IndustryThe Search Engine Update – Number 185 – November 19, 2004

The Search Engine Update - Number 185 - November 19, 2004

Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan's recap of top search engine stories from the first half of November 2004.

In This Issue

+ SES Chicago Discount Deadline Approaching!
+ Search Engine Watch Articles
+ More From The Search Engine Watch Blog
+ About The Newsletter

========================

SES Chicago Discount Deadline Approaching!

Our next Search Engine Strategies show comes to Chicago from December 13-16. Register before November 30 to save on your ticket! The show features nearly 60 sessions focusing on all aspects of search engine marketing plus features an extensive expo hall.

Special panels in Chicago include new topics on the popular subject of running an SEM business, a new issues track that will tackle hot subjects such as “black hat/white hat” SEO and ads linked to trademarks, search ad pricing alternatives such as pay-per-call, unifying web standards and search engine optimization and much, much more!

A full agenda and detailed information can be found at the conference web site.

Dates for other events around the world next year have also been set for next year. Those dates and basic information can be found on the Search Engine Strategies site.

=============================
Search Engine Watch Articles
=============================

Here’s a recap of major articles, important blog postings and some interesting forum discussions from Search Engine Watch since the last newsletter:

Beta MSN Search Gains Submit Tool & Webmaster Info
SEW Blog, Nov. 19, 2004

Worried the new MSN crawler isn’t picking up your pages? Now you can submit to the service. As with most add URL pages throughout the years, there’s no guarantee pages will actually be added, however. But fear not — as with most crawlers, many of your pages will naturally get picked up. The MSN Search blog also points out the new submit page along with other submission tips for site owners in its new Site Owner Help section. Read more via this blog post.

========================

GoogleGuy On Google Link Counts
SEW Blog, Nov. 19, 2004

Google’s backlink feature has long not returned all the links Google actually knows about for a particular page. That’s not going to change, but more links are showing and Google may also update wording on the site to reflect not all links show. A bit more about the issue via the blog post and in our forum thread Google Say Not Reporting All Backlinks.

========================

Search Engine Forums Spotlight
SearchDay, November 19, 2004

Links to this week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Launches Search for Scholars – Adwords to Ban Affiliates? – MSN’s ‘Near Me’ Search Button – The Difference In Traffic for #1 and #10? – Robots.txt & Security Issues – One year anniversary of the ‘Florida’ Update – What is the Future of the ‘Niche Directory’

========================

Google Scholar Offers Access To Academic Information
SearchDay, November 18, 2004

Google has launched a new Google Scholar search service, providing the ability to search for scholarly literature located from across the web.

========================

Google & The Approved Cloaking Problem
Search Engine Watch, November 18, 2004

Google needs to modify its policy on cloaking and provide more webmaster support, so programs like Google Scholar don’t leave it open to accusations of hypocrisy. More in this special article for Search Engine Watch members.

========================

Managing the Firehose of Real-Time Information
SearchDay, November 17, 2004

RSS feeds, search alerts and other information monitoring technologies are great, but often end up providing too much of a good thing. PubSub is a ‘matching engine’ that offers a promising new way to keep up to date while alleviating information overload.

========================

Robots.txt & Security Issues
SEW Forums, November 17, 2004

The robots.txt file helps you block spiders, but webmasters may not realize some of the security risks that also need to be considered. Discussion and advice about this.

========================

Directory Submissions 101
SEW Forums, November 16, 2004

One of our most active members, Nick W of ThreadWatch.org, put up a great list of resources and threads to guide you though making directory submissions. Have more to add, come post here.

========================

New Search Related Patents
SearchDay, November 16, 2004

Keeping up with newly issued patents for search-related technology can help you spot emerging trends and potentially new competitors to the existing major web search players. And more more, see this postscript: Even More Search Patents.

========================

Keeping SEO Secrets
SEW Blog, Nov. 16, 2004

Threadwatch has an interesting post about how the real “secrets” of SEO never make it onto search forums. I agree, but it’s not a reason for most to panic, as I look at more in this article.

========================

Another Cool Firefox Search Tool
SearchDay, November 15, 2004

In my Firefox series last week, I overlooked one of the browser’s most powerful search functions: An ‘always on’ find as you type feature.

========================

Google Unlikely To Ban Trademark-Linked Ads
SEW Blog, Nov. 15, 2004

A rumor has circulated that Google might ban affiliates from purchasing ads linked to trademarked terms. But that’s not the same thing as banning ALL ads linked to trademarks. This blog post looks at this important distinction and the challenges affiliates can post to the relevancy of paid ads. The postscript notes a Google denial of the rumor.

Andrew Goodman at Traffic also take another good look at the issues in Will Google Ban Affiliate Bidding? In particular, he talks about how automated ad building tools that Google itself provides makes it easy for affiliates to follow a dictionary-bidding approach.

========================

Search Engine Forums Spotlight
SearchDay, November 12, 2004

Links to this week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: New MSN Search Goes LIVE in Beta – Microsoft To Launch New Search Engine – Google Launches ‘Google Advertising Professionals’ – Organic vs Paid Traffic ROI? – Making Money With AdWords? – Link Building 101

========================

AOL Joins Search Shortcuts Game
By Gary Price, Nov. 12, 2004

AOL Search is joining the search shortcuts game with the release of AOL Snapshots. News.com has coverage and this blog post looks more at what’s offered at AOL and with other search players.

========================

Microsoft Unveils its New Search Engine – At Last
SearchDay, November 11, 2004

After months of speculation and two ‘preview’ releases, Microsoft has taken the wraps off of its new MSN search engine, the first major competitor to join the big leagues of web search in nearly a year. A major review of the news service. Also see:

========================

Search Engine Size Wars V Erupts
SEW Blog, Nov. 11, 2004

Google raised the stakes in the search engine size wars by claiming an index of 8 billion pages. Microsoft had planned to seize the title of biggest search engine by announcing 5 billion pages indexed today. We’ve been through these size wars before, and they are largely meaningless. A look at what to care about, what to dismiss and where we stand among the major search engines.

========================

Google Offers Advertisers Logo Certification & Other Aids
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 10, 2004

Google’s launched a new Google Advertising Professionals program designed to assist those who manage multiple AdWords accounts on behalf of others, such as search marketing companies. There are three aspects to the new program. My Client Center is new way for client managers to link up to 500 AdWords accounts and manage them in one place. Google AdWords Learning Center offers multimedia tutorials on various aspects of AdWords. Qualified Google Advertising Professional Logo is a new way for those who manage Google AdWords accounts to show they’ve been considered “qualified” by Google. More details via this blog entry.

========================

More Search and Browsing Fun with Firefox
SearchDay, November 10, 2004

Mozilla Firefox has features and extensions that go far beyond what you get with Internet Explorer. Here’s how to turbocharge the browser to enhance your online experience.

========================

Firefox, Google and Web Search
SearchDay, November 9, 2004

Mozilla Firefox has Google, Yahoo and other search tools baked in, but they are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to search capabilities available with this innovative new web browser that launched its first official version today.

========================

Mozilla Firefox: The Searcher’s Browser
SearchDay, November 8, 2004

Looking for an alternative to Internet Explorer that addresses IE’s notorious security flaws and has killer search capabilities to boot? Look no farther: Firefox is truly a searcher’s browser. Also see from Gary Price: New Firefox Resources.

========================

Stale & Split Image Databases Fuel Google Conspiracy Theories
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 8, 2004

A post at AnandTech raises concerns that Google Images fails to find pictures of US soldiers involved in the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal. A conspiracy? In reality, Google said it was just a failure of freshness on its part. However, the More On Google Images & Google News Images post raises new questions about that explanation.

========================

Link Building 101
SEW Forums, November 7, 2004

Forums moderator Nacho Hernandez pulls together useful resources to articles, books, forum threads and blog from all over the web on the topic of link building.

========================

Search Engine Forums Spotlight
SearchDay, November 5, 2004

Links to this week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Local Search Marketing: A Huge Untapped Market – Research: Do Keywords In URL Influence Your Rank? – Make All Your Keywords Plural? – How Do PPC Campaigns And SEO Compliment Each Other – World Without Search Engines – Does Adwords Have a Limit On the Number of Ads? – New AdWords Classifications Coming

========================

Search Marketing Beyond Google and Overture
SearchDay, November 4, 2004

When most people talk about pay per click (PPC) search engine advertising, Google and Overture (Yahoo) take center stage. But in reality, there are hundreds of smaller ‘Tier Two’ search engines that offer compelling PPC opportunities.

========================

Simplify PPC Costs – Flat Rates
SEW Forums, November 4, 2004

Following comments from Overture that a flat rate pricing model could come, members discusses the possibility of change there and elsewhere in the industry.

========================

Google Posts New Ad Guidelines
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 4, 2004

In September, I wrote that Google was going to finally expand publicly its guidelines covering ads. Those new guidelines have now gone up. The Google AdWords Content Policy page explains how advertising products such as cable descramblers, gambling, radar jammers and other things is not allowed. The guidelines also itemize what Google considers to be a protected group. Ads are not allowed if they promote violence or advocate against these groups. However, beyond this, ads that are anti any group or individual are also not permitted, with the key exception of those involving politicians.

========================

Tuning up your Skills in the Web Search Garage
SearchDay, November 3, 2004

Every now and then a book comes along that’s a must-read for every serious searcher, and Tara Calishain’s Web Search Garage falls squarely into that category.

========================

Want to receive new Search Engine Watch articles every day? Sign-up for SearchDay, the free daily newsletter from Search Engine Watch. Also keep up with news and discussion via our Search Engine Watch Forums.

===========================
More From The SEW Blog
===========================

Amazon & Microsoft Party At Google
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 19, 2004

Google opened its new offices near Microsoft in Washington State, and Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble reports that Microsoft and Amazon employees were out in force for a party. News and photos here: Just got back from Google’s Kirkland office opening party. More about the new offices here: Google plans to develop new software in Kirkland.

========================

Cash Back from Shopping.com
By Chris Sherman, Nov. 18, 2004

Shopping.com has launched its Smart Shopper Club, which refunds consumers up to 5% of the amount of each purchase, excluding shipping and tax, from participating stores. More via this blog entry.

========================

SBC Will Offer Access to Some Yahoo Services via Television
By Gary Price, Nov. 18, 2004

Jeffry Bartash reports in the article SBC and Yahoo team up in TV, wireless that the companies have announced a deal where customers can access some Yahoo services via their TV set and wireless devices. Look for it to begin sometime in 2005. A bit more info and related material via this blog entry.

========================

Google Says Growth is Slowing
By Gary Price, Nov. 18, 2004

The AP article Google Says Growth Is Slowing Down says that the growth that Google has seen so far this year might not be sustainable.

========================

Looking For Directories?
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 18, 2004

There’s been a number of posts on our forums and elsewhere where people are listing new and existing directories, all part of the general quest by site owners to find more quality links. Nick W decided to pull everything into one place in a new thread on our forums: Directory Submissions 101. So if you need a starting place on the directory hunt, check it out.

========================

Overture Extends Deal With Microsoft As MS Builds Its Own Technology
By Gary Price, Nov. 18, 2004

Overture has extended their relationship with Microsoft through June 2006. From the news release: “Under the terms of the extension, Overture will continue to provide its sponsored search results to MSN sites in the U.S. and Canada, Europe and Asia. The previous agreement ran through June 2005.” The WSJ also reports (subscribers only) reports that Microsoft is building its own technology. A portion of the article is available here. Want to discuss? Visit our forum thread: Overture Extends Relationship with MSN up to June 2006

========================

WebmasterWorld Conference Coverage & More
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 17, 2004

Search engine marketers gathered in Las Vegas for WebmasterWorld’s World Of Webmasters Search Conference this week. This post has a rundown on search coverage from the first day, with second day coverage in this post. Via this blog entry, you’ll also find links to coverage of our recent SES Stockholm show, the recent AdTech event and news of the annual Search Engine Meeting agenda being posted.

========================

Let’s Talk Mooter
By Gary Price, Nov. 17, 2004

Here’s a web search tool we haven’t heard from in a long time, Australia’s Mooter. In Searching your thoughts, from Red Herring, you’ll read a Q&A style interview with Mooter’s Founder and CEO, Liesl Capper.

========================

The Return Of RealNames
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 17, 2004

Keith Teare, founder of the RealNames navigation system that died back in 2002, tells me via email that he’s regained the RealNames domain name and launched a new RealNames search engine based on the company’s old data. Teare provides more details about the relaunch on his blog. So far, it’s unclear whether there are plans to bring in new data or a new business model. Teare himself notes on the blog: “To be honest, I’m not yet sure what I will do with it.” For background on the former RealNames system, see my article about the closure, RealNames To Close After Losing Microsoft.

========================

New Personalized Features at RocketNews
By Gary Price, Nov. 16, 2004

RocketNews, the news and blog search engine (about 11,000 sources) is online with a new look (layout and color scheme) and some new features including the My RocketNews Portal where your five most-recent queries are saved and viewable on your MyRocketNews homepage. For more about this and other changes, see this blog entry.

========================

Mobissimo Officially Launches
By Gary Price, Nov. 16, 2004

Travel search engine, Mobissimo has officially launched. We’ve blogged about this travel metasearch tool (it simultaneously queries more than 80 travel sites) several times and also linked to this Business Week profile.

========================

Google CEO: The Next Killer Device Is A GooglePod
By Gary Price, Nov. 16, 2004

At a tech summit at Google HQ yesterday, Eric Schmidt talked about a “killer” info tool he’s thinking about, let’s call it the GooglePod. From this San Jose Mercury News article: “The next killer device is a clearly a personal one,” Schmidt said. “The one I personally favor is putting all the world’s information into the equivalent of an iPod, which will be possible in the next five to 10 years. And if you can’t quite do that, your wireless connection will help you get what you need.

========================

New Robots.txt Tool
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 16, 2004

The robots.txt file allows you to prevent search engines from indexing documents on your web server, assuming they respect the convention. Most major search engines do. Ian McCanerin, one of our forum moderators, has posted a nice new tool to help you generate a robots.txt file. You can also discuss it in this forum thread.

========================

Yahoo Provides Access To Library Records
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 16, 2004

Via the Yahoo Search Blog, news that a special version of the Yahoo Toolbar now allows you to search across two million library holdings through a cooperative project with OCLC, the Online Computer Library Center. More about this and related resources via this blog entry.

========================

Google Publishes Quarterly Report
By Gary Price, Nov. 15, 2004

Although Google’s earnings announcement was a couple of weeks ago, the GOOG 10-Q (quarterly report) just became available.

========================

MSN Search Insider Offers Look At MSN Searches
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 15, 2004

A new MSN Search Insider feature that has sprung up. It shows the top 200 queries on MSN Search (annoyingly in random order), top “movers” in TV, sports and music, and a “duels” feature pitting top queries in a race against each other.

========================

SMA-EU Launches Blog
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 15, 2004

SMA-EU, the European search marketing organization that’s forming, has launched a blog. The blog has news on the group’s development.

========================

MSN Search Blog Comments On Evil & Rumors
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 15, 2004

If you thought the Yahoo Search Blog was edgy (I have, compared to the Google Blog), the new MSN Search Blog is even less corporate. In the past few days, it has jumped right in to comment about leaked screenshots of the MSN Desktop Search tool, to deny it made Google explicitly more evil than Satan (see my past blog post on this) and to explain a new algorithm change has dropped Google from that query on evilness.

========================

SEMPO Posts Revised Governance Documents
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 15, 2004

Earlier this month, the SEMPO search marketing group approved a variety of new governance documents, such as new bylaws, anti-trust guidelines and articles of incorporation. You’ll find these all posted via SEMPO’s About SEMPO page.

========================

Moving Forward With Microsites
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 15, 2004

Running a paid listing campaign but feel maybe your existing site doesn’t work well to convert? Rather than redo the entire thing, consider creating a new microsite to try out new ideas. More from Kevin Lee at ClickZ: Microsites and SEM: A Proof of Concept.

========================

Blinkx 2.0 Now Available
By Gary Price, Nov. 14, 2004

Blinkx, the web application that helps you find releated material based on the context of what you’re currently viewing in your browser window (they call it implicit query), has a new verision (Blinkx 2.0) available. I’m going to download the new version (it’s a 6.7 MB file, available for MS 2000 and XP only) and spend some time testing it out. Stay tuned. NOTE: Microsoft Research also has prototype named Stuff I’ve Seen.

========================

More Sources at Topix.net, Advanced Search Too!
By Gary Price, Nov. 14, 2004

Topix.net, the web-based news aggregator and search tool (thousand of RSS feeds too!), has just announced an increase to the total number of sources the service provides access to. More about this and other improvements via this blog post.

========================

Cached Pages at Ask Jeeves
By Gary Price, Nov. 14, 2004

When Ask Jeeves launched their Teoma 3.0 technology about six weeks ago, company officials said that cached pages would be available sometime in Q4. In the past day or two, I’ve started to notice links to cached copies (for some pages) on search result pages. Note: I’m unable to find cached pages via Jeeves UK.

========================

An Early Look at MSN Desktop Search
By Gary Price, Nov. 14, 2004

Tom Warren over at Neowin has just posted an early look (loaded with screenshots) at MS’s desktop search product and the toolbar/deskbar suite that is scheduled for release in the next six weeks.

========================

MyLifeBits Lecture
By Gary Price, Nov. 14, 2004

Those of you interested in the Microsoft Research MyLifeBits personal lifetime archive project, might want to take a look at this archived presentation by Gordon Bell: MyLifeBits: A lifetime personal store. It was presented at Austria’s European (Technology) Forum on August 26, 2004. Bell’s PowerPoint slides are also available. (10.5MB download)

========================

Google Makes Deal with Another Yellow Pages Provider
By Gary Price, Nov. 12, 2004

Google has struck a “content-sharing agreement” with yellow page directory provider, Dex Media. More in this Forbes article, Google, Dex Media Deal A Win-Win. The Google/Dex Media deal is a one-year agreement and can be renewed upon expiration. Dex is the exclusive publisher of the Yellow Pages and White Pages directories for Qwest in the 14 states where Qwest is the local exchange carrier. At the end of October, Google also announced a deal with Bell South to sell Google ads. See BellSouth Will Sell Google Ads and Google-BellSouth Partnership — Not Quite Revolutionary.

========================

GoogleGuy, Meet MSN Dude
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 12, 2004

After a pretty unlikely suggestion that MSN is somehow grabbing listings from Google, MSN’s forum poster MSN Dude popped up in a WebmasterWorld.com thread to deny the accusations. That brought out Google’s long-time forum poster GoogleGuy in the same thread.

A punch up? Not at all. Instead, a chummy welcome to the world of crawling and support that Google thought the accusations didn’t hold water. But in another thread spotted by Peter Da Vanzo, is GoogleGuy suggesting that site owners get to work reverse-engineering MSN’s search algorithm? Well, it’s not unprecedented. Back in 2003, GoogleGuy had some suggestions in terms of search engine optimization for…AltaVista!

========================

Handy Invisible Web Chart
By Gary Price, Nov. 11, 2004

David Whelan at Forbes has put together a handy chart that does a nice job explaining the Invisible Web. It’s based on the book that Chris and I wrote more three years ago. Some more thought on the Invisible Web also via this post.

========================

Yes, We Have No Free Watches!
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 11, 2004

For reasons unbeknownst to me, over the past two years Search Engine Watch has received requests from people in Ghana asking us to send them some of our free watches. I tell Ghana and the world here, we don’t!

========================

More Press Attention About Mobile Search
By Gary Price, Nov. 10, 2004

Forbes covers mobile searching in Calling All Web Search, a topic I’ve been posting on quite a bit in the past few weeks. Here’s a list of some of the companies featured in the article, with links to past SEW mentions: UpSnap; Synfonic; Smarter.com.

========================

A Chat with the CEO of Business.com
By Gary Price, Nov. 10, 2004

InternetNews.com offers up an interview with Jake Winebaum, CEO of Business.com, providing an update on the service.

========================

Dogpile Enhances Search Results
By Chris Sherman, Nov. 10, 2004

Dogpile rolled out new “IntelliFind” technology today that focuses on gaining a deeper understanding of user intent at query time and limiting searches to sources that will likely provide the best results for each query. The company also announced partnerships with vertical content providers Topix.net for news, Singingfish for streaming media, as well as deals to include Yahoo Images and Yahoo News links in search results.

The company says that the new approach will make searches more responsive, particularly with queries related to current events and popular culture. In addition to meta search results provided by partners Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and a number of paid placement networks, Dogpile now displays links to news, video and other specialized content when relevant, similar to what Ask Jeeves has been doing with its Smart Search results since early 2003.

========================

Overture Planning to Move HQ
By Gary Price, Nov. 10, 2004

The Pasadena Star-News reports that Overture will move their headquarters from Pasadena to larger offices in Burbank, California.

========================

Popularity Doesn’t Always Equal Usefulness (or Importance) of a Search Tool
By Gary Price, Nov. 10, 2004

Some numbers from Hitwise were released the other day about the traffic smaller web engines tools have been getting some press attention. These smaller services get little traffic — but that doesn’t mean they aren’t important to searchers, especially in providing more “search voice.” More via this blog entry.

========================

Product Pricing and Shopping Engines
By Gary Price, Nov. 9, 2004

Forbes writes about research from Indiana University examining product pricing in the age of comparison shopping engines: “With ever more powerful and smart search technologies cropping up online offering new ways to compare prices–Google’s Froogle, Product MySimon come to mind–wouldn’t price-sensitive consumers automatically gravitate toward retailers with the lowest prices and thus unleash a fierce attack on profit margins?”

========================

China: Rumors About Sina and Zhongsou.com
By Gary Price, Nov. 9, 2004

ChinaTechNews.com informs us of rumors that Sina is interested in acquiring Zhongsou.com: “Sina’s proprietary search directories and engine have been a weak spot for the company, and Sina has bolstered itself by partnering with various companies over the years…Zhongsou.com is one of the largest search engine technology providers in China. It was colaunched and established by Huicong and China Internet News Center in September 2003 and enjoys a good reputation in China for large webpage coverage, fast data upgrades, and fast Chinese searches.”

========================

AOL vs. Yahoo?
By Gary Price, Nov. 9, 2004

Plenty of press attention today about a major reorganization at AOL. The company also has plans to take on Yahoo by launching a free, ad-supported, version of the service. More in Saul Hansell’s NY Times article: AOL’s Chief Revamps It, With an Eye on Yahoo.

========================

Capping Your Overture & Google Daily Ad Budgets
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 9, 2004

Kevin Lee at ClickZ compares and contrasts setting up daily ad spend limits on Google & Overture in Daily Budget Caps Versus Active Management. He also argues that budget caps, while easy to set, aren’t the best way to get the most value out of your campaign. Instead, some manual review and prioritization may reduce spend and increase sales.

========================

BizRate Becomes Shopzilla
By Gary Price, Nov. 9, 2004

Comparison shopping engine, BizRate.com has become Shopzilla. The BizRate.com site and interface remains online but this Reuters article mentions that more products are accessible via the new Shopzilla site.

========================

Tips On Link Development
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 9, 2004

Shari Thurow offers up basic tips and background on developing links over at ClickZ: Link Development: The Key to Successful SEO.

========================

Local Search and Pay-Per-Call Technology
By Gary Price, Nov. 8, 2004

The Forbes article Search Engines Go Local offers an overview of the local search scene, and focuses on Ingenio, the company providing the pay-per-call technology for FindWhat’s new service.

========================

New Report: Search Engine Disclosure of Advertising
By Gary Price, Nov. 8, 2004

Consumers Union (the publisher of Consumer Reports) released results of a six month study that looks at how engines disclose advertising to searchers. The 82 page report, In Search of Disclosure: How Search Engines Alert Consumers to the Presence of Advertising in Search Results (PDF file) notes, “Many of the Web’s top search engines have made improvements in disclosure and transparency..compliance with FTC recommendations for disclosure varied widely, however, leaving ample room for improvement throughout the industry. Access to reports published in 2002 and 2003 remain available online. See this SEW article for more background on the FTC guidelines.

========================

Dulance Offers Price Tracking Via Web Feeds
By Gary Price, Nov. 8, 2004

Silicon Valley-based shopping engine Dulance, whose motto is, “Find Everything and Anything Sold on the Web” has announced a new service today that allows you to track price changes via RSS. More via this blog post.

========================

Searching For Images
By Gary Price, Nov. 8, 2004

Freshness problems with Google Images? Never fear — here are some alternatives to try!

========================

More Brin and Page Search Related Publications
By Gary Price, Nov. 8, 2004

It’s very likely that many of you have read, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine (1998), by Google co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The paper was written while they were students at Stanford. In this post, a short bibliography of other papers that the “Google Boys” wrote while members of the Stanford Database Group.

========================

SMA-UK Posts Rules & Membership Rates
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 8, 2004

The SMA-UK search marketing organization for the UK formed last month has posted information detailing its constitution and a membership application form with rates. More on types of memberships and how the group will operate in this post.

========================

Keyword Prices Rise, But Only In Some Categories
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 8, 2004

Fathom Online’s Keyword Price Index showed a 14 percent rise from September, with the average price per keyword jumping from $1.37 to $1.55. A chart with a per category breakdown via this post. Keywords in the consumer services category showed the strongest rise, while a number of categories actually showed decreases.

========================

New Stuff From Feedster and Technorati
By Gary Price, Nov. 7, 2004

Feedster has just unveiled a “blogs-only feed search, while Technorati has added several new features. A bit more on these developments via this blog post.

========================

New Options at Yahoo Shopping
By Gary Price, Nov. 5, 2004

The InternetNews.com story Yahoo Launches Precision Browsing discusses some new refinement/narrowing options at Yahoo Shopping for some (not all) products. This blog post provides more detail and compares to some other services.

========================

An Hourly Visualization of the News
By Gary Price, Nov. 5, 2004

Here’s a new and cool info visualization tool (it requires Flash) that comes from Jonathan Harris, the developer of WordCount.org. The site is called 10×10 and offers an hour by hour “postcard” (updated hourly) based on the 100 most “important” words culled from three RSS news feeds. More info via this blog post.

========================

Searching Television via Closed-Captioning
By Gary Price, Nov. 5, 2004

Greg Linden posts about a paper by Sergey Brin and others that discusses the use of closed-captioning from television broadcasts as a tool to help find related material. Several products are already around that allow you to search (via the closed-captioning) and view television content online, as covered more in this post.

========================

Google “Hack” Prevention
By Gary Price, Nov. 5, 2004

CNETAsia’s: Are you Google hack-proof?, offers several suggestions about how to keep material out of web engines. The author concludes the article with an important reminder since most articles on the topic focus on “hacking” as only an issue with Google. It isn’t!

========================

A Look at Eurekster
By Gary Price, Nov. 4, 2004

The New Zealand Herald article: Hunting what’s hot in social networks, takes a look at Eurekster and its founder, Grant Ryan, who hails from Christchurch, New Zealand.

========================

Yellow Page Companies To Buy YellowPages.com
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 4, 2004

BellSouth and SBC Communications are to purchase YellowPages.com, which they apparently hope can be built into an online business index for the United States. More from News.com: SBC, BellSouth let their fingers do the walking. The companies expect the new site to generate 50 million consumer searches per month. That’s 1.7 million searches per day.

To give you some perspective, globally Google does about 200 million searches per day on its own site and those of its partners. I think about 100 million of those are based out of the US. So this new move isn’t much of a threat to the major search engines. They’ve got tons of local traffic already. But it might make the joint venture more attractive for another acquisition, by a Google or Yahoo.

========================

Topix.net and Citysearch Announce Partnership
By Gary Price, Nov. 4, 2004

Topix.net (a news resource I utilize several times each day) and Citysearch are announcing a deal today that will bring news headlines from Topix.net to 40 local Citysearch guides AND feature advertising from the Citysearch ad network (32,500 advertisers) on Topix.net’s (32,000+) local news pages. The partnership should be integrated into their respective sites by the end of 2004. Topix.net appears to be on a roll. In the past few months they’ve announced deals with Ask Jeeves, Yahoo and Info.com. More in the Clickz story: Topix, Citysearch Team for Local Content

========================

Interface Changes at Ask Jeeves Local
By Gary Price, Nov. 3, 2004

Ask has just introduced a couple of interface changes on his recently launched Local Search (beta) service. A brief look at what’s new.

========================

$30 Million Jump in Domestic Paid Search Ads at AOL
By Gary Price, Nov. 3, 2004

The Washington Post takes a look at the Time Warner earnings announcement in: Time Warner Sets Aside Legal Reserve. On Paid Search and AOL: “The growth in ad revenue included a $30 million jump in domestic paid search ads and a $35 million increase related to AOL’s acquisition this summer of Advertising.com.” More also in the ClickZ article, AOL’s Ads Surge, Subscriptions Drop.

========================

Two New Ways to Search Froogle Via SMS
By Gary Price, Nov. 3, 2004

When Google launched their SMS-based search tool about a month ago you were only able to search the Froogle database by using a specific product name (Treo) or general product category (PDA). Today, the company added two new search options for SMS-based Froogle searching: Search for books by using its ISBN (International Standard Book Number) and search for a specific product by using its UPC (Universal Product Code). Smarter.Com’s is another recent entry into SMS search world. It offers pricing info for more than 100,000 computer and consumer electronic products

========================

Large Publisher Comments on Working with Google
By Gary Price, Nov. 3, 2004

The UK’s Daily Mail reports that publisher and database provider, Reed Elsevier “has called a truce” with Google. I wonder if Google knows that they were feuding? Reeds’s CEO, Patrick Crisp, says both companies need to work together. More in this post.

========================

Questions For Yahoo Spam/Content Police?
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 3, 2004

Tim Converse manages Yahoo Search’s “content classification” group. Those are the people who among other things try to automatically determine what’s search engine spam. Jeremy Zawodny’s about to chat with him and puts out a call on the Yahoo Search Blog for questions to raise: Questions for Tim Converse about Content Classification? So got a question? Drop by and put it in the comments.

========================

Googlewhacking Adventure Comes To New York
By Danny Sullivan, Nov. 3, 2004

Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure, sold out through the UK, now has arrived in New York. Dave Gorman? Googlewhacking? All is explained in this post.

========================

PageRank Goes From 5 to 7
By Gary Price, Nov. 2, 2004

Just one day after RustyBrick at Search Engine Roundtable pointed out a press release (he calls it one the funniest he’s ever seen) touting the fact the trademarked term, “Simply Wow”, is now top-ranked at Google, comes the following post on a trade magazine web site: Google Boosts PageRank for Robotics Online. That’s right, Robotics Online, from the Robotic Industries Association, tells members and readers that their PageRank has gone from a five to a seven. I’m wondering if they’ll let everyone know if their rank goes down? More good stuff for your “ridiculous” folder.

========================

Want to receive blog posts each day? Visit the Search Engine Watch Blog or subscribe to our blog feed.

===============================
About The Search Engine Update
===============================

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.

How do I unsubscribe?

+ Follow the instructions at the very end of this email.

How do I subscribe?
+

The Search Engine Update is only available to paid members of the Search Engine Watch web site. If you are not a member and somehow are receiving a copy of the newsletter, learn how to become a member.

How do I see past issues?
+

Visit the Search Engine Update Archives.

How do I change my address?

+ Send a message to [email protected]

I need human help with my membership!

+ Send a message to [email protected]. DO NOT send messages regarding list management or membership issues to Danny Sullivan. He does not deal with these directly.

I have feedback about an article!

+ I’d love to hear it. Use this form.

Resources

The 2023 B2B Superpowers Index

whitepaper | Analytics The 2023 B2B Superpowers Index

8m
Data Analytics in Marketing

whitepaper | Analytics Data Analytics in Marketing

10m
The Third-Party Data Deprecation Playbook

whitepaper | Digital Marketing The Third-Party Data Deprecation Playbook

1y
Utilizing Email To Stop Fraud-eCommerce Client Fraud Case Study

whitepaper | Digital Marketing Utilizing Email To Stop Fraud-eCommerce Client Fraud Case Study

1y