IndustryHighlights from the SEW Blog: August 7, 2006

Highlights from the SEW Blog: August 7, 2006

Featured posts from the Search Engine Watch blog, as well as our customary headlines from around the web.

Featured posts from the Search Engine Watch blog, as well as our customary headlines from around the web. If you’re not familiar with our blog, click on any of the links below, or visit the blog’s home page at http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/.

From The SEW Blog…

  • Find ‘Nearby Stores’ With Become
    There’s lots of data from many sources that reflects the dominant consumer shopping paradigm involving the Internet: research online, buy locally. Even though e-commerce, excluding Travel, will approach $150 billion this year, according to Forrester Research, that’s a small fraction of offline spending. But more and more of that offline buying is influenced in one way or another by the Internet. Among the shopping engines, ShopLocal and Froogle offer local buying information. CNET also has some local inventory information (via Channel Intelligence). Now Become.com has joined that illustrious group with a new “nearby stores” feature….
  • Rollyo Adds More Functionality
    The roll your own search resource Rollyo adds more functionality to its services. If Rollyo has slipped under your radar it’s a resource that allows you to create your own personalized search engine (hence ‘roll your own’) that will search up to 25 sites that you specify. They’ve improved layout, added blog search, added the ability to take an existing Searchroll and edit it to your own taste and added a ‘Rollbar’. The latter allows searchers to incorporate Rollyo into the browser to search any site, add sites to existing Searchrolls on the fly and create new ones based on…
  • The Concept Of A “Perfectly Optimized Page”
    Aaron Wall at SEO Book has an excellent and thought provoking write up named The Myth of a Perfectly Optimized Page. He discusses how he gets request from folks for him to review a page or two and to let the person know how “perfectly optimized” that page is. Aaron then explains how optimization is not just about keyword density or links, but that each page has a goal. Based on that goal, optimization tactics and strategies will change….
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  • Use Frequency Of Google Products Survey
    Philipp Lenssen is conducting an online survey asking you How Often Do You Use These Google Products? The products range from Google Web Search to Google Video, from Froogle Mobile to Google Mars and from Google Writely to Google Ride Finder. You can rate your frequency of use for each product on a six-point scale; hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, never but I know it, never and never heard of it. I completed the survey, afterward; it shows you a graphical, real time representation of all the responses. I assume Philipp will be providing a final roundup of numbers when the…
  • Industry Groups, Search Engines To Develop Click Fraud Guidelines
    Google, Yahoo and others team up against click fraud from News.com covers The Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Media Rating Council partnering with Ask, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others to form the @Click Measurement Working Group.@ Says News.com: The group’s mission is to establish guidelines for what constitutes valid clicks and invalid clicks on ads. Guidelines can help the industry measure how prevalent click fraud really is. Third-parties who sell click-fraud combating services to advertisers claim that click fraud rates are as high as 30 percent. Google and Yahoo counter that click fraud rates are minimal. Postscript: Google has a…
  • Google-AP Deal Not Pay-Per-Click & Some Further Details
    As it happens, I was at Google yesterday when the story came out about the financial agreement between Google and the Associated Press over the use of AP content. That story raised a number of questions, and here are some answers I can share so far from Google….
  • Search Marketers Often Don’t Track All Referring Conversions
    ClickZ reports on a 360i and SearchIgnite study that shows that search marketers do not look at all “assists,” instead they primarily look at the last referring click that lead to the conversion. Here are some highlights of the report:…
  • USA Today Gets A Hold Of Danny Sullivan
    Want to take a look at the past, present and future of our admired Founder and editor-in-chief of Search Engine Watch, Danny Sullivan? Well, today, USA Today released a little write up named Got a search engine question? Ask Mr. Sullivan. The article goes a bit into Danny’s reputation in this industry, it reviews how he got into Search Engine Watch, discusses any regrets (none) selling Search Engine Watch and possibly offers some insight into the future of Danny and Search Engine Watch. Read the article at USA Today….
  • Ask.com Releases ISBN Number Smart Answers
    Gary Price notes that Ask.com has added support for ISBN number searches. For example, conduct a search on 091096551X, which is the book Gary Price and Chris Sherman wrote, you should notice an image of the book and a link to compare prices. This is a neat feature, but I should note that entering in the same ISBN number at Yahoo Search gives you a Yahoo Shortcut that takes you to comparison shopping in the Yahoo Network. It was a nice feature for Ask.com to add….
  • July 2006 Search News Recap Posted
    The latest edition of my monthly Search Engine Report newsletter is now online, recapping top stories in search from the past month. You can read it online or receive it via email for free by signing up here. If you’re a Search Engine Watch member, the latest edition of Search Engine Update newsletter has also been posted. That newsletter carries more items than the Search Engine Report newsletter and goes out twice per month….
  • New Search Patent Applications: August 1, 2006 – Microsoft Answers?
    There are a number of new patent applications from Yahoo, including one that utilizes concept networks to understand the intention behind a user’s query; another describing an addition to a user interface that lets a searcher define the context of a search; an API approach to retrieve information from fast changing dynamic sites such as job listing sites, news site personals, or online auction sites; a way to use the contents of a first set of results from the search engine to find relevant pages from a second set of results, including both paid and organic results; a process of…
  • Forum Fodder: SES San Jose Party Update, Secrets Spilled, and 301 Redirects Galore
    Hot topics & discussions going on in the Search Engine Watch Forums right now: The official party list for SES San Jose networking events has been updated as of today with a new pub crawl sponsored by Trexy.com – find more details in this thread. Whoa! Who opened the floodgates? SEO’s are sharing trade secrets left and right. Take your turn and share just one of your favorite search marketing secrets. Recommendations on implementing 301 redirects are popping up in several discussions, as solutions for duplicate content issues, and closing an old site. On a related redirect topic, a new…
  • Microsoft adCenter Upgrades Include Firefox Support
    Microsoft adCenter has a new release launching Saturday, August 5th, and one of the upgrades includes the long awaited Firefox browser support….
  • Google Toolbar Bug Warns Against Use Of Other Search Engines
    Philipp Lenssen reports that a bug in the Google Toolbar warns users when they select other search engines to use. If you enable in the toolbar that you want to keep Google as your main search engine, and you install a toolbar from say MSN, it will pop up warnings at you. The warning reads, “Google has blocked an attempt by another program to change your default search settings.” Benjamin Lewis from Google said there is a bug with the program, “The fact that GoogleToolbarNotifier.exe remains in memory after disabling the feature is a bug – thank you for reporting…
  • AOL Video To Launch New Video Portal
    I received a press release yesterday from AOL, announcing the soon to launch new AOL Video portal at www.aolvideo.com, August 4th. What can you expect? More than “45 new video-on-demand content channels with thousands of hours of video programming from popular entertainment brands, organized and accessible via video search, browse or an interactive programming guide; free streaming content as well as the ability to purchase and download full-length content that can be viewed on multiple devices and PCs, online or offline; and access to millions of music videos, news clips, movie trailers, full length TV shows, and more.” Gary Price…
  • Enquisite: New Free Analytics Tool Launches
    Enquisite is a new free analytics tool that is launching today. I’m not an analytics guru and so others will need to kick the tires. But one of the things that impresses me about it is that you’re able to see locally where your traffic is coming from. In other words, if you’ve got concentrations of users in Los Angeles or Des Moines or Seattle this tool will expose that and what they’re searching for. Thus it can help coordinate online and offline marketing. It also tracks and compares organic vs. PPC placement. It also appears to have many additional…
  • Google Paying News Sites For Google News Syndication?
    Philipp Lenssen has some details on Google paying some news sources, such as the Associated Press, for syndicating their content in Google News. Philipp initially posted the story based on a Mercury News article that was foggy on the details of such relationships. But then Philipp received a statement from Google that read:…
  • Google’s Matt Cutts Answers Questions On Google Video
    Matt Cutts has released six video sessions so far, over the past two days at his blog. They all answers questions sent to him on the topic of search engine optimization. Most of the videos are about five minutes long, you don’t have to necessarily watch Matt talk, you can just listen (there is not much going on in the background).

Resources

The 2023 B2B Superpowers Index
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The 2023 B2B Superpowers Index

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Data Analytics in Marketing
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Data Analytics in Marketing

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The Third-Party Data Deprecation Playbook
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The Third-Party Data Deprecation Playbook

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Utilizing Email To Stop Fraud-eCommerce Client Fraud Case Study
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Utilizing Email To Stop Fraud-eCommerce Client Fraud Case Study

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