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…
- Yahoo
Gives Update On Site Explorer
Site Explorer Authentication – Some Improvements and Notes from the Yahoo
Search Blog gives an update, tips and some bug fixes for those making use of
the service, especially focused on issues with authentication…. - Google
To Subpoena Yahoo, Microsoft For Info To Help In It Book Scanning Lawsuit
Just in from Bloomberg, Google to Subpoena Yahoo, Microsoft on Book Scanning
covers how Google hopes that gaining information from rival book scanning
programs will help it defend itself in copyright lawsuits over its own
scanning program. From the story: Google, which doesn’t disclose how many
books it has scanned, also wants to know the title, authors and copyright
status of books already offered through competitors’ book projects, according
to the documents. The right to subpoena has been granted, but information is
to be kept confidential and used only in the litigation…. - Light
Posting On Friday, Oct 6, 2006
Barry Schwartz is off for Sukkot tomorrow, Friday, October 6 — and I’m away
at the Frankfurt Book Fair. So the SEW Blog might have light posting!… - LiveDeal
Partnership Moves: Vast, SimplyHired
Within the past two days LiveDeal has announced two significant relationships:
one with jobs metasearch engine SimplyHired and another, today, with general
classifieds aggregator/search engine Vast…. - Google
Blog Search Adds Ping Support
The Google Blog announced that Google Blog Search now supports the acceptance
of pings. So when you add a new blog entry and you support RSS/XML/Atom you
can send Google Blog Search a ping at their Blog Search Pinging Service. How
do you do this? Well, you can read more at About Google Blog Search Pinging
Service and view the Pinging API yourself. I tested it out on a different blog
and got a 404, but it is very possible I pinged the wrong URL, I will test it
again shortly. Postscript From Danny: Movable Type users want to put… - Google
Won Keyword Trademark Lawsuit: Rescuecom v. Google
MercuryNews.com reported last week that Google won a major sponsored keyword
trademark case against Rescuecom. Judge Norman Mordue of U.S. District Court,
northern district of New York, went “against all four precedent rulings” on
this case, said Eric Goldman. Specifically, the court said, “Defendant’s
internal use of plaintiff’s trademark trigger sponsored links is not a use of
a trademark…because there is no allegation that defendant places plaintiff’s
trademarks on any goods, containers, displays, or advertisements, or that its
internal use is visible to the public.” Eric Goldman explained that the court
used the 1-800 Contacts precedent in this case to… - Search
Competition; Why Can’t Others Catch Up To Google?
BusinessWeek.com has a good article on search competition, explaining how
Google’s continued growth amongst all the competition is practically
unaffected. In short, the article goes over new features, refinements, and
user interfaces and explains that it is mostly about the trust the searchers
have for the Google brand to provide the best results. Take a look at Danny’s
recent rant, he goes into this more and also check out Danny’s post on
Daggle.com named Why Search Sucks & You Won’t Fix It The Way You Think. Want a
view from a Google employee on the article, read Matt Cutts take… - Hello
Natural Language Search, My Old Over-Hyped Search Friend
This is a rant. It’s a rant from over 10 years of watching people trot out
natural language search as the “killer” solution to the current state of
search, something that’s happening once again with Powerset. That’s a search
engine you can’t even use at the moment, but the hype will no doubt continue.
To counteract that, my thoughts on and some history about natural language
search…. - USA
Today Asks Teoma Who?
The other day, Ask.com was featured in a USA Today article named What’s Teoma,
you ask? You could ask Jeeves, but he’s become … Teoma. Yes, a weird title
for a USA Today post, in where USA Today goes into the past of Teoma, Ask
Jeeves, Teoma, Rutgers, IBM and Apostolos Gerasoulis. The article is a fun
read but it needs some clarifications that are either wrong or can be
interpreted the wrong way. The article says, “Lanzone turned off Ask’s
technology and began to power Ask.com with Teoma.” Lanzone, being Jim, the new
CEO of Ask.com. The time they… - Google
Groups Beta 2006 Gets Mixed Reviews
Google announced a new Google Groups Beta with a new design, added features
and some shared features from other Google properties. In short, Google Groups
has a new design, added Google Page like features, more customization
abilities, file upload and sharing capabilities, member profile pages, Gmail-like
“message cards for discussions” and more. Nathan Weinberg calls this a “step
backwards” for Google Groups. As Nathan notes, Philipp Lenssen says there is
too much confusion and inconsistency felt in the new design. Garett Rogers
calls this upgrade an “better overall experience” for the Google Groups user.
Finally, News.com reports that it is… - Google
Code Search Live, Offers Code Searching For Programmers
Google Code Search is now live, a new service from Google designed to allow
computer programmers and others seek out computer code from across the web….
Headlines & News From Elsewhere
Google’s Query Rank, and Query Revisions on
Search Result Pages, Seo By The Sea
Google to Offer Annual Bonuses of Up to $3 Million, Bloomberg- Google Loves Open
Source WiFi, GigaOM - SEMPO Turns Gaze
In-House, ClickZ - Podcast: Google Code Search Launches; Natural Language Search Not Next
Leap Forward & More!, Daily SearchCast
Technorarti Bumps Search Engine Roundtable Off Top Blog List, Cartoon
Barry Blog
Paid and Organic Search – Impact of Ad Copy on Click Through Rates (Post 2
of 3), Hitwise- Kottke
is accumulating a list of embarassing queries in Google’s code search,
Scripting News - Google Code Search
Exposes WinZip Serial Number Info, Search Engine Journal
del.icio.us Plans To Become A Social Network, Read/Write Web
Local review site Yelp raises $10 million from Benchmark, SiliconBeat
Tutorials, Papers and Presentations from the International Conference on
Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, ResourceShelf
Wendy Muller Leaving Google Canada, Traffick
UK Online Ad Spend Still Booming, Outstrip Print By End 2006,
PaidContent.org
Ben Edelman vs. TRUSTe: Can’t We All Just Get Along?, ClickZ
PodZinger to Offer Targeted Video Ads, ClickZ- Ask’s Search Box Continues To Expand, InsideGoogle
Comparing Visit Data for Shoemoney & SEOmoz over 12 Months, SEOmoz
Social Local Search Sites Up 44% in Past Year, Hitwise- Other
Google fetching, Matt Cutts