Today’s search podcast covers a report of $800 million lost to click fraud
last year — or was it?; should Google and other search engines have ombudsmen
to resolve disputes and concerns?; what’s with Yahoo being suggested as
alternative search results for “therapy products” on Google; Google Jockeying is
coming to a classroom near you and more!
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Below are links to items discussed:
- SES Latino Edition
– Miami: July 10-11, 2006
- Report:
Advertisers Lost $800 Million To Click Fraud Last Year
The San Francisco Chronicle reports on a click fraud study that claims 14.6
percent of all clicks and $800 million worth of fraudulent clicks were charged
to advertisers….
- Google’s
Ranking Algorithm Too Dependent On Trust Factors?
Todd Malicoat went off on a bit of a rant which he named The Trust Knob is WAY
too High – Google Trustbox. Todd, as do many SEOs, believe that Google places
too much weight on “trust factors” when determining if a page should rank well
or not. Todd quotes some well-known SEOs saying that trust factors are
weighted at 85%, whereas copy is only given 15%. Why does this upset SEOs like
Todd? As Todd explains, One of the extremely big problems with trust filters
is that they don?t seem to be retroactive?meaning that sites that were around
and…
- Techmeme’s Front Pages:
What’s Really A Big Story & How To Go Back In Time
Kinderstart Transcript Available
Eric Goldman posted the Kinderstart transcript and other case documents on his
site. Recently, Kinderstart’s case was heard in court and the judge requested
Kinderstart to provide some more information. The full, 45 page, transcript of
the June 30th hearing can be downloaded here….
- Google
Ombudsman? Search Ombudsman? Great Idea — Bring Them On!
Back in 2004, Gary Stein suggested that Yahoo hire an ombudsman, a sort of
impartial referee to handle disputes involving advertising programs. I thought
it was a great idea. Today, Steve Bryant over at eWeek’s Google Watch calls
for Google to do the same thing. Again, great idea — let’s see the search
engines all start hiring ombudsmen, in the way that many newspapers and others
have done….
- Myanmar
Enables Access To Google After Blocking Gmail & GTalk
Mizzima News reports that Myanmar (also known as Burma) has opened up access
to Google again, after blocking it about a week ago. Reportedly Myanmar
blocked Google and Gmail/GTalk because they want to control the revenues
earned from the state-controlled telephone companies. Myanmar has been known
to block web-based email accounts because they want to only allow
state-controlled email usage….
- Google
Fixes XSS Security Holes
A security vulnerability in Google, discovered and posted at ha.ckers.org was
patched quickly by Google. Both Philipp Lenssen and JasonD posted about the
XSS hole that enables hackers to deploy phishing scams, cookie stealing, and
creation of worms. Matt Cutts of Google was quick to reply to the Threadwatch
post stating that the hole has “either fixed or the fix is going out.”…
- Search
For “Therapy Products” On Google Suggests Yahoo As Alternative Results
SEO Speedwagon posts notes that a query on Google for [therapy products]
displays a See Results For box listing pages from Yahoo. These mid-page
results are supposed to help people find pages somehow related to their
original query — but Yahoo really has nothing to do with therapy products.
How weird, how strange? I had to take a screen capture myself, just in case
the others get lost….
- Google
Posts First Quarter ’06 Quarterly Report 10-Q
For those of you who own Google stock or track Google’s revenues, Google has
just posted their quarterly statement. You can find the update on the Google
investors page with a link to a PDF document for Google’s March 31, 2006
10-Q….
- eBay
Disallows Google Checkout
Andy Beal reports that eBay has officially banned Google Checkout as a payment
solution on eBay. Here is a list of payment solutions not allowed on eBay,
including Google Checkout….
- New
Search Patent Applications: July 5, 2006 – Google Coming to a Shopping Mall
Near You
Google files patents for shopping offline with online assistance, a secondary
map in Google Maps, and an updated review aggregator. Yahoo adds a patent
application for search results PPC advertising, and managing blog content.
Microsoft looks to anchor text to help train a machine learning classification
system when user behavior data isn’t available. AOL details a method of
filtering search results using ontologies and expert domains for queries. IBM
explains differences in how images can be indexed, and presents a method based
upon the semantic meanings of pictures. Become, Inc., describes how different
links can be assigned different values while…
- Google
Jockeying
Another phrase to join ‘surfing’ and ‘browsing’ – we now have ‘jockeying’ or
Google jockeying, to be precise, according to the article from Pandia. Briefly
put, Google jockeying (though it can be any search engine, it just seems that
in order to gain attention Google has to be mentioned somewhere) is a
situation where a teacher or presenter is giving a lecture and someone (the
jockey) sits in the background running searches or using the search engine to
demonstrate something that the presenter is talking about. There’s an
interesting presentation on it provided by the Educause Learning
Initiative….
- Wi-Fi
Comes to New York Parks
The New York Times today is reporting on the progress of a project to unwire
New York City parks, which was announced three years ago. Reportedly by early
August of this year 10 of New York’s “most prominent parks” will have Wi-Fi
access. The project is being implemented by a small company called WiFi Salon.
Mobile handset maker Nokia is now underwriting the project as a sponsor….
Incroyable! ‘Le Tour’ Uses Google Earth Not GeoPortail
WebProNews points to the Google Earth Blog in explaining that The Tour de
France has integrated Google Earth into its site and functionality. In
particular, the site offers complete 3-D rendering of all tour stages. But we
must ask, why wasn’t this done on France’s homegrown Google Earth challenger
GeoPortail?…