Daily SearchCast, May 26, 2006: Dell's Doing Google, Dude; Google Does 50% Of US Searches; Don't Be Evil? Don't Make Ballmer Laugh & More!

Today’s search podcast covers Google and Dell sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.
Well, Dell agreeing that for an undisclosed sum, putting Google software on its
new computers is a good thing, dude. Meanwhile, Google does half the US’s
searches and is sending a new spider after your landing pages, to see if you’re
running a quality ad campaign. YouTube grows and grows in video search, plus
Ballmer laughs and laughs over Don’t Be Evil (ok, just one laugh) and more!
Warning, this episode contains occasional off-the-cuff singing, which might be
harmful to your ears. Sorry, it was a holiday weekend coming up, so I was feelin’
kind of funky.

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Below are links to items discussed:

• Google &
  Dell Partner: Google Software To Be Installed On Dell PCs
  The Wall Street Journal reports that Dell will be installing Google software
  on “millions of Dell personal computers.” That means software like Google
  Desktop search, the Google Toolbar, and the default search engine will be set
  to Google on these Dell PCs. Google is paying Dell an undisclosed amount for
  this partnership….
• 
  Dell De-Crapifier Page
  Gets stuff Dell puts on your computer off.
• NetRatings:
  Google Tops 50 Percent Mark In US Web Searches
  New stats (PDF) out from NetRatings show Google now handles half the web
  searches in the United States:…
• NetRatings
  Data: The Local Angle
  Danny posted here about April Nielsen//NetRatings data reflecting that Google
  had crossed the 50% threshold in search market share. I want to point to another
  part of the release, which jumped out at me: the Internet driving people to
  local retailers (“big boxes” in this case)….
• Google
  AdsBot Now Coming To Assess Your Landing Pages, Will Impact Your AdRank
  Google’s rolling out a new system where ad landing pages will be automatically
  spidered by a new AdsBot. The content of landing pages will help determine the
  quality of an ad campaign. That quality score, along with the amount you are
  willing to pay, is then used to determine an ad’s AdRank, the position where an
  ad will appear in the results. A high quality score means you can rank higher
  even if you pay less than others. And not participating in the new spidering
  system can hurt your AdRank….
• Google
  Dropping Conservative Sites?
  Is Google Dropping Conservative Sites They Disagree With? from Jennifer Laycock
  at Search Engine Guide is an interesting article regarding the possibility that
  Google is dropping sites from their index due to their political content.
  Jennifer has done some excellent digging around into some of the allegations
  surrounding the issue. However, the interesting, larger point is the extent to
  which Google (or indeed any other search engine) has a responsibility to be
  impartial in the information they provide, for financial reasons if no other….
• New Search
  Patents: May 25, 2006 – Yahoo Units and Microsoft Redundancy Filters
  New patents from this week from Yahoo on indexing by concepts and on uses of
  scripts on different computers to share data between them. Microsoft looks at
  reranking search results based upon redundancy, annotations on web pages, and
  showing web ads based upon a person’s television viewing habits. IBM comes up
  with smarter bookmarks, and Amazon shows smarter search results when a first
  query doesn’t quite work….
• Travel
  Search Used By Few But Will Grow & Kayak Gets Top Honors In Review
  A new report finds few use travel search engines but that declares the area
  set to grow. Meanwhile, an recent review gives Kayak top honors when pitted
  against some competitors….
• YouTube
  Dominant In Video Search, Now an Acquisition Target?
  The short answer is “yes.” The site — shall we call it the “MySpace” of video
  🙂 — is now the dominant destination for online video search, according to a
  press release out today from Hitwise. YouTube has an almost 50% market
  share….
• Search
  Marketing Growing Rapidly in the U.K.
  A new report from industry analyst firm E-consultancy finds that search
  marketing revenues grew more than 65% in the U.K last year, and that same
  level of growth is on track for 2006. The report also offers interesting
  insights into the division of revenues between PPC and organic SEO, as well as
  insights into how much search marketers are charging for their services. More
  details on the report in today’s SearchDay article, U.K. Search Marketing
  Environment Thriving….
• MIVA
  Seeing PPCall Monetization Growth
  One of the most interesting elements of the announced eBay-Yahoo! ?alliance?
  today is the potential for ?click to call? and ?pay per phone call? (PPCall).
  These are two distinct things: click to call is a VoIP-based calling
  infrastructure and PPCall is a billing or ad model. They?re related but one
  doesn?t always mean the other. However, in the case of portals and search
  engines ?testing click to call? usually means ?we?re thinking about PPCall.?
  They obviously want to make money from calls; MIVA (though a partnership with
  Ingenio) appears to be doing so. Earlier this month the company reported
  that…
• AOL Video
  Gets Google Video Promotion
  Way back when Google and AOL cut their partnership deal, AOL was to get
  promotion on Google Video. What, big flashing neon AOL banners? Actually, Google
  said it would be low-key. And that’s pretty much what’s been delivered. Gary
  Price noted earlier this week that a small AOL Video link had been added to the
  reverse bar of the Featured section of Google Video. Look over there on the
  right-hand side. You can’t — well, you can — miss it….
• Google
  Seeks Employees Through Wired Ad
  Google Ad in Wired from Google Blogoscoped covers Google doing print ads. No,
  not to drum up new users, though it has done some of that before. This time it’s
  to attract employees to work for the company. If you didn’t skip three grades
  and failed to learn Lisp by age 10 like Niniane, there’s no need to apply. Darn,
  and there’s me wasting all that time on Basic at age, um, 13? Well, I can still
  make my name fill the screen of a TRS-80….
• Ballmer
  On Google And Don’t Be Evil: Laugh & No Comment
  When I asked Barry Diller earlier this year if Ask needed some type of “Don’t
  Be Evil” like Google, his answer got the audience roaring with laughter. “Be
  Evil,” he said, then qualifying that businesses needed to be realistic. Now
  Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gets to swing at the same question in an interview
  with the San Francisco Chronicle. He basically dodges the question by saying
  Google doesn’t seem to follow it….