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

• 
  Where Is Google Games?, Google Watch
• 
  Flickr and Interestingness, O’Reilly Radar
• 
  Making
  Money For The Flickr Flock?, InternetNews.com
• 
  Multimedia Metadata Optimization, ClickZ
• 
  Rapidly Morphing, AOL Races to Build an Ad Empire, ClickZ
• Top
  10 Search Terms in 10 Categories, July 2006, ClickZ
• 
  Search Terms for Q2 2006, ClickZ
• 
  What’s Ailing Yahoo?, iMediaConnection
• 
  Google’s WiFi test goes smoothly, but don’t expect live human tech support,
  San Jose Mercury News
• 
  Google Code Jam 2006 Programmers Worldwide Invited to Participate in Google’s
  Fourth Annual Global Coding Competition, Google Press Release
• 
  GoogleGuys Explains Robots.txt Handling, Search Engine Roundtable
• 
  Google’s Approach To (Some) Content Matures; Google Video Gets Home-Page Boost,
  PaidContent.org
• 
  
  Will Search Retain Its Share of the Online Media Pie?, MediaPost
• 
  You are what you Search: Research with the AOL Data Set, ResourceShelf
• One
  Trackback Mistake You Can’t Afford to Make, SEO BlackHat
• 
  Google Continues on Domain Name Registration Spree, AP Domains This Time?,
  ResourceShelf
• 
  The alliance against Google, The Economist
• The
  Search for Secret Google Services, Google Blogoscoped
• My
  Google bag, Charlene Li
• New Ask Ad Targets Search
  Savvy, Threadwatch
• There’s
  Over 10,000 Google News Sources, Google Blogoscoped
• 
  Are the Google boys flying their jumbo jet?, Valleywa
• Search Results
  To Die For, MediaPost
• 
  Yahoo vs. Google, round two, CNN Money
• Google
  Games, Google Blogoscoped
• 
  I scream for (Google) ice cream, Official Google Blog
• 
  The new Google Checkout blog, Inside AdWords
• 
  Google Registers Checkoutsucks.com Domain; Yahoo Registers
  YahooSearchSucks.com, ResourceShelf
• AOL
  Revamps Photo Site, PC World
• 
  Phishers Flick Switch, Dupe Yahoo Users With Flickr, Information Week
• Censured
  for Censorship in China, Slashdot
• 
  Microsoft Searches for Traction, TechWeek
• Google Video is the
  Future of Google, Search Engine Journal
• 
  Google Video – What a Difference a Link Makes, Bill Tancer – Hitwise US
• Web Hosts Found
  Cloaking Webmaster Content, Search Engine Roundtable
• 
  Google search ads find momentum, USA Today
• 
  Growing By Leaps And Googles, Business Week
• The Nasty Problem
  with Scraping Results from the Engines, SEOmoz Blog
• New Ask Ad Targets Search
  Savvy, Threadwatch.org
• 
  Brainstorming Viral Marketing Ideas, Justilien.com
• 
  Defeating Google’s Perpetual Search Logging, Slashdot

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