IndustryDaily SearchCast, June 6, 2006: Yahoo MyWeb Gets New Look, More Features; Google Spreadsheets Want Your Tabular Data; The ODP Rigs The Alaskan Governor Election On Google; Baidu’s Kickin’ Commercial & More!

Daily SearchCast, June 6, 2006: Yahoo MyWeb Gets New Look, More Features; Google Spreadsheets Want Your Tabular Data; The ODP Rigs The Alaskan Governor Election On Google; Baidu's Kickin' Commercial & More!

Today’s search podcast covers Yahoo’s revamped MyWeb bookmarking service;
Google’s shot across the Microsoft Excel bow with Google Spreadsheets; Google
faces another book scanning lawsuit; think less of Google and it may think more
of your web site; Google asks if you like its ads; Baidu’s cool TV commercial;
the Open Directory keeps a former Alaskan governor in office on Google and more!

Tune-in by listening to this
MP3
file
, listening via WebmasterRadio
at 11:30am Eastern and repeated at 2pm Eastern Tuesday through Friday, via our
Odeo channel or through
iTunes via this

link
(or use alternative iTunes instructions explained
here) or
though our Yahoo Podcasts

channel
. Need more help tuning in live or finding the chat room? See the
Daily
SearchCast FAQ
.

Below are links to items discussed:


  • Facelift, New Features For Yahoo’s MyWeb Bookmark Service

    Yahoo’s MyWeb bookmark service has gotten a facelift and new features to make
    it easier than before for people to find what others are saving and sharing on
    the service. Yahoo MyWeb Gets New Look, Easier Browsing & Viewing Features in
    today’s SearchDay from me covers the changes and revisits how the system works
    in general….
  • Google
    Spreadsheets To Launch Shortly

    Google is to release a new Google Spreadsheets product on Tuesday, allowing
    anyone with a web browser to create and interact with spreadsheet information.
    The product will be a limited test release, which basically means first come,
    first served until Google shuts off the flow. Want it? Then watch Google Labs.
    Google Spreadsheets was planned to be posted there at 6am Pacific time
    Tuesday, when I talked with the company about the service earlier today….
  • Windows
    Live Mail’s Active Search: Gmail-Like Contextual Ads Next To Your Mail

    Two years ago, Gmail launched with the idea of showing ads contextually based
    on your email. Soon after, the shit hit the fan, with one California state
    senator even backing a special anti-Gmail law that failed to pass. Fast
    forward to last week, with Microsoft rolling out Active Search within Windows
    Live Mail. Just like Gmail, it will deliver ads based on what you’re reading.
    Unlike Gmail, there’s been no privacy freakout that I’ve seen….
  • Mark
    Fletcher Leaves Ask.com & Bloglines

    Mark Fletcher, the founder of the most popular Web base RSS reader, Bloglines,
    announced that he is leaving the company. On February 8th 2005 Ask Jeeves (Ask.com)
    acquired Bloglines and continued to add features and resources to the service.
    Just last week Ask.com launched a blog & feed search feature with the help of
    the Bloglines team. Mark is leaving not just to spend more time with his
    family, but more because he wants to start up new companies and help other
    startups succeed. Mark says he is confident in leaving Bloglines in the
    Ask.com hands, read Mark’s full moving…
  • Topix
    Adds Free Local Classifieds

    Joining the free classifieds fray, news aggregator Topix.net has added the
    ability to post listings on the site for housing, jobs, private party items,
    services, events and “local shops.” Here’s the ad-entry interface and here’s
    an example of where and how the ads appear. This program has been going on
    quietly for a few months but is now gaining notice….
  • Kozoru
    Opens Public Beta Testing Of Byoms

    Kozoru opens public beta testing of byoms (build your own mobile search)
    today. I mentioned this was coming last week. Today, I’ve spent some time
    exploring some of the byoms that are available, and creating my own. I found
    the system easy to use, reasonably intuitive, fast and generally effective. As
    a searcher, it’s going to be something that will be a useful addition to the
    search tools available; both the ready made byoms and more importantly those
    that you make yourself….
  • broadband
  • New
    Search Patent Applications: June 5, 2006 – Taking Care of Web Decay, Dead
    Links, and Parked Domains

    Yahoo provides an XML based bid management tool, and a way to maintain a
    persistent link to dynamic information between a browser and specific web
    pages. Microsoft marries email and search to provide a way store and track
    queries, and also introduces a method of calculating similarity between pages
    without the computational overhead of a Latent Semantic Indexing methodology.
    IBM aims to improve text search by preprocessing and maintaining relationship
    data between documents, delivers a means of spellchecking URLs, describes a
    process for personalizing web pages which include personalized search results,
    and introduces a method to rank pages while accounting…
  • French
    Lawsuit Over Google Book Search

    French publisher sues Google for piracy from AFP covers how a French
    publishing group becomes the third to sue Google over its book scanning
    program. La Martiniere alleges the indexing project violates copyright.
    Association of American Publishers Sues Google over Library Digitization Plan
    and Google’s Library Scanning Project Heads to Court (action by the Authors
    Guild) covers the two other suits that I know of, which we’ve blogged about
    before….
  • Google
    Stops New Ranking Lawuit With Anti-SLAPP Threat; Previous KinderStart Suit
    Continues Despite This

    Google Avoids Another Lawsuit Over Rankings (For Now)–Roberts v. Google from
    Eric Goldman at his Technology & Marketing Law Blog looks at how a case
    involving rankings on Google got dismissed before going to trial, thanks in
    large part to a counter-suit that Google threatened….
  • Google
    Indexing Fewer Pages: Signs Of The Google Crawling Sandbox?

    Aaron Wall over at SEOBook.com has an excellent write up on the recent
    indexing phenomenon at Google. Google has been indexing fewer and fewer pages
    and webmasters are trying to figure out how to get more of their pages indexed
    and found by searchers. Aaron posted a blog entry he named The Google Crawling
    Sandbox….
  • A
    Current List Of Google’s Robots

    What Bots Does Google Have These Days? from Ben Pfeiffer on my Search Engine
    Roundtable blog lists the names of the current spiders/robots/bots Google has
    roaming the web. The list includes the classic web spider Googlebot, the
    AdSense spider MediaBot, Google’s image spider ImageBot, the AdWords spider
    AdsBot, Google’s RSS feed spider Feedfetcher-Google, and Googlebot-Mobile for
    the spiders that go mobile. It’s a great short post by Ben while I was
    away….

  • Googlebowling A Reality?

    Googlebowling is a term used to describe the method of knocking out a page
    from the Google search results. Googlebowling is conducted by linking to a
    particular site from sites within bad neighborhoods. Rand over at SEOMoz.org
    posted recent information he learned about Googlebowling while at SES London a
    week ago. To successfully deploy Googlebowling, Rand writes that you need to
    “use patterns that would show that the site has “participated” in the
    program.” That means, you need to make sure to point the same “spammy” links
    to the other sites linking to the site you want to penalize. If…
  • Google
    Asks If AdWords Is Useful With Feedback Buttons

    Philipp Lenssen reports that Google is testing feedback buttons near AdWords
    ads. The feedback buttons asks, “Was this link useful?” You can then click on
    either a Yes or No button to provide the feedback. I was unable to duplicate
    this on my browsers, but interesting nevertheless….
  • Google
    Testing Expandable “More Google” Links On Home Page & More

    Philipp Lenssen reports that Google has been testing an expandable “More you
    can do with Google” link on the Google.com home page….

  • Searching With Invisible Tabs
  • Get Our
    Search News At The Top Of Google & Other New Subscribed Links
  • How To
    Contact Yahoo Search

    Last week, Yahoo posted helpful contact information at the Yahoo Search blog.
    Yahoo has a new contact form that can be accessed at http://help.yahoo.com/search/feedback
    and completed to submit feedback and questions to Yahoo. In addition, Yahoo
    improved the Yahoo Search Help section and also posted a useful Webmaster
    Resources section….
  • Yahoo’s
    CEO Terry Semel’s Salary Adjusted To One Dollar

    Bloomberg reports that Yahoo CEO Terry Semel will soon be earning a base
    salary of $1 per year. The rest of his income will come from a bonus and
    retention plan with options for nine million shares. Last year, Semel earned
    $600,000 as a base salary. The change to taking only $1 has him joining the
    “low” base salary ranks of Google’s two cofounder Larry Page and Sergey Brin
    and CEO Eric Schmidt….
  • UK
    Journalists Boycott Yahoo Services

    America’s Network reports that journalists in the UK are set to boycott
    Yahoo’s services and products. The boycott is in protest of how Yahoo has
    handled some matters in China, such as allegations that the yahoo sent
    information about journalists to the Chinese authorities….
  • Baidu,
    Chinese Search Engine TV Ad

    Baidu, the Chinese based search engine, launched a new TV commercial. The
    commercial was translated and posted over at ValleyWag.com and can also be
    watched at YouTube. The commercial has an ending tag line that reads something
    like; “with Baidu, you can ‘find’ whoever you want to search for.” Check out
    more of the details and the video at ValleyWag….
  • Funny
    Example Of Why DMOZ Titles Are Bad In Search Results

    Threadwatch posted a funny example of why DMOZ (ODP) directory titles should
    not always be used in the Google search results page. Search for Tony Knowles
    and you will see the top two results read, “Tony Knowles for Governor” and
    “Governor Tony Knowles” respectively. Yes, Tony Knowles is running to be the
    Governor Alaska but is not yet the governor there. If you click through to the
    second result, the one that reads “Governor Tony Knowles”, and points to
    http://gov.state.ak.us/, you will notice the actual title of the page is
    “Governor Frank Murkowski,” the current Governor of Alaska. So where…


  • Super Awesome, Super Bad Moustache!!! Low Reserve!

Resources

The 2023 B2B Superpowers Index

whitepaper | Analytics The 2023 B2B Superpowers Index

8m
Data Analytics in Marketing

whitepaper | Analytics Data Analytics in Marketing

10m
The Third-Party Data Deprecation Playbook

whitepaper | Digital Marketing The Third-Party Data Deprecation Playbook

1y
Utilizing Email To Stop Fraud-eCommerce Client Fraud Case Study

whitepaper | Digital Marketing Utilizing Email To Stop Fraud-eCommerce Client Fraud Case Study

1y