Search Headlines & Links: June 20, 2006

Below, a recap of stories posted today to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along
with other items we’ve spotted but not blogged separately:

From The SEW Blog…


  • Craigslist Adds Cities, Now 300 Strong
    According to an article in the Wall Street Journal (sub. req’d) over the
    weekend and a Monday posting on PaidContent, iconic local community and
    classifieds site Craigslist has added 72 new U.S. markets and more than 20
    internationally. The site is now in 300 cities in the US and abroad and has 10
    million uniques a month. Revenues for 2005 were estimated to be as high as $25
    million. The Journal article is mystified as to why CL leaves “money on the
    table.” But that’s part of the homespun appeal of this now powerhouse local
    Internet brand. This ClickZ posting…
  • It’s Not
    Just Google With Disappointing Results
    We have been poking hard at Google for disappointing search results, but
    Google is not the only search engine that has been disappointing me recently.
    You can group Yahoo and MSN and even Ask.com into the search engines that I
    have been disappointed with. Over at the Search Engine Roundtable, I cover
    what I call “forum buzz,” the discussions taking place within the SEM/SEO
    community. I tend to pick up on algorithm shifts and post the details at my
    site. Today, I covered two threads, one I named Yahoo! Also Easy To Spam and
    the other MSN Asks Webmasters What…

  • Microsoft, Google & Others Call For Unified Federal Privacy Protection
    Microsoft bravely took part in the search privacy panel we did at our SES New
    York show earlier this year (coverage here and here), saying it would welcome
    better US federal protections on privacy issues. Why? It would let Microsoft
    and the searchers it serves know exactly what data government agencies could
    and could not have. Now Microsoft, along with Google and other tech companies,
    are pushing to make this happen….
  • Canada’s
    YellowPages.ca Launches New Local Search Site
    Since this is Local Search Day at Search Engine Watch, here’s some additional
    news. Canada’s yellow pages publisher, Yellow Pages Group, which also operates
    city guides and a variety of other Canadian web destinations, has launched a
    new beta version of its flagship site, YellowPages.ca. The new interface is
    considerably more appealing and the new site has a number of improvements,
    outlined in the press release. YellowPages.ca provides the content for Google
    Maps/Local and MSN in Canada. You can also read some additional detail on my
    blog….
  • A Web of
    Local Search Services
    The major search engines tend to capture the lion’s share of press, but there
    are dozens of other players in the local search space, offering myriad
    opportunities for search marketers trying to get in front of people searching
    for local products and services. I’ve got a review of an excellent guide to
    many of these services in today’s SearchDay article, Who’s Who in Local
    Search….
  • Google
    Pulls Question About Google From Google Answers
    Peter Da Vanzo reports on an individual who posted a question on Google
    Answers that was removed by Google. The question was, “What percentage of
    Google searches are contextual?” Specifically, the person wanted to know what
    percentage of Google searches give back results based on the content of a page
    someone is reading. You can see the thread title in the cache or via this
    image capture, at this moment in time, where the poster was willing to pay $20
    for the answer. A Google editor removed the question, stating:…
  • Google
    Sub Sub Domain Issues Clearly Visible
    Threadwatch reveals some more examples of issues Google is having. They note a
    search on queer forum returns CraigsList 97 times out of the top 100 results.
    That is not all, a search on wedding forum returns about 50 of 100 results
    from CraigsList’s site, just scroll down to number 50 and you will see. Is
    CraigsList spamming? No! Is Google suffering? :) Google is clearly having
    issues with sub sub domains. Continued coverage of Google’s public index
    issues. Postscript From Danny: Comments at Threadwatch also note Yahoo has the
    same issue. MSN does not as badly (but that could…
  • New
    Search Patent Applications: June 19, 2006 – Autolinking, and Better
    Advertising through Deletion Predictions
    Four patent applications from Google describe fighting spam in emails,
    providing product review searches, moving large amounts of data, and
    autolinking. Yahoo matches, and raises with five patent filings. One on
    watching deletions to choose better ads, another on serving dynamic
    information through a additional browser interface, and three more on
    multimedia and RSS. Microsoft goes TV 2.0 with an electronic program guide,
    and describes a way of matching advertising content with certain search
    queries before those searches are made. IBM comes up with a unique way of
    presenting the results of a search from more than one search engine,…

Other Things We Read, Didn’t Blog But You Might Want To Read…

TaggedClickZSearch Engine Roundtable
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