IndustryThe Search Engine Update – Number 203 – Aug. 17, 2005

The Search Engine Update - Number 203 - Aug. 17, 2005

Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan's recap of top search engine stories from the first half of August 2005.

In This Issue

+ SEW Sold
+ SES Heading To Stockholm, France, Chicago
+ Top Stories
+ More From The Search Engine Watch Blog
+ About The Newsletter

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Search Engine Watch Sold

I created Search Engine Watch back in 1997 and sold it later that year to the then Mecklermedia, which became Internet.com, which became INT Media, which became Jupitermedia. Now Jupitermedia has sold Search Engine Watch — along with the ClickZ network and the Search Engine Strategies shows — to Incisive Media.

What’s this mean for readers? Nothing but good news, as far as I’m considered. Incisive wants me and the SEW team to continue prooducing the quality editorial product about search just as we have been doing — but we’re also looking at getting more resources to do that. I hope to be able to move forward with some new features as a results, especially for SEW members.

For those curious, Search Engine Watch, SES Shows Sold By Jupitermedia on the SEW blog gives you some more details on the sale and Jupitermedia Sells Search Engine Watch & SES Shows on the SEW Forums has discussion and is a place to post if you have further questions you’d like me to answer.

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SES Heading To Stockholm, France & Chicago

Next newsletter, I’ll have a wrap up of coverage and news out of our recent SES San Jose show. There was a ton going on! Meanwhile, for those doing forward planning, the next SES comes to Stockholm in October, and a new French show has been added for November. The year’s tour ends in Chicago in December. Links to sites about those shows can be found via our Search Engine Strategies site. Also see the SES Blog for news, as well.

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Top Stories
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Below is a recap of major articles from our daily SearchDay newsletter and important Search Engine Watch Blog postings since the last newsletter. Want to receive these stories daily or via RSS/feed? See the Search Engine Watch Newsletters & Web Feeds page for sign-up instructions.

=== Aug. 17, 2005 ===

Yahoo Local Expands With City Pages & More User Reviews – Yahoo Local has expanded with new city and neighborhood pages, along with increased display of maps and use of community reviews. Yahoo features custom pages for major cities throughout the US, with areas of those cities broken down into individual neighborhoods. In addition, it has coverage of all cities throughout the US offering information in various ways.

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Daily SearchCast #9, August 17, 2005 – Today’s search podcast covers Yahoo and Miva settling over a patent dispute about paid listings, the formal opening of the Ask Jeeves sponsored listings program, a written ruling about trademarks in search ads at Google, how most blog readers have no idea what RSS is, Rupert Murdock’s interest in multimedia search engine Blinkx, how Google and Yahoo need to step back from the “who’s biggest” debate, a new “block view” map service from A9, a new UC Berkeley center being formed to study search, how to find movie reviews and more.

=== Aug. 16, 2005 ===

Miva (aka FindWhat) & Yahoo Setting Paid Listing Patent DisputeMiva settles patent case with Yahoo for $8 million from the Associated Press covers how Miva — the former FindWhat — has settled a patent dispute with Yahoo over paid listings. The settlement amount of $8 million is tiny compared to the $328 million or so Google paid Yahoo to settle last year. However, I thought even that higher amount was cheap for Google to get clear of the dispute. As for Miva, the company will actually pay more than $8 million. Yahoo will get an undisclosed percentage of all ad revenues Miva generates through using its pay-per-click system.

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Daily SearchCast #8, August 16, 2005 – Today’s search podcast covers Yahoo and Miva settling over a patent dispute about paid listings, the formal opening of the Ask Jeeves sponsored listings program, a written ruling about trademarks in search ads at Google, how most blog readers have no idea what RSS is, Rupert Murdock’s interest in multimedia search engine Blinkx, how Google and Yahoo need to step back from the “who’s biggest” debate, a new “block view” map service from A9, a new UC Berkeley center being formed to study search, how to find movie reviews and more.

=== Aug. 15, 2005 ===

Screw Size! I Dare Google & Yahoo To Report On Relevancy – It’s summertime, and once again, the usual spat over index size has broken out, this time between Yahoo and Google. I cannot believe we’re going through this again. This is Search Engine Size Wars VI, by my count. It’s absurd. It’s annoying. It’s a friggin’ waste of time. Instead of advancing to a commonly accepted relevancy figure, the search engines want to keep us mired in the mud of who’s biggest. See also More on the Total Database Size Battle and Googlewhacking With Yahoo and Yahoo Announces Total Size Count.

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Ask Jeeves Sponsored Listings Program Formally Opens – The Ask Jeeves Sponsored Listings program that we wrote about earlier this month has now formally opened to any advertiser, rather than just existing Ask Jeeves advertisers. You’ll find the program here.

=== Aug. 12, 2005 ===

Google Gives Publishers Opt-Out From Library Scanning Project; One Group Still Not Happy – The biggest change is that Google will allow publishers who are members of the Google Print program to explicitly tell Google what library books they want digitized. To be clear, Google will continue scanning public domain materials.

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Search Engine Forums Spotlight– Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Search Engine Strategies San Jose 05 Session Coverage – Yahoo Invests $1bn in Alibaba.com – Is Yahoo Hand Coding More Results? – Anatomy of a Successful Reinclusion Request, and more.

=== Aug. 10, 2005 ===

Why Yahoo Bought Konfabulator – Yahoo’s recent purchase of Pixoria, developer of the quirky but seriously cool Konfabulator platform, has many pundits scratching their headswhat on earth would a web search company want with all of those software widgets?

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New Yahoo Site Explorer To Provide Linkage Data, Bulk Submit – During the Search Engine Q&A on Links session here at SES today, Tim Mayer from Yahoo said his company is launching (not live yet) Yahoo Site Explorer that provides webmasters and other interested parties with linkage data.

=== Aug. 9, 2005 ===

Get Google News Search Results as RSS or ATOM Feeds – Google has just joined many news engines (Topix.net, Findory, Yahoo News, RocketNews, and others) and is now officially making Google News search results available as RSS or ATOM feeds. You’re also able to create feeds from customized Google News pages as well as various Google News sections (business, technology, etc.). Google’s email-based alerts remain available. You’ll find the details, examples, and terms of use here.

=== Aug. 8, 2005 ===

Real-Time Transportation Finders– Looking for the next bus, train, taxi or other mode of transportation? These tools can help you find public transportation in your own neighborhood.

=== Aug. 5, 2005 ===

Google Not Happy With CNET – Google is not talking with CNET/News.com writers for about 11 more months. Why? It seems that Google is upset with a recent story that included personal info (found via Google) about Eric Schmidt. See also our forum thread Google Blacklists News.com with long comments from me on the issue.

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Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Yahoo Publisher Network Launches – Search Engines Really Are Different – Has Googlebot Become Lethargic? – How Best to Manage Visitors With Ad Blocking Turned On – Is Dogpile Attracting More Users? and more.

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Daily SearchCast #7 – Topics for today include the SES Conference Party schedule, search engine advertising, the Guinness Book of World Records, sponsored search answers, ebay’s purchase of shopping.com, a new Google user interface test, new Google Gmail interfaces, AdWords and much more!

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Baidu.com Goes Public, Shares Soar – Chinese web search engine Baidu.com (Google is a minority shareholder) went public today with its IPO on NASDAQ. Shares opened at $66 more than tripling the IPO price of $27. As I post this item shares are trading at $92. Also, Baidu’s CEO, Robin Li, did not comment on rumors that Google tried to buy the company prior to today’s IPO.

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Daily SearchCast #6 – Covers the sale of Search Engine Watch by Jupitermedia, more on the penalty box, the upcoming launch of MSN keywords, Yahoo offering blog search in Korea, the beta release of Yahoo Audio Search, Google, Microsoft and the hiring of Dr. Lee, and Google’s search for a chef continues.

=== Aug. 4, 2005 ===

Search Engine Penalties at Yahoo & MSN – In the second of a two-part article, we look at search engine penalties applied by Yahoo and MSN, and how webmasters can avoid them, or get them removed once sites are in the penalty box. Special edition for SEW members.

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Phase 2 of Longer AdWords Text Beta Begins – In the SEW Forums, moderator OptimizeOnline posts about Google beginning the second phase of a beta test allowing longer descriptions in AdWords on the Google Network

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Yahoo Releases Audio Search Engine – Yahoo has just launched a beta release of Yahoo Audio Search (YAS). Speaking as both a searcher and a music/audio junkie, Yahoo has done some impressive work with this first beta release but there is still room for improvement.

=== Aug. 3, 2005 ===

Coping with Search Engine Penalties – Search engine penalties are present and pervasive, and are a primary method used by search engines to control webmasters. Unless webmasters understand what they are and what to do about them, their websites could easily trigger a penalty, losing traffic and revenue. Special edition for SEW members.

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More Details On New MSN Keywords Program – MSN Keywords is live and kicking to some degree in France and Singapore. More details on what’s happening there and how it will spread worldwide.

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Daily SearchCast #5 – Covers the launch of Yahoo Publishers Network, the search “penalty box”, Indexing Summit 2 at SES San Jose, Google usage stats, Ask Jeeves reduces paid listings, all about Become.com, Yahoo Shopping API released, a look at Yahoo patent applications, and a new and cool feature from the A9 toolbar. Tune-in by listening to this MP3 file, listening via WebmasterRadio at 11:30am Eastern and repeated at 2pm Eastern or via our Odeo channel. Below are links about the stories that were discussed.

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Competition for AdSense: Yahoo Publisher Network Now Available to Small Publishers – The rumors are true, Yahoo has just announced that they’re extending the Yahoo Publisher Network for use by small- and medium-sized publishers.

=== Aug. 2, 2005 ===

A9 Enhances Toolbar with Cool New Feature – Word from A9 that they’ve just released a new version of their toolbar for Firefox and IE. I’ve listed the new features below including an option to add the search functionality from ANY search engine directly to the A9 toolbar by just clicking. The engine doesn’t need to have its own toolbar or an A9 Open Search column. This is as cool (very) as it is useful. However, it’s not the first time we’ve seen such a feature….[MORE”

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Ask Jeeves Will Cut Number of Paid Listings on Web Results Pages – Ask Jeeves plans to reduce the number of paid links on a search results page from about ten to two or three….[MORE”

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Daily SearchCast #4 – Today’s Daily SearchCast covers the new paid search listings program from Ask Jeeves, word of JupiterMedia selling Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Strategies, enhancements to Flickr, a new search engine overlap study from Dogpile, local search/social networking with InsiderPages.com, Google’s expansion plans, new books for the search community, Gigablast releases a toolbar with a couple of unique features, and info about a toolbar for Firefox named NeedleSearch.

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More From The SEW Blog
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Below are posts from the Search Engine Watch Blog since the last newsletter and not mentioned above. Want to keep up on daily news from the blog? Visit the home page or subscribe to the blog feed. Note that references to “I” may becoming from Danny Sullivan, Gary Price or Chris Sherman, all of whom post to the blog.

=== Aug. 17, 2005 ===

Automating the Mining of the Deep Web – Mike Bazeley’s article “Diving deep into the Web” profiles a Bay Area start-up named Glenbrook Networks that is developing technology to crawl material that’s hidden in deep/invisible web databases. Specifically, their technology will be able to automatically complete online forms and then extract the data that’s returned on a results page….[MORE”

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Battelle Excerpt: Google Goes PublicSecond Book Excerpt: Google Goes Public is the latest excerpt from The Search that John Battelle has posted on his blog, from his forthcoming book. It looks at the lead up to Google going public. See also The Boys Versus The Adults: Google Goes Public Story that we blogged about earlier this year, a great read on the same theme from GQ. See also Battelle Posts Excerpt from “The Search” for an earlier except about Bill Gross and GoTo.com

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Using Brackets To Illustrate QueriesHow to write queries from Google software engineer Matt Cutts is a nice look at how Googlers internally represent queries, so that everyone knows what was actually entered in the search box. It’s a good approach and one I’ll be adopting in general, for the most part….[MORE”

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Kai Fu Lee: Following His Heart To The Miracle Of Google – “Kai Fu Lee: I need to follow my heart” from ZDNet is a continuation of the Microsoft-Google fight over Kai Fu Lee, the in limbo head of Google China. It summarizes a letter Lee published on the web to former students, explaining that he’s following his heart to Google because of the new passion he finds there to explore technology and products “beyond just the search.” He even gives a formula of….[MORE” See also Google Anticipated Potental Problems in Lee Hiring.

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Yahoo Virtually Tied With Google On Customer Satisfaction – I wrote earlier of wanting relevancy figures. In lieu of that, how about some customer satisfaction figures? “Yahoo Gains On Google In Customer Satisfaction” from Forbes covers the latest data from the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index that puts Yahoo a hair’s breath behind Google for satisfaction….[MORE”

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Oodle For Local Classified Listings – We’ve been remiss in not having written of Oodle before, a relatively new search engine for local classified listings. Oodle scans the web to find listings of items for sale posted on places like Craiglist, newspaper classified pages and eBay, among others. It’s not just items for sale, either. You’ll also find used car listings, rentals, jobs and other locally oriented services….[MORE”

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Google Acquires Android Mobile Phone Software Start-UpGoogle Buys Android for Its Mobile Arsenal from Ben Elgin over at BusinessWeek covers Google having quietly acquired Android Inc, a 22-month-old start up company seemingly focused on software for mobile phones.

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Search Marketing VP Ron Belanger Departs Carat InteractiveCarat’s Top Search Exec Departs from ClickZ covers how long time search marketer Ron Belanger, vice president of search marketing at Carat Interactive, has jumped to be vice president of marketing for BuyDomains.

=== Aug. 16, 2005 ===

Google Unveils AdSense Blog – A post on Search Engine Roundtable and JenSense points out that Google’s Inside AdSense blog is now online. It joins “Inside AdWords” blog as resources where you can find news, tips, and advice about each service by members of the AdSense and AdWord teams.

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Google Registers “Movie” Related Domains – For you who track newly registered domains from Google, here are two more for your list. Late last month Google registered Googlemoviereviews.com and Googleshowtime.com….[MORE”

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Yahoo Has Social Networking Patent Published – If you have an interest in social networking, search and IR, you might want to take a look at a patent application from Yahoo that was published (not awarded) by the USPTO last week. It deals with how a user views info in a social network setting. After only a quick read it looks similar to what Yahoo is developing with their Yahoo 360 platform….[MORE”

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Feedster Launches Top 500 Blog List – Sure to fuel upset among those not listed and joy for those who are, Feedster has launched a new Feedster Top 500 list of what it considers the “most interesting and important blogs”….[MORE”

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A9 Officially Launches Maps Service; Block View Imagery Added for More Cities – If you’ve come across the story today about A9 launching a map service and it sounds familiar, it just might be. About 6 weeks ago I blogged a couple of comments about the service becoming available and included a link to an overview by Greg Linden. So, what’s really new at A9 today? “Block View” imagery has been made available for a few more cities….[MORE”

=== Aug. 15, 2005 ===

MSN Begins Rolling Out “Add-Ins” for Search Toolbar – The MSN Search Toolbar team has just released their first “add-in” for the toolbar. This one allows you to, “to view a three day forecast at a glance with one click”….[MORE”

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Nielsen//NetRatings: 11% of Blog Readers use RSS – The results of a new study out today from Nielsen/NetRatings (PDF) shows that 11% of blog readers use RSS to access headlines and read blog content. I would have thought the number would have been somewhat higher amongst blog readers given the amount of attention RSS gets in the blogosphere. I would also be interested to learn how “blogs” were defined since more and more non-blog sites are now offering RSS feeds….[MORE”

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Report: Yahoo Will Launch VoIP Service and What About a Google Wi-Fi Net? – Internet analyst Safa Rashtchy from Piper Jaffray said in a note today that Yahoo will launch a VoIP service in the next two weeks. Meanwhile over at Business 2.0, Om Malik reports on Google quietly building its own telecommunications network that might one day be used to provide free wireless access across America…[MORE”

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Universities, Search and IR Research – Stefanie Olsen does a great job offering a look at several search and info retrieval research projects underway at various universities in the US. You’ll read about a new research center that’s beginning UC Berkeley. Google and other players will be asked to join…[MORE”

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Google’s Q2 Financial Report Hits EDGAR Database – Number crunchers might be interested to learn that Google’s Q2 2005 official quarterly report (53 pages) hit the SEC EDGAR database today. The report is loaded down with numbers and some narrative. It offers more detail as compared to what was announced a few weeks ago when Google released their Q2 2005 earnings….[MORE”

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Searching for Movie Reviews with the Movie Review Query Engine – If you’re into movies and/or reading film reviews (both new and old films) the Movie Review Query Engine is an essential resource that makes finding and accessing a constantly updated stream of reviews written by hundreds of both well-known (NY Times, Ebert, etc.) and independent, web-based reviewers, quick and easy….[MORE”

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Yahoo Expands Ambassador Program and Adds Services for Certified Affiliates – The Media Post story Yahoo Beefs Up Training For Search Marketers has details about the folks in Sunnyvale expanding access to its Ambassador Program. Yahoo is also increase the amount of training and resources it provides to members of the Ambassador and Certified Affiliate programs.

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Preparing Feeds for Inclusion in Become.com Database – Part 2 of Shari Thurow’s interview with Jonathan Glick from shopping research and comparison engine, Become.com, is now online. This time around the interview focuses on what the webmaster can do to prepare feeds of product listings for inclusion in the Become.com database. Like I said last time, this is a must-read interview for anyone interested in shopping search. Part 1 of the interview is accessible here.

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U.S. District Court Judge Issues Written Decision in Geico v. Google AdWords Case – Out-Law.com reports that the judge in the Geico v. Google case recently released a written version of her ruling in a case that made news last December….[MORE”

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Murdoch Wants Blinkx – According to a story in the LA Times, News Corp is in talks to acquire multimedia (video and audio) search engine Blinkx. Stories about Mr. Murdoch’s rapidly growing interest in acquring Internet properties (not only Blinkx) have reached a fever pitch after conference call last week and his acquisition of MySpace a few weeks ago….[MORE”

=== Aug. 14, 2005 ===

Early Release of Findory’s Personalized RSS Reader Now Online – Findory’s just released a web-based and personalized (suggesting articles of possible interest) RSS reader….[MORE”

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Microsoft Adds Local Search and MSN Spaces to MSN Mobile – MSN is joining many other players (the big names as well as many smaller companies) by adding local search (listings from Yellow and White Page directories) to the MSN Mobile service….[MORE”

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What Should Google Learn From Netscape? – Industry experts tell Elizabeth Montalbano from the IDG News Service that Google should never underestimate the power of Microsoft.

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The Google IPO: One Year Later; Details of Correspondence Between Google and SEC Revealed – As we approach the first anniversary of the Google IPO later this week (Friday, to be precise), expect to find LOTS of stories that review Google’s first year as a public company. Today, Verne Kopytoff has two very noteworthy reads in the SF Chronicle on how the company is adjusting to growth and how the SEC held Google’s “feet to the fire” over its filing….[MORE”

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Another 44 Million Pages Added to Gigablast Index Gigablast has posted a new total size count. The new total listed on the Gigablast home page is at 2,068,530,608 pages indexed. That’s up from the 2,024,193,536 toal that Gigablast posted in May. In addition to running the feature filled Gigablast site, Matt and his team also provide web results to Snap.com.

=== Aug. 11, 2005 ===

Far Out! Virtual Neptune From Ask Jeeves Goes Live – Technical issues at the Ask Jeeves SES party on Monday made the debut of their new Virtual Neptune (VN) service an impossibility. However, this new service, I mean satire, is now ready for use. (-: The VN site mentions that local search listings from Neptune will soon be available. Cool! I wonder how many hotels, spaceship dealerships, casinos, or coffee houses are located on this distant planet. (-:

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Yahoo Invests $1 Billion in Chinese E-Commerce Site – Yahoo has confirmed that they’re investing $1 Billion in China’s, Ailbaba, an online e-commerce company. The investment will give Yahoo a 40% stake in Alibaba….[MORE”

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Answers.com and Opera Announce Partnership – According to a News.com story and this news release, access to the Answers.com database will be built into the Opera web browser toolbar. The companies will share revenue generated by users visiting co-branded content pages.

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A Conversation With the Co-Founders of Smarter.com – I recently blogged that comparison shopping engine, Smarter.com, will soon be moving into China’s search marketplace. Today, Brian Smith from ComparisonEngines.com, has posted an interview that covers a variety of topics (General search engines vs. shopping comparison engine, international expansion, etc.) with Smarter.com co-founders, Harry Tsao and Talmadge ONeill. Btw, Smarter.com also plays in the SMS search space here in the US.

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Hitwise Reports that Google Continues to “Dominate” General Web Search While Yahoo Number One in Local SearchTekrati does a nice job summarizing a recent Hitwise Market Snapshot that shows Google still “dominates” consumer web search but Yahoo is the leader in local search.

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Battelle: Google Will Not Acquire Meetro – John Battelle says that the Google will NOT be acquiring the social networking/location-based software provider meetro. Stories and rumors about a possible acquisition have been circulating this week.

=== Aug. 10, 2005 ===

Google’s Matt Cutts Launches Blog – Google software engineer Matt Cutts is well known to our readers, attendees of our SES shows to those who read up on search issues everywhere. Matt’s now launched a new blog where he’s sharing stories of being on the front lines of Google indexing and quality control issues, among other topics.

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Yahoo Launches Pay-Per-Call in the UK and Ireland – From Netimperative: “The service is already available in Yahoo Cars and will be introduced into Yahoos other e-commerce properties, Shopping and Travel following an initial introductory period beginning in early August on its shopping comparison portal Kelkoo.” A few more details in the news release.

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Google Improves Wildcard Matching – Word on the Google Blog that they’ve improved the underlying algorithm used with their wildcard (*) search operator….[MORE”

=== Aug. 9, 2005 ===

Google Posts New Total Size Number for Google Images – Google has now posted a new total image size count on the Google Images home page….[MORE”

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Yahoo Prepares LinkSpots Launch; Google May Expand AdSense Site Exclusions & Testing More “Signals” From Advertisers – DMNews.com has two stories each with comments from Google and Yahoo about new contextual ad services either coming soon or in testing….[MORE”

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Google Announces Authorized AdWords Resellers in China – Google announced today that they’ve introduced of an Authorized Reseller program in China. Andrew Goodman has details and commentary on Traffick.com. I’ve also posted the full text of the announcement here.

=== Aug. 8, 2005 ===

Lawsuit Claims Google Overcharged Advertisers – From Reuters: “Google Inc. is being sued over accusations that it overcharged advertisers who use the Web search giant’s paid search advertising program…The proposed class-action suit, filed on August 3 in State Superior Court in Santa Clara, California, accuses Google of charging in excess of advertisers’ “daily budgets,” under which Google allows an advertiser to limit how much it spends each day.”

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Indeed.com Gets Funding from The NY Times – Last Friday, I posted that job search vertical SimplyHired.com received some funding from angel investors. Today, News.com reports that Indeed.com (another job search vertical) has received a $5 million investment from the New York Times, Union Square Ventures, and Allen & Company. This is yet another Internet investment from the NY Times. In February/March they purchased About.com for $410 million in cash.

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Eurekster Announces SearchPublisher – From the news release: “Eurekster is now making its platform available for website publishers to offer personalized search on their own sites. Eurekster SearchPublisher(TM) is the first service to enable website publishers to provide their users with a highly tailored Web search experience, which results in greater user loyalty and retention, and increases the publishers’ share of the fast-growing $5 billion online paid search market.”

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Yahoo Partners With Web Analytics Companies – From the news release: “Yahoo Search Marketing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yahoo Inc., today announced that it has signed agreements to extend its search marketing application program interfaces (APIs) to leading web analytics providers Coremetrics, Omniture, WebTrends and WebSideStory.”

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On PubSub’s New LinkRanks Service – Erick Schonfeld from Business 2.0 has chatted with PubSub’s CEO, Bob Wyman and offers a preview of their soon to be released, new and improved LinkRanks service.

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Yahoo Releases New Ad Measurement Platform – From MediaPost: “Yahoo has released a new ad measurement platform that only counts and reports impressions after ads have been displayed on a user’s Web page, the company is expected to announce today. The new platform is designed to comply with Interactive Advertising Bureau standards released in December that require ads to be “fully rendered” on the receiving browser.”

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Google Asked to Remove Imagery from Google Earth – A News.com.au story reports about the head of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation asking Google to remove an image of Australia’s only nuclear reactor from Google Earth. If Google decides to remove the image does it mean that imagery of the location will also be removed from other providers of satellite/aerial imagery? In other words, could someone still get the image from GlobeXplorer or another provider? Would removing the imagery from Google Earth also make it unavailable from other services?

=== Aug. 6, 2005 ===

Forget Static Satellite Images, How About Real-Time Satellite Imagery? – With everyone so in love with satellite and aerial imagery these days (Google Maps, Google Earth, MSN Virtual Earth, TerraFly, World Wind from NASA, and many others) it might be that the static aerial/satellite images that we’re using today are just a stepping stone to real-time and interactive imagery from space….[MORE”

=== Aug. 5, 2005 ===

New Services for the Mobile Web Geek – 4INFO has fun lookups for drink recipes, pick-up lines, jokes and also other changes, while two other sites let you check airline seats and car rentals via your mobile phone….[MORE”

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SimplyHired.com Raises $3 Million from Angel Investors of Note, Guy Kawasaki Joins Board of Directors – A news release and Silicon Valley Business Journal story clues us into the fact that job search vertical SimplyHired.com has raised $3 million from angel investors including Rajeev Motwani, and early investor/advisor to Google and Ron Conway, founder of Angel Investors LLC., also an early investor in both Google and Ask Jeeves….[MORE”

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Another Google UI Test? – Yesterday, eagle-eyed Steve Rubel sent me a note about what he was seeing on a Google results page. Could it be another UI test? Here’s a screen cap that Steve sent along with his note. The searcher first sees a few results for specifically what they’ve entered. Then, the searcher is asked if they’re “dissatisfied” with what the results they’re seeing….[MORE”

=== Aug. 4, 2005 ===

Better Search Means Helping People Get Things Done – The ZDNet article “Yahoo’s new search master” offers a profile of and comments from Prabhakar Raghavan, a legend in the world of online info retrieval and the just hired person in charge of Yahoo Research Labs…[MORE”

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How Will eBay Utilize Shopping.com? – About a week ago, eBay shareholders approved the company’s acquistion of shopping comparison engine, Shopping.com. The deal is set to close at the end of the month. Since the acquisition was announced in June, we’ve heard very little about how eBay will utilize Shopping.com. The IDG News service article: Few details in eBay’s Shopping.com plans, offers a few bits of speculation about what might develop.

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Indeed.com Adds Sources and Services – Job search vertical Indeed.com has added several “hundred new job sources in the last month including the career pages of most of the Fortune 500.” Nice. Since employment databases can also be useful CI (competitive intelligence) tools, I would love to see Indeed.com do some data mining looking for trends, stats, etc.) How about beginning with their crawl of Fortune 500 job sites. Perhaps another revenue stream for Indeed? Indeed.com has also posted on their blog about new services added to their suite of tools for webmasters.

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UK Real Estate Listings+Google Maps=OnOneMap – Looking for property listings in the UK? A new service named OnOneMap takes listings of homes for sale in England, Scotland, and Wales and mashes them up with Google Maps and satellite imagery. The services claims to currently provide searchable access to about 50% of the homes for sale in the UK and hopes to reach 80% soon. More from Netimperative.

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Goodman on Yahoo’s Publishing Network – The always thought provoking Andrew Goodman says that much of the commentary and discussion about Yahoo’s new contextual ad program thus far is not “looking at this from the advertiser’s point of view.” From Andrew’s post: “If it continues to operate in its present fashion, it’ll just be helping even more dubious publishers cash in on a few ignorant advertisers who don’t track. Even if 75% of advertisers know what they’re doing, the remaining 25% are still very good at over-rewarding weak publishers with wildly overpriced clicks.”

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Providing Relevant Ads After a SearchAlmondNet, what Danny calls a “post-search” behavioral ad network launched in January. His into to the service is here. Today, Wired’s Adam Pennenberg provides a look at AlmondNet in an article titled, “Bridging the Google Ad Gap.”

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Factiva Launches New Service to Help Execs Measure Company Reputation – Factiva, a BIG name online info aggregator that offers poweful searching options (when needed) and full text access to thousands of newspapers, magazines, transcripts, and other sources has launched an online reputation tool today named Factiva Insight: Reputation Intelligence….[MORE”

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Get Cookin’ at Google – It appears that traditional methods (help wanted listings in the usual places) to find new chefs have failed to this point, and now Google is cranking its search up (again, no pun intended) by press releasing their new “worldwide search” and for two chefs….[MORE”

=== Aug. 3, 2005 ===

Yahoo Korea Now Offering Blog SearchNews.com reports that Yahoo has started to offer blog search on Yahoo Korea. No surprise that Yahoo has no comment as to when blog search will be coming to other Yahoo sites. However, I’m sure that between this story, recent comments by Jeremy Z., and Steve Rubel spotting an RSS search test site a few weeks ago, the guessing game about when Yahoo blog/rss search will launch outside of Korea will continue at a fever pitch.

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MSN Virtual Earth Team Answers Questions and Announces New Site for DevelopersA post just up on the MSN Search’s WebLog shares some insights about and future plans for MSN Virtual Earth as it completes its first week. You’ll read about future international coverage, newer imagery (where was the Apple HQ) and how people love the scratchpad feature. Also worthy of your attention is the new ViaVirtualEarth site that features info for MSN Virtual Earth developers as well as gallery of applications that use MSN VE services including the NASA Space Shuttle Current Location tool. For more on MSN Virtual Earth, here’s a link to the SearchDay review.

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Is the Butler Licensing Some Technology from Looksmart? – Search gumshoe (-: John Battelle has done some detective work and hypothesizes that Ask Jeeves is licensing some Looksmart technology for their new ad program.

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A Conversation with Rich Skrenta and Chris Tolles from Topix.net – Greg Linden points to an OJR interview with Rich Skrenta and Chris Tolles from Topix.net….[MORE”

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Yahoo Opens Customer Calling Facility in Oregon – About 3 months ago I blogged that Yahoo would be opening a customer service office in suburban Portland, OR. Oregon Public Radio reportsthat the office new facility opened yesterday and Yahoo co-founder, Jerry Yang, was in attendance….[MORE”

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Shopping Engine Smarter.com Will Launch in China – This news release from shopping engine, Smarter.com, points out that the company will launch a version of their service in China during Q4 2005. Smarter.com’s parent, MeziMedia, is lead by former Overture employees Talmadge O’Neill and Harry Tsao. Smarter.com also powers shopping search at Snap.com and also provides SMS access to their database.

===================

On the SMS and Mobile Search Beat – The Forbes article “Web Search Hits The Streets” offers a recap of what SMS search is about and includes mentions of Google, Yahoo, and 4info.net (a service I like a lot)….[MORE”

=== Aug. 2, 2005 ===

Stats: Time Spent With Various Yahoo and Google Services – Bambi Francisco’s article “Why Google may need instant messaging” offers a bunch of new and interesting stats from Majestic Research about Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Instant Messenger and Gmail….[MORE”

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Yahoo Shopping API Now Available – News from the Yahoo Developer Network today that they’ve just released an API for Yahoo Shopping. Details and documentation are posted here.

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Read All About PPC Search Marketing – A new book from Boris and Eugene Mordkovich offers a comprehensive look at all aspects of pay-per-click search advertising. The Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing Handbook is a 186-page guide that starts with the basics of paid placement programs, and explores various strategies and options for getting the most from your campaigns. More information and a sample chapter from the book is available at http://www.ppcbook.info/.

===================

Is Google Planning to Open an Office in Russia?The Moscow Times is reporting that Google might open an office in a St. Petersburg, Russia research park employing up to 3000 workers.

=== Aug. 1, 2005 ===

Yahoo’s Flickr Adds New Features – Flickr gains new features to show the most popular photo per day in calendar format and gains results clustering….[MORE”

===================

Google’s First Venture into Television Goes Live – In April, we posted a story about Google partnering with CurrentTV (the “hip” new tv channel chaired by Al Gore (-:) to provide search and “zeitgeist” data for a program called “Google Current” that will air throughout the day . Well, CurrentTV hit the airwaves today (available via satellite and cable (not on my cable system and no streaming) and Google Current is a part of the programming lineup….[MORE”

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Yahoo Files For Several Patents – A look at new patents filed for by Yahoo….[MORE”

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