Featured posts from the Search Engine Watch blog, as well as our customary headlines from around the web. If you’re not familiar with our blog, click on any of the links below, or visit the blog’s home page at http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/.
From The SEW Blog…
- Google Working To Stop Lawsuits Over YouTubeThe Financial Times reports that Eric Schmidt’s Google is running from media company to media company trying to offer upfront cash, in sums of “tens of millions of dollars,” to slow and “halt” the threat they pose to YouTube. FT.com says that Schmidt met with CBS, Viacom, Time Warner, NBC Universal, News Corp and others recently. There are some more details over at paidContent….
- Yahoo Sending Panama Invites OutI reported at the Search Engine Roundtable this morning that Yahoo! Search Marketing Version 2.0 (Panama) Invites Going Out. I was one of the first to be invited to upgrade to the Panama release, but outside of my group, it appears that now others who have requested the upgrade are now receiving them. Wondering what the process for upgrading is? Well, (1) it takes about 8 hours for the upgrade to happen, so it while you do not need to make changes to your account and (2) keyword listings with zero impressions for past 13 months or zero clicks for…
- Yahoo Asking Users To Rate Usefulness Of Search ResultsSEOdisco has screen captures of Yahoo asking him to rate how useful he finds the first two organic results for his search query. He is asked to rate it on a scale from one to five, one being “not useful” and five being “very useful”. This is not the first time we have seen Yahoo ask people to rate search results, I reported it back in July of this year. In addition, we know Google occasionally asks users to rate the AdWords results….
- How Much Should SEOs EarnRand at SEOMoz has another excellent post named SEO Salaries – How Much Should You Make. He details what he believes SEOs of all calibers should make. Here is a quick snap shot:…
- Ask.com Creates Flash Demo To Explain Why Ask.com “Is Better”Ask.com released a new flash demonstration that goes through all the features of search engine. The purpose of the demo is to illustrate to standard web users, how Ask.com provides easy to use tools and quick “smart answers” to give you a “better” overall search experience. I think they did an excellent job with it, starting the demo off explaining that Ask.com is different, in that they help you “Find” and not just “Search.” The demo is linked to from the Ask.com home page but if you are on a Mac you won’t see it. You will have to go…
- See And Find With QuinturaQuintura is the latest in the line of visual search engines such as Kartoo, Mooter and WebBrain. Quintura basically takes your search term, runs a search and then translates the results into a tag cloud effect on the screen. Users can then simply look at the results (powered by Yahoo) listed under the tag cloud and click on the link as per normal, or they can explore words displayed in the semantic map to focus the query more closely. The results section of the page is not exciting – title, URL, keywords in context and sometimes the size of the…
- GPS, Geotagging, Images and MapsThe NY Times has a long and relatively interesting article on geotagging images and mapping. It primarily discusses Flickr and, to a lesser degree, Google Earth and Picasa and other services such as TripTracker. The article also goes into the geocoding/tagging technology itself. Not discussed in the article is Microsoft’s “Photosynth,” which is an interesting hypothetical application and extension of all this technology. Mapping, images (including video) and local/travel are rapidly coming together in very rich applications, as alternatives to pure text-based online navigation….
- ClickRiver New Pay Per Click Program from AmazonEver wanted to put your ads right on the product page of your competitor’s product at Amazon.com, or wanted your product advertised with something related to it? Now with Amazon’s new pay per click program ClickRiver, now you can. The program is in beta at the moment and through Amazon’s A9 department. You can find out more about the program here and apply to participate in the beta at ClickRiver.com…
- Google Effect Of Domain Name Change Of OwnershipThis morning I wrote Does Change of Domain Name Ownership Hurt Rankings? a question that has been bugging Danny and myself since I wrote Google Effect Of Domain Name Expiration & Change Of Ownership. Well, I now have some webmaster feedback on this that claims that domain name change of ownership, by itself, appears to not have an affect on your rankings….
- Google To Partner With Clear Channel Communications?Business Week’s Steve Rosenbush thinks it is a good idea for Google to partner with Clear Channel Communications. The article explains that Google has been “adding “high profile” radio sales people in New York, Washington, Baltimore, Atlanta, and Chicago.” And Google is known to be working towards embedding ads into radio with recent rumors that Google AdSense For Audio Coming Soon….
- Ask.com Launches Elections Smart AnswersAsk.com launched some new smart answers for the upcoming elections. You can do a search on elections 2006 to see “General Elections are Tuesday, November 7, 2006.” The smart answer also gives you links to the Republican Party and the Democrats web sites. Additional quick links they give within the smart answers include; Analysis by Poll Reports, Race Profiles, Key Races, Key Issues, Races by Issue, and Congressional Districts Map. The additional resources include Candidate Reports, Ballot Items, Campaign Fact Checking, Campaign Funding, and Evaluating Initiatives. Finally, you can also break down by state by searching for New York state…
- Yahoo Launches Yahoo FoodWhat is for breakfast this morning? Well, you can now go to Yahoo Food and find out. Yahoo launched food.yahoo.com that contains “recipes, advice from regional celebrity chefs, video cooking guides and easy-to-use Web tools.” Reuters reports that in early 2007, Yahoo Food will expand to Australia, Britain and Canada, then expand into other global markets later….
- The Interestingness of Social NetworksInterestingness is a great name for a ranking algorithm. It’s what Yahoo’s photo-based social network Flickr uses to show which images the community finds the most “interesting.” Techdirt considers the impact that a couple of recent Yahoo patent applications filed for in February, and published last week (which I wrote about at SEO by the Sea), might have upon the growth of social networks. They reference the thoughts of Thomas Hawk, CEO of Zooomr, who weighs in on the topic in Should Yahoo Own Social Search and Rank in a Web 2.0 World? We’ve seen the major search engines compete…