IndustryDaily SearchCast, July 6, 2006: $800 Million In Click Fraud Or Not?; Does Google Need An Ombudsman?; Google Jockeying In The Classroom & More! (Corrected MP3 File)

Daily SearchCast, July 6, 2006: $800 Million In Click Fraud Or Not?; Does Google Need An Ombudsman?; Google Jockeying In The Classroom & More! (Corrected MP3 File)

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?…

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Utilizing Email To Stop Fraud-eCommerce Client Fraud Case Study

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