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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.