Highlights from the SEW Blog: Oct. 16, 2006

Featured posts from the Search Engine Watch blog, as well as our customary headlines from around the web. If you’re not familiar with our blog, click on any of the links below, or visit the blog’s home page at http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/.

From The SEW Blog…

• Google Wins Case Against Maughan Over Search Results Snippets
  Eric Goldman reports that Google has won the Maughan v. Google case where Mark Maughan filed a suit against Google for the content displayed in the snippets area under a search results listing in Google.com. A search on Mark Maughan Accountancy currently shows the number one listing from www.dca.ca.gov/cba/discipline/ma-me.htm. The snippet looks like:…
• Consumer Satisfaction Doesn’t Equal Market Share
  Earlier this week J.D. Power and Associates released the findings of its “2006 Residential Online Service Customer Satisfaction Study.” The study, based on a survey of more than 10,000 U.S. residential Internet users, found that Yahoo Messenger ranked the highest among IM clients and that – and this is something of a surprise – InfoSpace’s Dogpile had the highest rankings among search engines….
• Watch Some Of The Yahoo TV Commercials
  I posted some of the Yahoo TV commercials at Search Engine Roundtable, if you want to check them out, here is a list of those that were posted to YouTube. – Yahoo Answers Commercial – Yahoo Email Commercial – Yahoo Music Playlist Commercial – Yahoo Music Frequalizer Commercial – Yahoo Music UFO Commercial – Yahoo Commercial…
• Time Warner: YouTube Copyright Negotiations To Be “Kicked Up” To Google
  Google faces copyright fight over YouTube from The Guardian cover how chair and CEO of Time Warner Dick Parsons said his company plans to go after YouTube for copyright violations. It’s still talk rather than legal actions: Mr Parsons told the Guardian: “You can assume we’re in negotiations with YouTube and that those negotiations will be kicked up to the Google level in the hope that we can get to some acceptable position.” I’m sure it will get kicked up. And it shouldn’t be hard to get the right people connected given that the AOL part of Time Warner already…
• Google’s Blogspot.com Down, Blogger Content Inaccessible
  It seems like most of the morning, Google’s Blogspot service that hosts Blogger blogs has been down. For example, I have been trying to access any of the various official Google blogs such as the main one here, and they all time out or return a 500 server error. The same is true for the Google Press Blog, as well as any site using the blogspot.com domain, it seems. FYI – it seems that www.blogger.com is also down….
• How To Make Custom Search Engine With Live Search
  The Live Search blog posted today tips on how to build a custom search engine that pulls pages back from sites you select. It seems very similar to when MSN Search added “Search Macros” at the end of March of this year. Yahoo Search Builder and Eureskter have similar offerings….
• Resources For Finding Statistics For Any Web Site
  Rand over at SEOMoz wrote an excellent post detailing all the different resources publicly available to gather statistical data on pretty much any web site out there. He breaks down the tools into several parts including “Technical Data,” “Ownership/Hosting Data,” “Statistics/Popularity Data,” “Search Engine Indexing Data,” “Link Data,” “Social Tagging Data,” “Third-Party Trust Metrics,” “Important Directory & Site Listings,” and “Press & Media Mentions.” This comprehensive list of resources is bookmark-worthy and I seriously hope Rand keeps this particular post up-to-date….
• Ballmer: YouTube Overvalued & Google Transferring Wealth From Content Owners
  The Web According to Ballmer from BusinessWeek has Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer questioning the value of the Google-YouTube deal and oddly warning that Google is transferring wealth away from rights holders. It’s an odd statement, since that’s what Microsoft wants to do as well….
• Ask Mobile Search Launches
  Ask.com has launched a mobile search product at m.ask.com or mobile.ask.com. Ask Mobile is optimized for mobile devices and uses Skweezer throughout to improve readability and download speed on your mobile device. Navigating Ask Mobile was a pleasure on my Treo. You click on links, navigate to them, but especially nice is the ability to type in a number that corresponds to the link you want to navigate to….
• Yahoo In The (PR) Doldrums
  The NY Times has an article today highlighting a range of perceived problems at Yahoo. This is not the kind of publicity you want to see if you’re on the PR team. While it’s true that Google has momentum and Yahoo may need a kind of “shot in the arm,” what people forget is that Yahoo is the largest site on the Internet with the most monthly uniques….
• Google Master Plan Hacked (OK, Erased)
  Several Google offices now have “master plans” written on dry erase boards, but the original one at the Googleplex is probably best known. Googlers and others have added to it over time about things Google might do. Now Robert Scoble reports the board has been erased! “Master Plan 2.0” is apparently being drawn up as we speak….
• Google’s “False & Deceptive” Search Ads
  Ben Edelman’s False and Deceptive Pay-Per-Click Ads analysis looks at specific ads on Google.com that seem to violate Google’s editorial guidelines and perhaps US laws over “free” services being offered….
• Cool New Real Estate Tools
  The real estate vertical is one of the most interesting online segments for several reasons. Among them are the tools that have been developed amid intensifying competition. Two relatively new ones are Rentometer from iiProperty, a company that helps manage real-estate investments and rental properties, and Mapvine from a company called Rentvine….
• Will Voice-Enabled Mobile Search Kill Directory Assistance?
  Local media research firm The Kelsey Group just forecast “portal-backed wireless voice search [will” reach 1.45 billion queries in 2010” and cause “a significant disruption of the directory assistance market.” On one level, this is self-evident. Because of increasing competition and free alternatives, consumer-pays wireless directory assistance (DA) will eventually go away, unless it becomes incredibly valuable and useful. Cingular is trying to do just that with help from Tellme….
• Coke Counters Bad PR With Search Ads
  Coca-Cola Counters Critics With Search Ads from MediaPost covers how Coke is using search marketing to get the word out about a court victory where it was accused by a Colombian trade union of intimidating and assassinating union leaders….
• Microsoft Partners With Blinkx On Video Search
  Blinkx signs Microsoft pact from Reuters covers how video search company Blinkx is expected to announce today a partnership with Microsoft to power Microsoft’s video search needs, such as at Windows Live Search Videos….