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…
- French
Lawsuit Over Google Book Search
French publisher sues Google for piracy from AFP covers how a French
publishing group becomes the third to sue Google over its book scanning
program. La Martiniere alleges the indexing project violates copyright.
Association of American Publishers Sues Google over Library Digitization Plan
and Google’s Library Scanning Project Heads to Court (action by the Authors
Guild) covers the two other suits that I know of, which we’ve blogged about
before….
- Topix
Adds Free Local Classifieds
Joining the free classifieds fray, news aggregator Topix.net has added the
ability to post listings on the site for housing, jobs, private party items,
services, events and “local shops.” Here’s the ad-entry interface and here’s
an example of where and how the ads appear. This program has been going on
quietly for a few months but is now gaining notice….
- Mark
Fletcher Leaves Ask.com & Bloglines
Mark Fletcher, the founder of the most popular Web base RSS reader, Bloglines,
announced that he is leaving the company. On February 8th 2005 Ask Jeeves (Ask.com)
acquired Bloglines and continued to add features and resources to the service.
Just last week Ask.com launched a blog & feed search feature with the help of
the Bloglines team. Mark is leaving not just to spend more time with his
family, but more because he wants to start up new companies and help other
startups succeed. Mark says he is confident in leaving Bloglines in the
Ask.com hands, read Mark’s full moving…
Googlebowling A Reality?
Googlebowling is a term used to describe the method of knocking out a page
from the Google search results. Googlebowling is conducted by linking to a
particular site from sites within bad neighborhoods. Rand over at SEOMoz.org
posted recent information he learned about Googlebowling while at SES London a
week ago. To successfully deploy Googlebowling, Rand writes that you need to
“use patterns that would show that the site has “participated” in the
program.” That means, you need to make sure to point the same “spammy” links
to the other sites linking to the site you want to penalize. If…
- Funny
Example Of Why DMOZ Titles Are Bad In Search Results
Threadwatch posted a funny example of why DMOZ (ODP) directory titles should
not always be used in the Google search results page. Search for Tony Knowles
and you will see the top two results read, “Tony Knowles for Governor” and
“Governor Tony Knowles” respectively. Yes, Tony Knowles is running to be the
Governor Alaska but is not yet the governor there. If you click through to the
second result, the one that reads “Governor Tony Knowles”, and points to
http://gov.state.ak.us/, you will notice the actual title of the page is
“Governor Frank Murkowski,” the current Governor of Alaska. So where…
- Baidu,
Chinese Search Engine TV Ad
Baidu, the Chinese based search engine, launched a new TV commercial. The
commercial was translated and posted over at ValleyWag.com and can also be
watched at YouTube. The commercial has an ending tag line that reads something
like; “with Baidu, you can ‘find’ whoever you want to search for.” Check out
more of the details and the video at ValleyWag….
- Google
Asks If AdWords Is Useful With Feedback Buttons
Philipp Lenssen reports that Google is testing feedback buttons near AdWords
ads. The feedback buttons asks, “Was this link useful?” You can then click on
either a Yes or No button to provide the feedback. I was unable to duplicate
this on my browsers, but interesting nevertheless….
- Google
Indexing Fewer Pages: Signs Of The Google Crawling Sandbox?
Aaron Wall over at SEOBook.com has an excellent write up on the recent
indexing phenomenon at Google. Google has been indexing fewer and fewer pages
and webmasters are trying to figure out how to get more of their pages indexed
and found by searchers. Aaron posted a blog entry he named The Google Crawling
Sandbox….
Facelift, New Features For Yahoo’s MyWeb Bookmark Service
Yahoo’s MyWeb bookmark service has gotten a facelift and new features to make
it easier than before for people to find what others are saving and sharing on
the service. Yahoo MyWeb Gets New Look, Easier Browsing & Viewing Features in
today’s SearchDay from me covers the changes and revisits how the system works
in general….
- Google
Spreadsheets To Launch Shortly
Google is to release a new Google Spreadsheets product on Tuesday, allowing
anyone with a web browser to create and interact with spreadsheet information.
The product will be a limited test release, which basically means first come,
first served until Google shuts off the flow. Want it? Then watch Google Labs.
Google Spreadsheets was planned to be posted there at 6am Pacific time
Tuesday, when I talked with the company about the service earlier today….
- New
Search Patent Applications: June 5, 2006 – Taking Care of Web Decay, Dead
Links, and Parked Domains
Yahoo provides an XML based bid management tool, and a way to maintain a
persistent link to dynamic information between a browser and specific web
pages. Microsoft marries email and search to provide a way store and track
queries, and also introduces a method of calculating similarity between pages
without the computational overhead of a Latent Semantic Indexing methodology.
IBM aims to improve text search by preprocessing and maintaining relationship
data between documents, delivers a means of spellchecking URLs, describes a
process for personalizing web pages which include personalized search results,
and introduces a method to rank pages while accounting…
Other Things We Read, Didn’t Blog But You Might Want To Read…