IndustryThe Search Engine Report – Number 105

The Search Engine Report - Number 105

Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan recaps top search engine stories from July 2005.

In This Issue

+ SES San Jose Next Week!
+ Daily SearchCast: SEW’s New Podcast
+ Top Stories
+ More From The Search Engine Watch Blog
+ About The Newsletter

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SES San Jose Next Week!

Search Engine Strategies show comes to San Jose next week, August 8-11, and there’s lots happening!

Ask Jeeves CEO and director Steve Berkowitz will be doing the keynote conversation with me on August 9. Berkowitz To Keynote SES San Jose at the SES Blog tells you more about the session.

Did I say SES Blog? Yes, it’s now live and designed to help you keep informed about the show. The SES San Jose 2005 Sessions section gives you a rundown on each session of the show. As I wrap-up and confirm a session, I’m letting people know this and telling them a bit more about what to expect. The Attendee Advice section has information on getting more out of the show. Expect even more content to grow on the blog in the weeks ahead.

The full agenda and and more about the show can be found on the SES San Jose 2005 web site itself. There are a ton of new sessions, as well as returning favorites. The conference features speakers from major search engines, along with experts on search marketing.

At the web site, you can also view the entire program at-a-glance or use the session planner to get itineraries designed for those new to search marketing, interested in ad issues, interested in organic/free listings or even what’s new in the Been Before category.

After San Jose, SES comes to Stockholm in October, and the year’s tour ends in Chicago in December. Links to sites about those shows can be found via our Search Engine Strategies site.

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Daily SearchCast: SEW’s New Podcast

Want to keep up with the latest in search news while you’re on the go? Try our new podcast, The Daily SearchCast. It’s a 10-15 minute recap of the previous day’s news. It involves either I or Gary Price doing an off-the-cuff look at the previous day’s search news, accompanied by a guest host from the producers at WebmasterRadio.FM. How to tune-in?

  • Subscribe to our main SEW Blog feed, and you’ll receive the podcasts automatically when we alert readers to them each day.
  • Subscribe to our special podcast feed, and you’ll receive an alert only about new podcasts that we’ve posted.
  • Tune into WebmasterRadio.FM, where we go out live at 11:30am Eastern and then repeat at 2pm Eastern. The show archive at WebmasterRadio is here.
  • Listen via our Odeo channel, where it’s easy to see our past shows and hear them by using little play buttons right within your browser.
  • Select any of our search podcasts via the The Daily SearchCast home page. All previous podcasts are archived there.

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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.

=== Aug. 1, 2005 ===

New Ask Jeeves Sponsored Listings Program Lets More Advertisers Buy Direct – Ask Jeeves has officially announced a new automated paid listings service today, “Ask Jeeves Sponsored Listings.” It will let anyone purchase ads directly on the Ask Jeeves network rather than having to buy placement via Google or work through an Ask Jeeves account rep.

Search Engine Watch members should see the version that goes into more depth on topics such how Ask Jeeves may cope with the “hassle factor” of convincing advertisers they should go direct, how it may show more than three of its own ads, making use of the “standard” Googe format, issues with potential ad duplication and how Ask says it developed most of the technology internally, though it won’t name the third party company also involved — and isn’t worried that Yahoo might seek a patent infringement claim on paid listings.

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Revisiting Hijacking & Redirects: Moving To A Solution – What are redirects, how have they caused “hijacking” at Google, potentially elsewhere, and what as Yahoo done to solve the hijacking problems. All this and more is covered in this article that invites you to contribute to how search engines should established an across-the-board standard on dealing with redirects.

=== July 29, 2005 ===

MyJeeves 1.2 Released – Ask Jeeves has just released version 1.2 of their MyJeeves personal information management tool.

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Search Engine Forums SpotlightLinks to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: SEO Is A Lot of Work, Is It Worth It? – Getting from Point A to B with Search – New Ask Jeeves Paid Listings Program Said To Come August 1 – Low Quality Clicks – Google’s Cash Cow – Did Google Just Target Directories?, and more.

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Google Seeks Patent On RSS Ads: Filed In Dec. 2003 Google’s Advertisements in RSS Patent App in our SEW Forums covers how Google has applied for a patent on putting ads into RSS and feeds. You can discuss in that forum thread, plus Threadwatch has some talk. It’s important to realize that this patent app was filed with the US Patent and Trademark office in December 2003. In other words Google has been thinking about and developing methods to place paid advertising into RSS feeds for at least 18 months but likely much longer. However, it has only been in the past few months that Google started to test this type of service.

=== July 28, 2005 ===

Microsoft Gets Temporary Restraining Order in Google Case – A Washington State Superior Court judge issued a temporary restraining order today barring Dr. Kai-Fu Lee from performing his duties as the recently appointed head of Google China. See also Lee Hits China For Google, Didn’t Foresee Non-Compete Problems and The Hiring of Dr Lee: Google Strikes Back.

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AOL Offers Personalized Home Page, RSS FeedsAOL has launched a beta version of MY AOL, a customizable portal that provides access to AOL.com’s entire suite of features and allows users to add their favorite RSS feeds to the page.

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And More On Search Hiring! – “Where have all the engineers gone? Off to Google, Yahoo and MSN.” Sounds better if you hum the tune of “Where Have All The Flowers Gone.” Thought it was a bit lame so cut it — then just came across Anyway, Revenge of the Nerds — Again from BusinessWeek, where Ben Elgin looks at the brain drain happening as Google and Yahoo suck up tech talent. Geez, 230 engineers hired by Google in the second quarter of this year! A nice recap of who’s gone where. See also: Yahoo Hiring From IBM

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AOL Unveils New Mobile Search Services – This morning AOL is online with a mobile web search beta. AOL has offered some mobile services (for example, AOL Instant Messenger, mail, news, etc.) for years and has been testing new features since April. Here’s a rundown on what’s new on the web search front.

=== July 27, 2005 ===

Thinking Outside the Search BoxSometimes, looking beyond search engines is the best, if not only way to find the information you’re looking for.

=== July 26, 2005 ===

Former Google Exec Files Suit Over Alleged Pregnancy Discrimination – The NY Newsday article Suit accuses Google of pregnancy bias reports on a new lawsuit filed by Christina Elwell, a former director of national sales for Google who saw her star dropped after she became pregnant…[MORE”

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Search Marketing UK: A Buyer’s GuideWe review yet another buyer’s guide to search engine marketing, this one focused exclusively on agencies operating within the United Kingdom.

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RSS Search & Add Option Now Available For Google Personalized Home Page – In the past few days, Google has unveiled a new “look-and-feel” along with a couple of new features to their personalized homepage including the ability to add RSS feeds to the page….[MORE”

=== July 25, 2005 ===

Microsoft Launches MSN Virtual EarthMicrosoft has released a beta version of Virtual Earth, a web-based application that combines local search with maps and aerial photography.

=== July 25, 2005 ===

Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: July 2005 Yahoo Update – Redirecting Thousands of Dynamic URLs – Hiring An SEO – Do Search Engines like my-widget or my_widget.html best? – Myths – Never mind the top ten tips, and more.

=== July 21, 2005 ===

Deeper Insight into the BlogosphereBlogPulse, Intelliseek’s suite of tools for tracking trends and monitoring activities in the blogosphere, now has a cleaner look and a host of new features.

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AOL & Ask Show Growth In Searches But Big Players Still Big – New quarterly statistics out from Nielsen//NetRatings show that AOL and Ask Jeeves had double-digit growth in the number of searches they handled, though the total number of searches handled by the major players left these other services far behind. What’s probably most interesting to me is that despite all the effort and attention put into search, MSN hit its lowest level since the beginning of this year.

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Chris Sherman’s New Book, Google Power, is Now Available – Congratulations to our colleague, Chris Sherman, on the publication of his latest book, Google Power: Unleash the Full Potential of Google. Search expert, Shari Thurow, has read and reviewed Google Power and needless to say, she loved it. And a bit more from the book’s technical editor, our own Gary Price.

=== July 18, 2005 ===

The Best Blog Search Is All Of Them! – Metasearch The Blogosphere With Clusty – There’s plenty of talk these days about what’s “the best” weblog/RSS engine. Instead of continuing this post in search of determining the “best” engine, let’s talk about a resource that’s currently available that allows you to tap results from most of the big names in weblog search.

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Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: How Should Search Engines Protect Privacy? – AdSense Updates Terms & Policies – What Degrees Or Professional Backgrounds Do SEO/SEMers Have? – Optical Character Recognition And Crawlers – Interlinking of Related Sites, and more.

=== July 14, 2005 ===

Moving Past Google Privacy Fears & Toward An Industry SolutionGoogle’s balancing act from News.com revisits the well-trod path of Google as potential privacy threat. Personally, I would love to get beyond these “what Google might” do stories and more toward what the search engine industry itself ought to be doing in terms of protecting privacy, especially as everyone’s offering personalized search or search history features. Your comments will help, as I’ll explain below.

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Internet Archive Sued Over Access To Pages – Spotted via Threadwatch, Keeper of Expired Web Pages Is Sued Because Archive Was Used in Another Suit from the New York Times discusses how the Internet Archive is being sued for crawling the web and making copies of web pages. A copyright infringement case against a search engine, then? Not exactly, as we’ll see.

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Revisiting PageRank Lunacy – People continue to be obsessed by PageRank and how the idea that PR scores mean nothing may freak out some in the PageRank economy that revolves around the Google Toolbar’s PR meter.

=== July 13, 2005 ===

A Dynamite Personal Information Manager – Searching is one thing. Organizing and using the information you’ve found is quite another challenge, but a personal information manager called EverNote can really help.

=== July 12, 2005 ===

How Americans Search – A recent study from Harris Interactive shines interesting light on the behavior and preferences of Americans when searching the web.

=== July 11, 2005 ===

Local Search, From Locals – Online yellow pages are great for finding nearby businesses, but nothing beats a recommendation from a local in making a decision to patronize a business.

=== July 8, 2005 ===

Yahoo’s Blog & RSS Search Engine Outed – Yahoo said a blog and RSS search engine was something it was considering. Steve Rubel has come across what looks to be the test site. Well, it was the test site. I played with it for about two minutes, then found it had been taken down. See the screenshot over at Steve’s blog.

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Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Reporting Click Fraud to Google AdSense – Google Sitemaps One Month Later – Future of Web Directories – Is There Such A Thing As Spam Anymore? – Google Teaser Problems – How Much Is An AdSense Website Worth?, and more.

=== July 7, 2005 ===

Still More Cool Firefox Tools – The Firefox development community has been busy developing a range of new tools that enhance your searching and browsing activities, and best of all, they’re free.

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Search Ad Prices Up 3% In June 2005

The average price for search ads rose slightly last month, according to the latest Keyword Price Index from Fathom Online. The average price paid in June grew to $1.72, up 3 percent from $1.67 in May.

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Yahoo Now Offering SMS Search Tool; Expands Reach of Mobile Web Search – A new Yahoo SMS Search service is now available, allowing searchers in the US to get back certain types of information from Yahoo via text messages. In addition, Yahoo has expanded its web search service designed for mobile users to work with WAP-compatible browsers.

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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 Danny Sullivan, Gary Price or Chris Sherman, all of whom post to the blog.

=== Aug. 1, 2005 ===

Shari Thurow Chats Shopping Search with Become.com’s Jon Glick – In the first part of a two part interview, Shari Thurow chats with search industry veteran (Yahoo, AltaVista) Jon Glick, presently the Senior Director for Product Search at shopping research and comparison shopping engine, Become.com….[MORE}

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Yahoo News Adding More Video Content – A brief AP article reports that Yahoo News will soon add streaming video news clips from CNN and ABC News. No word about whether or not the clips (either metadata or transcript search) will also be searchable via Yahoo Video search….[MORE”

=== Jul. 31, 2005 ===

Gigablast Debuts Toolbar for Internet ExplorerGigablast has released a toolbar for Internet Explorer that offers a couple of features I haven’t seen elsewhere: (1) Search the sites linked from the current page and (2) search the sites in your bookmarks. A Gigablast toolbar for Firefox isn’t available yet but a MyCroft plug-in can be found here. Presently, the Gigablast index provides searchable access to over 2 billion pages.

=== Jul. 29, 2005 ===

MyJeeves 1.2 Released – Ask Jeeves has just released version 1.2 of their MyJeeves personal information management tool.

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Comprehensive Blog Comparison Review Offered – Mary Hodder at Nasperization.org has done some very impressive research and put together a great post that offers comparisons of how several of the major weblog/rss engines work. She also has placed much of the material into a very handy chart (PDF). Excellent work Mary! If you decide to do more blog search research, here are some things we’d love to learn more about….[MORE”

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Threadwatch Thumbs Up For SEO Book eBookReview: The SEO Book has Nick Wilson doing an in-depth review of Aaron Wall’s long-standing eBook, SEO Book. Verdict? Highly recommended to anyone of any skill level to purchase the US $79 guide.

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Google Analytics? New Domains For Those Who Like To Speculate – Since the blogosphere is always ripe with speculation, I’ll toss an item out. Does Google have plans to either begin offering expanding what they currently provide and/or rebranding their services as Google Analytic or Google Analytics in the near future (maybe SES)? We’re watching. Why am I mentioning this? In the past week Google has registered both Googleanalytic.com (and other domains) and Google-analytic.com (and other domains). A company that often “holds” domains for Google (before the product/service is launched) has Googleanalytics.com registered. Stay tuned.

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View Google Maps & MSN Virtual Earth Side-By-Side – Spotted via Phil Bradley, Virtual Earth and Google Maps, side-by-side lets you see the same area’s satellite view in Google Maps and MSN’s Virtual Earth service. Slick! I’ve found that copying and pasting a url works best. Otherwise, you’ll need to be very specific when entering an address of a location. For example, entering only a city name doesn’t appear to work. Also, this tool doesn’t allow you to see how far you can zoom-in to a location. Although this varies from address to address and from service to service, I’ve noticed that for many of the locations I’ve searched for, Virtual Earth offers a “closer” look.

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Goin’ Mobile With Technorati – Word from Technorati today that they’ve just released Technorati Mobile. Technorati’s mobile home page consists of a search box, a list of the hours top search terms, and links to top stories in three categories…[MORE”

=== Jul. 28, 2005 ===

A Look at Search Interface Protocols and Specifications – Developers and other search geeks out there might find this draft document that lists and discusses a number of search interface protocols and specifications worthy of a read/bookmark. The paper comes from the CORDRA project at Carnegie Mellon University. Thanks to Puzzlepieces for the tip. Btw, Michael Fagan (publisher of Puzzlepieces) also notes several other protocols/specifications that aren’t listed in the paper.

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Google Ads, a Feud, and a Barren Rock – Stories from the Canadian Press and Reuters report about how ads on Google are coming into play in a an argument betweeen Canada and Denmark over Hans Island, a barren rock near the North Pole….[MORE”

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Yahoo Yammys To Honor Online Video Through Contest – Yahoo wants to drum up interest in its Yahoo Video search service, so it’s handing out “Yammys” to recognize what it thinks is the best in online video content. To enter and learn more, visit the new The Yammys site. You can submit as of now and have through Aug. 17. Audience voting will happen from August 30 through Sept 12, then a panel of celebrities will judge. Semi-finalists will get digital cameras, movie tickets, DVDs. The grand prize winners get to go to a premiere, plus get a plasma screen TV and a DVD player. No news of Google have Gammys yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

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Battelle On The Birth Of GoogleThe Birth of Google at Wired has John Battelle recounting how Google came to be. Fast, easy read and tantalizing glimpse of John’s “The Search” book due out in September, from which its excerpted….[MORE}

=== Jul. 27, 2005 ===

Technorati Founder and CEO Chats with BusinessWeek – Technorati’s Founder and CEO David Sifry, chats with BusinessWeek about competition from the “big guys”, system architecture, growing pains, advertising, and a new service aimed at “people who need a deeper view of a company or its products.” Unfortunately, you’ll not read about what Technorati is doing to combat the rapidly increasing amount of blog and feed spam out there. Also, no info about what criteria Sifry and crew use to reach the currently posted number of more than 14 million blogs that Technorati claims to be tracking.

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Yahoo Toolbar for Firefox Leaves Beta, Version 1.0 Now Available – After about 5 1/2 months as a beta release, version 1.0 of the feature-filled Yahoo Toolbar for Firefox has just been made available….[MORE”

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Cairo.com Beats ShopLocal.com in WSJ Test of Local Shopping Engines – In today’s Wall Street Journal (registration not required), Walt Mossberg reports recent test of two local shopping engines, Cairo.com and ShopLocal.com. Cairo comes out the winner. More about Cairo.com in this SEW Blog post from last October.

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Goodman Revisits AdWords Changes & Importance Of Clickthrough The Importance of Clickthrough Rate (CTR): Has it Changed? from Andrew Goodman at Traffick is a very long look at recent changes to how Google is making use of clickthrough rate as part of its ad system. He highlights that AdRank is no longer CPCxCTR but instead takes in some other factors such as historical performance or ads with certain unspecified characteristics. In short, it’s CPCxQS, with QS being a quality score made up of some things an advertiser can’t visibly see. So an end to the importance of clickthrough? Andrew hopes not, seeing clickthrough as still a great indicator of quality and relevancy to the searcher. Good, well-written and fun read.

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Complaints Over Yahoo’s Direct Traffic Center – One of our SEW Forums moderators sebastian has had it with Yahoo’s Direct Traffic Center, the administrative control center for those running paid search campaigns. He created a 10 Reasons Yahoo Should Kill Direct Traffic Center thread listing his concerns and problems and found others sharing their problems. Want to see improvements? Jump in and sound off. Think things are fine? Then say so as well.

=== Jul. 26, 2005 ===

Amazon’s A9 Adds Online Calculator – Amazon.com’s A9 has joined other web engines in offering access to an online calculator that’s accessible from any A9 search box. Results appear at the top of a web page results list. You’ll spot an icon of an abacus located next the result. This page contains a examples of what the calculator offers. I’m betting that more special features and shortcuts are in the works at A9.

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litefeeds: A New RSS/XML Aggregator for the Mobile Web – Litefeeds is a new mobile web RSS/XML service to put feeds on cell phones na mobile devices….[MORE”

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Real-TimeTracking of the Space Shuttle; View Imagery of Earth Taken by Astronauts – The Space Shuttle has blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center and is currently orbiting the Earth. The Shuttle will dock with the International Space Station on Thursday. If you’re interested in tracking both spacecraft, here are a couple real-time databases….[MORE”

=== Jul. 25, 2005 ===

Registration for Google Code Jam 2005 Now Open – Software developers who write code in Java, C++, C#, or VB might be interested to learn that registration for the 2005 Google Code Jam ($155,000 in prizes) is now open. Registration continues through August 19th.

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Searching for Podcast Porn Podcast.net is a large (several thousand) searchable directory of podcasts and on its home page you’ll find a list the top search terms users query their database with. The current list shows that Podcast.net searchers want porn on their pods (porncasts?)….[MORE”

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Hispanics Loving Search Sites – In a post titled: Search is HOT for U.S. Hispanics, Nacho Hernandez posts a chart (via Ad Age) that he’s been “waiting to see.” It lists the “Top Web Properties Among All Hispanic Users.” Time-Warner tops the list. Yahoo in second. MSN third. Google fourth. Ask Jeeves seventh. Note: If you’re interested in reviewing the complete “Hispanic Fact Pack” where Nacho found the numbers, it’s available here for free (52 pages; PDF).

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Download Aerial Imagery and Access Detailed Local Info – A couple of people emailed me asking if I knew of a specialized database where they could download (for free) high-quality satellite and aerial imagery. The answer is yes….[MORE”

=== Jul. 23, 2005 ===

New “Hybrid View” From Google Maps – Now, along with “map” and “satellite” views, you’ll find a “hybrid” view at Google Maps that overlays map data (street names for example) on top of satellite/aerial imagery. Hybrid view is available for the US, Canada, UK, and Japan….[MORE”

=== Jul. 22, 2005 ===

Publishers Meet With Google to Discuss Library Scanning Project Wired Campus Blog points out that officials from The Association of American Publishers (AAP) and Google met on July 1st. The AAP had requested the meeting to discuss copyright concerns with Google’s book scanning initiative. Details about precisely what was discussed and/or decided are not known. The blog post also points out that more meetings could take place in the future. You can read about AAP’s concerns and review the letter they sent to Google here. Officials from the The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) have also requested a meeting with Google.

=== Jul. 21, 2005 ===

Pseudo-Transcript Of Google Earnings Call – I’ve just finished listening to the Google Q2 conference call and what follows is a pseudo-transcript of what I heard. In all but two cases, you’ll not be reading exact quotes. Nevertheless, I hope the post gives you a good idea of what was said. Below, read about the latest Google views on working with content partners, tagging/structured data, click fraud and Google’s rapidly expanding work force. See also Google Releases Q2 2005 Earnings.

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Google Earth, Google Moon, and Beyond? – When Google released Google Moon yesterday I wondered if providing imagery of the Moon was just the first step. Does the Googleplex have plans to provide imagery for the entire solar system? No official word yet BUT I have learned that Google just registered domain names for the entire solar system and beyond….[MORE”

Do Or Die Domain Name Registration SoarsPay-per-click speculation market soaring takes a look at numbers from VeriSign that show hundreds of thousands of domain names are being registered each week, “purely to publish pay-per-click advertising links from the likes of Google Inc and Yahoo.”

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Share Of Surfing Time On Search Still HealthyOPA: Consumers Spent More Time On Content, Less On Search, In June from MediaPost alerts us to the fact that the Online Publishers Association’s Internet Activity Index had the search category with the “biggest loss” of all surfing categories. Are consumers losing their love of search? Reality check time….[MORE”

=== July 20, 2005 ===

It’s All in the Name: IceRocket Will Become BlogScour – According to Mark Cuban to relaunch IceRocket from News.com, IceRocket’s new name will be BlogScour. No word as to what will happen to the other search services IceRocket offers. At the moment, BlogScour.com shows the IceRocket home page….[MORE”

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MSN Updates Start.com Site with New Features – Yesterday, MSN’s experimental Start.com customizable homepage received a few updates and bug fixes that you can read about on the Start.com blog. The most noticeable change comes in the way search results are displayed. Start.com results pages now allow you to quickly move between web results, news results, and RSS results via tab links at the top of the page. RSS results come from feed directory that’s powered by Moreover….[MORE”

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Yahoo Weatherman Tim Mayer Announces Release of New Web Index – Yahoo’s Tim Mayer alerts the search community that Yahoo Search released a new index last night. If you want to discuss the new Yahoo index, check out this thread in the SEW Forums. Barry (aka RustyBrick) points out other threads here.

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SMS Search Provider 4INFO.net Adds Email Search Service, WiFi Hotspot Search Coming Soon – Two quick news items from Palo Alto’s 4INFO.net, an mobile email search and wifi hotspot finding service….[MORE”

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PubSub Plays Ball with New Feature – The PubSub team released a new feature today that offers pre-built prospective searches to track blogosphere and other syndicated content about Major League Basball teams and players….[MORE”

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IAC/InterActiveCorp Completes Acquisition of Ask Jeeves – According to a news release and a brief item in the Los Angeles Times (reg. required), IAC/InterActiveCorp has completed its acquisition of Ask Jeeves.

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Google Alerts Now Available for Google GroupsPhilipp points to a blog post about the availability of Google Alerts for Google Groups to monitor the top 50 most recent search results there….[MORE”

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The Launch of Google Moon – To celebrate the 36th anniversary of the first moon landing, Google has not only put up a special logo on all of their home pages but they’re also releasing Google Moon. That’s right space fans, you’re now able to use the same technology that you’ll find at Google Maps and Google Earth to wander around the Moon….[MORE” See also Google Earth, Google Moon, and Beyond?

=== July 19, 2005 ===

How Many RSS Feeds Really Matter? – Everyday we read estimates of the total number of blogs and feeds out there. Of course, we rarely get solid definitions of just what a blog is. Does every feed belong to a blog? Do blogs or feeds that haven’t been updated in x amount of time count? Do all the sites that post totals use the same criteria? Bloglines post some numbers they feel may be relevant….[MORE”

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Yahoo Announces Q2 2005 Results – Yahoo released their Q2 earnings this afternoon and the News.com article: Yahoo profit rises, but revenue falls short, has the story. You’ll find all of the numbers in this Yahoo news release (PDF). Also available is an archived copy of today’s conference call along with a set of >slides (PDF). and in our post, a summary….[MORE”

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Google Will Open Research Center in China, Hire Microsoft VP to Run China OperationNews from the Googleplex today that the company is increasing their presence in China by opening a product research and development center sometime this quarter….[MORE”. See also Microsoft Sues Google Over China Hire.

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What’s New at Snap.com – Michael Liedtke’s AP story: Snap.com Plans to Combat ‘Click Fraud’, offers a look at what Bill Gross and Snap.com are up to these days including news that the company has just secured more than $10 million in venture capital funding….[MORE”

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A Chat with Rob Solomon from Yahoo Shopping – Brian Smith over at Comparison Engines has published a Q&A interview with Rob Solomon, Yahoo Shopping V.P.

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New from Bloglines: Subscription Suggestions and UI TranslationsBloglines has just launched a new service called Quick Pick Subscriptions service that allows users to quickly find blogs that they might be interested in subscribing to….[MORE”

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Inquisitor: A New Search Tool for Safari Users Inquisitor Inquisitor 1.0 is a new search app that those of you who use Safari might want to take a look at to add predictive search feature to the web search field in Safari.

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RSS + Video Search = BlinkxTV SmartFeed – Word of new service from BlinkxTV that was just released named SmartFeed. Beginning today, you can create an RSS feed (aka SmartFeed) for any BlinkxTV keyword search….[MORE”

=== July 18, 2005 ===

Where’s My Bus (or Train or Plane)?, Services That Offer Real-Time Info and Maps – If you’ve never taken a look at the NextBus.com service you should. It’s one of those resources that’s not only very useful (if it’s available in your area) but also very cool. It’s also another example of real-time info on the web….[MORE”

=== July 15, 2005 ===

MSN Shopping Beta Now Available – Brian Smith at Comparison Engines has posted news about today’s official beta launch of MSN Shopping. Brian’s post includes several comments from Chris Jolley, Group Programming Manager of MSN Shopping.

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Yahoo Announces New Research Laboratory – According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle and this news release, Yahoo is opening a new research laboratory in a partnership with the University of California, Berkeley….[MORE”

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Flash Content Added to Yahoo’s Video Database – The Yahoo Video Search database received a major update last night. The Yahoo Search Blog notes that you’ll now find more international material and support for Macromedia Flash content (animations, games, etc.) A tweak has also been made to the Yahoo Video Advanced Search Interface allowing you to limit a search to Flash material.

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Yahoo Using Search Profile To Trigger Banner Ads Over Time – The PC World article, Yahoo Tailors Graphical Ads to Users’ Search Queries, discusses changes to Yahoo’s “Impulse” advertising program.

=== July 14, 2005 ===

Google PageRank Update Underway – According to Search Engine Roundtable, a Google PageRank update is underway. If you want to discuss, here’s a link to an SEW Forums thread. More discussions about the update are listed here.

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Yahoo Search Translator Released – The Yahoo Search Blog and a News.com article: Parlez vous Deutsche, provides a look at the new Yahoo Search Translator. It takes search queries submitted in German, translates the query into English and French, and then allows the searcher to quickly find and read not only German language material but also English language content that has been mechanically translated into German….[MORE”

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Zenome, A New Human-Edited Web DirectoryCanada’s Globe and Mail offers up a look at a new human-edited directory of web resources called Zenome. Although Zenome might look like the ODP, its founders say Zenome has been designed to overcome some of the ODP’s problems by paying editors….[MORE”

=== July 13, 2005 ===

Google Adds Video On Demand…Button! – Just posted on the Google Blog is word of interface tweak on the Google Video site that enables you to search “all video” (still images/transcripts from telelvision programs AND playable video) or limit your query to only playable video. This is something I wished for in a recent post about Google Video….[MORE”

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Andy Beal Departs WebSourced Over Differences – Andy Beal of Search Engine Lowdown has announced he’s left his day job — vice president of search marketing for WebSourced — due to philosophical differences over the direction of WebSourced….[MORE”

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A Couple of My Favorite Mobile Web Tools – I’m often asked about the tools and sites I use for keeping up while on-the-go. So allow me to point out two favorite services, Yahoo Alerts via SMS and Bloglines Mobile….[MORE”

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Claria Planning “Behavioral Search Platform” – Claria, the company formerly known as Gator, is getting into the search game with a forthcoming site that will use searcher behavior rather than link analysis as a primary measure of relevance….[MORE”

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A New Image Search Tool Named PixsyPixsy is a new engine that provides access to imagery posted on various social networking services, blogs, mobile blogs, and other web sites….[MORE”

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Click Fraud Case Will Stay In ArkansasFederal judge sends Internet-ad suit back to state court covers how an attempt to get a click fraud case filed against Google, Yahoo and others moved to the US federal court system has failed. It will remain within the Arkansas state court system. The case came up earlier this year and is notable as the first major one seeking class action status.

===================

PressDisplay Makes Visual Copies Of Newspapers Available Online – Spotted via Robert Scoble, PressDisplay is an interesting site that lets you view newspapers from around the world as they appeared in print….[MORE”

=== July 12, 2005 ===

Google Employees Affect Real Estate Prices in California Town – The Wall Street Journal story (free to non-subscribers): Searching for a Home In Atherton, Calif.? Look Out for Googlers, reports on the booming price of real estate in this California town due in part to Googlers taking profits from stock sales and using the money to purchase homes.

===================

Yahoo Confirms HotJobs Crawling – What’s Old Is New In Job Search – Matt Marshall from the San Jose Mercury News offers up an interesting read in Yahoo to ‘copy’ jobs to beef up its listings that takes a look at the new HotJobs database of open-web content that we blogged about last week. The new Yahoo/HotJobs service officially launched this morning. Here’s the official announcement….[MORE”

===================

Schwarzenegger Visits Yahoo – We’ve noted from time-to-time about high profile visitors that have come to Google. This time, Yahoo gets a turn, with a visit from California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. InsideGoogle points to an NBC report on how anti-Arnold protestors turned up outside Yahoo. From inside Yahoo, Jeremy Zawodny gives his account of listening to the audio stream that I gather Yahoo employees could hear.

=== July 11, 2005 ===

GoogleGuy Confirms “More Results” Display Experiment – I haven’t been able to see it when running Google searches today but a post in the SEW Forums offers a screen cap of a Google user interface experiment….[MORE”

===================

Yahoo Maps Mash-Ups Begin Rolling Out – It has been about two weeks since Yahoo released an API for Yahoo Maps. Since then, developers have started releasing “mash-ups” that overlay various types of info on top of Yahoo Maps. Here’s a list of a few of them….[MORE”

===================

Sight-Impaired Users Have Problems with Registration Process at Google“Is Google Shutting Out The Blind?” by Susan Kuchinskas at InternetNews.com, reports that some sight-impaired Internet users are having problems with the “captchas” that Google uses when registering for a Google account thats required to access Gmail and other services.

===================

International Group of Publishers Asks Google to “Cease” Scanning Library Books – An international group of publishers is requesting that Google “cease” scanning copyrighted materials for the Google Print for Libraries project until “appropriate licensing” can be worked out….[MORE”

===================

FeedPlex Adds Advanced Search Options – Nathan Enns from FyberSearch has just updated his FeedPlex engine of RSS/XML material with 11 new advanced search options, including a couple that are unavailable elsewhere….[MORE”

===================

Google SMS Adds Stock Quotes – It looks like Google has added another feature to their SMS search tool. You can now use Google SMS to find stock quotes. Yahoo’s SMS service that launched last week, 4info.net, and Synfonic also provide stock quotes.

===================

Google Maps Mania For Centralized Look At Google Maps Projects – Spotted via Tara, Google Maps Mania is a much needed resource covering those making use of Google Maps in various ways. See the right-hand navigation at the blog for various mapping projects grouped by category. It would be nice to see Google itself offer this type of compilation, as well. See also A Growing Compilation of “Hacks” for Google Earth.

=== July 9, 2005 ===

Google SMS Graduates from Google Labs But Remains in Beta; Web Demos Now Available – Google SMS leaves the labs and gains online demos…[MORE”

=== July 7, 2005 ===

Gigablast Releases Travel and Blog Search Verticals – I just noticed that Matt Wells over at Gigablast has released Gigablast Blogs and Gigablast Travel. These new specialty engines (verticals, if you like) appear to allow the searcher to search topic-focused portions of the main Gigablast web database of more than two billion pages. See also Gigablast Now Offering Government Info Search Tool.

===================

Ask Jeeves: Barry Diller Ponders Leaving Google Ad Network – The AP article: Barry Diller turns to Ask Jeeves for answers, takes a look at how Jeeves might fit into Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp an organization that the AP’s Michael Liedtke calls a “crazy quilt of electronic commerce.” ….[MORE”

===================

Google Joins Jeeves and Yahoo in Providing Currency Conversions – Via Google Blogoscoped, word that Google has joined Ask Jeeves and Yahoo in offering online currency conversion rates posted directly onto web results page….[MORE”

===================

China News For Google, Baidu & Yahoo – Lots of news in terms of China and search, ranging from Google perhaps eyeing Baidu, Baidu saying it’s happy staying independent and Yahoo China losing its president.

===================

Google Invests In Broadband Access Over Power LinesGoogle, Goldman And Hearst Invest In Broadband Firm from the Wall Street Journal (paid subscription required) reports that Google, along with Goldman Sachs and media publisher Hearst, are investing in a company that provides broadband Internet access via power lines….[MORE”

===================

News Sources On London Bombings – How various news search services offered special ways to track news of the London bombings.

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