IndustryHighlights from the SEW Blog: Apr. 20, 2006

Highlights from the SEW Blog: Apr. 20, 2006

Featured posts from the Search Engine Watch blog, as well as our customary search headlines from around the web.

Featured posts from the Search Engine Watch blog, as well as our customary search 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/.

Former DoubleClick Execs Launch ShopWiki, New Shopping Search Engine

Another shopping comparison engine!?! Yes, I understand your lack of enthusiasm, but more than a decade after the industry was born, there’s still a lot of room for improvement. ShopWiki, a new shopping search engine founded by former DoubleClick executives, takes a different approach than the current breed of comparison engines to address some issues.

Click here to read the rest of this post…

Yahoo Pondering Free & Low-Cost WiFi

OK, Google, we’ll see your free WiFi plans and sort of match you maybe, says Yahoo. Yahoo Testing Free Wifi Product from TechCrunch covers Yahoo running a survey about giving people free WiFi access to reach Yahoo Messenger and a $7.95 per month plan to hit the internet overall. Hey, I’m ready to sign-up! Sounds like a nice, cheap backup for when my EVDO isn’t working.

Google’s Matt Cutts Confirms AdSense Bot Helping Googlebot With Indexing

Matt Cutts, who is speaking at this week’s PubCon, confirmed that the AdSense mediapartners bot is doing double duty by not only targeting ads for AdSense but also indexing for the regular Google search database, in a bandwidth saving move. Matt also noted that there is no advantage to being indexed by one bot or the other, however, those cloaking content and serving different pages to each bot could run into problems in the search index.

More details on JenSense.

New Search Patents: Is That A Tricorder In Your Pocket?

There were 4251 patents granted on April 18, 2006. Following are five that looked like good candidates for my first post on search patents as SEW’s new patents correspondent. They include a Yahoo patent on money exchanges; a Google patent on controlling access to documents based on URLs, another on personalizing results; Gateway’s social tagging-like patent and a GeoVector’s patent on a rudimentary tricorder-like device.

Click here to read the rest of this post…

New Click Fraud Index Aims To Quantify Click Fraud Rate

Elinor Mills points to a new Click Fraud Index service that reports click fraud rate among those monitoring through its network to be 13.7 percent. The big caveat to keep in mind is that this rate only takes into account data from those who are part of the Click Fraud Network, which is backed by click fraud auditing company Click Forensics. The company does say this one the Click Fraud Index page, but despite this, some might assume the figures represent an industry-wide estimate.

Click here to read the rest of this post…

Keyword Prices Drop Slightly In First Quarter 2006

Fathom Online releases a report that shows that keyword prices, on average, have dropped from $1.43 at the end of 2005 to $1.39 in the first quarter of 2006. The price drop was “not surprising” according to Fathom Online, stating that Q4 prices were higher due to the “seasonal nature of advertising.”

Interview With Ask’s Jim Lanzone

John Battelle continues rolling along with his new interview series, this time talking with Jim Lanzone, senior vice president and general manager of Ask. Jim delivers up usual good comments on moving past “10 blue links,” improving relevance and freshness, coopetition with Google and more.

Search Ads Getting More Attention From Big Advertisers

The Wall Street Journal ran an article named Once-Wary Industry Giants Embrace Internet Advertising yesterday. It discusses the recent shift in large retailer ad budgets towards online ads. For example, Pepsi-Cola is expecting its online spend to increase to between “5% and 10% of the overall ad budget in 2006, from 1% five years ago.” Also Anheuser-Busch is expecting its ad spend for online advertising to double in 2006, to account for 5% of the overall advertising budget. Business Week is running an article calling out the same theme, “Rise Of The Lowly Search Ad.” The Business Week article shows some of the more unique ways of using keywords to reach potential consumers.

Search Headlines

NOTE: Article links often change. In case of a bad link, use the publication’s search facility, which most have, and search for the headline.

Yahoo flexes its muscles in travel search business
International Herald Tribune Apr 19 2006 11:54PM GMT
Bill’s right: the future of advertising is the internet
Media Week Online Apr 19 2006 11:25PM GMT
ShopWiki Pairs Wikis, Search
Red Herring Apr 19 2006 9:28PM GMT
New Ways to Target Your Customer
eMarketer Apr 19 2006 9:19PM GMT
Google in China: The Big Disconnect
New York Times Apr 19 2006 7:31PM GMT
Microsoft Readies Storage Service to Rival Google’s ‘Gdrive’
PC Magazine Apr 19 2006 7:27PM GMT
Off the fence – Are search engines dictating unfair commission levels?
Media Week Online Apr 19 2006 6:44PM GMT
News Corp. invests in jobs search engine
ZDNet Apr 19 2006 5:23PM GMT
Schultz on Pubcon: Blog Optimization + Q/A With Matt Cutts and Jeremy Zawodny
Search Engine Lowdown Apr 19 2006 4:28PM GMT
Do You Want to be Just an Average SEO?
Search Engine Guide Apr 19 2006 4:25PM GMT
China launches third-generation search engine
Peoples Daily Online Apr 19 2006 2:48PM GMT
What Every CMO Should Know About SEO
MarketingProfs.com prem Apr 19 2006 1:47PM GMT
Google Searches Deeper for Enterprise Dollars
Internet News Apr 19 2006 5:40AM GMT
Yahoo meets analyst expectations
CNET News.com Apr 18 2006 10:17PM GMT

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