Is Google Responsible for Ruining the Internet? (Friday, February 04, 10:49 PM EST)

I was just sitting here drinking my coffee and I had a thought. Far from making sense of the web as they purport to do, Google is single handedly turning it into a bloated disaster zone.

First they spouted the content mantra. Webmasters diligenlty pumed out millions of pages to satisfy the hungry cralwers.

Then they started the anchor text numbers game. People then went out and built millions of sites especially to promote their other pages.

Now we have adsense. Pages are now being made from crap especially to make as many adsense impressions as possible.

Add to that buying pagerank, blog and guestbook spamming (all due to Google's algorythms) and the rest and I wonder if it's a master plan to take down the net :)

Rackspace bans Yahoo! (Friday, February 04, 09:53 PM EST)

How funny is THAT? - Well, not very funny at all for anyone hosted on Rackspace i guess..

Yahoo's Tim Mayer said:

A customer of a hosting company like rackspace may have a customer that is being hit by our crawler and not realize who it is so they report the IP to rackspace or another provider and they block the IP at the router level. This would cause other SE to have access and for us not to have access.

Muppets...

via barry

Gates + Windows = Interoperability? (Friday, February 04, 09:46 PM EST)

Bill Gates has issued a letter to Microsoft customers that outlines an intention to design it's software with interoperability in mind, primarily in the form of XML

Simply put, interoperability is a proven approach for dealing with the diversity and heterogeneity of the marketplace. Today I want to focus on two major thrusts of Microsoft’s product interoperability strategy: First, we continue to support customers’ needs for software that works well with what they have today. Second, we are working with the industry to define a new generation of software and Web services based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML), which enables software to efficiently share information and opens the door to a greater degree of "interoperability by design" across many different kinds of software. Our goal is to harness all the power inherent in modern (and not so modern) business software, and enable them to work together so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We want to further eliminate friction among heterogeneous architectures and applications without compromising their distinctive underlying capabilities.

and from beta news

"I think Microsoft is premature trumpeting the open-format messaging. And to be clear, by any definition typically applied to file formats, Office isn't open," Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox told BetaNews.

But Gates made clear in his letter that interoperability does not equate to open source. He said that interoperability is about how different software systems work together, regardless of licensing and development. Gates claimed that open source could actually have a detrimental effect on making software interoperable.

The comments in the Beta news piece are not kind - much talk of FUD heh...

Time Warner - 5 Million Shares in Google (Friday, February 04, 03:32 PM EST)

Bearing in mind all of the talk about Yahoo being a media company and Google being a tech firm and how that relates to predicted market share and growth for both companies it's interesting to note that Time Warner own 5 Million shares in Google.

Find the SEC filing here and see this Cnet report also

Making the Perfect Geek Curry (Friday, February 04, 04:33 PM EST)

Ok, so a little Friday FOO is in order :-)

Im going shopping for Curry tomorrow, and wanted to pick the collective brains of the Threadwatch boys and girls over general curry making. For my contribution, i give you... Follow the title link for the full post...

Effective Offline Marketing (Friday, February 04, 02:29 PM EST)

I'm interested to hear what methods of offline marketing people have found effective in promoting their websites. A lot of people who have become successful through SEM and have a bit of cash in their pocket are now realising that 'branding' and building real sites and real businesses is the way to go (as well as doing a little bit of blackhat on the side to keep the funds coming in obviously!)

It would be interesting to hear about the more unusual and non-mainstream methods of marketing that people might not be aware of. For instance, I read a book recently that discussed 'Undercover Marketing'. This medium involves using actors to stage situations whereby people overhear another group of people praising a particular company or product. For instance, a group of hikers are out walking, another group of hikers approach from the opposite direction. They are talking animatedly about this great new brand of walking shoes that are the best they've ever had. Obviously, things we overhear like that are more likely to sway our decision making process than obvious advertising directed at us. Another example of this is the story that Amazon paid lots of concierges in apartment complexes to leave Amazon boxes in the hallway in the morning. The supposition of the tenants passing these every morning is that this company must be good because lots of people in my apartment block are buying from them.

I quite liked these two examples and I thought they could work well to promote websites. Interested to hear from other people what forms of offline marketing they find effective.

How to Handle Mistakes (Friday, February 04, 02:19 PM EST)

When a company makes a mistake, there is almost always one option that is taken: The wrong option.

Defending the mistake, despite everybody knowing a mistake was made is bad news. It breeds mistrust, and creates a serious "them and us" feeling amongst those that have to live with the consequences of the mistake.

The worst part of the defending the error problem is everyone knows that a mistake was made. Well, everyone but the decision maker, who refuses to acknowledge the problem at all.

Since the decision maker is often the business owner, there is little the other people affected by the bad choice can do, to help with the problem. They can try to offer suggestions, advice, and cost effective alternatives, but those ideas are often flatly rejected in many cases.

Personally i've nothing but respect for any company i deal with when, inevitably they make a mistake but, deal with it swiftly, professionally and apologise for it. It just goes to prove that not only are they human, but also that in a crisis, i can depend on them to sort it out.

Dealing with Mistakes Publically

Why not turn a mistake into an opportunity? There really is no need for a mistake (barring loss of life etc..) to be a total disaster - especially online. If you're seen to act upon the problem quickly, professionally and to the injured parties satisfaction publically then IMO it can only do your business good. Some thoughts on ways to do this:

• Enable comments on product sections - and monitor them!
• Intall a forum for customer support - and man it!
• Issue a public notice on the website about the mistake, and again, enable comments and answer them..

Why don't people get this? To err is human, to admit error and handle it correctly and publically is a marketing & PR opportunity

original post found via Seth

WebmasterWorld Register Threadwatch.net - Is this a Wind Up? (Friday, February 04, 03:35 PM EST)

I mention in the title that this could be a wind up of course, it's ever so easy to give false whois information...

Threadwatch.net

To contact the owner of the domain threadwatch.net, please email webmaster@searchengineworld.com

Interesting eh?

January Search Patents for Google Yahoo M$ and More (Friday, February 04, 12:27 PM EST)

This months most interesting Search related patents compiled by JasonD for Threadwatch - Google, Yahoo, MSN, IBM and Apple all make an appearance and it makes for interesting reading for sure - Thanks Jason... Follow the title link for the full post.

Jeeves to Increase Public Presense in Search Community (Friday, February 04, 10:43 AM EST)

Kaushal Kurapati has posted on the Jeeves blog the companies intention to increase their presense in the Search forums - and better yet, to drop the stupid nicknames - Yaay!

I know we have at least one or two of the ASK people registered here so you better come out now and damn well post something useful! heh...

Google and Latent Semantic Indexing (Friday, February 04, 10:28 AM EST)

Aaron Wall takes a look at Googles Latent Semantic Indexing technology in light of recent shake ups in the main index. He says that Google have increased the weight of the LSI part of the overall algorithm and that does seem likely as many around the web concur.

A brief definition:

Latent semantic indexing adds an important step to the document indexing process. In addition to recording which keywords a document contains, the method examines the document collection as a whole, to see which other documents contain some of those same words. LSI considers documents that have many words in common to be semantically close, and ones with few words in common to be semantically distant. This simple method correlates surprisingly well with how a human being, looking at content, might classify a document collection. Although the LSI algorithm doesn't understand anything about what the words mean, the patterns it notices can make it seem astonishingly intelligent.

I've also been told that Using Semantic Analysis to Classify Search Engine Spam - an older stanford document is well worth considering when looking at recent changes...

So, questions for the technically inclined as my eyes start to glass over with this stuff :-)

• Is this what is going on at Google?
• What's the best way of handling it?

Go ahead and thrash out your theories, it's all speculation but it certainly seems likely so getting to grips with it is a must...

Rackspace Hosting Blocks Yahoo! Spiders (Friday, February 04, 08:38 PM EST)
Tim Mayer from Yahoo! at a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums named Rackspace hates Yahoo? Or Vice Versa? said: We did some further testing and our crawler IPs are in fact blocked from Rackspace. Tim said this happens quote...

Google Backlink Update Underway (Friday, February 04, 04:43 PM EST)
During all this fun at Google, there is a backlink update underway. Forum Threads: DigitalPoint SEO Chat V7...

Yahoo! Express URL Removal (Friday, February 04, 04:01 PM EST)
A member at WebmasterWorld asked how he can remove a URL from the Yahoo! index. Tim, from Yahoo!, posted a URL to the answer. create a "robots.txt" file on your web site to prevent our crawler from indexing your site...

WebmasterWorld Goes After ThreadWatch (Friday, February 04, 03:51 PM EST)
Nick, the creator of a new great forum/blog named ThreadWatch posted an entry named WebmasterWorld Register Threadwatch.net - Is this a Wind Up?. Basically, it looks like someone over at WebmasterWorld, affiliated with searchengineworld.com, Brett Tabke, owner of WebmasterWorld -...

More On Latent Semantic Indexing (Friday, February 04, 01:57 PM EST)
Yesterday I wrote an entry named Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) - Crawl into the Google Algorithm?, where I discussed how the current theories behind the Google SERP changes have to do with a new algorithm shift for Google. Now many...

AdWords Relevancy & AdSense Revenue Take a Hit (Friday, February 04, 01:35 PM EST)
Last night, I received an email from Peter Da Vanzo, you know the guy who started that new cool directory named Rubber Stamped. Well in a blog entry he named First Rule of Adsense he mentions a thread over at...

JeevesGuy Come Out: Kaushal Kurapati (Thursday, February 03, 10:44 PM EST)
As I mentioned in my comment in an earlier entry named Ask Jeeves Goes Blogging, JeevesGuy came out for the first time under his real name at WebmasterWorld under the name Kaushal Kurapati. I waited for the blog post at...

Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) - Crawl into the Google Algorithm? (Thursday, February 03, 10:19 PM EST)
Earlier today, I started a little theory on the sandbox dieing, well, there is a ton of smart forum discussion going on in a thread at SEW Forums that I renamed to Major Google Changes: Latent Semantic Analysis?. Now, bakedjack...

Is the Google Sandbox Over (Thursday, February 03, 04:50 PM EST)
I think, not 100%, since there are no forum threads speculating, but.... I believe, the Google sandbox is done with! - Maybe :) Why do I say so. Well, about a handful of sites I launched within the year, all...

Google Assigning Less Weight to Links? (Thursday, February 03, 04:28 PM EST)
Yesterday, I started to notice that my Google traffic for this particular site has come back to its normal level (maybe a little less then normal) from about 3 or 4 weeks ago. But I am not the only one...

MSN Spending Big to Promote New Search Engine (Thursday, February 03, 04:06 PM EST)
Yesterday, a IHelpYou Forum thread named MSN search ads everywhere today discussed the wide spread imprints of MSN Search advertisements throughout the Web. I noticed Google AdWords & AdSense ads for MSN that read "Try The New MSN Search" -...

Google Latent Semantic Indexing Technology (Friday, February 04, 01:05 AM EST)
Google recently strongly integrated latent semantic indexing into their algorithm.

Google AdWords / AdSense Shakeup, Free Link Renting Guide, Ask Jeeves Blog (Thursday, February 03, 06:55 PM EST)
Google AdWords and AdSense shakeup. SearchGuild birthday awards. Free link renting guide. Ask Jeeves launches their official blog.

Yahoo! Launches Yahoo! Q (Thursday, February 03, 06:54 AM EST)
Yahoo! launches a contextual search product.

When You Can't Rank for Your Own Name... (Thursday, February 03, 04:29 AM EST)
Post noting that some sites are no longer ranking well for their official site name in Google.

Amazon Margins Drop, Stock Tanks, Amazon offers Cheaper Express Shipping? , John Battelle Interviewed, AIRWEB Conference (Thursday, February 03, 12:12 AM EST)
Amazon has a bad quarter due to lowered margins. John Battelle interviewed. AIRWEB conference seeking white papers.

Google Referral Program & Google Karma (Wednesday, February 02, 01:30 PM EST)
Google launches an affiliate program.

Google Strong 4th Quarter, Yahoo! Japan Blogs, Australian SEM Conference (Wednesday, February 02, 10:04 AM EST)
Google has a great 4th quarter. Yahoo! Japan launches blogs. Australian SEM conference announced. Black Knight posts about the problems with DMOZ.

MSN Officially Launches, Comment Spammer Chat (Tuesday, February 01, 11:12 AM EST)
MSN makes their official launch announcement. Yahoo! is digging into Google's market share. Google becomes a domain registrar. Interview of an anonymous blog spammer.

Lots of Random Stuff... (Sunday, January 30, 11:18 PM EST)
AlmondNet creates an ad network based on search history. Steven Berlin Johnson writes about how technology will change writing. Apple beats Google as brand of the year. Clicktracks launches Optimizer product. Digital identity speeches. New blog newsreader network. Virtual Library updated using XML. A couple search engine surveys. New wiki based search engine launches. SBC to buy AT&T;.

Little by Little or All at Once? (Friday, February 04, 10:41 PM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: Small Business Ideas Forum - "I know I've got to update my web site. And, that the update will be extensive. So, do I make small changes over a period of many weeks or do I do one massive...

Ask Jeeves Reports Strong Results (Friday, February 04, 09:57 PM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: ClickZ - Ask Jeeves more than doubled its profits in 2004, posting net income from continuing operations of $52.4 million, or $0.80 per share, on revenues of $261.3 million. This compares with $24.8 million net income on revenues of...

Search Engine APIs: Right for You? (Friday, February 04, 09:40 PM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: ClickZ - It's great the engines recognize that when billions of dollars a year flow through an auction marketplace, automated control APIs are a necessity, as they are on Wall Street. But like Wall Street, technology alone won't make...

Is Answers.com the Next Google? (Friday, February 04, 08:34 PM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: Fool.com - Why is GuruNet soaring? Investors may be looking at Google's $55.6 billion market capitalization and thinking that GuruNet's Lilliputian $93 million capitalization leaves a lot of room for growth. Maybe, but Answers.com has just been released, and...

Clicks add up to big ad dollars for search sites (Friday, February 04, 08:25 PM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: News.com - The fact that Eli Lilly, Napster, Novartis and Staples are among Super Bowl advertisers that are also regulars on Google is not the only evidence that Web advertising has come of age....

Interview: Thunderstone VP Doran Howitt (Friday, February 04, 08:11 PM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: Search Engine Guide - Jason Dowdell interviews Doran Howitt, the VP of Marketing at Thunderstone about the Thunderstone Search Appliance SBE his company has recently launched....

Meta Search For The Desktop (Friday, February 04, 02:57 PM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: InternetNews.com - Watson, released this week by Intellext, is a sort of meta desktop search engine that also incorporates contextual analysis to automatically suggest related items as the user works....

Googling the Bottom Line (Friday, February 04, 02:31 AM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: Wired - How much is it worth to a company's bottom line to place near the top of Google's search rankings?...

Local Search: Advantage, Google (Friday, February 04, 02:00 AM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: Traffick - Starting today, Google has begun making all Google Search users aware of the Google Local offering by putting a link to it on the Google Search homepage, with a red "new" notation. This will lead, in my...

Yahoo Offers New Y!Q Contextual Search Tool (Friday, February 04, 01:55 AM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: SearchDay - Yahoo has rolled out a nifty new tool that lets you use content you're viewing as the basis of a search query, providing results that are difficult to get otherwise without using advanced search commands....

Keyword Price Dip Reveals Seasonal and Industry-Specific Volatility (Friday, February 04, 12:58 AM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: ClickZ - Keyword prices dropped an average of 3 percent in January after the end of the 2004 holiday shopping season, but prices in certain vertical categories fluctuated even more dramatically. That's according to search engine marketing (SEM) firm...

Google Latent Semantic Indexing (Friday, February 04, 08:10 PM EST)
Google Latent Semantic Indexing Many people have been noticing a wide shuffle in search relevancy scores recently. Some of those well in the know attribute this to latent semantic indexing, which Google has been using for a while, but recently increased its weighting. How Does Latent Semantic Indexing Work? Latent semantic indexing ...

Yahoo Launches Yahoo! Q - Contextual Search Tool (Friday, February 04, 02:20 PM EST)
Yahoo Launches Yahoo! Q - Contextual Search Tool Yahoo launches Yahoo! Q, which shows contextually relevant news and links in a small pop up box next to content. "The thinking is that if you can read an article, you can be inspired to search," said Ken Norton, senior director of product management ...

How to Select a Web Site Host (Friday, February 04, 01:54 AM EST)
How to Select a Web Site Host So, you know how to create HTML files (web pages) and want to start a website. You have a domain name but don't know where to store the files (web host). You find countless web hosting companies offering a wide range of products but ...

Napster Goes After Apple iTunes (Thursday, February 03, 10:46 PM EST)
Napster Goes After Apple iTunes Blatantly attack Apple until market share declines just a few points. That's the name of the game. Desperation. Napster is following suit, today they launched a flat rate all-you-can-eat music service for $15/month they've been testing for a while. They plan to launch an aggressive ad campaign, ...

Video Search and Online Marketing (Thursday, February 03, 10:07 PM EST)
Video Search and Online Marketing Last week we discussed how Video Search is out there and growing, how can Internet and Search Marketers use Video Search to reach target markets of consumers and potential reoccuring site traffic? Online video and broadband are not only adding a new entertainment medium to the ...

Ask Jeeves launches Blog (Thursday, February 03, 02:30 PM EST)
Ask Jeeves launches Blog Search Engine Ask Jeeves has followed in the footsteps of rivals Yahoo!, Google and MSN in launching a corporate blog. The blog, which has no clear purpose specified at this stage, commenced with a post from Erik Collier, Data Engineering Manager, who writes about a recent office move. In ...

Link Popularity - A Thing of the Past? (Thursday, February 03, 04:04 AM EST)
Link Popularity - A Thing of the Past? I've found myself involved in a lot of discussions about the dropping importance of link popularity lately. Numerous people have said to me that they think incoming links no longer hold as much weight as they once did, and that the only links ...

New FireFox 1.1 Release Delayed (Thursday, February 03, 04:00 AM EST)
New FireFox 1.1 Release Delayed While the current final version of Firefox reaches new heights (it touched a download mark of 21 million recently!), the developers released some information about the coming releases. Originally planned for a March 2005 launch, the release of 1.1 version of Firefox has been delayed and ...

Yahoo Is Hiring Search Engine Marketing Manager (Wednesday, February 02, 10:01 PM EST)
Yahoo Is Hiring Search Engine Marketing Manager Thought this was kinda interesting and might be of interest to a few people here. A member at SEOchat noticed a new position available from Yahoo for a search engine marketing manager. Now while, Yahoo is not the hottest place to work in comparison ...

Google’s Quarterly Growth Expressed in Triple Digits (Wednesday, February 02, 09:40 PM EST)
Google's Quarterly Growth Expressed in Triple Digits Google shares hit a record $210 in evening trading after the search giant released a quarterly report that beat most analysts' expectations. Google considers itself the world's largest generator of online advertising revenue, a claim founded on its triple digit growth from Q3 to ...

Mamma.com Intros Click Auction Model (Monday, February 07, 05:56 AM EST)
Mamma.com announced it added a new auction function to the flat rate pay-per-click media sales offered by the meta-search engine, according to DM News. Also announced were interface improvements,...

[summary]

Hitwise Shows Evidence of Viral Effect (Friday, February 04, 03:56 PM EST)
Hitwise reports that its monitoring of a Tide an ad-supported viral campaign - where visitors to a special website can sign up for free samples and recommend the site to friends - increased...

[summary]

Analyst: Search Marketing Will Exceed $23 Billion in 2010 (Friday, February 04, 03:55 PM EST)
SearchEngineLowdown points to a breakdown of Piper Jaffray analyst figures showing the search engine marketing field growing to $10 billion in 2006, then growing 35 percent in 2007, 20 percent in...

[summary]

Ohio Toughens Spam Penalties (Friday, February 04, 03:55 PM EST)
Ohio enacted a new anti-spam law that makes illegal a wide variety of activities common among spammer, including falsifying routing information and using unauthorized access to computers to send...

[summary]

Amazon Growth Big, Slowing (Friday, February 04, 03:53 PM EST)
Amazon.com reported financial results showing 26 percent sales growth in 2004 when taking into account currency adjustments, a figure that disappointed some analysts. International sales grew...

[summary]

Spam Absent from DMA Ethics Referrals (Friday, February 04, 02:44 PM EST)
The Direct Marketing Association's ethics committee forwarded four internally-policed cases to government authorities, according to DM News. The four members referred to various authorities involved...

[summary]

Internet Ads to Eat More Marketing Share (Friday, February 04, 02:43 PM EST)
eMarketer collected a bevy of statistics showing the general picture of online adspend growth. It predicts 4.2 percent of adspend will go to the internet, just about where Merrill Lynch estimates had...

[summary]

Online Adspend Pegged to Hit 7.4 Percent in 2009 (Friday, February 04, 02:43 PM EST)
Merrill Lynch estimates that online ads will account for 4.6 percent of adspend in 2005, up from 3.7 percent in 2004, according to a MediaPost report. Due particularly to increased forecasts for...

[summary]

Ogilvy Staffs Digital Innovation Group (Friday, February 04, 02:23 PM EST)
OgilvyInteractive launched a small internal group called the Digital Innovation Group that will deal with emerging interactive technologies and media. Headed by Maria Mandel, a former director of...

[summary]

Everyone Now an Online Marketer, Even Superbowl Advertisers (Friday, February 04, 01:43 PM EST)
Taking one in every 25 marketing dollars might not have been enough to grant the internet "mainstream" status, but The New York Times reports that the medium may have come of age now that Superbowl...

[summary]

comScore Buys Still Another Survey Firm (Friday, February 04, 01:43 PM EST)
ClickZ reports that comScore acquired still another survey company, this one a large Canadian firm, SurveySite. The Toronto-based company employs 50, servicing very large U.S. consumer brands such as...

[summary]

Ask Jeeves Blog (Thursday, February 03, 01:34 PM EST)
Hey, Look What We Found: The Official Ask Jeeves Blog! http://blog.ask.com/

Google switched definitions from Dictionary.com to Answers.com (Wednesday, February 02, 02:24 PM EST)
In case you havent noticed Google switched definitions from Dictionary.com to Answers.com!

MSN Search out of Beta (Tuesday, February 01, 09:28 AM EST)
I am proud and excited to announce that MSN Search is now officially launched. With this final push we have made more than 40,000 Encarta encyclopedia articles and associated media available for free to MSN Search users, which translates to more than 1.5 million Instant Answers. We also improved ...

Google blogger reappears, redacted (Monday, January 31, 10:35 AM EST)
Mark Jen this week got a gentle schooling in the dos and don'ts of blogging at Google after posting and then temporarily pulling from the Web some mild criticisms of his new employer. via News.com

Yahoo Launches Local Search BETA (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)

Lycos Sells to Korean Internet Portal (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)

Google Launches Bidding Site (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)

Search Engine Marketing Organization Cops Criticism (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)

MSN Previews New Search Engine (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)

Mamma.com Adds Auction to Pay-Per-Click Offering (Friday, February 04, 06:37 PM EST)
DMNews reports meta-search engine Mamma.com has added an auction-based pricing tool to its Mamma Classifieds flat-rate pay-per-click search product. Via MarketingVOX.

Search Revenue to Reach $23 Billion by 2010 (Friday, February 04, 02:08 PM EST)
Gord Hotchkiss breaks down the recent predictions given by Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy. Next year, he predicts search revenues to top $10 billion, and then hit $13.5 billion in 2007, $16.2 billion in 2008, $19.8 billion in 2009 and top $23 bill

Paid Search Rivals Super Bowl Commercials (Friday, February 04, 02:03 PM EST)
The New York Times provides a good comparison of paid search with other big advertising favorites, such as the Super Bowl. I've always said that search gets you an audience larger than the Super Bowl, for the cost of a Yellow Pages ad. Lot's of basic i

GuruNet Sees Stock Growth from Answers.com Publicity (Friday, February 04, 01:55 PM EST)
Haaretz reports on Jerusalem-based GuruNet's good fortunes, since going public in October. The company, once known for its enterprise search, is know creating a buzz with its Answers.com search engine (which I use and love). GuruNet now hopes to base a

A Gmail Rollout from Google? (Friday, February 04, 01:49 PM EST)
Neville Hobson speculates that Google may be getting ready to rollout a Gmail to a wider audience, i.e. everyone.

Yahoo YQ Contextual Search (Friday, February 04, 01:46 PM EST)
Jason Dowdell doesn't let a trivial thing, like a birthday, get in his way when it comes to search. He gives his thoughts on Y!Q the new contextual search service from Yahoo. I tried to add to a post on this site, but couldn't get the code to work, but

UK's Yell.com Understands Slang (Friday, February 04, 01:35 PM EST)
The UK's online yellow pages, Yell.com, is reported to now understand different slang words. ...the new website also recognises words like cludgie (toilet in Scotland), stotty (bread in Newcastle), laithe (barn in Yorkshire) and sough (drains in Lancas

Ask Jeeves Can't Match Google's Pace (Thursday, February 03, 11:47 PM EST)
I'm guessing that the execs at Ask Jeeves wish they had announced their Q4 numbers before Google and not after. After Google reported a sevenfold increase in profits, Wall Street was looking for Ask to provide a similar performance, they were disappointed

SMA-UK Faces Scrutiny (Thursday, February 03, 08:05 PM EST)
Think we don't report on the criticism SMA-UK is getting? Think again! It's unfortunate that, because of the major failure of SEMPO to get things right, any future SEM/SEO groups will face the same scrutiny. SMA-UK may or may not do better than SEM

10 Things Google Could Do as a Domain Name Registrar (Thursday, February 03, 05:23 PM EST)
CircleID taps in to collective thoughts on why Google has been accredited by ICANN and gives a top 10 list of speculation. Thanks Robert!

Yahoo Launches Contextual Search (Thursday, February 03, 02:19 PM EST)
Haven't had chance to play with this yet, but Yahoo has launched a new contextual search tool named Y!Q.

A9 Yellow Pages (Sunday, January 30, 08:09 PM EST)
Google competitor A9 has Company > Yellow Pages on A9.com " href="http://a9.com/-/company/YellowPages.jsp">a nifty new thing where you can see street-level photos along with the Yellow Pages on Amazon.com. They got the photos by driving around in trucks with computer-controlled cameras....

Superbowl Advertisers Also Big on Search Advertising (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
John Markoff's article in the NY Times is a nice backgrounder of the search advertising industry, starting with Bill Gross's PPC innovations with GoTo.com in the mid-1990s. Markoff notes that several big buyers of Superbowl ads are also regular presences on search results pages. The big brand-recognition efforts still cost a fortune, while the lead-conversion methods have never been cheaper or more direct.

The Google Atom Bomb (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
Much blog buzz about Tom Foremski's doomsday scenario for Google AdWords. A billionnaire (presumably Bill Gates in disguise) offers $100-million dollars to the first person who clicks through an unidentified AdWords ad. I suppose the landing page would exist in isolation with no incoming links, and would contain a form to fill out. Millions of people would take up ad-clicking as their new hobby, tromping through legitimate landing pages and hoping to stumble upon the winner. TechDirt points

What is a Top-Ten Listing Worth (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
Adam Penenberg decided to quantify the answer to this question and reported his findings in a Wired News article. He collaborated with Oneupweb to conduct a study of traffic and conversion results of clients, before and after they cracked the top 30 Google listings for their keywords, and also the top 10. Many multiples of improvement transpired as each milestone was reached, proving that SEO really does work.

GOOG Soars (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
Did I say something about the value of Google's quarterly report already having been priced into the stock? Yes, I believe I did. That's why I'm not making the big bucks as a financial analyst. Today, GOOG gapped up hugely, and is leveling out around 211. The stock has closed above 200 twice before--on January 3 and January 18--but has responded to the 200 level as a resistance point. They say that the third attack on a resistance le4vel makes it a support level,

Google an ICANN Registrar (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
Google is now a domain registrar. Why not? The company has its hands in so many pots, it doesn't hurt to get a little registration action going. Signing up domain names connects to the Blogger business, and beyond that Google's intention here is anybody's guess. Here is Google's rather preposterous explanation: "Google became a domain name registrar to learn more about the internet's domain name system. We believe this information can help us increase the quality of

MSN Search Graduates from Beta (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
Unlike Google, Microsoft doesn't leave its projects in beta for years at a time. MSN Search graduated to the main search engine spot today. That's about it--nothing more to add at this point. My review of the latest beta version is here. (I still love those sliders, and the built-in answer engine works well.)

Gigantic Google Bonuses (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
Google has initiated a bonus program that rewards employee projects with stock dumps that vest over several years. The first wave of bonuses included 12-million dollars worth of stock divided amont 12 employees whose projects were particularly valuable to the company. Treating employees well is always good. In this case, Google seems to be responding to much discussion of the difficulty in keeping rich employees from leaving the company to start their own enterprises. In that light, the bonuses

GOOG quarterly (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
Google beat projected revenue in its fourth quarter by 10 cents a share, it was announced today. That would normally be a blockbuster report, but glitter was expected and already priced into the stock. GOOG spiked above 200 in today's trading, then slithered down nearly two percent. GOOG's price-to-earning (past year) is 230. Gulp.

Is Yahoo! Eating Google's Lunch (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
This NY Times article profiling the leapfrogging competitveness of Yahoo! vs. Google assembles a number of quotes portraying Google as a lazy and capricious company that doesn't follow through on its beta projects. Granted, it is hard to fathom why Google keeps mature products in beta for so long--Froogle and Google News come to mind. But there is a PR advantasge to that tactic, as it conveys the impression that Google scientists are just not satisfied with services that we lowly consumers

Google Quarterly: Tuesday (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
Watch for Google to post results of its fourth fiscal quarter Tuesday. Analysts expect whisper number to be exceeded, which implies a quieter level of whispering well, anyway, everyone expects GOOG to report a good quarter.

A9 Local Slideshows Become an Art Form (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
This is taking off even faster than I anticipated in my Blastoff post. A9's new Yellow Pages section, featuring many millions of street photos, has become the target of a certain type of virtual joy riding. There is an undeniable fascination in prowling around major cities through the A9 interface--the photos sequences do not approach movie-frame rates, but are closely enough spaced to present a visual tour of neighborhoods. People-watching is part of the appeal, as anyone walking along the

Introducing the Yahoo Y!Q search tool (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
Highlight any text paragraphs you find interesting and ask Y!Q to find out what the text is about.

Google switches to Answers.com (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
Google replaces Dictionary.com as its definition provider.

Microsoft starts using the MSN search engine (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
MSN abandons Yahoo and switches to its own search engine.

The Google Browser (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
Pandia believes Google is developing a Gbrowser.

Google adds TV search (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
About the new Google Video beta test.

Google's new 32 words limit (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
Google now allows as many as 32 words in search queries.

New anti-spam tag (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
The search engine agrees on common HTML tag.

AOL Search gets a face lift (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
AOL adds some features.

Exalead gets a 1 billion document index (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
European Exalead is preparing an even larger index.

MSN Search tests RSS feeds (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
MSN is alphatesting the possibility of displaying search results through RSS feeds.

Yahoo's new desktop search software (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
Yahoo! Desktop Search lets you search your own computer.

I don't get it (Friday, February 04, 09:42 PM EST)
Maybe I'm not supposed to. Do they make lubricant for eyeglasses? Link: Dove.com....

the Purple Hotel (Friday, February 04, 08:39 PM EST)
Steve points me Tom's blog--about a (pun intended) Purple Hotel.  tompeters! leadership training development project management....

What do you do after you make a mistake? (Friday, February 04, 12:13 PM EST)
Nice post by Wayne, thanks Red: Blog Business World - Marketing, Public Relations, Search Engine Optimization....

Great job (last part, for now) (Wednesday, February 02, 05:23 PM EST)
A friend of mine is a world-class lawyer, with a great background in copyright, deal-making and intellectual property issues. She has a stellar resume and could get a cog-job in about two seconds. Except that she doesn't want to do...

Great job (part 2) (Wednesday, February 02, 05:07 PM EST)
Well, if it's the jobs at little companies that we want, what's wrong with the current system? In my experience, little companies are rarely so organized that they know just what slot to fill, what to call that slot and...

Are you looking for a great job? (part 1) (Wednesday, February 02, 05:02 PM EST)
I've been thinking about the job-finding/person-finding paradox a lot lately, and it seems completely broken to me. Consider a few facts:1. The traditional way to get a job is to send a boring resume in response to as many posted...

I've been remiss (Wednesday, February 02, 01:32 AM EST)
Worse than remiss. Negligent. I haven't told you about Vincent Flanders' funny and useful and free article on web design. Link: Web Pages That Suck presents the biggest web design mistakes in 2004 learn usability and good Web design by...

Mitch Joel discovers... (Tuesday, February 01, 08:32 PM EST)
That life is a bit like an open source project. The more he gives, the more he gets. Montreal Gazette - canada.com network....

Fix your computer (Tuesday, February 01, 07:37 PM EST)
I had to use a PC today in order to run Exact Target to do a mailing. I was stunned and astonished at how much the experience has degraded since my last exposure. There were dozens of pop ups...

Welcome to Seth's Blog (Tuesday, February 01, 02:17 PM EST)
There's been a rush of new traffic, and for those new to the blog, I commend you to the archives (at your left, it goes back a few years). To get you started, please click here: Seth's Blog: The Best...

Latent Semantic Indexing (Friday, February 04, 12:09 PM EST)
Very nice post by SEO Book, I mean Search Engine eBook, ah how about Search Marketing Guide? :) about Latent Semantic Indexing. The idea is related to what I've seen described as "contextual relavency" where a search engine (like Google) ranks a document in part based on the related concepts in the page as a whole and compares them to other related documents in the index. What this means for

Google spatial engine (Thursday, February 03, 11:13 PM EST)
According to Government Computer News, Google Inc. will be geo-enabling its search engine with the recent acquisition of Keyhole, a digital mapping company. Keyhole's technology lets a user enter an address, "fly" over a 3-D image of it, zoom and tilt, measure distances and find things around it. "The Google engine will be part of the second-generation Geospatial One-Stop e-government site,

Ask Jeeves - Google Local (Thursday, February 03, 10:31 PM EST)
Ask Jeeves now has a blog with JeevesGuy unmasked! Also via WMW: SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Web search provider Ask Jeeves Inc. (Nasdaq:ASKJ - news) on Thursday posted sharply higher profit and revenue, helped by strong Web search advertising and an acquisition last year that roughly doubled its size. Oakland, California-based Ask Jeeves said net income from continuing operations rose to $17.1

Internet Explorer on a Mac is dead. (Thursday, February 03, 07:36 PM EST)
As the browser wars continue, I think we can now rule out one. Internet Explorer on a Mac should be considered dead. Why? If you run IE on a Mac and load www.msn.com you will get a horribly rendered site. Seeing as this is Microsoft's browser and a Microsoft site, I would think they'd work together, but they don't. This leads me to believe that they no longer care about IE on a Mac and maybe we

New Vote Business Blogging Awards (Thursday, February 03, 03:25 PM EST)
The first voting script for the Business Blogging Awards apparently had some issues, so a new voting system is in place and any votes prior to today have been scrapped. So please take a moment and cast your vote for Best SEO Blog Our blog is listed as: Online Marketing SEO Blog Additional categories to vote for include: Best Overall Blog Best Group Blog Best New Blog Best Law Blog Best

Yahoo to launch search tool Y!Q (Thursday, February 03, 02:46 PM EST)
MercuryNews.com ran a short article today announcing that Yahoo is launching a new search tool (Y!Q tool). Yahoo boasts that it's the first contextual search technology that analyzes the contents of the Web page you're viewing and then gives you a list of search results directly related to what you're reading. You can test it out on Yahoo News Tags: Yahoo, Y!Q, Search Engine, Search

Google Referral Program (Wednesday, February 02, 07:48 PM EST)
It's official, Google has launched a Referral Program that pays $20 for every advertiser or publisher you refer. Breakdown at SEO Book and InsideGoogle Tags: Google, Affiliate

MSN Shopping Beta & MSN Newsbot (Wednesday, February 02, 02:00 PM EST)
Matthew@MSN notes that MSN Shopping Beta. "It's another much cleaner interface over the predecessor and quite like Windows Marketplace." msnsearch WebLog also notes that Newsbot has been Revamped. What's new: * More stories are featured at the top of the page * A page listing all of the news publishers has been added * A 'similar coverage' feature groups instances of a story picked up by

Google Doubles Q4 Revenue to $1.03 billion (Wednesday, February 02, 12:45 PM EST)
DMNews.com reports Google profits increased sevenfold in the fourth quarter of 2004. AdSense generated $490 million, or 48 percent of total revenue, up 92 percent over last year. "Google had an exceptional quarter," CEO Eric Schmidt said. "Revenue and profits increased significantly, our execution was solid across the company and most importantly, our relationship with our users, partners and

Netscape 8 Coming Soon (Tuesday, February 01, 03:22 PM EST)
Thomas is the fellow who re-designed this blog and is also our design-savvy SEO. He's busting at the seams to share his enthusiasm about search so here you go: Netscape 8 is almost a reality. A beta, along with a re-design of Netscape.com, should be out February 17th. The new Netscape has the rendering engine of Firefox and Internet Explorer all in one browser. They are also working with

MSN powers its own search engine (Tuesday, February 01, 02:11 AM EST)
As of Feb 1, MSN Search will be powered with its own search engine. Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice-president of MSN Information Services & Merchant Platform division at Microsoft, said: "The final version of our MSN search service provides us with an infrastructure that allows us to continually and rapidly deliver innovative new features that give consumers precisely the information they're

Google Update Allegra (Thursday, February 03, 08:22 PM EST)
Updates are always a fun event. Even without the new pretty green pixels accompanying the update, you can bet their will be some great conspiracy theories that come out of this. Is latent semantic indexing a reality yet?

Google Update Allegra 2-2-2005

Google Local Tab on the Homepage (Thursday, February 03, 08:16 PM EST)
Local search gets bigger by the day. Time for it to hit the mainstream...It's now on Google's homepage. Good spot by Chicago at Webmasterworld.

Google Local Tab

I Though Google Hated Affiliates? - Google Enters the Affiliate Game (Thursday, February 03, 02:29 PM EST)
Big G is now paying the teeth that bite them. Google has opened up their own affiliate program.

The Google referral program (beta) is for businesses whose customers and visitors include small to medium-sized businesses, and who want to help those companies become more successful by running Google AdWords, or serving ads with Google AdSense. The program works by giving approved sites unique links to Google, then compensating the referring site for passing on a new AdWords advertiser or AdSense publisher.

Joining is easy, and free

1. Apply.
2. Once you're approved, place a Google referral program link on your site.
3. Earn $20 for each advertiser or publisher you refer.

Google Enters the Affiliate Game

Typos (Thursday, February 03, 03:10 AM EST)
So I'm #19 for "English as a second language" and #23 for "English as a second langauge" because of a typo on my new header. Who would have though that the mispelling would be so competitive? Obviously I'll be fixing...

Register, it's Free! (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
How often have you gone to a website, been invited to sign up and then found that you would have to pay subscription?  Having been directed to the AdAge website from a business blog, it was refreshing  to see straight away that subscription was free (though for premium articles you...

Bridging the Gap Between PR and Search Marketing (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
When speaking to clients about Web content, I always try to make a distinction between what comes out of a company brochure and the content that appears on a company's website. Very often the way that companies present information about themselves and their products in an offline context, is different...

Technology for Marketing Conference (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
Next week the Technology for Marketing Conference will be held in London's Olympia on the 8th and 9th (February). They bill themselves as:UK's premier event dedicated to helping marketing, customer service and sales professionals implement technology solutions to optimise their marketing strategies and campaigns.There looks like there will be quite...

E-Mail Marketing as a Relationship Strategy from Peppers and Rogers (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
I've just downloaded an interesting pdf from the Right Now website, entitled E-Mail Marketing as a Relationship Strategy (you need to sign up to receive it). Written by the Peppers and Rogers Group, the management consulting firm, it offers a guide to High Impact E-mail Marketing and according to the...

Keep Track of your To-Do Lists with Ta-da Lists (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
I just came across a neat new tool, called Ta-da Lists, which allows you to make lists of things you need to do, such as Bills to Pay, Things to do for the Holidays, Search Engines to Submit to, Blog Articles to Write, Directories to Link to, etc. To-Do lists...

Inland Revenue (UK Tax Office) Manages a PR of 6/10 (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
I've just been on the Inland Revenue's site and noticed that its Self Assessment page for tax returns had a Google PR (Page Rank) of 6/10, on  whilst its 2003-04 Tax Returns, Notes and Help Sheets managed a PR of 5/10. And no, I don't make a habit of frequenting...

A9 Launches Online Local Yellow Pages (with photos) (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
A9 has just launched a new search product, in partnership with Yellow Pages, which gives users the opportunity to get address details, view maps and even photographs of business addresses. Coupled with the ability to view books (through Amazon), a search engine (results enhanced by Google) and image search...

Does Your Website Lack Personality? (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
The other day I was reviewing a site that had been developed for one of my clients (previous to engaging me!). This B2B site had a few thousand products, was relatively easy to navigate around and offered clients the ability to pay through a variety of means – their terms...

Google Hires Firefox Programmer (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
In a move that is sure to fuel speculation that Google is planning to launch its own Internet browser, it was announced this week that Google has hired the lead programmer, Ben Goodger, of the Firefox browser. Here's what they had to say on Wired: Among other clues pointing to...

Using Keywords to Speak your Audience's Language (Friday, February 04, 10:56 PM EST)
It's amazing how many marketers fixate on their site's HTML, believing that's where solutions to their search engine marketing (SEM) challenges are found. But they're looking inward when they need to be looking outward. So begins an interesting article by Fredrick Marckini, titled Keywords: Speak Your Audience's Language, in Clickz....

The New MSN Search (Wednesday, February 02, 11:10 AM EST)
The New MSN Search is out so hurry up to get the beauty of it hot. Microsoft has definitely done a very good work with this one and I am quite impressed with it. Here are my first comments on...

Y!Q Beta Launches ... with Mixed Results (Friday, February 04, 06:50 PM EST)

Yahoo! has launched Y!Q, its contextual search engine that refines search results according to related keywords that the searcher might not have thought of. the idea is to make searching more intuitive—or, more accurately, to make the search engine seem more intuitive of your needs. In a Y!Q search, Yahoo! returns standard Web results (without advertising, at this point), refined by considering additional, related keywords. All keywords (yours and Yahoo!’s additions) are listed above the results.

Y!Q may be tested in a number of ways, the quickest being to visit the Y!Q engine itself. I tried the engine there, and also followed instructions for adding Y!Q searching ability to Firefox. In this manner, you can launch a Y!Q search by adding a keyword (”yq” is suggested) before your search string, typing the whole shebang into the browser’s address bar. This method requires a minute of setup, and does not require any downloads. (Plug-ins for Firefox and IE are available.)

Y!Q’s usefulness is not compelling at present, but does attain satisfaction when applied to news items and news stories. Yahoo! encourages this application, suggesting a visit to a special Y!Q-flavored version of Yahoo! News, where each headline is enhanced with a Search Related Info link. Clicking that link pops up a window with related links—a quick and powerful way of delving deeper into a story. Of course, this gambit is most useful with headlines that aren’t already bundled into Yahoo!’s Full Coverage, which is already a contextual treasure-house.

Presently I do not see an important reason to use Y!Q searches consistently, and no important reason not to. The service is not distinguishing itself compellingly. Most troubling, it seems to lack imagination. No matter how many broad searches I tried (president bush for example, or mp3), Y!Q returned results refined by only the keywords I entered, and no others. How could even the stupidest contextual engine fail to relate mp3 to music, iPod, MP3 players, and dozens of other key phrases? Search results do differ between Y!Q searching and regular Yahoo! searching, but I’m at a loss to explain why, how, or which is better.

Y!Q is a dud, but an interesting dud. Stay tuned.

Yahoo! Video Added to Home Page (Thursday, February 03, 07:27 PM EST)

Pressing the advantage over Google, whose video service cannot compare on any level, Yahoo! has placed Yahoo! Video on the home page. I guess a few people will see it there.

Yahoo! Japan Starts Blog Service (Wednesday, February 02, 06:36 PM EST)

Nobody knows (well, nobody outside of Yahoo!) if this launch represents a test before starting a U.S. blog site. But Yahoo! Japan has opened its Weblog service.

MSN Search Graduates from Beta (Tuesday, February 01, 10:45 PM EST)

Unlike Google, Microsoft doesn’t leave its projects in beta for years at a time. MSN Search graduated to the main search engine spot today. That’s about it—nothing more to add at this point. My review of the latest beta version is here. (I still love those sliders, and the built-in answer engine works well.)

Is Yahoo! Eating Google's Lunch (Tuesday, February 01, 03:45 AM EST)

This NY Times article profiling the leapfrogging competitveness of Yahoo! vs. Google assembles a number of quotes portraying Google as a lazy and capricious company that doesn’t follow through on its beta projects. Granted, it is hard to fathom why Google keeps mature products in beta for so long—Froogle and Google News come to mind. But there is a PR advantasge to that tactic, as it conveys the impression that Google scientists are just not satisfied with services that we lowly consumers think are fairly splendid, as if they have more tricks up their sleeves than we’ll ever know. The article is wrong about at least one statement: “Yahoo is receiving acclaim for some of its innovations, like local search that allows users to see a map that pinpoints the location of the area or business they are searching for.” True, but the implication is that Google does not deploy such a map. In fact, Google Local puts the pinpointing map directly on the search results page, whereas Yahoo! inconveniently removes it to a separate page.

At any rate, both companies are fairly shameless in their marketing responses to each other’s innovations. Neither is asleep at the wheel, and my best hope is that they ignore each other better. Otherwise the risk is that they’ll become clones of each other in the mad dash for market share.

A9 Local Slideshows Become an Art Form (Tuesday, February 01, 01:59 AM EST)

This is taking off even faster than I anticipated in my Blastoff post. A9’s new Yellow Pages section, featuring many millions of street photos, has become the target of a certain type of virtual joy riding. There is an undeniable fascination in prowling around major cities through the A9 interface—the photos sequences do not approach movie-frame rates, but are closely enough spaced to present a visual tour of neighborhoods. People-watching is part of the appeal, as anyone walking along the street as A9’s photo vehicle made its pass was captured for posterity. In fact, a privacy issue is emerging over that very fact. A9 fans are using Flickr to mount slide shows and assemble photo montages.

Hungering for the here and now (Thursday, February 03, 04:06 PM EST)

All in a year's work (Wednesday, February 02, 01:39 AM EST)