IndustryThe Search Engine Update – Number 228 – September 6, 2006

The Search Engine Update - Number 228 - September 6, 2006

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

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In This Issue
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+ Departing From Search Engine Watch
+ 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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Departing From Search Engine Watch
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Just a short note for now, to alert my readers that I’m leaving Search Engine Watch as of December 1. The site’s owner Incisive Media and I have been unable to agree on terms to renew my contract. I’m also currently set to leave the Search Engine Strategies conference series at the end of this year.

I explain more about my decision on my personal blog in Leaving Search Engine Watch. I’ve also did a follow-up post, The Day After & Many Thanks!, after the warmly received outpouring of support. Pondering Next Steps — Making No Fast Decisions covers what I can tell you so far about my future plans — mainly that I’m weighing options and still talking with Incisive along with other companies.

I won’t get all mushy and sad and say goodbye to readers yet, since I’m still planning to work just as hard as ever for Search Engine Watch through the end of November. I have no news on who will be taking over, but I or someone else from Search Engine Watch will keep you informed as Incisive makes those plans and let you know via the newsletter.

To keep up with my personal plans, you can subscribe to my personal blog at Daggle or sign-up for a mailing list I’ve started to keep people informed here. I’m continuing to do the Daily SearchCast podcast, for those who like it. It has moved to its own site, DailySearchCast.com.

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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:

I’ve still got openings on a few panels for our SES Multimedia & Mobile Edition 2006 show this October in Los Angeles. In particular, I’m looking for those involved with mobile SEO, though I also have a space on our video SEO, image SEO and possibly the podcast SEO sessions. More details are here. Pitches are being taken through Thursday, September 7 (IE, get them to me before Friday, September 8).

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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. 6, 2006 ===

Google Debuts 200 Year News Archive Search – News and history junkies take heart: Google’s new News Archive Search lets you search back over twenty decades worth of historical content, including scads of articles not previously available via the search engine. See also Topix’s Cool Year-Long News Archive.

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Microsoft Adds Behavioral Targeting Features To adCenter – Microsoft has added behavioral targeting features to its adCenter product. Microsoft has broken down internet surfers into 18 audience segments including; mobile users, Internet power users, gamers, movie watchers and more. See also: Microsoft ContentAds Inviting Advertisers into Pilot

=== Sep. 5, 2006 ===

Netscape Search Inserts Netscape News Above Web Results – Netscape Search has gained a new “Netscape.com results” section at the top of the page that shows you top voted stories from the Netscape community news service. See also Understanding Digg.com.

=== Sep. 4, 2006 ===

Bringo Click To Call Service Attempts To Help Consumers Foil Voice Response Systems – If you’re a credit card issuer, a cell phone carrier or an airline you use IVR (interactive voice response) phone trees to resolve calls. Now comes a deliciously subversive “click to call” service is designed to help people bypass these.

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Google Says They Will Give Brazil Orkut Data – Google will give over the Orkut data of specific users including IP addresses with time and date stamps that can help trace a specific user and registration information including names and e-mail addresses, in response to a law enforcement request in Brazil.

=== Sep. 1, 2006 ===

Google Images Labeler: Google’s Challenge To Flickr? – The Google Image Labeler game is designed to help Google improve its image search results through tagging — and feels like a catch-up game with human-powered efforts that Yahoo is embracing via Flickr. See also

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Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: TrueLocal Launches Canadian Local Search Engine – The Video Void: Where Are All The AdSense Video Ads? – Here Comes Social Media Optimization? – Google Apps for Your Domain, and more.

=== Aug. 31, 2006 ===

The Taming of the Bots – All savvy search engine marketers know how to create a search-friendly site that can be easily read by a search engine spider, or bot. But what happens when those bots go bad? See also: Search Engines Handle No Index Inconsistently

=== Aug. 30, 2006 ===

Download Books For Free From Google Book Search – Google is now offering free, downloadable versions of public domain books that you can find in Google Book search. Unfortunately, there’s no way to browse through a directory of books that are available. However, you can keyword search for them easily, sort of.

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Google’s Accuracy Can Easily Cost Advertisers $285 Million – Brandt Dainow has a interesting article discussing how even a small inaccuracy in Google’s billing systems could add up to millions of dollars in charges. See also:

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Pricing Models for the Small SEM Shop – How do you go about establishing prices for your search marketing efforts? What kind of contracts do you need to protect your business? A group of experienced search marketers offer advice. See also: Top SEM Firm Mistakes

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Windows Live QnA Beta Now Live – The Windows Live QnA service is now a public beta, meaning you can test it out Microsoft’s entry into the question answering space for yourself. See also:

=== Aug. 29, 2006 ===

Generating Buzz With Link Baiting and Viral Campaigns – What do you get when you come up with a great idea on the web, whether it be something resourceful, something useful, something funny, even something controversial? You come up with ingenious ways to generate buzz for your sites through link baiting and viral marketing campaigns. See also: Social Media Optimization: It’s Like SEO, For Social Sites

=== Aug. 28, 2006 ===

Winning Big With a Small Search Marketing Budget – Big companies with huge budgets certainly make it more difficult for smaller search marketers to compete, but ingenuity and creativity can still provide a compelling competitive advantage regardless of budget constraints.

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Google, Favored Sites, and Editorial Opinion – There’s a lot of blog coverage of a new patent from Google about how some sites might get ranked based on “favored status” and editorial input. A look at the patent. See also:

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eBay Signs International Paid Search Deal With Google – eBay has reached a deal with Google to offer up paid search ads eBay’s sites outside the US and do click to call in both the US and internationally.

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Yahoo Removes Blog Search For Short Term – The blog community is buzzing over Yahoo removing blog search, including removing the Yahoo News integration of blog search or even accessing blog search at Yahoo.

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Google Apps for Your Domain Live – Google announced the official launch of Google Apps for Your Domain, and enterprise solution bundling Gmail, Calendar, Page Creator and Talk for your own domain.

=== Aug. 25, 2006 ===

Google’s Webmaster Central Adds A Blog – Google has created a blog specifically for webmasters to provide advice on ranking and inclusion issues. See also:

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Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: What Is Social Search? – Keeping Track of Links – Virtual Servers and Subdomains for SEO – Advertising With Ask – How Much to Charge for PPC Work? and more.

=== Aug. 24, 2006 ===

Search Marketing Works for B2B, Too – Most people assume search marketing works only to reach consumers, but it’s actually quite effective for businesses wishing to connect with other businesses, as well.

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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. 6, 2006 ===

Classifieds A Big Gainer In Local Landscape – comScore is reporting that the classifieds category is gaining very fast with 47% annual traffic growth, with Craigslist more popular but LiveDeal and Oodle showing more growth….[MORE”

=== Sep. 5, 2006 ===

New Look YellowPages.ca Comes Out Of Beta – Canada’s Yellow Pages Group took its new search-driven yellow pages redesign out of beta over the weekend. Here’s what we wrote when the new site initially launched….[MORE”

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Google’s Click To Call In UK – Google seems to have launched Click To Call in the UK….[MORE”

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Google Opens Tesseract OCR Software – The Google Code Blog announced that Google has “re-released” the Tesseract OCR software to the open source community….[MORE”

=== Sep. 4, 2006 ===

YouTube Hires Yahoo’s Treasurer, Gideon Yu – TheStreet.com reports on a Wall Street Journal story that YouTube has hired away Yahoo’s Treasurer, Gideon Yu. Gideon Yu is to begin working at YouTube this month, Yahoo said he “is taking advantage of what’s a good career opportunity for him to step up to another level.” See also: Ask.com Hires Former PayPal CTO, Chuck Geiger

=== Sep. 1, 2006 ===

Search Engine Roundtable Starts Podcast: The Search Pulse – Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable is running a new podcast, The Search Pulse, to recap the most discussed and important topics within the search marketing community on a weekly basis….[MORE”

=== Aug. 31, 2006 ===

Ask.com Adds Emoticons Or Smiley To Smart Answers – Ask.com have added a new Smart Answer to their suitcase, it is called an emoticon or smiley. You know they look like, 🙂 or 😉 or :D, you get my point. So now if you search on some of the more popular emoticon at Ask.com you will get a Smart Answer explaining what they are.

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Google Uses AdWords Conversion Data To Fight AdSense Fraud – Not new but perhaps a new awareness that the AdSense team may use AdWords conversion data to determine which sites are trying to fraud advertisers and users (often named Made for AdSense sites – MFAs)….[MORE”. See also Google AdSense Sued by Suspended Publisher.

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Tips On Getting Listed In Local Search Results – Patricia Hursh covers the what, why and how on local search, with four key steps on getting listed and visible….[MORE”

=== Aug. 30, 2006 ===

Yahoo ‘Goes’ for Windows Mobile – Yahoo announced today the availability of its Go bundle of services for Windows Mobile….[MORE”.

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Internet Archive Suit Settled – The suit issued back in July 2005 over the Wayback Machine and the Internet Archive caching pages without permission has been settled, described as a bug that’s now been resolved….[MORE”

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Yahoo Hiring Up All The Brains – The Wall Street Journal looks at how Yahoo is trying to compete with competitors by hiring up smart people….[MORE”

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Google CEO Eric Schmidt Joins Apple’s Board Of Directors – Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s looking for another small company to help run — this time, Apple. He’s just been elected to Apple’s board of directors….[MORE”

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Accoona Review In Ariadne – Accoona offers some interesting alternatives for the news and web searcher….[MORE”

=== Aug. 29, 2006 ===

AOL Launches New Music Store – AOL has lunched a revamped AOL Music portal with a new music store and a subscription based service….[MORE”

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Yahoo Revamps Real Estate Portal – Yahoo has revamped Yahoo Real Estate. They have also added some more Yahoo Shortcuts that pulls data from Yahoo Real Estate, directly on Yahoo Search, along with other changes….[MORE”

=== Aug. 28, 2006 ===

Google Seeks Offices In Seattle Again – Google is seeking major new office space in Seattle….[MORE”

=== Aug. 25, 2006 ===

Google Has Too Much Money, Possibly Classified As Investment Fund – Google has asked the SEC for an exception to a rule that would classify them to be regulated as a mutual fund company….[MORE”

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Windows Live Video Beta Now Available – Microsoft is testing a video search engine….[MORE”

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New 411 User Survey Points To Mobile Local Search Demand – A new study looks at how Americans use directory assistance….[MORE”

=== Aug. 24, 2006 ===

Dutch Farmers Site Loses Court Case Against Google – The Dutch farmer dating site has lost their court case in Amsterdam, over sex and pornographic ads coming up in response to searches for their name, Farmdate….[MORE”

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Google Joins Coalitions To Fight Child Pornography – The Google blog announced that Google has joined two coalitions to help protect children online. These coalitions combat child pornography and child exploitation on the Internet. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) release can be found here.

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Yahoo’s Panama Release Coming Sooner Then Expected? – Emails from Yahoo suggest that the new Panama paid search interface and system might come sooner than expected….[MORE”

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Mobile Search for TV Listings – TV Guide and mobile local search content provider 4Info have teamed up to permit cellphone users to access TV Guide’s listings content via SMS or WAP….[MORE”

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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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