Through the miracle of modern technology (or perhaps Danny’s close-guarded
and heavily disputed secret of time traveling), you are getting tomorrow’s Daily
SearchCast today. Actually, Danny’s off on Wednesday, August 16 — so we did an
extra long show on Tuesday, August 15 and cut it into two parts. If you get our
podcast feed, you already got
part one.
In part two, “today’s” search podcast, we cover Google Maps getting coupons for local
merchants; Google’s trademark protection letters spark new controversy despite
being three years old; customer satisfaction with search engines; Matt Cutts AKA
GoogleGuy; a farmer dating site takes on Google and more!
Tune-in by listening to this
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file, listening via WebmasterRadio
at 11:30am Eastern and repeated at 2pm Eastern Tuesday through Friday, via our
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though our Yahoo Podcasts
channel. Need more help tuning in live or finding the chat room? See the
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SearchCast FAQ.
- Google
Maps Gets Coupons
Hmm? How do you prove to local merchants who lack tracking software or even
web sites that search converts? Coupons! That’s right, the conversion tracking
tool that requires no internet connection, cookies or software has come to
Google Maps….
- Three
Years On, Google’s Trademark Usage Letters Become News Again
How long does it take the wheel to spin full circle on the internet?
Apparently three years, judging from the outcry over Google’s “new” move to
send out trademark protection letters asking people to be careful about how
they use the word Google….
- Yahoo,
MSN, & Google Fall In Customer Satisfaction Survey
The American Customer Satisfaction Index has been released and Yahoo, MSN and
Google all fell in points from last year’s results. If you look at the 2nd
quarter scores and scroll down to the portals and search engines section you
will see the ratings. Yahoo was hit the hardest, with a drop of
five-percentage points from last year. Ask.com followed with a fall of 1.4%,
then MSN falling 1.3%, and then Google falling 1.2% year over year. The only
gainer is AOL with a 4.2 percentage point increase year-over-year. There is
more coverage on this at DMNews, Bloomberg, News.com and…
- Matt
Cutts Confesses To Being GoogleGuy
In Monday Morning Roundup, Rand Fishkin writes: Did anyone blog about Matt
outing himself as GoogleGuy during SES? I believe his exact words were “I
backed into that position.” Nope, Rand — I was surprised about the lack of
reaction and blogging to that myself. I’m still doing post-show catch-up, but
it hardly seemed to catch any buzz. Perhaps one of the industry’s oldest
secrets — Matt Cutts being GoogleGuy — was no longer a secret to most any
longer….
Naylor & Amanda Finally Meet: Universe Fails To Be Destroyed- More SEO
Video ‘Cutts’ By Matt
Matt Cutts at Google has posted a few more videos with Google SEO tips for us.
Here they are: + Session 11: Reinclusion requests + Session 12: Tips for Search
Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose 2006 + Session 13: Google Webmaster Tools…
- Google
Supplemental Results Get Fresher
I reported this morning at the Search Engine Roundtable that GoogleGuy announced
Google has updated those pesky supplemental results. Supplemental results are
those pages in a secondary index at Google. The pages in the supplemental
results tend to be staler and rank worse then the normal documents in the main
Google index. In any event, the supplemental results have been updated and
should be somewhat more fresh….
- Yahoo
Launches Search Builder
During the Social Search Overview session, Tim Mayer of Yahoo announced the
launch of Yahoo Search Builder. I haven’t had much time to play with it yet, and
probably won’t until next week. But the Yahoo Search blog has a nice overview of
the new product. Keep in mind, this seems very similar to Eurekster, based on my
quick quick quick read of it. More on this later….
- Rollyo Adds
More Functionality
The roll your own search resource Rollyo adds more functionality to its
services. If Rollyo has slipped under your radar it’s a resource that allows you
to create your own personalized search engine (hence ‘roll your own’) that will
search up to 25 sites that you specify. They’ve improved layout, added blog
search, added the ability to take an existing Searchroll and edit it to your own
taste and added a ‘Rollbar’. The latter allows searchers to incorporate Rollyo
into the browser to search any site, add sites to existing Searchrolls on the
fly and create new ones based on…
- University
of California Joins Google’s Book Scan Project
As expected the University of California is partnering with Google on the Google
library scanning project. Reuters reports that Google will be funding “the
scanning of “several million” of the 34 million titles in the University of
California’s libraries.” Postscript From Danny: The partnership means that UC
becomes the first organization to my knowledge to partner with both major
scanning programs from search engines. UC partnered with Microsoft on its
project in June. UC is also part of the broader Open Content Alliance backed by
both Microsoft and Yahoo…
- Google
To Allow Pornographic Movies In Google Video?
TechCrunch wrote that Google has recently removed the term “pornographic” from
the restrictions on uploading videos. It is now just a restriction on
“obscene” material, with an added categorization for “mature and adult”
content. TechCrunch also believes Google removed a checkbox confirmation that
said, “video is not pornographic or obscene material.” Philipp Lenssen also
notes this, and added commentary by Donna Bogatin at News.com….
- Google
Video Replaces Froogle & Expandable More Link Added To Google Home Page
Philipp Lenssen spotted that on Google.com, they have removed Froogle, added
Video and added a “more” link that opens up some more options, including
“books,” “froogle,” “groups,” and “even more.” We have seen the expandable more
link tested in the past, looks like it has made it to the front page….
- Beware:
Is Your Hosting Provider Cloaking Paid Links On Your Site For Their Benefit?
I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable on thread in our forums that shows
how some hosts are inserting links on sites they host, without notifying the
web site owner, and doing it via cloaking. Matt Cutts from Google looked
deeper into the reported issue in the thread and said that “it looks like this
webhost is cloaking.” The web hosting company is placing paid links within the
content using cloaking techniques. If you are worried about this for your
site, then check the Google index for you site. You can use a Google site
command “with a porn phrase…
- Yahoo’s
CEO, Terry Semel, Answers Tough Questions
Search Engine Journal pulled out some serious quotes from a Fortune Magazine
interview with Yahoo’s CEO, Terry Semel. I’ll pull out quotes, like Loren
did;…
- Yahoo
Hires Away comScore Executive
ClickZ reports that Yahoo has hired Peter Daboll, the president and CEO of
comScore Media Metrix, to be the chief of insights and head of global market
research at Yahoo. Daboll explains that his position was created at Yahoo to
“bring together the external world of market research and the wealth of
internal data that Yahoo collects.” Peter Daboll will be reporting to Cammie
Dunaway, Yahoo’s chief marketing officer, in Sunnyvale, California….
- Google
Hires Linux Coder, Andrew Morton
Andrew Morton, well known in the Linux world for coding under Linus Torvalds,
has been hired to work at Google, reports News.com. Linus commented about the
job in a message board posting on Aug 6th. Andrew will continue working on
Linux, but Google will be paying him to do so….
Microsoft adCenter Now Live In The UK
The adCenter blog announced that Microsoft adCenter is now live, Tuesday,
August 15th, in the UK. 100% of the ads served on Microsoft’s properties will
run adCenter ads, including MSN Search and Windows Live. Be prepared to see
search volume and budget change requirements in your ad campaigns. Want to
discuss with others? Join our forum thread named Microsoft adCenter Launches
in the UK….- Farmer
Dating Web Site Sues Google Over Porn Ads
INQ7 Network reports that the owners of Farm Data, “a respectable meeting
website for farmers,” is suing Google for the ads that show up for the query
[farm date]. Basically, pornographic sites and sex sites come up for the term
and Farm Date says that those ads are “very damaging for Farmdate’s
reputation.” We should know the court ruling on August 24, I will keep you
posted on it….
- Danny & Daron Sumo
Wrestle (what, no video? Yeah,
YouTube is STILL down. But I also put
one of them on Google Video
here).