Featured posts from the Search Engine Watch blog, as well as our customary headlines from around the web. If you’re not familiar with our blog, click on any of the links below, or visit the blog’s home page at http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/.
Note: Search Forums Spotlight will appear in Monday’s SearchDay.
From The SEW Blog…
- November 2006 Search News Recap Posted
The latest edition of my monthly Search Engine Report newsletter is now online, recapping top stories in search from the past month. You can read it online or receive it via email for free by signing up here. If you’re a Search Engine Watch member, the latest edition of Search Engine Update newsletter has also been posted. That newsletter carries more items than the Search Engine Report newsletter and goes out twice per month….
- Google Ordered By Another North Carolina Court To Remove Pages
Apparently, North Carolina is going to start a trend of people who get court orders to remove material Google has spidered when left out in public view. This week, Google was ordered to remove material by a court in that state. It follows a similar court order in a different case earlier this year….
- End of an Era… Beginning of a New Chapter
Today marks Danny Sullivan’s last day at Search Engine Watch, 10 years after beginning the industry’s leading publication for search engine news. Danny’s undeniable passion, knowledge, and dedication to the growth of the search engine industry is well engrained within the archives of Search Engine Watch, and will carry on long after his departure….
- How The Digg Editorial Process Differs From Search Engine Editorial Process
Todd Malicoat has a write up called The Search Marketer’s Guide to Digg, where he explains the difference between the Digg.com editorial process and search engines editorial process. It all comes down to the “human editorial authority,” and I quote; While most the search engines DO have human intervention – they haven’t accepted and embraced it. One of the beauties of digg is if there is CRAP in the index – you know exactly who to blame for it. As always, both human and algorithmic methods of intervention have their faults. I am sure Danny will go into a…
- Yahoo Turns Down Google’s Request For Information On Book Search
The NY Times reports that Yahoo has recently rejected Google’s subpoena for help with the Google Book Search project legal woes. Reportedly, Yahoo turned down Google’s request for similar reasons mentioned by Amazon when they turned down the same request. If you are interested, I have posted the full court filing at my server as a PDF download….
- Microsoft On How To Let MSNBot In, Keep Bad Bots Out
The Live Search Blog described how you can verify if the MSNBot you see crawling your site, is truly the MSNBot from Microsoft or some rogue spider trying to steal your content. Microsoft has added a way to look up the reverse DNS information for the IP of the bot and described what you should see, to ensure that it is the official MSNBot, if it is not, then you may want to block it or report it to Microsoft. A step by step guide is at the Live Search Blog. What about Googlebot? We covered that here….
- Goodbye Search Engine Watch & Best Wishes!
Today is my last day with Search Engine Watch, with me heading to my new digs at Search Engine Land tomorrow. I wanted to wish Search Engine Watch all the best going forward, plus help readers understand some of the changes that are happening. To do that best, I thought I’d go all the way back to the beginning, to the birth of Search Engine Watch….
- IAC To Launch AskCity; Local Info Services Site
Reuters reports that IAC and Ask.com are launching a new local information services site named AskCity on December 4th. The site will combine IAC’s portfolio of Ask.com, CitySearch, Evite and TicketMaster by providing information and services such as Web search, city guides, maps and event listings….
- Alexa Ain’t So Bad, Says Site Search Comparison
Alexa has come under plenty of fire recently as not being accurate (old hands have known better for years), as more and more people are using it to “prove” how hot their sites are. Sean Ryan at SLI Systems says lay off the Alexa bashing! SLI provides search services for a variety of web sites. Sean plotted the amount of searches he sees against the relative Alexa traffic rankings of some sites and found there was a correspondence. If you were a high traffic Alexa site, you also had a lot of site searches. Interesting, but I’m afraid it won’t…
- Goodbye Google Answers
Wow. Google is shutting down its Google Answers service. The company has announced that new questions won’t be accepted after the New Year, though the site will continue to let people view the question archives. Killing off the service, which never seemed to catch on much, certainly will help Google seem like it is focusing efforts toward more needed areas. But it still feels like an odd, almost surrendering move in the face of Yahoo Answers being such a success….
- Advertiser Details On Google Audio Ads
Donna Bogatin over at Digital Micro-Markets has posted what look to be PowerPoint slides designed to explain how Google Audio Ads will work for advertisers. The PowerPoint slides show how Google plans to bridge the advertisers with the consumers, how they deliver the ads to the radio and how many people Google thinks they can reach with the ads. As we reported earlier, we are expecting Google Audio Ads To Be Tested By End Of Year….
- Google Quality Raters Leaving Traces When They Visit Sites
This morning I reported at SER that Google’s EWOQ Search Referral String are being found in webmasters web analytics tools. For example, some people are recently noticing the URL https://www.google.com/evaluation/search/rating/task-edit?task=XXXXXX coming up in their referrals analytics. When I try to go to that URL, it tells me I do not have sufficient privileges to access that area. This EWOQ is the place for Google quality raters to leave feedback to Google on relevancy and search quality of the results….
- Linkbombing Against Anti-Martin Luther King Jr Site
In case you missed it, there’s a new link bombing campaign underway to try and reduce the rankings of an anti-Martin Luther King Jr. web site. The campaign raises all sorts of issues, ranging from those who disagree with the nature of that site and want it gone to those who might want all viewpoints represented in results, even if they disagree with them. Dropping Google Bombs Against Hate from Nicholas Carlson at InternetNews.com is a good overview of the situation with quotes from the major search engines. Doing down Martin Luther King from Phil Bradley gets into the issue…
- Live’s Erik Selberg On Microsoft’s Tough Search Challenge
Talk about the echo chamber coming full circle. The stats on Microsoft’s search share decline that I posted last week were commented on by Erik Selberg of Microsoft’s Live.com search team in his General disarray at The Big 3 post. He provides a fresh, honest assessment of Microsoft’s search challenge ahead from someone in the rank-and-file:…
- Ask.com Challenges You To Stop The Fat Naked Man From Dancing
Phil Bradley spotted an ad in the London Metro today, asking you to take the Ask.com Challenge and win prizes by searching. ChallengeAsk.com has more details. There’s a YouTube video with a fat, hairy man doing a striptease (also shown above, if you don’t want to click over). The joke challenge is to stop Sam (the man in the video) from dancing by searching at Ask.com. The real challenge is that by searching, you can win prizes if you get a congratulations message appearing in your search results….
- Google: Not TV Network But TV Adjunct
Via Threadwatch, a transcript of a conversation between ABC reporter Alan Kohler and Richard Kimber, managing director of sales and operations for South East Asia of Google. In the conversation, Kohler asks: “But do you see Google eventually becoming a sort of a free-pay TV network, showing, effectively, TV channels on Google?” Kimber responds that at Google, “we don’t see it as cannibalising the TV, but more as an adjunct to it.” So services like Google will provide will enable on-demand viewing, as an “adjunct” to TV viewing….
- Exalead CEO Warns Of “Google Monster” & Closed Yahoo & Microsoft
The Multilingual Search Blog covers Exalead CEO Francois Bourdoncle taking a big stick and swinging at Google in a keynote talk at SES Paris. He positions his own service as potentially the savior for those in Europe worried about the “Google monster.” Beyond Google, he also criticizes Yahoo and Microsoft for collaborating on a “closed” sitemaps protocol. I’d say the Cold War against American-based search engines is going up a notch….