Search Headlines & Links: September 11, 2006

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…

• Google
  Interesting Items Module: Recommend Searches, Pages & Gadgets
  Google has added an Interesting items for you module to the personalized home
  page interface as noted in the Google Operating System blog. Google works with
  your own searches and attempts to find other things that will be of interest
  to you. The module provides users with three tabbed options – searches, pages
  and gadgets. I found that the searches Google suggested to be something of a
  mixed bag; some of them were actually quite sensible, although they were
  limited to a maximum of three individual search terms (not a phrase search in
  sight) – out of the 10 recommendations…
• Ask.com
  To Open R&D Center in Germany
  Ask.com announced a new Germany research and development center to be headed
  up by Eric Heymann, former head of technology at Seekport, as director of
  global content acquisition today. The German R&D center will work closely with
  the Pisa, Italy, Campbell, Calif., and Piscataway, N.J. locations. Apostolos
  Gerasoulis, VP of search technology at Ask.com, said, “the expansion of our
  European research and development team will allow Ask.com to continue to
  develop and scale our world-class search.” The full press release is posted
  below….
• Track
  Federal Spending With Government Search Engine
  Andy Beal spotted an AP article named Senate backs online search of spending.
  Yes, the Senate wants to make it easier for normal users to track what the US
  Government is spending taxpayers money on. The example search given is that,
  “one could type in “Boeing” to find contracts awarded to the aerospace company
  or “breast cancer research” to see efforts to battle one of the leading
  killers of women.” Andy asks, why not just have Google do it for the
  government, since they already know a lot more than the government does
  anyway? :)…
• Google’s
  Toolbar Anti-Phishing Blacklist
  Philipp Lenssen reports on a whitelist of URLs found at sb.google.com which
  appears to be a whitelist of safe URLs to be used for the Google Toolbar. Be
  digging deeper into the forums area of Google Blogoscoped, you can see that
  the this whitelist will prevent the “Web Forgery” warning in the Google
  Toolbar from popping up on those particular sites….
• Google
  GeoTargeted AdWords Preview Tool: See How Ads Look Outside Your Region
  Friday, the Inside AdWords blog announced a new feature that allows
  advertisers to see how their ads appear. So if you want to test the appearance
  of your ad locally or based on a specific set of geographic criteria, you can.
  Go to www.google.com/adpreview and type in your keyword phrase. If you want to
  add geo-specific criteria, you can. To define the country enter &gl=[Two
  Letter Country Code Here], to define the region enter &gr=[region code here],
  you can also define city, latitude and longitude, postal code and DMA. More
  details at the AdWords Help Center….
• Windows
  Live & Live Search Leaves Beta In The UK
  It’s official — Windows Live and the Windows Live Search service you’ll find
  there are out of beta in the UK, plus it’s now Windows Live powering the MSN
  portal that continues to run despite the new focus on the Windows Live brand.
  Oddly, when I got to the Windows Live site from the UK, the beta moniker is
  still there. And if there’s a UK-version of Windows Live, that’s nowhere in
  evidence. Details from what I was sent about the release:…
• Looking
  Back At Search & 9/11
  Five years ago, like so many, I was shocked and horrified by the events of
  September 11. I spent the day uncertain of what to do, before running for the
  cover of what I knew, looking at the search engines. Finding Disaster Coverage
  At Search Engines illustrates how they reacted that day. It underscored what
  I’ve long described as the great failure of Google then, having to effectively
  tell people to go elsewhere for information while its web search results were
  showing links with descriptions saying things like “View from the WTCA
  Headquarters.” Since that time, the emergence of Google…

Headlines & News From Elsewhere

• 
  Search Briefs: A Podcast Interview with Head of Google’s Speech Recognition
  Efforts, ResourceShelf
• 
  Microsoft adCenter Continues Serving Ads 60 Hours Beyond Pausing Campaign,
  Search Engine Roundtable
• Northern Light’s New
  Business Research Engine, ResourceShelf

• 
  Yahoo Adds Conference Calling to Messenger, Search Engine Journal

• 
  Yahoo Messenger Offers Free Group Conference Calls (eWeek), Reuters
• 
  Google To Offer Katie Couric News Feeds, Information Week
• 
  Google has 1.3 Million pages of its own in the Supplemental Index, ABAKUS
  Search Engine Marketing SEO Blog
• 
  Google appoints Dennis Woodside to UK MD, NMA
• Brit Hume Exposes Google Bomb
  Plot Against ‘The Path To 9/11’, News Busters
• 
  SEO Bloggers Said What? Search Top 25 Blogs Here, Reality SEO
• 
  More Add-ons for NASA’s World Wind (A 3D Digital Globe), ResourceShelf
• The
  thoughts of chairman Ma, The Guardian
• 
  Yahoo China to be profitable in one year – Alibaba’s Ma, Forbes.com
• 
  Cool Flickr Geotagging Examples, Bradley Horowitz
• Google
  Maps Updates Satellite Photos, Google Blogoscoped
• Google
  China Teacher’s Day Logo, Google Blogoscoped
• Microsoft
  Launches Desktop Feed Reader, TechCrunch
• 
  Alexa & Hitwise and Real Numbers, Oh My!, SEOmoz
• Microsoft
  YouTube Clone Coming,
  TechCrunch
• More Google domain activity
  – AdSense for TV and web history
• 
  Original Signal Transmits Attention Data and Feeds, Micro Persuasion