Search Headlines & Links: September 11, 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…

  • Google
    Interesting Items Module: Recommend Searches, Pages & Gadgets
    Google has added an Interesting items for you module to the personalized home
    page interface as noted in the Google Operating System blog. Google works with
    your own searches and attempts to find other things that will be of interest
    to you. The module provides users with three tabbed options – searches, pages
    and gadgets. I found that the searches Google suggested to be something of a
    mixed bag; some of them were actually quite sensible, although they were
    limited to a maximum of three individual search terms (not a phrase search in
    sight) – out of the 10 recommendations…
  • Ask.com
    To Open R&D Center in Germany
    Ask.com announced a new Germany research and development center to be headed
    up by Eric Heymann, former head of technology at Seekport, as director of
    global content acquisition today. The German R&D center will work closely with
    the Pisa, Italy, Campbell, Calif., and Piscataway, N.J. locations. Apostolos
    Gerasoulis, VP of search technology at Ask.com, said, “the expansion of our
    European research and development team will allow Ask.com to continue to
    develop and scale our world-class search.” The full press release is posted
    below….
  • Track
    Federal Spending With Government Search Engine
    Andy Beal spotted an AP article named Senate backs online search of spending.
    Yes, the Senate wants to make it easier for normal users to track what the US
    Government is spending taxpayers money on. The example search given is that,
    “one could type in “Boeing” to find contracts awarded to the aerospace company
    or “breast cancer research” to see efforts to battle one of the leading
    killers of women.” Andy asks, why not just have Google do it for the
    government, since they already know a lot more than the government does
    anyway? :)…
  • Google’s
    Toolbar Anti-Phishing Blacklist
    Philipp Lenssen reports on a whitelist of URLs found at sb.google.com which
    appears to be a whitelist of safe URLs to be used for the Google Toolbar. Be
    digging deeper into the forums area of Google Blogoscoped, you can see that
    the this whitelist will prevent the “Web Forgery” warning in the Google
    Toolbar from popping up on those particular sites….
  • Google
    GeoTargeted AdWords Preview Tool: See How Ads Look Outside Your Region
    Friday, the Inside AdWords blog announced a new feature that allows
    advertisers to see how their ads appear. So if you want to test the appearance
    of your ad locally or based on a specific set of geographic criteria, you can.
    Go to www.google.com/adpreview and type in your keyword phrase. If you want to
    add geo-specific criteria, you can. To define the country enter &gl=[Two
    Letter Country Code Here], to define the region enter &gr=[region code here],
    you can also define city, latitude and longitude, postal code and DMA. More
    details at the AdWords Help Center….
  • Windows
    Live & Live Search Leaves Beta In The UK
    It’s official — Windows Live and the Windows Live Search service you’ll find
    there are out of beta in the UK, plus it’s now Windows Live powering the MSN
    portal that continues to run despite the new focus on the Windows Live brand.
    Oddly, when I got to the Windows Live site from the UK, the beta moniker is
    still there. And if there’s a UK-version of Windows Live, that’s nowhere in
    evidence. Details from what I was sent about the release:…
  • Looking
    Back At Search & 9/11
    Five years ago, like so many, I was shocked and horrified by the events of
    September 11. I spent the day uncertain of what to do, before running for the
    cover of what I knew, looking at the search engines. Finding Disaster Coverage
    At Search Engines illustrates how they reacted that day. It underscored what
    I’ve long described as the great failure of Google then, having to effectively
    tell people to go elsewhere for information while its web search results were
    showing links with descriptions saying things like “View from the WTCA
    Headquarters.” Since that time, the emergence of Google…

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