IndustryThe Search Engine Report – Number 118

The Search Engine Report - Number 118

Search Engine Watch editor-in-chief Danny Sullivan recaps top search engine stories from September 2006.

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In This Issue
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+ Upcoming Search Engine Strategies Events
+ Top Stories
+ More From The Search Engine Watch Blog
+ Our Search Newsletters & Feeds
+ About The Newsletter

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Upcoming Search Engine Strategies Events
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Don’t miss our search marketing & networking events! There’s one coming near you:

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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.

=== Oct. 4, 2006 ===

Rebranding Ask.com, Part Two – Ask.com’s Senior User Experience Analyst Michael Ferguson continues his discussion of the company’s rebranding, offering tips and suggestions for anyone considering updating or modifying a web site.

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Eric Schmidt Warns Politicians That Elections Will Forever Change – Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, warned politicians at a Tory party conference in Bournemouth that the outcome of general elections will be changed “within five years” by what Eric Schmidt calls “truth predictor” software. See also:

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Yahoo Rolls Out PPC Ads In Mobile Search Results – Yahoo is launching (in beta) paid-search ads in mobile in the U.S. and expanding its test program in the U.K. See also:

=== Oct. 3, 2006 ===

Google’s Matt Cutts Answers Questions On PageRank – Matt Cutts of Google answered some questions about how PageRank works and is reported by Google. See also:

=== Oct. 2, 2006 ===

Google’s New SearchMash Test Site – Google’s gained a new unbranded site called SearchMash where it plans to test user interface ideas without Google’s brand somehow skewing the tests. Below, more about the site and comments from Google about it. See also:

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Amazon’s A9 Becomes, Well, Sort Of Nothing – Amazon’s A9 saw the loss of its driving force Udi Manber to Google earlier this year. Now two years after its launch, A9 itself has lost virtually all of its many of its distinguishing features, according to an update from the company.

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Google Buys Birthplace Garage – Google has purchased the garage where the company developed after its initial birth at Stanford University. See also: Google’s 8th Birthday.

=== Sep. 29, 2006 ===

Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Can We Take SEO As a Long Term Career? – Is Flash The Future Of The Internet? – Best Way To Build A New Site – New Trends in Google Rankings – Yahoo in Talks to Acquire Facebook, and more.

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Yahoo Toolbar To Be Installed On HP Computers IE7 Browsers – Yahoo and HP have struck a deal to have all desktop and laptop computers in the United States to have the Yahoo Toolbar pre-installed on top of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7. See also:

=== Sep. 28, 2006 ===

Search Arbitrage: Good or Evil? – Skilled traders of bonds, commodities or other equities often leverage their bets using arbitrage to take advantage of price differences in the marketplace. With a bit of creativity, you can use arbitrage to profit from price differences in search engine advertising programs.

=== Sep. 27, 2006 ===

Behind the Scenes in the Search Engine Labs – Most of the major search engines have research units and live testing grounds for new products and features. What kinds of projects are they currently working on?

=== Sep. 26, 2006 ===

DMA Offering Search Marketing Certification Program – The Direct Marketing Association has announced a new certification program in search marketing, which is to launch at its annual conference next month.

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Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against AOL Over Search Data Release – A class action lawsuit has been filed against AOL seeking $1,000 in damages for each person whose search records were released last month.

=== Sep. 25, 2006 ===

Compare & Contrast: Search Ad Program Strategies – Google, Microsoft and Yahoo’s pay-per-click (PPC) programs are similar, but each have unique features that require different campaign tactics to use effectively. How do you get the maximum advantage from each program?

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Pluggd Promises Podcast Concept Searching, But We Still Need Better Basic Keyword Searching – Podcast search service Pluggd plans to make it possible to search podcasts by concept, rather than keyword. That sounds cool, but there’s still some ways to go before I’m full of excitement.

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Fortune Looks At Chaotic Google & Whether It Can Have A “Second Act” – A Fortune cover story on Google, covering the company’s fast-paced, seemingly disorganized approach to products and exploring if it can come up with a “second act” to please investors. See also:

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Goodbye Froogle; Hello Google Product Results In Web Search – Froogle, Google’s shopping search engine that launched with big hopes back in 2002, is to be deemphasized in place of product listings integrated into regular Google search results. See also: Google Base Store Connector.

=== Sep. 22, 2006 ===

Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Yahoo Reports Slowing Ad Sales – Search Engines Can’t Read 301’s – Google Mobile Ads – MSN Search Vs Windows Live Search: What’s The Difference? – Will Google Penalize for Linking to Non Related Sites? and more.

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BusinessWeek’s Good Look At Click Fraud – A BusinessWeek cover story on click fraud goes beyond the usual stuff with some new info, ranging from a new advertiser pressure group, to an industry estimate that click fraud is 10 to 15 percent, along with a couple outing themselves as fraudsters. It’s well worth a read. See also: The Click Quality Council Formed By ClickForensics.

=== Sep. 21, 2006 ===

Bush Bio Changes For Miserable Failure Query Due To White House Change – Since 2004, a search on Google and Yahoo for “miserable failure” has almost always ranked the the official George W. Bush biography tops. That’s now changed, after the White House moved the bio to a new page, which has caused the old page to disappear for that search temporarily. The switch is something a future president probably won’t like.

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Google’s Belgium Fight: Show Me The Money, Not The Opt-Out, Say Publishers – I’ve had a long talk with the group that so far has successfully sued Google in Belgium over indexing, a talk that leaves me thinking they don’t fully understand how search engines work and why their arguments over copyright infringement will ultimately fail. Then again, the case is really about trying to convince Google it should pay to carry their news content. See also:

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Do Patents Point to SEO Gold? – Do patents, white papers, and other publications authored by search engine employees provide clear guidance to how to optimize Web pages? A panel of experts debated the issue at a recent Search Engine Strategies conference.

=== Sep. 19, 2006 ===

Your Search, Your Way – A new generation of search services goes beyond simple personalization, and lets you customize both your search topics and how results are presented.

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Yahoo CEO Says Ad Growth Slowing Down; Ask.com To Increase Market Share – Terry Semel, Yahoo’s CEO, has warned that online advertising growth will be slowing in automotive and financial services industries. See also:

=== Sep. 15, 2006 ===

See Ads? Now You Don’t! Google AdWords Rotating Out Top Sponsored Links – Google is now displaying or not displaying the top sponsored links (with the blue background) based on searcher behavior. See also:

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Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Which Web Services Do You Use? – Mining the Tail? – AdSense On Home Page – Does It Cheapen The Look? – What are the Barriers to Using Search Analytics? – Digg Dealing With the Same Problems as Google? and more.

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Business Searching Beats Sex Queries & Who’s Handing Out The Query Data? – There’s a new paper out saying that business topics have ousted sex topics as top searches. Forget the findings, however. In the wake of the AOL search data uproar, I wanted to know where the 20 to 30 million search sessions studied came from.

=== Sep. 14, 2006 ===

Search Marketing in Regulated Industries – Developing and promoting a site for a company in a highly regulated industry can be a challenge to a search marketer on many unforeseen levels. Here’s how to avoid common gotchas or even worse consequences. The longer version of this story for Search Engine Watch members goes into more detail about the challenges of doing search marketing in regulated industries, and offers a checklist of specific tips to get around potential obstacles and also to stay out of trouble with regulatory authorities.

=== Sep. 13, 2006 ===

Your New Title: The VP of Search – What do the New York Times/About.com, Citicards and Passages drug treatment center have in common? You guessed it, a Vice President of Search, the hottest new title in town.

=== Sep. 12, 2006 ===

Microsoft Upgrades Live Search Offerings – Microsoft has made a number of changes to its Windows Live offerings, including pushing some services out of beta and adding new features to others. See also:

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Shakespeare Searched By Clusty – Clusty has released Shakespeare Searched which is designed to provide quick access to the works of the Bard. It’s not designed as a replacement for, or access to the full text of his work, but as a quick reference resource.

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Big Brands: Do You Know What Wikipedia Saying About You Via Google? – Steve Rubel produced a small study on the top 100 advertisers to see where in the Google rankings does the brand’s Wikipedia entry fall. For example, a search on the well-known automobile brand Chevrolet shows a Wikipedia entry for them at the number four result. See also:

=== Sep. 8, 2006 ===

Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Report: Local Search Advertising Spend Will Double – Content Is King – Do I Need Adwords? – Organic Search Vs. Paid Advertisement – SEO Rates – Moving to Pay-For-Performance, and more.

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More On Google & Blocking Privacy Proxies – Several proxy servers used by those wishing to search and surf anonymously had apparently been blocked by Google, including the popular Tor service. Google’s since explained why these were blocked and how human users can get around the barrier….

=== Sep. 7, 2006 ===

Online Video Advertising Builds Momentum – With ubiquitous broadband access and ad-serving technologies becoming more sophisticated, marketers are increasingly interested in online video advertising opportunities. How do top interactive agencies leverage video for their online advertising campaigns?

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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.

=== Oct. 3, 2006 ===

Ask.com Sponsored Listings 2.0 Launched – Ask.com launched a version 2.0 of their sponsored listings program yesterday. The new features include a daily budgeting solution, a variable refill account self-service feature, an hourly billable data report, bulk upload enhancements and dashboard reports. More details at the official press release and over at ClickZ.

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How To Game Digg & Why You Shouldn’t – Peter Da Vanzo shows how you can pay someone to Digg your content for a fee. SEO Blackhat reveals a guaranteed way to get your content on the front page of Digg. But after-all, is it worth gaming the Digg system or any social networking type of site’s system to get that exposure? Rand explores the pros and cons of gaming Digg – it may not all be positive. See also: Digg To Change System To Stem Gaming; Top Digger Quits.

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Get 20 Years For Meta Tag Abuse – A new law in the US might land some people using meta tags in trouble, if they are trying to mislead children.

=== Oct. 2, 2006 ===

Need A Costume For Halloween? Try The CostumeZee Costume Search Engine! – CostumeZee is a search engine that enables searchers to locate costumes for particular events, such as Halloween, or themes such as Pirates.

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The Accent Is On Search – An interesting article in Pandia about an overlooked area of search – “Searching Google for words with accents.” The bottom line is that it’s difficult and fiddly to do it, and it depends on a number of different factors that the searcher cannot control.

=== Sep. 29, 2006 ===

Yotophoto For Finding Free Photos Fast – Yotophoto is a fast and easy to use image search engine. The focus of Yotophoto however is on making ‘open and copyleft’ images available to educators, bloggers and digital artists.

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Google Reader & Ask’s Bloglines Undergo Updates – Both Google Reader and Ask.com’s Bloglines have gone under some interface and usability updates, with some added features included. See also:

=== Sep. 28, 2006 ===

Ask.com Upgrades Weather Results & Adds Earthquake Data – Ask.com has launched an enhanced version of the weather results and has added earthquake data to Smart Answers.

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comScore: Local Search Gains Momentum – comScore released new local search data showing Google and Yahoo lead for local searches in the United States.

=== Sep. 27, 2006 ===

Indeed Launches Salary Search Beta – Indeed, the job search engine, announced the launch of a Salary Search tool. It basically allows you to enter in a job title description and a location (optional) to find “objective” and “current” salaries for jobs offered based on your search.

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OneSky Jets Travel Search Engine For Private Jet Flights – Can’t afford your own private jet, like the 767 the Google cofounders own, but like the idea of flying privately? OneSky is a new search engine allowing you to book room on private jets between destinations within the United States.

=== Sep. 26, 2006 ===

Google Gets Long Distance Phone Call From Space – The world’s first private woman space tourist Anousheh Ansari made a long distance call to the Googleplex to talk with Google co-founder Larry Page. See also: Beware: Giant Bug Found On Google Earth.

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Yahoo Fellowships For Repressed Journalists, While Chinese Journalist Might Sue Them – Yahoo — under fire for allegedly harming journalists in China — is going to fund fellowships for journalists in countries with press restrictions. See also: Google: Banning Books In The US Is Bad; Censorship In China, Not So Much.

=== Sep. 25, 2006 ===

Microsoft Consolidates Platform, Portfolio In ‘Digital Advertising Solutions’ – Microsoft announced the launch of “Digital Advertising Solutions,” an effort to bring together, in one convenient buying environment, Microsoft’s extensive portfolio of consumer properties in gaming, mobile and online.

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Real Estate Search Engine Trulia Adds New Depth, Features – Real estate search engine Trulia has now expanded and is offering nationwide coverage through a mix of crawling and listing feeds. It’s also providing a range of new information on real estate price trends, comparable homes and neighborhood guides (i.e., schools, commutes and crime data). See also: Zillow Adds ‘Owner-Generated’ Content.

=== Sep. 19, 2006 ===

Video Search Usage for August 2006 – Hitwise just released August 2006 market share data for the most popular online video search sites. See also: Google Wants To Launch Google Video In Japan.

=== Sep. 18, 2006 ===

Baidu Holds 62% Share In China – Baidu, the Chinese search engine, has 62.1 percent share based on a China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) report. That is up 10 points from 52 percent in 2005.

=== Sep. 14, 2006 ===

Yahoo Adds More Social Features To Local – Yahoo has just made its popular Yahoo Local site more personal and simultaneously more “social.” A number of new features have been integrated into the site that allow people to create customized profiles and lists of local favorites but also to tag and share those favorites for discovery by the larger user community.

=== Sep. 13, 2006 ===

Hitwise Data Center Offers Search Terms & Top Search Engines For Various Countries – New from Hitwise is the Hitwise Data Center, sharing details on web surfing behavior. There are different data centers for various countries, and for search marketers, two key reports tell you top terms and top search engines.

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Site Search Volume More Than Web Search Volume – Site search volume may well exceed web search, but despite this, site search gets little attention.

=== Sep. 12, 2006 ===

The Ten Linking Commandments By LinkMoses – Eric Ward posted a fun but true list of what he calls LinkMoses Linking Commandments.

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The Search Diggs – I love the idea of trying to combine something like Digg with search news and have been wanted to do this myself for ages. Maybe I still will, but others have gotten there first. John Battelle is the latest with SearchMob having just launched today. Head over there, and you can submit and vote on stories related to search. Search N Sniff is a similar site that launched last week, and The Search Engine Press is the oldest, launched in February.

=== Sep. 11, 2006 ===

Looking Back At Search & 9/11 – Remembering how search engines reacted during the events of September 11.

=== Sep. 6, 2006 ===

‘Local Shopping’ Competition Intensifying – Yokel announced expanded local store and inventory information in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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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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