Today’s search podcast covers AOL firing execs over the search privacy issue;
how to evaluate search engine popularity figures; Google gets your MTV into web
sites; saving addresses for reuse on Google Maps & Yahoo Maps and more!
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- AOL
Fires CTO & Two Employees After Search Records Slip Up
The Wall Street Journal just reported that AOL has fired the Chief Technology
Officer, Maureen Govern, and two other employees after releasing search
records last week. The article named “AOL Fires Technology Chief After
Web-Search Data Scandal” discloses that Maureen Govern, the CTO along with the
researcher who released the data and the manager overseeing the research have
been all fired. I am kind of surprised that AOL hit someone so high to the
top, but it does make a statement, a statement AOL must make….
- comScore
Figures Show First Google Decline For Nearly A Year, But What To Believe?
The latest search engine share figures from comScore are now out, and Google’s
nearly year-long continued rises have came to a halt in July 2006, according
to comScore. But how much can you trust any of the figures that ratings
services provide? In this post, I look at the latest comScore stats and begin
a series about how to critically evaluate search share ratings….
NetRatings: Tiny Google Decline, But Not The First Time & Yahoo Growth
Yesterday I looked at the latest figures out of comScore that showed Google
seeing its first drop in search share for nearly a year. My review of rating
service figures continues today with NetRatings. They also show a Google drop,
but far less than the comScore figures….
- Google
AdSense Begins Running MTV & Viacom Video Ads for Select Publishers
After recently announcing a partnership between Google & Viacom, their new
video ads have begun displaying for a small group of specially chosen
publishers. The videos, which run clips from a variety of shows from Comedy
Central, MTV, MTV2, The N, and Nickelodeon channels, are interspersed with
ads, and publishers are paid on a CPM basis on how many of the ads are viewed
by the user….
- David
Brent’s Microsoft training video, Sydney Morning Herald
- Google
Base Adds Click & Impression Metrics For Merchants
The Google Base Blog announced that Google Base has been tracking clicks and
impressions since early June. They are now displaying that data to merchants,
so that they can see the number of times their Google Base items are viewed
(impressions), clicked on and the pageviews of that item. An impression occurs
each time a Froogle or Google Base result is displayed for that item, a click
is tracked each time someone clicks on that listed item and a pageview occurs
each time someone views the items page. The data is mostly just updated daily,
but you can use it…
- Google’s
Audio Player
Philipp notes as does Ionut Alex that with the release of voicemail on Google
Talk, you can now use that feature to play audio files over Google’s network.
Philipp describes a method of easily doing this. One thing to note, as a Mac
user. This does not rendered on Apple’s Safari web browser, even thought
Google Video works fine….
- Saving
Addresses At Google & Yahoo Maps
Matt McGee posted an entry on a fairly new feature at Google Maps, that allows
you to save locations for later use. He notes that Yahoo has had this feature
for a while. In addition, the Google Blog has announced this feature earlier
this month. I thought it would be useful to write a “how-to” save addresses at
Google Maps and Yahoo Maps….
- How Much
Is Link Baiting Services Or Projects Worth?
Honestly, the purpose of this post is selfish, I want someone to come up with
the value of a link baiting effort. I am looking for someone to tell me how
much time, money and effort should be put towards a link baiting project. What
is the minimum you need as an outcome of that link baiting effort to make the
link baiting tactic a success? These are questions running through my head
over the past couple days….
- How XSS
HTML Injection Might Let Others Put Links On Your Sites
SEOMoz has some excellent examples of government sites that are susceptible to
cross site (XSS) html injection, something that can also happen to any site.
Let me first do my best to explain what this means in layman terms (hope I get
it right)….
LibreDigital Warehouse Competes With Google Book Search
Steve Bryant reports that “publishers fight back against Google,” with their
own book search service. The new service is named LibreDigital Warehouse and
was announced by HarperCollins and LibreDigital the other day. This new
service will give “publishers and booksellers the ability to deliver
searchable book content on their own Web sites.” The technology empowers
publishers to define rules on a partner and book title level, defining which
pages are viewable, which pages are not, and what percentage of the pages are
available. They will begin offer about 200 HarperCollins titles and increase
that to 10,000 titles or so. More…
ClickTracks Acquired By J.L. Halsey
The ClickTracks web analytics service has big news today, that it has been
acquired by marketing technology firm J.L. Halsey. J.L. Halsey also owns
marketing tools such as Lyris, EmailLabs and Hot Banana. Congrats to John and
all the crew over at ClickTracks! More information from the press release
here….
Subdomains Trademark Violations?
ClickZ has a write up named Can Subdomains Violate a Trademark? In there
report, they show how the Jews for Jesus sued the people running
jewsforjesus.blogspot.com. The case was ultimately settled out of court and no
ruling has been made. But this raises interesting questions. What if we here
at Search Engine Watch decided to categorize all Google related topics under
the subdomain google.blog.searchenginewatch.com. Is that a trademark
violation? I can see how a public hosted domain, like blogspot.com subdomains,
might be viewed as more of an infringement of trademark then would be a
subdomain hosted on searchenginewatch.com – but…
- Farecast
Adds Cities To Flight Fare Prediction Tool
GigaOM writes that Farecast, a travel search engine that uses statistical
modeling to predict if the prices of tickets will increase or decrease over
time, has added cities, to include 55 U.S. cities. Wired News takes the
“matter of fact” approach to their coverage of Farecast, describing “turns out
13D paid only $300 for her flight, while 14E shelled out nearly $1,000 for
his.”…
- What is
Google These Days?
Google is a search engine, but it’s also one of the world’s largest
advertising companies. And many analysts are now calling it a media company,
as well. So is Google still focused on its mission to organize the world’s
information and make it universally accessible? Danny Sullivan put that and
other questions to Google CEO Eric Schmidt in his keynote conversation at the
recent SES San Jose conference. And, as has become a tradition, Andrew Goodman
was on hand to not only report on the dialogue but to add his own laser-like
insights. Read on in today’s SearchDay article, Google…
- My Q&A
With Eric Schmidt In Video & Transcribed
Via Google Blogoscoped, news that Google’s now posted a video of my Q&A two
weeks ago with Google CEO Eric Schmidt that covered a wide range of topics.
I’ve embedded it below, if you don’t want to click through to Google Video. No
time to watch? Don’t worry, they’ve also posted a written transcript. There
was also a Q&A with press after the conversation, and you’ll find a transcript
of that here. Can’t watch but wish you could listen? You’ll find a podcast of
the conversation here. That page also has a round-up of press and blogger
coverage of the…
- Stephen Colbert’s
Tips for Protecting Your Online Identity, YouTube
TrackMeNot Extension, Google Blogoscoped