Below, a recap of stories posted today to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along
with other items we’ve spotted but not blogged separately:
From The SEW Blog…
Specialty Search Roundup #3
From Traffic Cams to Digitizing to the Kennedy Library to Archival Records: A
Selection of Specialty Database via ResourceShelf Yes it’s time once again for
a Gary Price, specialty search database and portal roundup. Here’s a look at a
few recent postings that he published on ResourceShelf. Real Time Data:
TrafficLand Continues to Expand, Aggregating Traffic Cams Around the Nation
Cool! ResourceShelf real time compilation continues. Future Projects: Plans to
Digitize Entire Contents of John F. Kennedy Library Announced Business:
Entrepreneurship Research Portal from the E.W. Kauffman Foundation U.S.
Congress: Congressional Documents Online ?The Rutgers – Camden School of
Law…
- Daily
SearchCast, June 15, 2006: You Got Digg In My Netscape; When NYT Met SEO;
Google’s New US Government Search; Searching For Products By Color & More!
Today’s search podcast covers Netscape transforming into a Digg-like community
news site; the New York Times and its industrial-strength search engine
optimization work; Google relaunches its US government search service;
searching for products by color and more!
- Yahoo
Asks Web Searchers How Clean Are The Search Results
Gary Price captured a screen shot of Yahoo polling search users on how clean
the Yahoo search results page looks. The question asked is "How clean and
uncluttered do you find this page?" With a five point scale, 1 being cluttered
and 5 being clean. View the full screen capture by clicking here….
- The
Dilbert Google Logo Story
Remember the Google Dilbert logos? If you do, and you want to read the story
behind it, check out Doug Edwards’ post at Xooglers. Doug also notes some
controversy over Google selling coffee mugs (Danny’s posted pictures of one
here) with the Dilbert logo. You can see the old story about Google on at
InternetNews.com from May 20, 2002. Edwards begins the tale of Google logo
changes here and talks at the end about how recently the Dilbert strip poked
fun at Google. The story of Google and Dilbert continues to this second
installment, ending with today’s post….
- Google’s
UK Chief Kate Burns Leaving For More Family Time
Last time I saw Kate Burns last year, she was about six months pregnant. Now
Google managing director of UK, Benelux and Ireland is leaving the company to
spend more time with that growing family. Best of luck, Kate! More details in
Burns set to leave Google director role from Brand Republic….
- MSN’s
Hand Crafted Results
"MSN Hiring People to Hand Code SERPS" at SEO Blackhat is a nice catch from
the MSN Search jobs page talking about needing people to help hand-craft
results. Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped reacts with "Oh my." I react
with "Hallelujah."…
- Google
Relaunches US Government Search, Now With Personalized Home Page
Google launched its search engine for US government information, informally
known as Google Uncle Sam, many years ago. It’s been running since at least
1999. But now the service has received an update giving it a personalized home
page and formal branding as Google US Government Search….
- SEMPO &
Fair Issac Team Up To Study Click Fraud
ClickZ reports that SEMPO and Fair Issac have teamed up to study PPC click
fraud. Fair Issac is the organization that developed FICO scores to measure of
credit risk, a service used by most credit agencies. ClickZ explains that the
study will use several "artificial intelligence methods to determine the
extent of click fraud and to develop a solution for the search marketing
industry," developed by Fair Issac….
- Yahoo
Sued For Trademark Infringement Using Google AdWords
DenverPost.com reports that Yahoo was sued by lovecity.com for bidding on the
lovecity.com trademark in Google AdWords. Reportedly, Yahoo placed bids on "www.lovecity"
and "lovecity.com," so when someone searches on those phrases, Yahoo Personals
would come up in the search ads on Google and Google’s search ad network. I
tried a search on www.lovecity and saw two competing dating services but not
Yahoo, come up in the sponsored listings section. I actually find it humorous
that Yahoo would go this far, only because the left hand does not talk to the
right hand….
- Google
Buys Headquarters For $319 Million
Last night I was notified of a SEC Filing showing Google has entered into an
agreement to purchase their headquarters (The GooglePlex) for $319 million. Of
the $319 million, $10 million was already placed into escrow on June 9. Google
is technically buying 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway and 1200-1500 Crittenden Lane,
Mountain View, California, about 978,066 square feet of land. In addition to
the $319 million price tag, Google has to pay $315,000 per month to the city;
$140,000 per month for ground lease and $175,000 per month for rent with rent
increases of 4 percent to 7 percent. More details…
- Netscape
Aims To Be Digg 2.0, Slashdot 3.0 With Community News Model
I was never a big Slashdot fan, given that I found the conversations about
search often had comments from people who didn’t know what they were talking
about. Digg came along and hardly won me over. Having one of my stories Dugg
over there reinforced the idea that Digg was Slashdot 2.0 in all the wrong
ways. Now AOL is trying to revive its flagging Netscape brand by turning it
into a Digg-clone or Slashdot 3.0, if you will. You’ll find the new version
here….
- SEO for
All the News That’s Fit to Search
The New York Times has one of the most popular news web sites, but until this
year that was largely because of the strength of its brand. After its
acquisition of About.com, the Times embarked on an aggressive campaign to make
its web site more search friendly, a complex process that’s paid off with
notable traffic gains for the company. Today’s SearchDay article, Getting The
New York Times More Search Engine Friendly, takes a look behind the scenes at
how the Times and its vice president of enterprise search, Marshall Simmonds,
pulled it off….
- New
Yahoo Publisher Network Changes Focus on New Publishers
Yahoo Publisher Network released a new version of the control panel today
which focuses on helping a new user get the most out of Yahoo, both within and
outside the Publisher Network realm. For new publishers many how-tos, help
guides and demos were added. But also included is a new Publisher Services tab
which promotes other areas of Yahoo….
- Google’s
Complete Plays Of Shakespeare Less Than Compleat
The Google blog ‘Inside Google Book Search’ announced in No holds bard that it
is now possible to explore Shakespeare with Google – The complete plays of
Shakespeare now at your fingertips. Well no, not exactly. I’ve spent some time
playing around with this resource and it’s less than impressive for a number
of reasons….
- Yahoo,
MapQuest Bring Where 2.0 Back to Earth
Excuse the pun, of sorts. Many of the speakers and panelists over the past
couple of days at Where 2.0 demonstrated a range of cool technologies or
whiz-bang features that probably don’t have a hope of becoming breakout, mass
market consumer applications. That doesn’t mean they aren’t interesting or
useful. But the question is: where will these companies be in 5 years?…
Other Things We Read, Didn’t Blog But You Might Want To Read…
- An
Inside View From a Google Employee, Google Blogoscoped (?Is google
concerned about a lot of the fraud that goes on with Adsense??, he answers:
?Like you wouldn?t believe. …. The problem with [click-fraud] is just that
it?s a very, very hard issue to fix.")
-
Is There Money In Mash-Ups?, Forbes
- Purple Brain Touts Yahoo Site,
Promo Magazine
- TagFetch
Searches the Tagosphere, Micro Persuasion
- Jux2 Meta Search
Engine Adds MSN Results and Firefox Extension, Search Engine Journal
- The
Removed Google Groups Posts, Google Blogoscoped
Links to Rankings – A Test Of Wills, Link Building Blog
Google Maps Table Tilt Control Solution, Search Engine Roundtable (tilt
your laptop, watch Google Earth tilt with it)
- Report: Use of
Behavioral Targeting to Double, ClickZ
- 5 Steps to PPC Ads That Work,
Performancing
-
1000 Songs in Your Toilet, Good Morning Silicon Valley (iPod james college
toilet. Nothing to do with search, but you need a little humor break now and
then)
-
Why is there no British Google? A top British politician…, Silicon
Valley Watcher
-
Gartner: Google Likely To Buy Another Online Office App, InformationWeek
(That’s sort of obvious. Heck, they’ll probably a bunch of things)
- Photo Image
Site Referrals Valuable, Natural Search Blog
-
Yahoo! Hack Day tomorrow, and some of my inspirations, Chad Dickerson
Encoding RSS Titles, Jame Holderness (via
Title
Pain, Ongoing)
-
Organic
SEO — What Does it Really Mean?, Search Engine Guide
-
How To
Get A Huge Site Indexed On MSN, Search Engine Roundtable
- Blinkx.TV : More
Video Than Google, Yahoo or YouTube, Search Engine Journal
TagFetch Searches the Tagosphere, Micro Persuasion
-
Offline Conversion Tracking and SEM, ClickZ
Fun with GeoRSS, Directions Magazine