Highlights from the SEW Blog: July 24, 2006

Featured posts from the Search Engine Watch blog. 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.sewprod.wpenginepowered.com/.

• Ask.com Adds RSS Smart Answers
  The Ask.com blog announced a new feature to its Smart Answers line up today. For example, if you do a search on se roundtable an abbreviation of my blogs name, you will get RSS feed results at the top from my blog. The Ask blog says that the initial list of sites included “was selected based on the most popular feeds chosen by our users in Bloglines.”…

 

• Google Labs Launches Accessible Web Search
  Google has launched Google Accessible Search, a stripped down version of the Google search results page. The design was created to make it easier and more effective for the blind and visually impaired. The results are a bit different, tailored to the visually impaired, to show more accessible pages in the results. Google told me how this actually works,…

 

• Mid-July 2006 Search News Recap Posted
  If you’re a Search Engine Watch member, the latest edition of Search Engine Update newsletter has been posted. It recaps top stories in search from the first part of this month….

 

• Amnesty International Asking Users To Pressure Google, Yahoo & Microsoft Over China Policies
  BBC News reports that Amnesty International is urging users of Google, Yahoo and MSN in the UK to email the search engines opposing the way each operates in China. Amnesty International says that the search engines are aiding the censorship. The search engines say that Chinese users are more well off then they were prior. More on the Amnesty campaign can be found here from the organization….

 

• Google Finance Adds Suggest Auto Complete & Conference Call Transcripts
  We have been tipped off that Google Finance has added two new features today. The first is auto-complete, like Google Suggest. If you go to Google Finance and begin typing something, it will offer suggestions tailored to stock symbols (pretty useful). Also, if you view a particular stock quote, you may notice an additional link added under the “Facts” section where it has “Site Links.” The additional link is named “Transcripts” and links to SeekingAlpha.com. If you view GOOG and click on the transcript link, it takes you to Recent Transcripts for GOOG at SeekingAlpha.com….

 

• 11 Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Site
  Rand at SEOMoz writes up an excellent post he named 10 Remarkably Effective Strategies for Driving Traffic. He has given us 10, plus one bonus idea for driving traffic to your site. I will list them in summery here, but Rand has posted the “ingredients”, “process”, “results” and “examples” for each listed traffic driving strategy at his post….

 

• Yahoo Revamps Behavioral Targeting Platform
  ClickZ reports on the details of Yahoo’s revised behavioral targeting platform, once known as Fusion and Impulse. Fusion and Impulse has been renamed to Engagers and Shoppers to better describe what the product does. Anna Papadopoulos of ClickZ interviewed Richard Frankel, senior director of product marketing at Yahoo about the new upgrade….

 

• Yahoo Delays Launch Of New Ad System, “Panama”
  ClickZ reports that Yahoo’s new ad system, aka Panama, will not be launching in the 3rd quarter. They now estimate a delayed launch date of the 4th quarter. The new ad system was reported on by Danny back in early May. ClickZ has more details on how the delayed launch has affected the company’s stock….

 

• Google: Semantic Web Faces Webmaster Challenges
  For years, Sir Tim Berners-Lee has posed the idea of a semantic web that will be smarter through tagging. I’ve always said the flaw with this idea is that people make mistakes with tagging. Google’s also said this type of thing before, as well — but Google’s director of search Peter Norvig gave fresh pushback yesterday when on a panel with Lee. Google exec challenges Berners-Lee from News.com has the details, with Norvig explaining that site owners often don’t tag information correctly, along with some simply being misleading. True enough….

 

• Malware Search Engine Powered By Google
  H.D. Moore of Metasploit designed a vertical search engine using the Google API to search specifically for malware. The search engine can be found here….

 

• Yahoo Finance Upgrades Features & Charts
  Part of the launch of the new Yahoo homepage, Yahoo has added some features to Yahoo Finance. Those features include new tools to manage charts, an improved “investors chat room” and financial video news. SearchViews explains that Yahoo “hopes to tone down the wild west atmosphere of boards by introducing a way to rate posts on a scale of 1 to 5 stars, with lower rated posts to be filtered out.” Part of the upgrade includes access to adding Yahoo badges to your site, something we beta tested in mid-May….