Search Overtaking Email as Most Popular Online Activity – New research from Pew Internet & American Life tracking surveys and consumer behavior trends from the comScore Media Metrix consumer panel show that about 60 million American adults are using search engines on a typical day. This is a big jump from last year….[MORE”
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Feedster Beta Tests “FeedRank” Sort and WordPress Only Search – I noticed a change on one of Feedster’s UIs today (the one at FeedSter.net to be specific) that allows a searcher to choose to see their results sorted by “FeedRank” in addition to being to date or relevance sorts….[MORE”
=== Nov. 18, 2005 ===
New MSN Search “Fast Answer” Offers Results from MSN Shopping on Web Results Pages – MSN Search has added a new “fast answer” feature that provides results direct from MSN Shopping at the top of web search results pages….[MORE”
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The Google Maps API Gets Its Own Blog – Via GB and dirson, word of yet another blog from Google devoted to a specific Google tool or service. This time it’s the Google Maps API Blog! Other recent additions to the Google blog stable include Inside Google Desktop Search and the Google Video Blog.
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Coverage of of CNET Japan Search Conference – The CNET Japan Fall Innovation Conference is currently underway and Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal is doing his very best to offer coverage of many search-related sessions….[MORE”
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Google Opens Offices in Mexico and Brazil – Google has recently opened offices in Mexico City and Sao Paulo, Brazil….[MORE”. See also London Kids Doodle For Google As Part Of New Office Opening.
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Yahoo 3600 Adds New Features – A post on the Yahoo 3600 blog points out that several new features were added to the service yesterday including a favorites section, ability to highlight certain blog posts, a blog calendar and more….[MORE”
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Failure Most Popular Term Sending Traffic From Google To US White House Site – Turns out the Google Sitemaps stats security problem means anyone can access the top terms driving traffic to the US White House web site. The top term isn’t going to make President George W. Bush very happy. That’s because it’s “failure.”
=== Nov. 17, 2005 ===
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Google’s Offer to Provide Free WiFi in Mountain View is a Go – This story from the San Jose Mercury News report that Google’s offer free WiFi throughout their hometown of Mountain View, California, is a go….[MORE”
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Yahoo and MSN: New Patent Apps Published – Patent applications from Yahoo and MSN dealing with user annotations, trust networks, and domain specific database creation and searching were published today by the USPTO. Two of Yahoo’s applications fit very nicely with their FUSE (Find, Use, Share, Expand) and MyWeb visions….[MORE”
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UK: Send Maps to Mobile Phones With Multimap and Other Send to Phone Tools – Netimperative reports that online mapping service Multimap has added a “map to mobile” feature that allows the searcher to send the url of a map to their mobile phone/device via SMS (text messaging) and then click to view the map on their mobile phone/device….[MORE”
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Tasty: Searching for Recipes Increases – The Media Daily News Brief: Hitwise: Recipe Searches Surge, discusses some new numbers that show people are looking for recipes on the web as Thanksgiving Day approaches here in the US….[MORE”
=== Nov. 16, 2005 ===
Access Local Gas Prices via SMS with Synfonic – Synfonic now provides local gas price comparison info for the U.S. I haven’t seen this info available via any other SMS service….[MORE”
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Eurekster Launches Community-Powered Search “Swickis” – Eurekster, known for its personalized social search efforts, has introduced a new service aimed at personal and small business web site owners that allows them to create a customized site search tailored to the content of the site. Creating a “swicki” for your site is both easy and free….[MORE”
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Another Google UI Test? AdWords Appearing at the Bottom of Search Results –
Mr. Seo Book (aka Aaron Wall) reports on another possible Google UI test. This one involves Google showing AdWords results at at the top, on the right, and at the bottom of the page. Aaron wasn’t able to grab a screen cap and I can’t see it when I run Aaron’s test search. Nevertheless, be on the lookout for AdWords appearing at the bottom of web search results.
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Vertical Search for B2B – VerticalSearch.com has launched as a business-to-business search service covering health, transportation, agriculture, construction, telecommunications and other industries, drawing results from from over one hundred B2B verticals. The site is in beta, and offers only a basic search with no refinement or advanced search tools, so results vary widely in quality depending on what you’re looking for. But probably a site worth keeping an eye on if you do a lot of B2B type searching.
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France Majority Party Campaigns with AdWords – Over the weekend, running a search on Google France for the words “violence,” “riots,” “suburbs,” “burned cars” or even “scum” pulled up Sponsored Links to France’s majority party official UMP (“Union for a Popular Movement”) web site….[MORE”
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Speeches, Lectures, and More Added to BlinkxTV Database – As of today Blinkx is making hundreds of hours of material keyword searchable from Harvard, Princeton and Cambridge, UC Berkeley, Middlebury College, Columbia University, Washington State University to name just a few of the institutions. This Netimperative story has more info and some examples of the content you’ll find….[MORE”
=== Nov. 15, 2005 ===
Google Adds Two New Features to SMS (Text Messaging) Service – Google has added translation and currency conversion to their SMS (text messaging) service….[MORE”
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Search AOL Shopping Using AOL Instant Messenger – You can now search AOL Shopping via AOL Instant Messenger using a the AOL Shopping Buddy robot….[MORE”
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Google Tweaks Robots.txt File – For those of you who track such things, Google made a tweak to its Robots.txt file in the past day or so. They are now disallowing the indexing of the /chart directory. As noted on this blog, it likely has something to do with the release of Google Analytics. Then again? We will be watching.
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Rashtchy: Google Will Be Major Player at E-Commerce 3.0 – Highly regarded analyst, Safa Rashtchy, from Piper Jaffey has some powerful words about Google’s future in the e-commerce space in comments made to InternetRetailer.com….[MORE”
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MS Releases Free Desktop Search Client for Enterprise Users – Microsoft’s Desktop Search is now available and free for enterprise users. Use of the Windows Toolbar with the enterprise version is optional….[MORE”
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Google’s Blogger Running Ads on MySpace.com – Over on MarketerToday.com, Garrett French notes that he has seen (screen caps included) ads promoting Blogger (from Google) on the popular social-networking site, MySpace.com….[MORE”
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Yahoo’s “Community” of User Tools and Services – With today’s SearchDay article about the new “community-oriented” Yahoo Shopping feature, “Shoposphere,” Searchblog points to an interesting five page read from Business 2.0 titled, The Flickrization of Yahoo….[MORE”
=== Nov. 14, 2005 ===
New: Searchable Database of Published Opinions by Supreme Court Nominee, Judge Samuel Alito – With the hearings for Supreme Court nominee, Judge Samuel Alito, coming in January, askSam has put together a searchable and/or browseable database (available online or offline via a download) with more than 350 of Judge Alito’s published opinions and decisions….[MORE”
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Google’s Quarterly Report Officially Released by SEC – Although Google publicly announced their quarterly earnings a few weeks ago, those of you who love to and read quarterly reports will be interested (happy?) to know that Google officially filed their 10-Q (Q3, 2005) with the SEC this afternoon. You can find an HTML version here and begin combing over the numbers and narrative….[MORE”
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Yahoo Culture: Sunnyvale & Santa Monica – In Chris Gaither’s LA Times (free, reg. required) article, Can Yahoo Sign On to Hollywood?, you’ll read about the very different cultures at Yahoo’s office in Santa Monica (aka Hollywood) versus their Yahoo HQ in Sunnyvale (aka Silicon Valley)….[MORE”
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More on the End of Yahoo/AOL Talks – We blogged late last week that Yahoo had dropped out of the running for a piece of AOL. More details about what caused the discussions to end this WSJ article (sub required)….[MORE”
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An Excerpt from The Google Story – It’s time for another book about search, Google to be specific. While John Battelle’s excellent book The Search is about the search biz and technology as a whole (yes, with plenty about Google), the new book (due out tomorrow in the U.S.) by David Vise from the Washington Post and Mark Malseed focuses squarely on Google (Vise calls it a biography) and is titled, The Google Story. Today, The Post published an excerpt from the book….[MORE”
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Shopzilla Comes to the UK – Netimperative reports that Shopzilla has just expanded into the UK. The company also offers shopping databases in France and Germany….[MORE”. See also Shopping Engine Smarter.com Launches in China and Japan.
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Yahoo To Have Podcast Creation & Hosting Service – Via Scripting News, Podcasts Help Drive Demand for High-Volume Hosting has Yahoo saying it wants to go beyond podcast search with a service to allow people to create and host podcasts at Yahoo. Google is rumored to have a similar plan in the works. Goodness knows it’s overdue to have anything on the podcast front.
=== Nov. 13, 2005 ===
Google Registers A Few New Domain Names – The folks in Mountain View have registered a few new domains in the past couple of days, such as GoogleMagazines.com, GooglePapers.org, GoogleMicrofilm.com and GoogleLibrary.org….[MORE”
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MSN ‘s Live.com and Start.com Offer “Feed” Only Search Tab – It looks like MSN continues to slowly release its feed search tool. Via either the new Live.com or the Start.com sites you’ll find a tab that allows you to see only material coming from feeds….[MORE”
=== Nov. 12, 2005 ===
eBay Unveils Service With New and Historical Info About Popular Search Terms – A new service from eBay allows subscribers to access a ton of business intelligence from the eBay database including top keyword searches by category or related keywords….[MORE”
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Bloglines Expands “Universal Inbox” Initiative with Job Listings – Bloglines is allowing their users to create new job alerts from both databases as part of their growing “universal inbox” intiative….[MORE”
=== Nov. 11, 2005 ===
Learning About and Understanding Web Spam – Here’s some great reading, viewing and material for your reference shelf. With web spam continuing to be a very hot topic, I wanted to point out two papers and the slide presentations that accompany each of them. Both do a great job of describing web spam issues and making them understandable. Both papers were given during the 14th International World Wide Web Conference and AIRWeb05 that took place in May….[MORE”
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MSN Begins Beta Testing New Homepage – MSN officials have posted that they’re now testing a beta version(s) of the MSN homepage. Of course, the MSN Homepage team is chronicling their activities on a blog….[MORE”
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MSN’s AdCenter: More than Just Keyword Advertising – Ina Fried’s News.com excellent overview article: Microsoft’s ad pitch underpins Net moves, offers a look at Redmond’s foray into selling search advertising (and beyond) with their AdCenter program….[MORE”
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Google Looking for Spanish Language Quality Raters – Do you speak and read Spanish have “experience” in Spain and other Spanish speaking countries? If so, than Google has just published a position opening (it’s a temp job) to evaluate “search quality”….[MORE”
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Google Personalized Search Now Includes News Results –
Yesterday, Google rolled out an improved version of personalized search results, saying that news results would be included “soon.” That didn’t take longtoday, a message on the Google News page lets us know that news results are now included in personalized search results, joining web and image results in the mix.
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Google Cache Problems – Cache not working? at our Search Engine Watch Forums and Missing: Google Cache at Threadwatch cover some people having trouble getting access to cached copies of pages via Google. I’m seeing that myself.
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Murder, Love Gone Awry, Google Searches & Bogus Clicks – Google Blogoscoped and Andy Beal both point to a story about an accused murderer searching for “neck,” “snap,” “break” and “hold” on Google, evidence prosecutors say that the man murdered his wife. Meanwhile, Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable points to a WebmasterWorld thread where someone reports a jaded girlfriend clicking on his AdSense links and getting his account suspended.
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Google Provides Search Stats By Industry Sector – Nice spot by that man Peter Da Vanzo of (The Original) Search Engine Blog, a page over at Google full of metrics about how people in different industries search. Pitching that travel client on search? Help yourself to some stats from Google to help close the sale, for example.
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Black Hats Going White? – A reporter asked me recently if the black hat and white hat branches of SEO are getting further apart these days. I replied I thought things were coming more together….[MORE”
=== Nov. 10, 2005 ===
Imagery Comes to LookSmart’s FindArticles – RLG, a highly respected organization in the library world with more than 150 research libraries as members, has announced a partnership with LookSmart. today’s announcement brings access to RLG’s Trove.net database of “209,000 rare and unusual images” to searchers via LookSmart’s FindArticles, a LookSmart site….[MORE”
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Who’s A GAP? WhoisaGAP Helps You Find Google Advertising Professionals – Are you a Google Advertising Professional? Want to find one? While Google certifies them, it doesn’t give you a list of them. No matter. Teddie Cowell over at Neutralize tells me they’ve knocked together a directory containing over 200 Google GAPs. Wait, that would be Google Google Advertising Professionals. I guess it’s over 200 Google APs. Nah, that sounds silly. Anyway, check it out at whoisaGAP. How they get the list? Searching the web, baby, searching the web and seeing who says they’re a GAP. If you got left out, you can email them for inclusion.
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PC Magazine Reviews Six Comparison Shopping Sites, PriceGrabber Gets Top Honors – In a PC Magazine review of six comparison shopping sites titled: Price-Comparison Sites Strive to Save You Time and Money and gives top honors to PriceGrabber….[MORE”
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Mashups a Go-Go! New Mashups from MSN Virtual Earth and Yahoo Maps – It’s good to see more map mashups coming from developers working with both MSN Virtual Earth and Yahoo Maps. Here’s a look at just a couple of them. Remember, these are just released apps and bugs are bound to exist.
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Travel Search Player SideStep and Amazon.com Announce Partnership – Over at Clickz, Pam Parker reports on a new partnership between Amazon.com and travel search aggregator, SideStep in the article: Amazon, SideStep Partner for Travel Search….[MORE”
=== Nov. 9, 2005 ===
A Look at Some Patent Applications from Yahoo, Microsoft and Others – With so much attention being placed on each and every U.S. patent application that Google has published, I thought it would be interesting to take a quick look and see what others are doing in the way of search-related IP….[MORE”
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IBM Joins Corporate Monitoring Space with Release of Public Image Monitoring Solution – According to this article from News.com, IBM is joining other players in offering services that monitor a company’s “image” using the web mentions, blog postings, etc., via a new service named Public Image Monitoring Solution….[MORE”
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Answers.com Adds New Content to Database – Word from Answers.com that they’ve added several new reference selections to their already impressive collection of free tools. New this month: Devil’s Dictionary – quaint dictionary by Ambrose Bierce; Jargon – computer related terms; AnswerNotes – miscellaneous terms and names
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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 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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