Search Headlines & Links: August 14, 2006

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

From The SEW Blog…


  • Microsoft Attacks Click Spam by Looking at Noisy Behavior
    Sites in search results that rank highly while serving visitors only ads are
    the target of a number of papers by Microsoft, submitted to the SIGIR 2006
    conference held last week. Michael Hickins wrote about them in Microsoft:
    Noise Improves Search Results, and Jeremy Reimer adds more details in
    Microsoft Research Peers into Search. Both offer nice overviews of the papers
    presented by Microsoft at the conference, which cover topics such as query
    analysis, user behavior, and personalization. Eight of the thirteen papers are
    available at the Microsoft Research pages. If you are interested in how
    Microsoft might be ranking,…
  • Googlers
    Go For Pizza Stunt
    Via InsideGoogle, Feeding Google – Better than Pirates of the Caribbean is a
    video over at YouTube where start-up CambrianHouse decides to attract
    attention by delivering 1,000 pizzas to the Googleplex in Mountain View. Will
    the Googlers go for it? Yes, they do….
  • Beware:
    Is Your Hosting Provider Cloaking Paid Links On Your Site For Their Benefit?
    I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable on thread in our forums that shows
    how some hosts are inserting links on sites they host, without notifying the
    web site owner, and doing it via cloaking. Matt Cutts from Google looked
    deeper into the reported issue in the thread and said that “it looks like this
    webhost is cloaking.” The web hosting company is placing paid links within the
    content using cloaking techniques. If you are worried about this for your
    site, then check the Google index for you site. You can use a Google site
    command “with a porn phrase…
  • Matt
    Cutts Confesses To Being GoogleGuy
    In Monday Morning Roundup, Rand Fishkin writes: Did anyone blog about Matt
    outing himself as GoogleGuy during SES? I believe his exact words were “I
    backed into that position.” Nope, Rand — I was surprised about the lack of
    reaction and blogging to that myself. I’m still doing post-show catch-up, but
    it hardly seemed to catch any buzz. Perhaps one of the industry’s oldest
    secrets — Matt Cutts being GoogleGuy — was no longer a secret to most any
    longer….
  • Google
    To Build Data Center In India
    The Money Times reports that Google is continuing their efforts to build a
    data center in India. The data center will house e-mails, blogs, photos,
    documents and chat records and most likely be based in Andhra Pradesh state.
    Google has other offices in India, more on that here….
  • Another
    Tool Uses AOL Data For Search Term Research
    SEO Blackhat released a tool that uses AOL data, Hitwise figures and
    Overture’s suggestion tool to figure out the search volume and click-through
    rate you can expect from a search phrase at the various search engines. Last
    week we reported on a more basic tool that did something similar but this new
    tool gives you an “estimate with some certainty how many clicks to expect for
    ranking anywhere in any search engine for any term.” Basically, you go to this
    tool and enter in the number of searches you expect to be performed for a
    keyword phrase. Then after you…
  • Google
    To Allow Pornographic Movies In Google Video?
    TechCrunch wrote that Google has recently removed the term “pornographic” from
    the restrictions on uploading videos. It is now just a restriction on
    “obscene” material, with an added categorization for “mature and adult”
    content. TechCrunch also believes Google removed a checkbox confirmation that
    said, “video is not pornographic or obscene material.” Philipp Lenssen also
    notes this, and added commentary by Donna Bogatin at News.com….
  • Yahoo
    Hires Away comScore Executive
    ClickZ reports that Yahoo has hired Peter Daboll, the president and CEO of
    comScore Media Metrix, to be the chief of insights and head of global market
    research at Yahoo. Daboll explains that his position was created at Yahoo to
    “bring together the external world of market research and the wealth of
    internal data that Yahoo collects.” Peter Daboll will be reporting to Cammie
    Dunaway, Yahoo’s chief marketing officer, in Sunnyvale, California….
  • New
    Keyword Suggestion Tool Uses AOL Data
    SEO Scoop spotted a new keyword suggestion tool that estimates the volume of
    traffic you can expect for a given query based on the AOL data slip up.
    Basically, the tool has data from March to May of this year, it then takes the
    market share figures of Google, Yahoo and MSN and multiples that by the AOL
    search volumes for those queries. Of course, you have the issue of people
    searching differently at different engines. AOL users are typically less tech
    savvy, when compared to Google users. So I wonder how accurate the estimates
    are?…
  • Chinese
    Government Opens Up Blogger Again
    CIO reports that after three years, the Chinese government has opened up
    access to Google’s Blogger. Why did they reopen access? Well, no one really
    knows. Maybe it is because restricting access to Blogger won’t stop people
    from starting blogs with other software?…
  • Google
    Looking For Canadian R&D Office
    Globe and Mail reports that Google is looking for office space in the southern
    part of Ontario, Canada. The new office will house as many as 200 employees,
    and be focused around research and development….

Headlines & News From Elsewhere

NOTE: Headlines are extra long today because I’m doing some catch-up from
last week.

TaggedMicrosoftSearch Engine RoundtableSearch enginesYahoo

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