Highlights from the SEW Blog: May 21, 2007

Featured posts to the Search Engine Watch blog in the past week, along with recent search-related headlines from around the Web.

We’ve collected all the search marketing news from selected posts to the Search Engine Watch blog in the past week, along with recent search-related headlines from around the Web.

From the SEW blog:

Organic Search

  • Is The Company Worth As Much As The Domain Name?
    The recent multi-million-dollar sales of some domains shows how valuable those domain names are.

Search Advertising

  • Fair Isaac Click Fraud Report Spreads False Alarm
    Media reports saying Fair Isaac Corp. (FIC) reported industry-wide click fraud at 10 to 15 percent are not accurate.
  • Fair Isaac Pegs Billed Click Fraud at 10-15% – IN VERY LIMITED CASES
    Preliminary data from a study by Fair Isaac Corp shows that, in the limited cases it was able to study, 10 to 15 percent of billed pay-per-click traffic was likely to be click fraud.
  • AdWords Gets Its Day In Court
    American Blind and Wallpaper Factory’s suit against Google’s AdWords will be heard in November.
  • AOL on Ad Technology Buying Binge
    A day after it announced it would acquire Third Screen Media, a mobile ad technology provider, AOL has now acquired a controlling interest in ADTECH, a German ad network with display ad and e-mail marketing capabilities.
  • Google Audio Ads See Broad Release
    Google is in the process of making Audio Ads available to U.S. AdWords advertisers.
  • Is Segmentation Next Big Thing In Web Marketing?
    It is an important element in the marketing mix, though at times a tricky one to apply to search.
  • Yahoo Being Sued For Faulty Ad Platform
    This one should not get too far, and if it does Yahoo may as well get out of search.

Linking Issues & Social Media

  • Interview with YouTube on Partner Program
    Grant Crowell talks with YouTube’s Head of Product Marketing Jaime Byrne about the expansion of their revenue-sharing partner program to select users.
  • Why Wiki?
    Wikipedia is not a search engine, and links from Wikipedia no longer count towards increasing your link equity – so why should SEOs care about Wikipedia?
  • SEOs Seeing Effects of Google’s Paid Links Algorithm?
    UK SEO Dave Naylor says his clients are being impacted by a Google algorithm to penalize buyers and sellers of paid links.
  • Podcast on Winning on Digg with Neil Patel
    Neil Patel and Eric Enge have put together a two-part podcast series on how to succeed on Digg.
  • Matt Cutts’ Paid Links Update
    The head of Google’s Webspam team, has added some clarification to his post about Google’s treatment of paid links.
  • Starting a New Link Campaign
    Good link building always starts with identifying the targets.
  • Tomi Poutanen Talks About Social Search
    Eric Enge talks with the senior director of product management for Yahoo Answers and del.icio.us.

Mobile & Local Search

  • New Local Search Site: LocalGuides
    The site lets users create lists of favorite local businesses, then share those guides with other users.
  • Google Mobile Search Ad Checker Improved
    The search page may not be pretty but it appears to be functional.
  • Yahoo OneSearch Adds 7 More Countries
    The mobile application is now available in several Southeast Asian countries.

Vertical & Specialty Search

  • Will Universal Search Drive Growth of Google’s Vertical Search Properties?
    Exposing other search tools through the traditional web search interface should increase usage of these vertical search tools.
  • Online News Is Hottest Video Search Category
    According to data released by ClipBlast video news is the fastest-growing category on the Video Web.
  • Yahoo Researcher Declares Semantic Web Dead
    “There is simply no hope in enforcing a complete set of semantics for media (or content) annotation on the web as a whole.”
  • PR News survey finds online video is underutilized
    A new survey conducted by PR News and Medialink reveals that PR pros aren’t using online video as often as they’re watching it.
  • Krugle Announces a Code Search Appliance
    Enterprise customers that maintain large source code bases behind the firewall can benefit from Krugle Enterprise.
  • ChaCha Partners with blinkx for Video Search
    ChaCha, a search engine that search engine that uses human guides to enhance its search results, has announced a partnership with video search engine blinkx for multimedia content.
  • It’s Raining Search Engines
    It looks like 2007 will be the year of the niche search engines.
  • Autobytel Selects Kosmix as Vertical Search Partner
    Autobytel has selected Kosmix to power an auto-focused vertical search engine on their “next generation consumer automotive Web site,” MyRide.com.

In-House & Outsourcing

  • Google Webmaster Group Calls for Backup
    Google’s Webmaster Help group is getting some much-needed backup in the form of additional Google Search Quality team members.

SEM Industry Issues

  • Microsoft to Acquire AQuantive
    The company announced plans to acquire digital marketing agency aQuantive for $6 billion.
  • WPP Snaps Up 24/7 Real Media
    Ad agency holding company WPP has acquired 24/7 Real Media for $649 million, keeping it out of Microsoft’s hands.
  • Yahoo’s New Mission
    “To connect people to their passions, communities, and the world’s knowledge.”

Searching/Search Technologies

  • Google Planning Query Enhancements
    The first is a technique that will add a supplemental query that Google’s algorithm determines may return more relevant results. The second is cross-language information retrieval (CLIR).
  • Google Experimental to Offer Sneak Previews
    Leading-edge users can now sign up for tests of potential new features or interfaces.
  • Google Goes Universal, Adds Navigation
    a query from Google.com will now show results from Google’s vertical search engines, and a universal navigation bar has been added to all of Google’s pages.
  • Start.com Stopped
    Microsoft is shuttering Start.com, its experimental interface launched in February 2005 that developed many of the features that ended up in the Live.com start page.
  • Forget Demographics Google May Soon Offer Psychological Profiling
    Google has submitted a patent for psychological profiling of users. The patent outlines the ability to profile game users by their chat conversations and other text-based interaction with the games.

More from the SEW Blog

  • Internet Search Engine Database launches ISEdb SCOOP
    It presents search engine industry news in such a way that user-appreciated information is pushed to the top of the overflowing pile.
  • Yahoo Names New CFO
    Yahoo announced today it will appoint Blake Jorgensen, the co-founder of Thomas Weisel Partners, as their new Chief Financial Officer, leaving Sue Decker to focus on advertising.
  • The Greening of Search Engines
    Call it a sign of the times, a cheap marketing ploy or both mixed together. Search engines are touting their environmental friendliness in many ways.

Search Headlines

We report the top search marketing news daily at the Search Engine Watch Blog. You’ll find more news from around the Web below.

Taggedorganic searchSearchEngineWatchSEOs
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