IndustryDaily SearchCast, May 23, 2006: Google Removes Sites Over Hate Speech From News; Google Bug Makes Your Site Seem To Disappear; MSN Gives ODP Description Opt-Out (Hurray!) & More!

Daily SearchCast, May 23, 2006: Google Removes Sites Over Hate Speech From News; Google Bug Makes Your Site Seem To Disappear; MSN Gives ODP Description Opt-Out (Hurray!) & More!

Today’s search podcast covers Google removing some sites from Google News
over hate speech issues; a bug that causes Google to report fewer pages indexed
than it actually has for your site; MSN goes where other search engines have yet
to go, offering an opt-out for Open Directory titles and descriptions being
forced upon your listings and more!

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Below are links to items discussed:

  • Amazon
    Upgrades Amazon Online Reader

    Gary Price has a detailed & step-by-step write up on the new Amazon Online
    Reader. You can view the new look for the reader by clicking here. The new
    features include; search for words within the pages, scroll from page to page
    (looks AJAX like), and a zoom feature. More details at Gary and/or at
    Amazon….
  • Google’s
    Eric Schmidt Interviewed on CNBC

    ResourceShelf points to a CNBC interview of Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt. The
    two-part interview goes over the “plan B” for Google’s growth, Google the
    “portal,” the competitive landscape, the CNET controversy, Bill Gates comments
    about Google, Wall Street, the international front, and finally click fraud. A
    few things I will put out for you is that Google wants to increase “targeted
    ads” for all media, Google won’t call itself a portal, content companies are
    not competitors, there is a difference between public information being
    available and publicizing that information, and Asia is a growing market that
    Google will be aiming…
  • Google
    Removing News Sources For Hate Speech

    NewsBusters.org reports that Google has removed two Islamic sites from the
    Google News index for “hate speech.” Google cited three examples of articles
    that Google News readers reported to them, including this one and this one.
    Philipp Lenssen has a nice write up on the subject here. It is also important
    to note that Google has not removed the site from the Google Web search index,
    site:www.michnews.com returns almost 33,000 results….
  • MySpace
    In Partnership Talks With Google & Microsoft

    The Financial Times reports that MySpace, the huge social networking site, is
    in talks with Google and Microsoft over partnership opportunities to better
    monetize MySpace with contextual and search ads. MySpace, that has “nearly 80m
    registered users”, is seeking a search company, like Google or Microsoft to
    “supply internet searches on its pages, along with adverts tied to results.”
    The Financial Times says that Yahoo is “less interested,” possibly because
    they have their own consumer generated content going on there. This deal can
    be huge for both Google and Microsoft, and also MySpace….
  • Windows
    Live Local Maps UK With Aerial Imagery

    Loren Baker spotted a LiveSide post noting that Windows Live Local has added
    UK aerial imagery coverage. LiveSide explains that they are still lacking
    Birds-Eye feature at many UK cities, but expect improvements to that feature
    by the “end of the summer.”…
  • Google
    Base Live in UK & Germany

    Philipp notes that Google Base is now live in the UK and Germany. The UK
    version is at http://www.google.co.uk/base/ and the German version is at
    http://www.google.de/base/….
  • AdSense
    Video Ads Out of Rich Media Beta Test

    AdWords advertisers will be able to display video ads across the AdSense
    content network. The video ads, in a click-to-play video format so not to be
    too obtrustive to the user experience, will be available as both site targeted
    ads as well as on a keyword basis. However, it does not seem to be an ad
    format that publishers will be able to opt-out of….
  • Show Me
    More Pictures Like This One…

    Image search can be frustrating, because search engines can’t “see” pictures
    in the same way that they can “read” text?indeed, image search involves a lot
    of guesswork on the part of the engines. Experimental image search services
    are trying to overcome the inherent challenges with image retrieval by
    allowing you to use a reference image as a starting point to find similar
    images based on color, texture and so on. More on two of these services in
    today’s SearchDay article, Searching for Images by Similarity….
  • Google
    Continues To Gain Market Share While Others Lose

    comScore released their latest stats on the “Share of Online Searches by
    Engine”. Google gained April 2005 to April 2006 6.6 percentage points,
    claiming 43.1%, up from 42.7% March 2006. Yahoo with 28.0% in April 2006,
    dropped 2.7 percentage points from April 2005, but remained flat from March
    2006 to April 2006 with 28% share. MSN dropped 3.2 percentage points claiming
    12.9%, and also saw a decline from March 2006 to April 2006 by .3%. What is a
    bit surprising is that Ask.com’s share also decreased both from April 2005
    with 6.1% to March 2006 with 5.9% and then in…
  • MSN
    Allows Webmasters To Opt Out Of ODP Titles

    Huge props to MSN Search for enabling Webmasters to tell MSN not to display a
    site’s ODP directory title in the MSN Search results. Basically, some times
    when a site is listed in MSN Search results, they use the ODP (dmoz.org)
    directory listing’s data, specifically the title and description from the ODP
    database. Now, MSN allows Webmasters to specify if that data should be used or
    not. How do you implement it?…
  • Tool
    Estimates How Much Selling Your Links Is Worth

    The folks at Text Link Ads announced via the Link Building Blog a tool that
    calculated the value of links on your page. This nifty and stylish AJAX
    powered tool asks you to type in the URL of the site, the site’s theme, the
    number of links you want to sell on the page, if the links will be site wide
    or single page link only and then to specify the location of the links on the
    page. According to the tool, a single link on this site, if placed on the left
    hand navigation bottom bar, is worth $5,200…
  • Google
    Sends Settlement Notices In Click Fraud Class Action Case

    The Inside AdWords Blog posted an update on the Lane’s Gifts v. Google
    Settlement. They posted a statement by Nicole Wong, Associate General
    Counsel;…
  • Searcher
    Behavior: An SEOs Perspective

    Shari Thurow has a new ClickZ article live named Analyzing Search Behavior for
    SEO, which looks at searcher behavior from the SEO’s perspective. She defines
    the different modes of search behavior that include; Berrypicking, Querying,
    Refining, Expanding, Browsing/surfing, Pogo-sticking, Foraging, Scanning
    (eye-tracking) and Reading. Shari goes deep into a paper written by Marcia J.
    Bates in 1989 named Berrypicking, for the inspiration of Analyzing Search
    Behavior for SEO….
  • New
    Click Fraud Bot Exploiting 34,000 PCs & Hundreds Of Advertisers

    Help Net Security reports that PandaLabs discovered a bot named Clickbot.A,
    which infected 34,000 computers. The Clickbot.A automatically clicks on search
    ads, costing advertises hundreds of dollars (or more) for invalid clicks. This
    clicks act as if they are real, in nature, since they are on 34,000 different
    machines, on different networks, and are being instructed to the style of
    search ad clicking they should take. So it may look as if the clicks are
    valid, when they may not be. Jen will be posting more details later about this
    case, for now you can get more information at Help…
  • Google
    Finds Bug With Site Search Command

    Vanessa Fox from Google Engineering posted at the Inside Google Sitemaps blog,
    that Google found a bug with the site search command. The post explains that
    some of the reason people are noticing indexing issues at Google, is because
    of this bug. The two of a “few bugs that affected the site: operator” include
    using the site command with a trailing slash (i.e. site:www.example.com/) or
    trying it on a hyphenated domain name (i.e. site:www.example-site.com). Google
    says they will have it fixed within a few days, but until then, use the syntax
    site:www.example.com. I have the forum roundup on this bug…
  • Google
    Adds /Music To Robots.txt File: Google Music Coming Soon?

    Garett Rogers discovers that Google just changed their robots.txt file to
    include Disallow: /music. That suggests that Google is ready to launch a music
    portal, of some sort soon. Gary Price has been speculating about Google Music
    for over a year now….
  • Yahoo
    Publisher Network Launches Direct Deposit & Tax Withholding

    Yahoo! Publisher Network has just launched a few new features for publishers,
    including the much longed for direct deposit. They have also included an
    option for publishers to automatically allow YPN to do tax withholding on
    their earnings. And lastly, they have announced that they will pay publishers
    on the 25th of the month, which puts them several days ahead of when Google
    AdSense sends their payments to publishers. For more details on all the
    changes, please see YPN launches direct deposit, tax withholding and faster
    payment turnaround on JenSense….
  • Potato Bugs

Resources

The 2023 B2B Superpowers Index
whitepaper | Analytics

The 2023 B2B Superpowers Index

8m
Data Analytics in Marketing
whitepaper | Analytics

Data Analytics in Marketing

10m
The Third-Party Data Deprecation Playbook
whitepaper | Digital Marketing

The Third-Party Data Deprecation Playbook

1y
Utilizing Email To Stop Fraud-eCommerce Client Fraud Case Study
whitepaper | Digital Marketing

Utilizing Email To Stop Fraud-eCommerce Client Fraud Case Study

1y