IndustryThe Search Engine Update – Number 217 – March 28, 2006

The Search Engine Update - Number 217 - March 28, 2006

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

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In This Issue
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+ SES: Forward Planning
+ 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: Forward Planning
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Missed SES New York or SES China this year? Not to worry — we have more events coming up in the next few months.

SES Munich happens this week, and I’ll be taking part in some panels on the first day out there.

April sees SES Japan, SES Italy and SES Toronto happening. Chris and I can’t make every show, so we won’t be at the first two. But we will be in Toronto. Chris has organized that event, and I’ll be doing a keynote for it.

From May 31 through June 2, SES London happens. It’s our longest-running non-US event and the first to expand to three days.

In July, SES Latino happens in Miami, our first event targeting the US Hispanic and Latin American market.

August sees our regular SES event return to the US. SES San Jose happens early in the month, and my timeline on when you can expect that agenda is posted here.

Doing forward planning beyond this? See the Search Engine Strategies site and also keep an eye on the Search Engine Strategies Blog.

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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.

=== Mar. 28, 2006 ===

Searching BG, Before Google, And The Need To Search Better – Just when you think stupid articles that assume we couldn’t search BG — Before Google — have come to an end, the New York Times gives us another one. An opinion piece by Edward Tenner, explains how Google and its rivals today have made searching too easy and thus people aren’t leaning about proper searching strategies. I agree with Tenner in the end, but he takes a convoluted and mistaken argument to get there.

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Google Recipes! Google Careers! Google Confusion! The UI Madness Continues – Item 3 on my 25 Things I Hate About Google list was “Stop confusing people. Pick a user interface and go with it!” The past few days only prove my point, as I’ve seen everything from Google Recipes to Google Careers being reported as new features while others play with their cookies in order to get a green bar vertical search implementation.

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Official Google Blog Deleted, Blogger Registers googleblog.blogspot.com – Google accidentally deletes its own official company blog, allowing someone else to register the address for themselves through the Blogger service. All’s back in order now.

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The Latest Click Fraud Roundup – Google might be about to settle a click fraud case, but the issue remains very much in the minds of the major media. A review of some major round-up peices assessing the state of click fraud in the industry.

=== Mar. 24, 2006 ===

Google Tests New Image Ads In Google Local – Google Local tests more ads within maps, this time ones that contain an advertiser’s logo.

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Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Sued by KinderStart for Penalizing Site – Gold Membership for Overture Members – Is Yahoo Ousting Small & Medium-Sized Businesses? – Do Ugly Sites Earn More With AdSense? – Determining the Size of the Keyword Tail – Zeal To Shut Down, and more.

=== Mar. 23, 2006 ===

Supplemental Index Issues “Gone”; Welcome Big Daddy Index – Over the past month or so, Google has been having some issues with supplemental pages. Google says those should be going away as its “BigDaddy” infrastructure comes online.

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Targeting Search Ads By Demographics & Behavior – The days of targeting searchers only via keywords are coming to an end. Now search engines are giving you the ability to target searchers by age, gender and other demographics.

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Google’s 2006 Q1 Earnings Conference Call Scheduled On April 20th – Google has posted the schedule for the 2006 first-quarter earnings conference call. The conference call is to take place on April 20, 2006 at 1:30 PM PT. See also:

=== Mar. 22, 2006 ===

Google Doesn’t Have To Hand Over Search Logs To Justice Department – The judge in the case of the US Department Of Justice versus Google has ruled that Google does NOT have to provide the DOJ with query logs. Google calls it a victory, and I agree. Google will have to provide a list of web site URLs, however. See also:

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Google Jumps Into Social Tagging With New Google Reader Feature – The Google Reader Blog has announced that you can now share the content you read with your friends, family, colleagues and others. This is a big move for Google, what seems to be the first time they’ve allowed people to both tag and importantly share that tagged content with others.

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Google Enhances Keyword Tool; Adds Global Trend Graphs – Google AdWords announced that they have added “global trends” to the Keyword Tool. Global trends shows the search volume of a particular keyword phrase, charted over a 12 month historical period. To access this data, you can go here and then enter your keyword phrases. Then click the “Get More Keywords”, after the page loads, on the right side, select from the “Show columns” drop down menu, the “Global search volume trends” option. You will then see this data charted for you.

=== Mar. 21, 2006 ===

Google Launches Google Finance – At long last, Google has launched its own Google Finance service. For years, those seeking specialty financial information via Google have been sent to competitors such as Yahoo and MSN. Now Google’s providing financial information directly to its own users.

=== Mar. 20, 2006 ===

Paul Flaherty, A Founder Of AltaVista, Passes Away – Sad news that Paul Flaherty, one of the founders of AltaVista, passed away on Friday on a heart attack.

=== Mar. 17, 2006 ===

Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Considers European Retail Push – Using Link Farms as a Weapon? – What Do You Love & Hate About Google – How I Made a Million in 3 Months – What Is A ‘Poison Keyword?’ – Is a Site’s Age a Factor? and more.

=== Mar. 15, 2006 ===

Finding the Values of U.S. Homes – Talking about the ‘real estate bubble’ is a popular parlor game these days. Now you can find your own estimates for how over-or-under valued your neighborhood is thanks to a new web site called Zillow.

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No Credit Card Merchant Account? No Problem! How I Can Now Get Paid With Google Payments – Google is now allowing select Google Base users to use Google Payments as a substitute to a merchant account. The best way to describe Google Payments is calling it a PayPal alternative.

=== Mar. 14, 2006 ===

Winning a Search Advertising Bid War – Your pay-per-click campaign is advancing steadily until suddenly, the ranking officer at some joker’s company launches a surprise attack, overruns your position, and pins you down in a bloody bidding war. What do you do? Pull back? Hunker down? Or counter-attack?

=== Mar. 13, 2006 ===

25 Things I Hate About Google – Google’s purchase of Writely sort of drove me over the edge last week. When I saw the news confirmed, I exclaimed out loud to myself, “Oh, give me a break.” A break from what, freakishly talking to myself? No, a break from Google going in yet another direction when there is so much stuff they haven’t finished, gotten right or need to fix.

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25 Things I Love About Google – Love, hate. Love, hate. When it comes to Google, I did the “hate” side of my love/hate relationship over in my 25 Things I Hate About Google article. In this article, I’m all about the love. How do I love Google? Let me count the 25 ways into my heart.

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Google Partnering With Publishers To Sell Online Books – Google gave me the heads-up late Friday that a new feature allowing publishers to sell online versions of their books through Google Book Search was about to go live. The experiment will allow publishers to sell access to their books online. Publishers set a price, then consumers can buy and read the book online.

=== Mar. 10, 2006 ===

Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Microsoft’s Windows Live Search Opens; Bye-Bye MSN Search? – Demographics Added to AdWords – It’s Illegal And Unethical And They Know It! – Click Fraud Issue Growing – MSN AdCenter Primer for New Users, and more.

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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, Jennifer Slegg or Chris Sherman, all of whom post to the blog.

=== Mar. 28, 2006 ===

Infospace Launches Local Search Beta; Partners With Local.com – Local.com and Infospace have teamed up to create a new Infospace Local Search site that’s in beta. You’ll find it here, with a rundown from Gary Price on features here and coverage of the deal from ClickZ in Local.com and InfoSpace Jockey for Local Search Traffic.

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Speed Dating Meets The SEO Business World With Speed Pitches – Chris Ridings of SearchGuild.com and Denise Russell (aka Gurtie) have launched SpeedPitches.com, a service that enables SEOs and prospective SEO clients to be pitched by SEO companies, ummm, really quickly. This concept is similar to Speed Dating, a service that places singles in a room….[MORE”

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Yahoo & Microsoft To Build Storage Centers In Grant County, Washington – MoneySense.ca reports that Yahoo and Microsoft have plans to build huge data centers in Grant County, Washington….[MORE”

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Google Lands Sponsored Links Deal With Verizon SuperPages; Local.com & Infospace Partner On Beta Local Search Site – ClickZ reports that Google has landed a dead with Verizon SuperPages.com to provide some backfill sponsored results for SuperPages.com….[MORE”

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AdsBlackList Offers AdSense Filter URL List – Nathan Weinberg reports on a service named AdsBlackList.com. The service provides a list of predefined MFAs (Made for AdSense sites) that generate low quality click throughs and low CPCs….[MORE”

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Google To Host Roundtable For Top Music Industry Executives – PaidContent.org reports that Google is hosting a get-together of the top 20 executives from the music industry this Thursday. The roundtable event is invite only and was mentioned at a Digital Hollywood pre-show yesterday. This is just some more evidence of a Google music download service to come soon.

=== Mar. 27, 2006 ===

San Francisco’s Mayor & The Google Guys Via Valleywag, “S.F. mayor’s friendship with Google founders” from the San Francisco Chronicle looks at questions of propriety over San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom accepting rides on a private jet with Google’s cofounders along with campaign contributions he’s received from individual Googlers and “hang out” time with Larry Page. Nothing illegal is said to have happened, but with Google now pitching to win a contract to give San Francisco wifi, there are concerns the Chronicle says about relationships being too “chummy.”

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Feed Rinse; Filter Your RSS Feeds – Traffick reviews this cool service that filters your RSS feeds for the content you want to read. The tool is named Feed Rinse and it enables you to filter by; keywords, tags, author, site, profanity, and more. This seems like a neat tool that you may want to try out. Traffick believes one of the larger companies may buy them shortly… Yahoo? Ask? Maybe Google?

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MSN Names Yusuf Mehdi New Chief Advertising Strategist – ClickZ reports MSN has named Yusuf Mehdi as the chief advertising strategist for the new MSN Online Business Group. MSN’s Online Business Group is to manage the ads sales, work on business development and marketing for the MSN Live products, Windows Live products and other “MSN platforms.” David Cole, who will be leaving MSN in April, will temporarily run the Online Business Group at MSN.

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UK Internet Users Really Love Google; 75% Use Google – ThreadWatch covers a WebSideStory study that shows Google captured 75% of UK market share in February 2006. The breakdown amongst the top five in the UK include; Google with 74.67%, Yahoo with 9.30%, MSN with 5.46%, AOL with 4.21% and Ask with 2.28%. This is based on search referrals from about four million daily Internet users in the UK “that use a search engine to reach another site on the web,” the study says. No wonder Google was voted the best brand on the Internet by UK users.

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Ask TV Commercial Blitz Hits US Air Waves – I reported yesterday, that the Ask blog has posted two of their US based TV commercials for your viewing pleasure. The two commercials try to show how the current method of searching is out of date, and that you should use Ask.com to get a more sophisticated and efficient method of searching the Web. You can view the commercials yourself by clicking here. I would love for you to share your thoughts; we have a forum thread under the title Ask’s TV Commercials.

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Some Of Google’s Most Expensive Keywords Via Xooglers, “Updated: Highest Paying AdSense Keywords” from CyberWyre has a nice of some of the some expensive keyword phrases you can buy at Google (probably at Yahoo also). $54.33 for mesothelioma lawyers tops the list….[MORE”

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Yahoo Updates Search Toolbar; Tabbed Browsing in IE & Delicious Tags – The Yahoo Search Blog announced that they have updated the Yahoo Toolbar. For IE users, you can use the toolbar to enable tabbed browsing in IE 5 or 6. For Firefox users, they have added for bookmarks, mail alerts, and AntiSpy for all countries that Yahoo supports (and no list of these is given). In addition to those updates, they are now giving users the ability to tag content with del.icio.us directly from the browser….[MORE”

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Yahoo & 60 Minutes Debut Tiger Woods 60 Minutes Interview – Rand Fishkin describes how he was flipping through the channels and noticed the mention of the Yahoo & 60 Minutes deal at play. Rand says he was watching the “tail end” of 60 minutes, where they asked viewers to search for “Tiger Woods” at Yahoo Search. At the top you will see a “Yahoo Shortcut” with links to http://news.yahoo.com/60minutes, which currently has exclusive footage of the Tiger Woods interview. You will also see a link to Tiger Woods profile page at Yahoo PGA and a link to the Yahoo TV listings for 60 Minutes.

=== Mar. 24, 2006 ===

Do Aerial Maps Violate Our Privacy? These Maps Are Nice to Look at, but Not Smart from the LA Times revisits the entire “do aerial maps show too much” issue. Past stories on this topic have tended to look at how various countries are concerned that sensitive areas are displayed. This reporter takes a different angle, about whether maps show too much about our own homes. So do you have a privacy right for your house not to be displayed?….[MORE”

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adCenter Now Tracks Conversions By Firefox Browsers – MSN adCenter fixed some of the bugs with Firefox Danny reported under the title MSN adCenter: Firefox Users Need Not Apply; Customers With Firefox Might Not Get Tracked. The adCenter representative posted an update in our forums, saying “we fixed the issue with conversion tracking.”

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Google Publication Ads Test Deemed Unsuccessful Google’s Print Auction Fizzles from BusinessWeek covers how the new Google Publication Ads program didn’t exactly raise tons of money after its first public auction….[MORE”

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Search National Archives and Records Administration Web Pages With Web Harvest – Gary Price reports on a new search engine named Web Harvest that enables you to search governmental and military Web pages. The FAQ says that the harvest collection contains about “75 million web pages and represents about 50,000 “.gov” and “.mil” unrestricted federal web sites active between 10/14/04 and 11/19/04.” The search technology is currently using NUTCH and NUTCHWAX, open source solutions.

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Former Google VP To Speak At The Lincoln Chamber of Commerce Workshop – Chris Gilmer reports that former Google Vice President of Corporate Marketing, Cindy McCaffrey, is to keynote at the Women in Business Workshop in Lincoln, Nebraska….[MORE”

=== Mar. 23, 2006 ===

Some New Video Search & Sharing Sites – Searchforvideo is a relatively new web-wide video search site you might want to check out, while Guba and VideoEgg are two other video sites that will be of interest to those who want to share video or see what others have contributed….[MORE”

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Study: Searchers Still Prefer to Buy Offline – A new Google-sponsored study from comScore Networks found that 25% of product-related searches resulted in purchases, with 63% occurring in brick and mortar retailers, compared with 37% from online merchants. The study has similar findings to a Yahoo-sponsored ComScore study in December 2004, which found that 92 percent of purchases related to consumer electronics occurred offline. Both ZDNet and Ad Week have more details on the study.

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AdSense Launches “AdSense Help” Google Group – The Inside AdSense blog announces the launch of a new Google Group started by AdSense named AdSense Help. The group is currently up to 199 members, and growing quickly. You must, however, register to post in the group, but prior to registering, they ask you to read the charter. Also, posts made by “AdSensePro” are officially by a Google representative.

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Yandex, Popular Russian Search Engine, To IPO – Nick Wilsdon notes that Yandex is set to IPO shortly. Yandex is Russia’s most popular search engines with 62% market share. The Moscow Times reports that they have spoken with Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank. They may be listed on the NASDAQ, where Yandexs “international peers trade”.

=== Mar. 22, 2006 ===

SEMPO Board Elects 2006 Officers – ClickZ reports that SEMPO’s new board of directors has elected the 2006 SEMPO officers. The new chairperson is Gordon Hotchkiss from Enquiro, Dana Todd from SiteLab remains the President, Jeffrey Pruitt from iCrossing is the new Vice President, Sara Holoubek takes over as the Treasurer and the new Secretary is Dave Williams from 360i.

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LookSmart’s Zeal Directory To Close – Once a potential rival to the Open Directory, LookSmart had decided to close its volunteer-driven Zeal directory at the end of this month. LookSmart acquired the service in 2000. Though the Zeal site itself is still accepting registrations, here’s the closure message LookSmart’s sent out….[MORE”

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Social Bookmarking Made Easy By SocializerSocializer is an automated social bookmarking service that helps you get people to send a link to your page to a number of social bookmarking sites….[MORE”

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A Deeper Look At Personalized News Search Engines – Mark Glaser at MediaShift wrote a great review named Your Guide to Personalized News Sites. He reviews the history of personalized news sites, and discusses many of the new free options people have to search news with a personal touch.

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Ask.com Adds “The Advanced Plan” For Larger Advertisers – I was reviewing the Ask Sponsored Listings page and noticed a new service named “The Advanced Plan” listed on the home page. I have not seen this special program before today. The plan says it is available for those that plan on spending approximate $5,000 or more per month. For those advertisers, they get this special contact form to fill out.

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ShopLocal Wins In Crawling Case Against Cairo – Apparently, ShopLocal.com wasn’t happy with rival local shopping search service Cairo for hitting its listings. ShopLocal took Cairo to court, and Cairo has now agreed not to make further “robotic or other automated” visits to ShopLocal’s site, ShopLocal says….[MORE”

=== Mar. 21, 2006 ===

Google Base Creeping Into Main Search Results Page – GoodROI shows us an example of a search that brings up a Google Base search box, right at the top of the main search results at Google.com….[MORE”

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Congoo Offers (Free) Subscription Based Content For Free – Elinor Mills reports at News.com that Congoo released a search service enabling people to search newspapers, magazines and other periodicals that are typically fee-based subscription content….[MORE”

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Moneyextra.com Partners With MSN Search – Netimperative reports that MSN Search has been expanding its search partner base by adding the MSN Search box to MoneyExtra.com. This partnership is to help MSN increase their search volume and quotas, to compete with Google and Yahoo for the search pie. The MSN Search box will be present on MoneyExtra.com for three-months, at that time, they will review the relationship and re-negotiate.

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Yahoo Removed Block Result Feature From My Web – A reader has informed me that Yahoo has removed the block result (page and site) feature from My Web….[MORE”

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Gary Price Interviewed; Ask’s New Butler? – Library Journal has an interview with Gary Price, of Ask.com and formerly the News Editor of Search Engine Watch. The interview goes through Gary’s new role at Ask.com, his continued work at Resource Shelf and many other topics. When I saw Jim Lanzone, from Ask.com, at SES NYC a month ago, I told him that Gary is the closest thing to Jeeves that I know. So in reality, the loss of the Jeeves character has been fulfilled by the real deal, Gary Price.

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Amazon Changes “Did You Mean?” Result For “Abortion” Query – Wired News reports that Amazon has changed the way to handles the search query “abortion.” In that past, Amazon would place a message at the top of the search results of a query on abortion; stating, “Did you mean adoption?” The message was completely algorithmic, based on related searches for adoption and abortion. They are recently changed the page to not show this message, but you should still notice “related searches” for alternatives to abortion queries at Amazon.com

=== Mar. 20, 2006 ===

Google And Nike Team Up To Create Soccer Social Networking Site – Google and Nike have launched Joga.com, a social networking site specifically targeting soccer fans worldwide….[MORE”

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Yahoo Launches Local News Beta – Yahoo News has launched a local beta version with coverage for local areas in the US….[MORE”

=== Mar. 17, 2006 ===

Reports from Search Engine Strategies China – A rundown on coverage from the SES China event that happened this month….[MORE”. See also Mobile Search in China.

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MSN Search Link Operators Explored – Rand Fishkin explores the MSN Search link operator. With this advanced search command, you can find out who links to Matt Cutts, SEO Book, SEO Consultants, but not SEOmoz.org; (linkdomain:mattcutts.com linkdomain:seobook.com linkdomain:seoconsultants.com) (-linkdomain:seomoz.org). This is pretty powerful stuff, check out SEOMoz.org for more information on this.

=== Mar. 16, 2006 ===

Google Looking for AdWords Seminar Leaders – Many US-based Google Advertising Professionals have received invitations to apply to become AdWords Seminar Leaders, paying positions leading one-day seminars throughout the US….[MORE”

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Ask Appoints Senior Vice President And Chief Scientist – Ask.com has appointed Tao Yang as the new senior vice president and chief scientist of Ask.com. Yang’s role will be to build out Ask.com’s “system infrastructure” and “classification technologies.” Yang was a co-inventor of Ask.com’s search technology, Teoma, now known as ExpertRank….[MORE”

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Google And Yahoo To Sell Branded PCs? – Google and Yahoo are apparently in talks with Wyse Technology to build out low-priced PC….[MORE”

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Using Search Engines For Test Taking – The School Library Journal has an article named “Cheating via Google?” The article explores the use of search engines in the classroom and during test taking….[MORE”

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Google News Prank Confirmed; News Source Removed From News Index – I Newswire, a free press release distribution service, has been removed from the Google News index after releasing a false press release submitted by a teenager….[MORE”

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Yahoo Displayed Google URL With “Terrorists” – Philipp Lenssen reports that if you do a search at Yahoo UK/Ireland for google, the fifth result displays the URL “www.google.ca/#terrorists”. I personally do not see this result within the top 100 results when I perform the search. But if I use search.rediff.com, I see the URL listed as “http://www.google.ca/#terrorists” at the tenth position.

=== Mar. 15, 2006 ===

whoisaGAP Organizes Google AdWords Professionals By Geography And Entity TypewhoisaGAP has reorganized its Google AdWords Professionals database to be broken down by geographic location and by type of entity (individual or company entity)….[MORE”

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SEO Prospects And Clients From Hell – Ben Pfeiffer wrote an article named “What To Do If Your The SEO Client Nobody Wants?” I believe that most of the SEOs and SEMs involved in the search community can relate to this article. Ben explains how there are those prospects that call from SEO to SEO asking for advice….[MORE”

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Yahoo Grants 1.3 Million Options to CEO, Terry Semel – MarketWatch reports that Terry Semel, the CEO of Yahoo, has been granted 1.3 million stock options from his company….[MORE”

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College Basketball & Pro Baseball Historical Newspaper Articles Search – If you are a basketball or baseball fan, you will love two new searchable archives….[MORE”

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Nutch’s Doug Cutting Joins Yahoo Full Time After Serving Four Years Independently – Jeremy Zawodny notes that Doug Cutting, who has been working at Yahoo for four-years as an independent contractor, as now signed on with Yahoo full time, as an employee. Doug will most likely continue working from home on his open source projects; Lucene, Hadoop and Nutch. So while Yahoo loses some employees, they gain some as well. See also: Yahoo Loses Director Of Business Development to FeedBurner.

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Yahoo Redesigning Home Page – InternetNews.com reports that Yahoo has been redesigning its home page to bring out more search features on the front page….[MORE”

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SEM Salaries Revisited – ClickZ has a nice two part article, the second part being on SEM Salaries. The article shows that an entry-level SEM position salary can range from $30,000 to $45,000 or about $10 per hour for part-time help….[MORE”

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Google Desktop 3 Leaves Beta, Gains Quick Search Feature – The Google blog announced last night that Google Desktop is out of beta, finally. In addition, Google has added a feature named quick search box that pops up a search box in the center of your screen when you hit your control button two times in a row. Quick Search “enables you to search the web and your local computer.” If you do not want this feature, you can turn it off in your Google Desktop preferences area.

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Microsoft Begins Testing Advertising In Live Products – Microsoft has announced advertising will be added to a variety of their Live products, including Office Live, Windows Live Mail and most notably, MSN Spaces. Twenty beta advertisers are included in the initial advertising launch offering a variety of creatives….[MORE”

=== Mar. 14, 2006 ===

MSN To Launch Click to Call Soon? – MarketingVox reports on a BusinessWeek article that shows signs that Microsoft will launch a click to call service within its search engine. The article suggests that Microsoft will launch the service this week and it allow users connect to businesses via web-based calls by clicking on MSN search links.” I would assume this will be integrated into MSN AdCenter but it is possible they use a third-party PPC engine for the feature.

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Revisiting Diller On Search – Shari Thurow has her ClickZ article on Barry Diller’s Keynote from SES NYC live under the title Barry Diller on Search. Her summary, along with the recorded podcast, Search Engine Roundtable live coverage, and CNN’s commentary all make for a good roundup of the keynote session that took place a couple weeks ago.

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Google Idol: Vote For The Next Google Video Music Star – Philipp Lenssen finds a new site named Google Idol that utilizes Google Video to pin singer versus singer….[MORE”

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Getting Relisted In The Shopping Search Engines Too Easy? – Thomas Hawk has been following an online retailer named PriceRitePhoto that has been allegedly ripping off its customers. Thomas reports that even though PriceRitePhoto has been delisted after its abusive bait and switch tactics, it has been re-listed at both Yahoo Shopping, PriceGrabber and MSN Shopping. Thomas is upset with these shopping search engines for not screening past fraudulent retailers more closely. He notes that he has received a response from Yahoo that they will remove this retailer once again for being in “violation of Yahoo’s Terms of Service.” He has not heard from PriceGrabber or MSN as of yet.

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Ultimate Googling with Advanced Dork Firefox Extension – Search Engine Journal covers at new Firefox extension named Advanced Dork that enables advanced Google searches with a right click on your mouse….[MORE”

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Microsoft to Launch Video Service Under Windows Live Video – TechWeb reports that Microsoft is going to launch a video service to challenge Google Video during April of this year. The service is most likely going to be named “Windows Live Video”, like all the new Windows Live This or Windows Live That type of services they announced. MSN currently has live video streams of “variety of news, entertainment and sports from content partners.” This new service, I would venture, would be more like upload your video and share it with friends. Expect a tight integration with MSN’s other services, in particular MSN Spaces.

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Memorandum Launches WeSmirch Gossip Tracker – I love Memeorandum’s tech page, which consolidates breaking tech news stories in an easy to digest manner. Now Memeorandum’s technology is powering the new site WeSmirch, which gives you gossip in an orderly fashion. Hey, Charlize Theron is single again! Jennifer Aniston doesn’t want pity! Isaac Hayes is quitting South Park! By the way, WeSmirch remains a proud member of the Memorandum family. It just doesn’t use that domain because, “celebritygossip.memeorandum.com is just too awesome a name for the world to handle at this time,” says the service.

=== Mar. 13, 2006 ===

Google Alpha Release for Google Video RSS Feeds – Google has released an alpha (not even beta) release of RSS feeds for Google Video, allowing you to stay updated on new content.

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SEO Tools Bonanza from SEOValley & SEO Book – Search Engine Journal reports on SEO/SEM related tools from SEOValley and SEO Book. SEOValley has 22 different SEM related tools, including and SEO book has 23 tools, most with the source code available for reuse. Loren Baker’s favorite tool of the 45 listed at those two sites is SEO Book’s Keyword Suggestion Tool.

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Google Operations VP Talks Of “Shards” & Other Search Architecture Details – An InternetNews.com article named Peeking Into Google has Google’s VP of operations and engineering giving us insight into Google’s architecture….[MORE”

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Google Releases Google Talk for Blackberry – Nathan Weinberg reports that Google Talk is now officially supported on Blackberry devices. The 18 page PDF user guide goes through all the features of Google Talk for Blackberry. Nathan reports that “it works in real time, and you can stay signed in and receive messages while using other Blackberry apps.” More information at Blackberry’s Web site.

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Google Mars Launches – Google launched Google Mars this morning and has posted it at Google Labs. Google has plotted points by Regions, Mountains, Plains
Spacecraft, Canyons, Ridges, Stories, Dunes, and Craters….[MORE”

=== Mar. 10, 2006 ===

Brazil Asks Google To Help Orkut To Stop Organizing Organized Crime – Poor old Orkut, Google’s social networking service. First it’s knocked for only being popular in Brazil. Then it’s knocked for being a haven Al-Qaeda sympathizers. Now it’s back to Brazil, where “Google Brasil summoned on chat room complaint” from Reuters covers how the Brazilian public ministry is asking Google to explain what it is doing to curb organized crime activities allegedly being committed or planned within Orkut. The story notes that 73 percent of Orkut’s users are apparently Brazilian. The story makes mention of child pornography in Orkut. The service has also been dinged for drug sales, with ten arrests made in Brazil last July.

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Richest People in Search – Gary Price reports on a Forbes richest people list for 2006. Gary pulled out those on the list that run the major search engines. So how do they rank?….[MORE”

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Google Enables Related Content JavaScript Block – Garett Rogers reports that Google has enabled Webmaster to place JavaScript on their pages to show a “related” content box by Google. You can check it out live at Vivi’s blog, right above the comments. The code does not contain any unique identifier, nor does it appear there is any monetization involved with what it produces. Too similar to Y!Q? More information at Googling Google.

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Google to Protect Firefox with Phishing Shield? – News.com reports that Google may be providing the technology to protect Firefox against phishing scams….[MORE”

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Google Partners With BenQ & Google Removing Ads from Mobile Content? – PaidContent links to a story at Mob Happy describing how Google Mobile has removed the ads on his site….[MORE”

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Will Local Search Engines Replace National Search Engines for Local Search? – ClickZ reports “about half the panelists believe local search engines will replace national search engines like Yahoo, Google and MSN when it comes to specific market needs,” according to Borrell Associates’s “2006 Local Search Advertising” report….[MORE”

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‘Drafting’ and ‘Hijacking’ in Paid Search – A ClickZ article named Paid Search Spawns ‘Drafting’ and ‘Hijacking’ Strategies discusses the differences of ‘drafting’ and ‘hikacking’ tactics and its legal/ethical consequences….[MORE”

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Didn’t Get That Wedding Gift? Blame The Search Engines! – Search engines are appearing to be indexing gift registries and ranking them well enough to be found by unsuspecting online consumers. This causes the registry to show that people have ordered an item or two that the bride and groom have never received. I wrote up the long-winded story here but let me explain in short….[MORE”

=== Mar. 9, 2006 ===

Google to Partner with Wikipedia? – Garett Rogers reports that Google and the Wikipedia may be in some sort of partnership. March 6th, Google registered “googlereference.net/org/info and googlereferencepages.com/net/org/info“, which can imply Google starting, what Garett is calling “Google Reference.”….[MORE”

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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?

  • Subscribe to our main SEW Blog feed, and you’ll receive the podcasts automatically when we alert readers to them each day.
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  • Tune into WebmasterRadio.FM, where we go out live at 11:30am Eastern and then repeat at 2pm Eastern. The show archive at WebmasterRadio is here.
  • Listen via our Odeo channel, where it’s easy to see our past shows and hear them by using little play buttons right within your browser.
  • Listen online or subscribe for MP3 player downloads via our Yahoo Podcasts channel.
  • Listen via iTunes 4.9 or higher. Click here and you should find the show will load automatically in iTunes, if you have it installed. If not, then see further instructions here.

Here are the last two days’ worth of shows:

You can find all shows from previous days listed on the Daily SearchCast home page. Just select any file to download it and listed on your computer or digital audio device.

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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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