The Search Engine Report - Number 116
Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan recaps top search engine stories from June 2006.
Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan recaps top search engine stories from June 2006.
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In This Issue
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+ SEW Forums Turns Two
+ Google’s Eric Schmidt In Featured Session At SES San Jose
+ Top Stories
+ More From The Search Engine Watch Blog
+ Daily SearchCast: Search News Via Podcast
+ Our Search Newsletters & Feeds
+ About The Newsletter
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SEW Forums Turns Two
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Our Search Engine Watch Forums turned two years old this month. We recently surpassed the 10,000 members mark and have well over 80,000 posts on search engine optimization and the search marketing industry. All of the SEW Forums staff would just like to say thank you to the entire search marketing community for supporting the forums and helping us grow to this point. We’re looking forward to the year ahead. If you haven’t been by, check out the forums and our many discussions. And come join the celebration in our forum thread, Happy 2nd Birthday SEW Forums!
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Google’s Eric Schmidt In Featured Session At SES San Jose
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I’m very pleased to announce that Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt will be in a featured session at our upcoming Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2006 show this August.
“A Conversation With Eric Schmidt” will happen from 10am to 10:45am on August 9, the third day of our four day show. During the session, I’ll be talking with Eric about how Google is growing and dealing with challenges and issues in search, especially given its stature as the leader in the space.
You’ll find full details about the event at the SES San Jose 2006 web site. We’ve also got a number of search marketing & networking events beyond San Jose, including some topic-specific ones. Here’s our full list:
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Top Stories
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Below is a recap of major articles from our daily SearchDay newsletter and important Search Engine Watch Blog postings since the last newsletter. Want to receive these stories daily or via RSS/feed? See the Search Engine Watch Newsletters & Web Feeds page for sign-up instructions.
=== July 5, 2006 ===
Report: Advertisers Lost $800 Million To Click Fraud Last Year – A new click fraud report claims 14.6 percent of all clicks and $800 million worth of fraudulent clicks were charged to advertisers last year. See also:
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Google’s Spam Score Details Shown? – Someone’s come across a cached URL in the Google results that seems to reveal some Google ranking criteria. See also:
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Google To Launch Book Search Service In China – Google will be launching an on-line book search service in China. Google signed agreements with publishing houses, Tsinghua University Press and the Children’s Publishing House. See also:
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Windows Live Local Integrates ‘Call For Free’ Into All Business Listings – “Click To Call” functionality has now been integrated into Windows Live Local, letting searchers call for free to businesses listed.
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KinderStart.com Case May Proceed To Court? – The KinderStart.com case, a suit over a site losing rankings in Google, might proceed to trial.
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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 and more from other companies, as well. See also:
=== June 29, 2006 ===
Yahoo Second In Market Share In China – TMCnet.com reports that Google is in third place in China, with 13.2% share. Yahoo is in second place with 21.1% market share and Baidu leads with 43.9%. TMCnet sources this information from the Beijing Modern Business Daily on page 1 from the Tuesday, June 27, 2006 edition. See also:
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Google Launches Checkout, not the Rumored GBuy – Google has launched Google Checkout, a payment system for online retailers that’s tightly integrated with Google AdWords. Checkout isn’t the rumored PayPal killer, but it does offer some compelling features for both merchants and online shoppers alike. See also:
=== June 28, 2006 ===
Google Loses French Lawsuit Over Vuitton Trademark – Google lost an appeal in a French lawsuit involving the Louis Vuitton trademark and must pay a $375,000 fine. See also: Yahoo Sued For Trademark Infringement Using Google AdWords.
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Digging into the News – Social news site Digg has expanded from technology news into broad-based coverage of many popular topics, with stories ranked according to their popularity among Digg users.
=== June 27, 2006 ===
New Players in Travel Search – Travel search engines, which allow you to book directly with suppliers, have the potential to completely disrupt the status-quo. Here’s a look at two new highly disruptive services that offer great advice for travelers.
=== June 26, 2006 ===
MSN Talks Spam Defenses; Takes Weekends Off From Indexing – This morning I uncovered two threads at WebmasterWorld that provide information on MSN from spam defense to when search indexes get updated….[MORE”. See also: MSN Search Requires Unique Robots.txt Files In HTTPS Vs. HTTP Cases & MSN’s Hand Crafted Results (Fake? – Shame On Me!)
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Google Blamed For Indexing Student Test Scores & Social Security Numbers – Catawba County Schools in North Carolina gained a temporary injunction to remove personal student data that ended up in the search engine. See also: Follow-Up: School Couldn’t Reach Google Until Injunction Filed.
=== June 23, 2006 ===
Ask.com Too Strict With Child & Sex Keywords? – A search on Ask.com for [laws against pedophilia” brings back a message that reads, “This query does not comply with Ask.com Terms of Service.” Is the service too strict on what you can search for? See also: Ask.com Removes “Legacy Filters” To Enable Pedophilia Keyword Search.
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Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Google AdWords Scheduling/Day Parting Now Live – SEO Training- Is It Worthwhile? – Age of Links – Quality and Authority: Relevance Alone Is Not Enough, and more.
=== June 22, 2006 ===
Searching for Critical Acclaim – Want to know what the critics say before watching that movie, buying that book or downloading that music? Here’s how to find treasure-troves of reviews, quickly and easily.
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Google Partners With Adobe For Toolbar Distribution In Shockwave, Other Product To Be Named – Both Adobe and Google have announced a new deal where Adobe will distribute the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer as part of Adobe Macromedia Shockwave Player downloads. That was supposed to begin yesterday, and bundling with other Adobe products will happen in the future.
=== June 21, 2006 ===
Google AdSense Tests CPA Ads, Commission Based Ads – Some AdSense publishers have been invited to partake in AdSense ads that pay based on action, like an affiliate network. See also: eBay AdContext To Promote Auctions Via Contextual Based Ads.
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The Search & Branding Tug-Of-War, Again – From the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival, news once again of traditional ad buyers worried that search is going to rob their budgets while search engines planning to do that theft try to distract with a “search is a brand thing” message.
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Hacking Flickr – You can do a lot more with Yahoo’s popular photo sharing site Flickr than simply upload your own photos and browse images created by other users. A new book in O’Reilly’s popular ‘Hacks’ series shows you how.
=== June 20, 2006 ===
Who’s Who in Local Search – Although the major services get most attention, there are dozens of players in the local search space and lots of opportunities for search marketers use to highly targeted services to reach users looking for local products and services.
=== June 16, 2006 ===
Bill Gates To Work Part Time at Microsoft in 2008 – Bill Gates has given up his “chief software architect” role now and will be stepping down to be a part time employee and chairman in July 2008.
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AdWords Ad Scheduling Officially Launches – Google AdWords officially launched their new ad scheduling, enabling advertisers the ability to schedule the appearance of their ads based on both time of day and day of the week.
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Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Marshall Simmonds, the NYTimes & Acceptable Cloaking – What Are The 200 Signals Google Uses To Rank Pages? – CMS and SEO – An Unhappy Relation – Strategy for Domains In Multiple Languages – Is There Really a Google Sandbox? and more.
=== June 15, 2006 ===
Getting The New York Times More Search Engine Friendly – Online newspapers have often ignored search engines, or viewed them with mistrust, relying on the power of their brands to drive traffic. That attitude is changing dramatically at the New York Times, and with powerful effect.
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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.
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Netscape Aims To Be Digg 2.0, Slashdot 3.0 With Community News Model – AOL is trying to revive its flagging Netscape brand by turning it into a Digg-clone or Slashdot 3.0, if you will, a community-built news portal.
=== June 14, 2006 ===
Understanding Searcher Behavior – Searchers interact with search engines in a variety of ways, and understanding searcher behavior is an increasingly important aspect of effective search marketing.
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Looking At Links After Looking At Patents – “Bill Slawski Interview” over at SEO Buzz Box is well worth a read. Aaron Pratt’s got a great set of questions that he puts to Bill, who in turn has very clear, good responses that show how the original Google notion of links as votes has become complicated for both Google and search marketers. See also:
=== June 13, 2006 ===
MySpace Looking To Auction Search To Google, Microsoft or Yahoo – MySpace-owner News Corp’s Chief Operating Officer Peter Chermin said MySpace plans to “auction off our search business of of the three biggest, Google, Yahoo and MSN, and see the best we can get.” See also: SimplyHired Powers MySpace Jobs.
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Google Earth: An Emerging ‘Geobrowser’ – Google Earth is more than a way to get maps. An entire community has grown around it and is getting stronger. See also:
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Search Companies Energetically Seeking Electricity – The Wall Street Journal reports that the search companies, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Ask and possibly Google are looking to find cheap electricity to power all the computers and hardware that power the companies by moving to remote locations. See also:
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A Real Estate Vertical Search Roundup, Part 2 – The conclusion of our roundup of a number of the most popular new real estate search verticals. See also:
=== June 12, 2006 ===
Google GBuy Launch Later This Month To Challenge PayPal? – Google Payments may be expanded for any merchant to use outside of Google Base by the end of this month. See also: Schmidt Talks On Staying In China, GBuy & More.
=== June 9, 2006 ===
Microsoft Expands Windows Live Book Search With Two Universities & Submission Service – Microsoft announced that the University of California and University of Toronto Libraries will be participating in the Windows Live Book Search program….[MORE”
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Google Paper Explains Listening To Your TV Can Help It Put Ads & Info On Your Computer – There are many people discussing a recent patent Google was awarded for picking up on ambient audio from your TV and pairing those sounds to your computer to serve up ads based on what you are watching
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Google Calls On Users To Lobby For Net Neutrality – Google cofounder Sergey Brin might not have been able to lobby all the US senators he wanted earlier this week to stop a bill that threatens net neutrality. But Google still has a big stick to wave — its users. See also: Google Warns U.S. Legislators On Anti-Trust Complaints Over Net Neutrality.
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Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: What Top 5 Skills Would You Study to Become a Better SEO? – Brin Says Google Compromised Principles – Is Reciprocal Linking Dead – June 2006: Start of the Traditional Summer Slump, and more.
=== June 8, 2006 ===
Look Out Wikipedia, Here Comes Yahoo Answers! – New stats add fuel to the idea that Yahoo Answers is perhaps becoming a social interacting phenomenon like YouTube or MySpace. A look at the service’s growth and how it works. The longer version of this story for Search Engine Watch members goes into more depth about how Yahoo is building traffic for Yahoo Answers plus how search marketers can appropriately tap into the area. See also: Yahoo Answers Launches “Ask the Planet 2006” Campaign & Google Answers: Ask Whatever You Like, Except About Google.
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More From The SEW Blog
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Below are posts from the Search Engine Watch Blog since the last newsletter and not mentioned above. Want to keep up on daily news from the blog? Visit the home page or subscribe to the blog feed. Note that references to “I” may becoming from any of the Search Engine Watch staff who post to the blog.
Interactive Review Of SEOBook’s SEO Firefox Extension – Aaron Wall over at SEO Book released a Firefox extension for SEOs. The Firefox extension allows you to see on the Google and Yahoo search result pages the PageRank, the age, the links, the .edu links the .gov links, the del.icio.us numbers and Technorati rank….[MORE”
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SEOMoz’s Keyword Difficulty Tool – The keyword difficulty tool at SEOmoz has been updated. The tool tells you how competitive a keyword is to rank for….[MORE”
=== July 3, 2006 ===
Ending Click Fraud with Pay-Per-Percentage – An interesting new paper from the folks at Microsoft Research covers a type of advertising approach selling percentages of impressions said to be “immune to both click fraud and impression fraud” and would use something called “pre-fix match” instead of broad match….[MORE”
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New York Times Looks At Google’s Hardware & Infrastructure – A New York Times article has a detailed analysis of Google’s infrastructure and discussion with Urs Hvlzle, senior vice president for operations at Google….[MORE”
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Google’s Non Search Products A Flop – BusinessWeek reports that when Google launches a new non-search product, the competition “shivers,” but Google has yet to lead in market share for any of those non-search products….[MORE”
=== Jun. 30, 2006 ===
Googleplex Irvine & “AdSense Audio” For Radio Ads – A report on a visit to the Googleplex Irvine and “Google AdSense Audio,” a method of “dynamically generate and change commercial content according to demographic and what is currently going on in the geographic area of radio stations”….[MORE”
=== June 29, 2006 ===
Google Video Adds New Features – Google Video is letting now letting users add comments, labels and ratings to any video on the site. Yes, tagging by any other name….[MORE”
=== June 28, 2006 ===
Google and Yahoo Come to the Aid of Craigslist – Craigslist is being sued under federal housing discrimination law for allowing the posting of allegedly discriminatory ads seeking certain types or classes of roommates and tenants. Google, AOL, Yahoo, Amazon and other online firms recently filed what’s called a “friend of the court” brief in support of Craigslist in the matter….[MORE”
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‘Point and Search’ on Japanese Cellphones – The NY Times covers “Point and Click” mobile local search in Japan on GPS-enabled mobile phones using technology from American firm GeoVector. See also ‘Point and Search’ Redux.
=== June 27, 2006 ===
Image Database To Fight Online Child Porn – The AP reports that AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, EarthLink, NetZero and Juno are teaming up to fight child pornography. They are pooling together $1 million to build a database of pornographic images of children and software to match the image database with similar matches on their own networks….[MORE”
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Microsoft Re-Launches adCenter Labs Again – Been hearing about the “new” Microsoft adCenter Labs tools this week? That’s because Microsoft has done another round of publicity on them after initially launching them earlier this month. Our past recap is here and here. See also: Microsoft Demographics Prediction Tool Interactive Review.
=== June 26, 2006 ===
The SEO Event Google Calendar – Aaron Wall posted a very useful SEO Event & Conference Calendar using the Google Calendar platform….[MORE”
=== June 25, 2006 ===
France’s Gioportail Mapping Site: La Demande C’est Fantastique! – The French answer to Google Earth, the indirectly government funded Geoportail, launched Friday and was immediately overwhelmed with visits from eager French citoyens (citizens) and other curious would-be users….[MORE”
=== June 23, 2006 ===
Yahoo Says Searchers are Better Patients – New research from Yahoo tells us that the majority of people who searched for health information subsequently visited their doctor (61%) and that 71% of these folks went equipped with pointed, action oriented questions….[MORE”
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PhotoBucket Has 44% Share of Photo Sharing Sites: Beating Yahoo & Flickr – The Hitwise blog posted what I found to be surprising statistics on what is the most popular photo sharing site. I would have thought Yahoo Photos or Flickr would be a one of the most popular services, but it looks like PhotoBucket has almost 44% of the share….[MORE”. See also: Yahoo Photos Upgraded, Beta Available & Google Introduces Picasa Web Albums
=== June 22, 2006 ===
Google Testing Ad Supported Premium Video – Google is running a test offering about 2,000 premium videos available for free streaming viewing, inserting a persistent banner-type ad at the top of the screen and showing an additional post-roll video ad once the premium content has finished streaming….[MORE”. See also: Google Video Movers & Shakers (AKA Zeitgeist).
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Video Search, Smut and Censorship – Earlier this week, ZDNet News published an article discussing the presence and availability of explicit content on video search sites like, YouTube, Yahoo Video and Google Video. See also: Child Porn Suit Dropped Against Google & New York State Sends Warning On Google Video Service.
=== June 21, 2006 ===
Nielsen//NetRatings Stats Keep Google On Top In May 2006 – Last month, Nielsen/NetRatings had Google hitting the 50 percent mark of percentage of searches handled in the United States (when rounded up from 49.8%). This month, Google slips back down very slightly to 49 percent….[MORE”. See also: Hitwise: Google Nearing 60% Of Queries In US.
=== June 20, 2006 ===
Microsoft, Google & Others Call For Unified Federal Privacy Protection – Microsoft, Google and other tech companies, are unified federal approach to consumer privacy….[MORE”
=== June 19, 2006 ===
Ask.com Sponsors NBC’s Treasure Hunters – Ask.com backing contestants in a new NBC show named Treasure Hunters….[MORE”
=== June 16, 2006 ===
Sibastien Billard Asks Danica Brinton Questions About Ask – Danica Brinton, head of International Product Management and Localization for Ask.com, was interviewed about the blog search by Sibastien Billard very recently….[MORE”
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Schmidt Talks On Staying In China, GBuy & More – Conde Nast Portfolio, a new business magazine out next year, landed a nice coup of having Eric Schmidt speak yesterday at its launch party. Here are some things worth highlighting to me….[MORE”. See also: Schmidt: Google Still A Tech Company Despite The Billboards.
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Riya To Expand Into Web Image Search – Riya will expand to a web image search service. Currently, Riya allows you to upload a photo, define the photo as matching a particular person and then it tries to scan other photos to figure out if other photos in your collecton match that person….[MORE”
=== June 15, 2006 ===
Big.com Gets Ask Results, Toolbar – I mentioned how useful Big.com was back in October, making it easy for those with low vision to see things more clearly thanks to its big fonts. Brad Haugaard, the project manager over there, dropped a note to say there’s been some changes to improve the service….[MORE”
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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….[MORE”
=== June 14, 2006 ===
Google’s Complete Plays Of Shakespeare Less Than Compleat – It is now possible to explore Shakespeare with Google, says the company: “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….[MORE”
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ShopWiki Launches Search By Color – ShopWiki this morning launched its ‘Search by Color’ feature which lets consumers quickly and easily filter search results by color….[MORE”
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Japan To Build Own Search Engine With 30 Japanese Companies & Government Help – Japan is going to be building out their own search engine after conducting a focus group on the idea….[MORE”
=== June 13, 2006 ===
New Flavor Of Expand & Collapse Results – Google is now testing a new expand and collapse feature within its search results….[MORE” See also Google Images Home Page Design Test.
=== June 12, 2006 ===
‘Search: Thy Name Is Google’ – A new report on search behavior point out that everyone can do better in more efficiently providing relevant results to users. However, the report confirms that until something better and more relevant comes along, for now “Search, They Name Is Google”….[MORE”. See also: The Downside Of Google?.
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Reflecting On Direct Hit, The Google Rival – Gary Culliss, formerly of Direct Hit, talks cashing out of search early on back when Direct Hit and Google both started….[MORE”
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Google Founder “Ron Google” Helps Jessica Alba At MTV Movie Awards – A clip from last night’s MTV Movie Awards shows Jessica Alba having “Ron Google,” the inventor of Google, comment on if she’s really that popular….[MORE”
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MSN Windows Live Launches News & Local Live Answers – The MSN Search blog announced that MSN Search now supports news specific and local specific “live answers”….[MORE”
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World Cup: Google Does The Logo Thing; Yahoo & Ask Have Smart Shortcuts – Google’s sporting a special World Cup-version of its logo in honor of the start of the World Cup today, while Yahoo and Ask are offering special results that come up after World Cup-related searches. A round-up of what’s going on….[MORE”. See also: US, UK Searchers & The World Cup
=== June 8, 2006 ===
New Link Building Guide – There’s a new guide going over how to build links in 2006….[MORE”
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The Top 100 Companies Searched Most On Hoover’s Web site – Hoover’s released the Hoover’s 100, the top 100 companies searched most on at the Hoover’s web site. The top ten are; Wal-Mart, Apple, Proctor & Gamble, Dell, Microsoft, GE, Starbucks, Johnson & Johnson, Google and IBM, respectively. To view the full top 100, visit The Hoover’s 100.
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Daily SearchCast: Search News Via Podcast
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Want to keep up with the latest in search news while you’re on the go? Try our podcast, The Daily SearchCast. It’s a 10-15 minute recap of the previous day’s news. How to tune-in?
Here are the last two days’ worth of shows:
You can find all shows from previous days listed on the Daily SearchCast home page. Just select any file to download it and listed on your computer or digital audio device.
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Our Search Newsletters & Feeds
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News each day, throughout the day, alerts of new discussion threads from our Search Engine Watch Forums and more — we have a newsletter or feed that covers all of these. See our Search Engine Newsletters & Web Feeds for a full rundown on everything we offer, as well as special buttons to let you subscribe via news readers such as Rojo, My MSN, Bloglines, Feedster, Newsgator, Pluck and My Yahoo. Thanks to FeedBurner for providing our feed tracking and management services!
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About The Search Engine Report
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The Search Engine Report is a monthly newsletter that covers developments with search engines and changes to the Search Engine Watch web site, https://www.searchenginewatch.com/. You may pass this newsletter on to others, as long either part is sent in its entirety. Please note that long URLs may break into two lines in some mail readers. Cut and paste, should this occur.
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