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!
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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!