Below, a recap of
stories posted today to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with other items we’ve spotted but not blogged
separately:
Today From The SEW Blog…
AdWords Advertisements Not Censored in Google China
Google China has censored their search results to
remove certain sites and listings that are deemed by the Chinese government.
However, an advertiser has discovered a loophole in the censoring system that
results in these censored sites showing up in google.cn search results via the
Google AdWords sponsored listings program….
Tech Memeorandum Gets New Name: Techmeme
Memeorandium’s tech page has been on my essential
reading list since it launched almost two years ago. About the only downside has
been remembering the name. I’d always be misspelling it. Problem solved. Creator
Gabe Rivera has given it a new name, Techmeme, and a new domain: techmeme.com. A
bit more from him on the change here: Goodbye tech.memeorandum, Hello Techmeme….
Microsoft Accelerates Mapping
Mapping has already become one of the most
competitive arenas online — a visual version of local search. Barry posted
earlier about how Microsoft wants to enable dynamic updating of online maps with
traffic and other local data in real time. Last week, as I posted on my blog,
the company announced the well-known acquisition of Vexcel corporation. Vexcel
is a “remote sensing” and mapping company that enables, among other things,
extremely high resolution aerial photography and 3-D mapping….
Expedia-Hosted Domains Spamming
SEO Black Hat reports that it appears Expedia
France is spamming the search engines. What this appear to be are hosted spam
pages on the expedia.fr domain name. If you do a search at Google for buy viagra
you will currently notice that buyviagra.blog.expedia.fr is the 2nd result.
There are many other examples of these pages, in fact, my blog has been denying
comment spam from all sorts of Expedia France subdomains including
homeequitylineofcredit.blog.expedia.fr. This may just be some sort of Expedia
hack, where spammers buy the subdomain from Expedia, to do what they want with
it….
Yahoo Unveils
Public Details Of “Panama” Ad System Upgrade
Yahoo’s finally gone public with details about its
new “Panama” ad system upgrade, which when launched later this year will bring
the system up to matching what Google’s long offered, though both Yahoo and
Google will remain behind Microsoft’s third-generation ad platform “adCenter,”
launched last week. Details have leaked before, but now Yahoo’s doing the
talking directly….
Microsoft To Map The World In Real Time?
The TechnologyReview.com has an interesting
article explaining a project at Microsoft named SenseWeb, that will strive to
enable Windows Live Local to have real-time mapping and local data. The
real-time information, is reportedly going to be up-to-the minute on local gas
prices, traffic flows, restaurant wait times, parking information and more. It
is important to note that Yahoo maps have been offering real-time traffic
reports since at least January 2005. I am interested to see how Microsoft will
enable local gas prices, restaurant wait times and parking information into this
system….
Windows Live QnA In Action
The MSN Search Blog mentions the new Windows Live
QnA service and also has a link to the MSN Spaces QnA blog that has details with
screen shots of the new offering. So if you are interesting in taking a look at
Microsoft’s answer to Google Answers and Yahoo Answers, visit the QnA blog. We
had a short brief on this new service on Friday….
Microsoft Acquires DeepMetrix To Enhance adCenter Metrics
ThreadWatch points to a release that shows
Microsoft has purchased DeepMetrix, a Web analytics company. The purchase is to
enable Microsoft to “deliver new Web analytics applications in future releases
of Microsoft adCenter.” Last year Google acquired Urchin, and then renamed it to
Google Analytics in November and began AdWords integration soon after. Microsoft
will possibly do the same….
New Way To Try Google Health (Maybe)
Garett Rogers reports and Philipp Lenssen reports
on a what may appear to be Google Health, which we suspect will be coming this
Wednesday. They both have screen captures of new query refinement that might be
related to the expected lunch of Google health. I personally can’t replicate it,
but with some digging, Danny and I found a way for you to hit the underlying
health filters….
Other Things We Read, Didn’t Blog But You Might Want To Read…
- Flood Maps,
O’Reilly Radar
Is Your Search Team Ready For Unexpected Events?, MediaPost
Encouraging Search Engine Spam, ClickZ
eBay To Offer Pay-Per-Lead Ads, MediaPost- How to
Contact Google, Google Blogoscoped -
An Interview with Marissa Mayer, Google’s first Female Engineer,
Unofficial Google Blog - Checking In
With RocketNews, ResearchBuzz - Google Calendar
colors a CNET reporter’s day, News.com
Click Fraud MLM Recruitment on Ebay, SEO BlackHat- Googlers Advised To Limit Choice, InsideGoogle
- Ignore
MSN Search at your Peril, SitePoint - Google Related Links Now Even More Useable, InsideGoogle
- Google Mordor, InsideGoogle
- Tolkien
Google Logo Petition, Google Blogoscoped
Google Maps Add-In for Outlook, Chris Pirillo
Quick Notes from Last Night’s Extending Social Networks into Social Search
Roundtable, Search Engine Lowdown
Blogger beats Maine Tourism advertising agency, Scobleizer- Update on
Colbert video flap: it’s on Google, with CSPAN consent, Boing Boing
Primer: Aerial Photographs and Satellite Images: ResourceShelf