Author
[email protected] [email protected]
Date published
May 23, 2006
Categories
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